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Small Worlds An Interview with Polly Apfelbaum and Amy Cutler lydia yee Polly Apfelbaum and Amy Cutler began working in New York at very different times—the early 1980s and the late 1990s, respectively. Whereas Apfelbaum’s experience in the freewheeling East Village was one of showing in different galleries and ‘‘growing up in public,’’ Cutler made her mark in a group exhibition at the Drawing Center and joined Leslie Tonkonow just a couple of years after graduating from Cooper Union. Although their work emerges from different traditions— Apfelbaum blends elements of painting and sculpture, while Cutler’s practice is rooted in drawing—they share a number of mutual concerns: an interest in narrative, ‘‘feminine’’ subjects, and an evocative use of color. Apfelbaum and Cutler make their work by hand, and printmaking has provided both with an escape from the isolation of the studio as well as an opportunity to expand their practice through collaboration with master printers. Each has been exhibiting in museums and galleries in Europe in recent years, and showing abroad affords them the freedom to experiment without the pressure and scrutiny of the hometown audience. LYDIA YEE: I would like to start by asking you both what sort of work you were doing when you first started garnering attention and at what point where you at in your career. POLLY APFELBAUM: That is a bit complicated to answer. I moved to New York City in 1978. My first one-person show was in 1986 in the East Village. I was showing fabricated wood pieces; later I added found objects. The work that is probably recognizable with what I am doing today—using the dyed fabric—was first shown in SoHo in 1992 in an exhibition called ‘‘the blot on my bonnet’’ at the Amy Lipton Gallery. YEE: Did you first have opportunities to exhibit your work in East Village galleries? 33 34 Lydia Yee APFELBAUM: The first show of the wood work was in a small gallery on 10th Street called Paulo Salvador, run by a lovely Brazilian man; he later died of AIDS. He mostly showed sculpture. Then I moved to Loughelton Gallery, which was an interesting gallery, also in the East Village, run by two women who had both gone to CalArts. At the time I didn’t even know what CalArts was and they were showing mostly people who had gone to CalArts, Sue Williams, Kate Ericson, and Mel Ziegler. They had John Baldessari curate a show there that included Meg Cranston and John Miller. It was a little different from some of the other East Village galleries. I was learning and showing at the same time, growing up in public. My work at the time sometimes looked like a one-person group show. I was mixing things up, trying a lot of different things out. But the East Village was open to that; and Loughelton in particular, because of the CalArts connection, was very idea-driven. I had spent a year in Spain in 1985 and was also influenced by a large exhibition of Arte Povera I had seen in Madrid. YEE: Maybe you could show a heterogeneous group of works together because the East Village was a kind of experimental cauldron anyway. APFELBAUM: Totally. But you know, I started showing in the East Village at the same time I was in group shows at White Columns and at Artists Space. Valerie Smith included my work in one of the ‘‘Selections’’ shows there, which was very important for me. It was great to have one foot in the so-called commercial world and also to be showing at nonprofit alternative spaces. Before I went to Spain in 1984, I really didn’t have work to show or many opportunities, but when I came back in 1985, the East Village was really active. You have to remember too that many of the early East Village galleries were run by artists. They really opened things up. YEE: Did you make a distinction in what you would show in a commercial gallery versus an alternative space? APFELBAUM: No, I didn’t. There was not so much pressure to sell, or to make saleable work in those days. And at that point, so many different things were going on in my work; I could just put it out there and suffer the consequences. That’s what I mean by growing up in public, taking risks. I think the work kept changing a lot because...

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