Meet Weisman Award Winner Joseph Lappie, Artist

Creative projects are a given during a student’s time at Columbia. Getting paid to complete these projects? Not so much. The Albert P. Weisman Award makes this type of funding a reality. The Weisman Award provides up to $4,000 to a limited number of students in a variety of media who need financial assistance to finish a significant project.

In the coming weeks, The  Studnt Loop will profile select recipients of the 2008 Albert P. Weisman Award. Students, feel free to celebrate your peers, get a little jealous, and take a fresh look at your own body of work. After that, apply.  

If you entered the exhibit There Is Always More Than One When There Is Always Only One, your instinct might have been to take in the visual impact of the life size prints. Or, you may have wanted to touch the piece and experience its tactile qualities. Or, maybe you’d start by reading the text that shadowed some of the figures. There was no linear way to interpret the many art forms used in the exhibit and its creator, MFA Book and Paper Arts student Joseph Lappie, wouldn’t have had it any other way.  He immersed himself in a complex artistic approach and the effort resulted in a co-win for the Albert P. Weisman Award Best of Show.

The idea for There Is Always More than One When There Is Always Only One developed as Lappie considered ways to pull the audience in.  “I had been working on artist’s books, smaller prints and drawings and yearned to get back to something that was…more visually substantial, something that would really grab viewers as they walked into the gallery space,”  Lappie said.  Lappie felt the depth of the piece owed much to the artistic forms that converged to create the final work.  “In general I find the more avenues of access you can provide for viewers the better,” he said. “Presenting work that contains visual components, textual representation, a tactile or physical presence, etc… only increases the amount of people that will be drawn to the work and hopefully extends the time one spends with it. The larger the number of engaged viewers, the increased likelihood someone will be positively affected.  As long as the different mediums can intertwine and relate in a way that forms a cohesive whole, there is no reason to not provide multiple visual layers.”

Lappie welcomed the opportunity to challenge himself with this exhibit. “There was a personal push to see how big of a print (and print matrix) I could create (6’3”). I knew I would need several layers of engagement. By developing the visual, the tactile and the textual elements I created an interactive piece where each viewer was responsible for how much they got out of the artwork,” Lappie said. Lappie’s foray into the unpredictable world of Interdisciplinary Arts came after he received two Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, one in Painting and another in Graphic Design.  He had experience with Printmaking, but was still seeking artistic growth. 

Columbia’s Graduate program fulfilled that need.  “Columbia offered the most potential for me to grow as an artist and as a technician,” Lappie said. “Its program provided two-dimensional, three-dimensional, sound and performative classes that appealed to (and occasionally scared) me. It promised to provide demanding hands-on training in intriguing subjects like papermaking, bookbinding and letterpress while helping to develop the concept/context/content of my art and thought process.”

Once in the program, applying for the Weisman award was an easy decision. Lappie stated, “Here is this great award with a thirty-plus year history of helping students create a large piece or body of work, offering to help me with the more complicated bits of realizing a project (financing), plus publicizing my work and offering an exhibition. How could I not apply?” 

Financing was particularly important to achieve his goals with There Is Always More than One When There Is Always Only One.  Lappie said, “My thesis piece is (including the prints) forty feet long and reaches over ten feet high. That’s a lot of material. A lot of quality material. Expensive reams of faux-suede, decent paper, good birch plywood, spools of silk ribbon, printouts and more. All of this costs money and winning the Weisman allowed me to create without having to jeopardize the integrity of the piece or going broke in the process.” 

With the relief of financial pressure, Lappie was able to focus on the personal nature of the project. “Until There Is Always More Than One When There Is Always Only One, I never explicitly created autobiographical art, so for this piece I wanted to present the many ‘people’ that form my ‘self’ and the factual fictions that have shaped me throughout the years. Although initially worried that I may lose some people to exclusivity of experience I came to feel that in this instance the content was so relatable that it became less about me and more about us.” 

The Best of Show co-win proved that this more personal approach was worth the risk. Weisman Advisor David Lewis stated, "I think what was so impressive about Joseph's application was how clear he was about what he wanted to do.  Everything from his work samples to his artist statement, were concise, clear and compelling." The success of There Is Always More Than One When There Is Always Only One ignited the continued life of the exhibit. 

“My plan has been to expand this exhibit so that it encompasses an entire gallery space and utilizes another layer of accessibility-sound,” Lappie said. “Ideally this piece will grow and find its way into many more galleries within the next year or two. The award and its positive connotation certainly increases the chance of this happening. There are many more facets of my ‘self’ to examine and many more personal mythologies to explore.” In addition, Lappie had several projects lined up within the next year, including collaborating with New York poet Steven Karl on his upcoming book State(s) of Flux and preparing for his first Chicago solo show Before There Was Us and Them There Was We at the Believe Inn on November 22. 

Details on these projects, as well as samples from Lappie’s portfolio, can be found on the website Peptic Robot Press. Lappie had sage advice for any potential Weisman applicants on the fence. “Stop considering the application and apply,” he said. “Go to the Weisman informational meeting, formulate your idea to the point where you can discuss it comfortably with your peers, and put together a solid, well-crafted proposal. If you get the award be prepared to work and if you don’t get the award…shrug it off, revisit your proposal, fix the glitches and be prepared to work.”

Keesha Johnson
MFA Creative Writing
Portfolio Center Production Manager