In “My Little Corner of the World,” whose title comes from Yo La Tengo’s cover of the 1960s love song of the same name, Sekel includes some real-life references, such as a painting of a nighttime swamp inspired by a kayaking trip. “It was dark when we went out, and when we came back it was really beautiful to look at the stars through the overhanging cypress trees,” he said.
In a way, a painting like “My Little Corner of the World” becomes a self-portrait, although Secker says this was not intentional. “I think every painting is a self-portrait in its own way,” he speculates. “Maybe some more than others, though.” But, he clarified, “I wasn’t trying to express myself.” Instead, he said he was “mainly thinking about the space in the painting.”
These paintings are almost my immediate reactions to things, rarely a conscious, broad summary of a period of time…”
“Wetlands” was inspired by a real place where a large electric polling station was surrounded by swampland. “You see birds all the time,” Secker said. “Birds and trash. That’s the edge of all the swamps around here.” New Orleans’ railroad tracks are similar, he said, noting, “I’ve always admired what you find when you walk around, what you see.”
In addition to painting, Secker also used a Risograph printer to produce magazines. He first encountered the vintage machine among its cult following in Philadelphia, but it wasn’t until he moved to New Orleans that he became enamored with it. Secker has two Risographs in his studio. One was purchased from a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Alabama for $80. Another came from a church in Alabama. Neither works 100%, so he uses them for different tasks. Seckel likes the beauty of Risograph’s process of printing one color at a time. Moreover, it is also very useful for his practice.
“It takes a lot of labor to print things,” Secker said, adding that it has also become a “community resource.” In addition to using the Risograph in his own work, he also prints flyers, posters and other materials for people. “You meet people, interact with the people you live with and so on,” he explained.
Sekel’s latest zine, Pink Tape, mixes cell phone photos taken in the first few months of 2019 with photos of recent paintings and drawings he has created since late 2018. He would try to produce a few magazines or books each year that would ultimately document his life at the time. This is part of his practice and has a certain connection with his painting. “They definitely support each other in a way,” he said of both aspects of his creative work. “They’re definitely not completely independent, but they’re not interdependent either.”
One major difference between these projects is their scope. Secker said he used magazines and books to create “a survey of a broader time period rather than a more focused idea of what was happening in the painting.” Instead, “these paintings are almost my immediate reactions to things, rarely a conscious, broad summary of a period of time or something else.”
But there is a correlation between these works, as they both rely on the artist’s observation of the mix of natural and man-made objects that populate his world. Secker captures surroundings so ordinary that they are often overlooked, but he uses these details to populate worlds that span real life and imagination. *
This article originally appeared in High Fructose Issue 52, which is now sold out. Subscribe to New High Fructose here to get the next print issue.
