Practical Magic: Milk and Honey
Milk and Honey, Grab and Go, 2020, digital c-print
Practical Magic is an online interview series with early and mid-career creatives. Through a selection of prompts we spotlight each person’s practice and (hopefully) prove art world creatives are the real influencers of today.
interview with: MILK AND HONEY
artist duo
Milk and Honey is the collaborative effort of artist couple Robert P Gordon and Ashley Kaye. Based in Fayetteville, AK they each have unique individual practices, and together create quirky and sometimes grotesque tableaux complete with fragmented body parts and soft sculpture galore. In their own words:
We each consider Pennsylvania home. Rob earned their MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and Ashley is finishing up her MFA at the University of Arkansas. We are recent recipients of Artist 360 grants from the Mid-America Art Alliance. As Milk and Honey we blend Rob's neurotic work ethic and free-associative ideation with Ashley's impulse-driven studio practice.
We had the immense pleasure of showing Rob’s work for our first exhibition of the year, Superimpose, and learned about their duo with Ashley through our growing friendship. Read below for surprising inspiration and an ambitious next project in the works.
PP: Did you receive a formal education for the work you do currently? Either way, do you think it has supported/informed the outcome of your career and your future goals?
MH: Rob attending RIT was a great experience, and opened a ton of doors for us. It also reinforced a love of, and dissatisfaction with photography that informs our work. Ashley has enjoyed having access to facilities outside her medium, and the freedom to make with abandon during her three years of the University of Arkansas. Returning to art after several years of not making, her MFA has allowed her to rekindle a practice. We both love photography as an abstract concept, but graduate school has made us incredibly skeptical of the photographic gatekeepers, and largely bored with the medium and its expectation of repetition and visual homogeneity.
The Kiss, 2020, digital c-print
PP: What are you listening to in your studio or when you work?
MH: It’s really down to whoever gets to it first, Rob is always turning on Yacht Rock Radio or New Hip Hop Radio on Pandora, while Ashley will put on cooking shows like Top Chef, Spring Baking Championship, or Beat Bobby Flay.
PP: Current binge-worthy tv/film recommendation?
MH: We love Schitt’s Creek, What We Do in the Shadows (editor note: highly recommend), Westworld, and Watchmen. We are also enjoying watching every Star Wars movie in chronological order.
PP: Who or what are major influences for you right now and why?
Rob: Currently, memes and advertising. I am obsessed with the infinite scroll advertisements you see at the bottom of web pages. They are these wild pairings like a photo of cranberry jelly with the text “How to actually empty your bowels every morning”. They are a really exciting use of text and photographs, like some kind of coprophilic Baldessari send up.
Ashley: I love pop culture, particularly, “low” culture. I un-ironically enjoy bad television - The Bachelor, Lifetime movies, viral videos, you name it. I spend a lot of time lurking on social media, algorithms keep me supplied with dance videos, and awful conservative bigotry that I can’t keep myself from hate-watching.
we couldn’t have said it better ourselves
PP: Success & failure is subjective - what to you was the most successful moment that you’ve had as a creative, and why was it successful or meaningful to you? What was a moment of failure that you've had, and how did you overcome it?
MH: We have really enjoyed getting reactions from our viewers, whether it’s a refusal to sit in a skin chair, nuzzling a nipple pillow, grinning with delight, or grimacing with revulsion. And Rob’s uncle recently said, “Oh, I get it, it’s ok to be weird!” so that’s a win.
Failure wise, we did a pop-up performance at Crystal Bridges [Museum of America Art] on New Year’s Eve 2 years ago, and it was much much darker than we anticipated and we had trouble seeing in our suits. Rob panicked and rushed through the choreography, and Ashley had to adapt. We asked some of our friends in the audience and nobody noticed, but any time things don’t go to plan, Rob counts it as a failure.
PP: What's your favorite article of clothing to wear and why?
DO: Ashley reaches for a high-necked or oversized sweater, while Rob likes a well-worn pair of jeans, and dress shirts with wild prints on them.
Rob and Ashley among a selection of their soft sculptures
PP: What is the next big milestone you've set for yourself? How close to achieving it are you?
MH: Our big milestone is a solo exhibition. The exhibition is original art, food, drink, and strange yard games, like a cornhole set where you throw fleshy bean bags into sexually suggestive holes. We want to collaborative with local artists and chefs to engage with the themed exhibitions. Think Banksy’s Dismaland on a community scale. We were going to trial the food tie in at Ashley’s canceled thesis exhibition, with a spherified mango and coconut “egg” shooter.
We also have an art object to-do list, with some more CNC frames, a three-panel altarpiece, and photographic soft sculpture. Given the current situation, you’ll have to ask the CDC about how close we are to achieving that. Maybe a year?
Still from single-channel video Cultivating Mass produced for the 2019 Black Apple Awards in Fayetteville, AR
Practical Magic interviews post (nearly) every Tuesday and Thursday - check back weekly to see who we’re chatting with next.