Chalet Comellas-Baker on the inspiration for “The Lonesome Cut Up”:
I just watched this really cool documentary, you know, I'm living in Nashville now, so I had to watch that country music Ken Burns deal. So I was thinking about Hank Williams senior. And he wrote this song and the whippoorwill... he mentions the whippoorwill. I had already been looking up how the whippoorwill have been declining in population over the past, like from when he wrote it. This is what I looked up—from 1949 to present. What are the populations, the numbers for the whippoorwill? And they have been in steady decline. So I told him I was like, there's a project here, so I want to do something with this. But I'm not really sure what. One thing I was thinking about was I'll take the lyrics and I'll do this cutup technique. It's something that he used to do. It's something that David Bowie used to do. It's something a lot of musicians did. You just take it and the structure of it inspires the next iteration.
Read MoreAlice Stone-Collins on the process of working with cut paper:
It's the same thing I guess as if you were working on a painting and you knew it needed something and you would have to either rub something out and repaint on top of it. I guess the only difference is is I'm just doing it with with cut paper. I also kind of like building them from the ground up. Like I like the concept of painting that street with all those deer and seeing what it looked like before all the deer were put down. Any type of interior space —like again the bed and the bunnies— I like seeing the empty room just with the floorboards and then gluing the bed down. Like it's almost like you're like going through the process of adding fur(niture)— …It makes me feel a closer connection to the pieces and the places that I'm recreating.
Read MoreJessica R. Smith on the perceived value of woven coverlets in the 19th century:
The idea of weaving and being able to weave this beautiful—what we would call Op Art now—coverlet showed that you were a hard worker and you contributed to the material goods of the family... And the farmers would say “Well my daughter wove this beautiful coverlet—and this is because she made something that was utilitarian, that it was a material good. It was part of our... it's part of our family wealth and it's not just frivolous like embroidery or silk painting, Which I had never heard— like I'd never thought of that, right? And so, I thought well, isn't that interesting—this idea of you like making something that has actually utility... value to it. That it's a functional object is viewed having more value, right? Than this decorative object...
Read MoreSonya Yong James on taking risks and pushing herself in her work :
It seems like for the past...say...two or three years, I approach every single project, or show, or sculpture ...it's like a brand new thing. And it's actually really uncomfortable and it's really scary because when I do that—I just have to, it's just the way I work— I have to really push myself kind of to that edge. Particularly of not really knowing how something is going to turn out. And knowing also…too… there's a tremendous amount of risk, because you can really, really fail in a really spectacular and public way! Because, I mean, I tried to do a little bit of math because I have to be somewhat prepared, you know. But so, I had ...luckily, I was really lucky...I had a couple of interns helping me. And so we're tearing these bed sheets in The Contemporary, but then I had to move— and then into The Temporary— in the temporary little room space that I had and then I'm like trying to like kind of like lay down on the ground with a tape measure and like, measure it. And I do some math, and then think about what the size is going to be here. And do I have enough bed sheets? I mean, I know I bought every single bed sheet in Atlanta again. It better work! And that real kind of fear, you know, thatadrenaline. I mean, my adrenal glands in the month of November... but I don't know... it's worth it. You know, I kind of think too, as an artist, you want to have that feeling of wonder. I think as artists, that's the thing that we're always trying to hold on to…recapture.
Read MoreColleen Merrill on what inspired her research presentation “Mirroring: Affirming the Self as Parent, Artist, and Academic”:
Looking at the child stages of development in regards to Donald Winnicott who was another psychoanalyst who wrote the book "Playing in Reality" from 1971… And that book hashes out a few of these different stages of development— mirroring the transitional object, social awareness— and how these things relate to a child's sort of creative impulse. And I'm like how...what a great sort of metaphor to think about that too for the artist—for the parent—that they're also going through a very similar type of developmental stage in their own right. You know they're also going through these sort of formative years that a child is going through at the same time. When we have children, we're emerging in our careers, we're emerging as artists. Why don't we sort of recognize that and discuss that more? So that's sort of what inspired it.
Read MoreNaomi Falk on working with indigo dye:
I moved to South Carolina and I found out that it was historically a place where Indigo had been cultivated. And so... and that there were people doing it and that there was an indigo plant that was native to South Carolina —or something similar like that—along the coast and had been found again. Like they thought that it was no longer in existence and now it's still here and so they're cultivating it on a small scale again. But there's a long history of textile industry and … indigo production in the region, and so I thought that I would start, you know, learning more about that.
Read MoreAs a mold maker/caster I'm always thinking about sequences of objects and thinking about repetition of objects and the arrangement of things in a way that one object relates to another has been important to me for a long time, I think. So, I think objects all offer individually something to a conversation, but it's often as a collective. They come to be sort of greater than the sum of their parts in terms of conceptually what it could mean. So in this case the fragments are important I think to me in terms of communicating fragility—even sort of an ephemeral quality. There's maybe a question in these objects about if they're finished or if they've been broken. You know, the thing about clay—and actually glass is similar, textiles is similar—the material has a memory. It sort of has a sense of... it carries with it what's been done.
Read MoreBrittainy Lauback on vacation cruises:
We're always trying to vacation from ourselves and we never can. You know? What I think is so kind of disturbing about the cruise in general is that you have this—you know, you're really stuck with all these people. You really do kind of start to have like a little bit of an existential crisis. Like, you know, like hell is other people and you're stuck on the ship with them. And I really felt that, but at the same time I have to say I also felt this overwhelming tenderness. And like I also really loved all these people, and everyone was genuinely open and trying to connect. You know, it's like kind of those stereotypes about the…you know, open, loudmouth American. There's something really lovely about that.
Read MoreRachel Reese on her first meeting with artist, Suzanne Jackson:
I was giving a lecture at the opening of the Nick Cave exhibition we had at the Jepson Center and in that lecture was talking about sort of the impetus for his soundsuits— which was a response to the Rodney King beatings in Los Angeles— he was in Chicago... And she came up to me after the lecture and introduced herself. “Hello. Hello, I'm Suzanne Jackson” And she was wearing these bracelets that she said "Your lecture reminded me. I wear these bracelets everyday" (and she does) "I got them in Watts just before the riots broke out in 1992.” And so that was our first conversation with one another, and I said I've been trying to get in touch with you! So we sort of both talk about that, like, serendipitous first meeting, but from that I went to her studio and—her house and studio—and was just blown away at the amount of work, the like experimental style of her work that she was making. I entered another world in her house, and it was very clear that she had been like head down making work for 10 years with no visibility.
Read MoreDonna Mintz on her artwork:
They are glass plate negatives— from late 1800s to around 1910 or 12 are the dates that I’ve seen on them— that I got at a flea market in Chelsea New York, in lower Manhattan. … I bought the first one thinking “I don’t know but one day I’m going to do something with this” because It was a forest and I love the scene. And I put gold leaf on the back of them. And they end up being the one object in this whole exhibition that I think captures that exact idea I’m trying to capture—which is that a memory, a moment in time so finite and fleeting has been made permanent. First by the photographer by fixing this image…that was then maybe printed, maybe not. Who knows where the photograph is… cast off and I found 120 years later!? And made into what I think is a beautiful object that has the gravitas of an important memory. To me they’re not— because I don’t know even where they were made. But I’ll say, I just love them.
Read MoreChristina Vogel on beauty in painting:
Mira Schor also just talks about pleasure, visual pleasure. And just thinking about like paintings that... I want to make paintings that are pleasurable. Now, I think the thing that I have been thinking about... I don't think it's also completely unrelated to what's going on in the world. And I don't want anyone to think that I'm like just putting my head in the sand and then going to the studio and making these like beautiful paintings. In a lot of ways, I feel like these paintings which are about beauty and about embracing these like, overtly kind of feminine symbols— like flowers are just overtly feminine or have been associated with femininity—so embracing like and you know, wanting to make paintings that are beautiful and lush and like joyful even sometimes... I don't know that that has been respected historically and that has definitely been pushed into the category of paintings women make.
Read MoreMeredith Lynn on collaboration:
Actually something that I really appreciate about working with Katie is that—seeing her work through ideas and problems in her own work and knowing that when she calls me and says “I think that you need to reexamine this idea”—knowing that she is also pushing herself through those same challenging and difficult conversations in her own work and then knowing that I can be open and vulnerable to those criticisms that she’s bringing to me because I know that she’s also bringing that to her own work. I think that’s something that we all need to strive for… is to be willing to have your mind changed. Not about everything certainly— I think we have to have certain ethics and ideas that we hold fast to—but being willing to put up any of your ideas to scrutiny, I think is really important.
Read MoreCorrina Sephora on being persistent:
But I really wanted to work for this old blacksmith guy in Castleberry and he said I'd hire you IF I had this extra work— so come back next week. So, I'd go back every week and I'd say "Hi. I'm back. Do you have some work for me yet? … I'm kind of persistent pretty much and he said ... "Well, you know. Why don't you come back next week and we'll have some work for you." And he said he didn't think that I would ever go away. He thought he was better off just getting some more work and hiring me to come work with him 'cause I clearly wasn't going away. Right? Because I heard a "no" in there somewhere, but mostly I (heard), "Yeah, you're talented. You've got great skills. I'd love to teach you. You'd be helpful in the shop." … IF... I didn't hear that "no." So... I try not to be annoying with that persistence—but maybe it's annoying sometimes—but maybe it works out.
Read MoreHaylee Anne on the Living Melody Collective’s process of making the mural for the Center for Civil and Human Rights:
A big part of this mural … was [calling out] redlining. The city of Atlanta has maps for every district and even more than that, every area of every district. And they categorize land by color— which is not uncommon for areas that are often trying to segregate without using the word segregation. So, you know, areas would be delineated in green if they were considered good, yellow if it was fair, black if was unusable, red if it was poor… and so we took those district maps and we also incorporated [them] into the mural.
… The mural became this like kind of home base project…where everyone could kind of come and go work on the project, but also bring their kids and feel this sense of community and just not have to worry about that aspect of childcare.
Read MoreTommye McClure Scanlin on the relationship between her paintings and her tapestries:
I’m not trying to replicate this painting… but I’m trying to be inspired by it… or informed in some ways about the kinds of things that I saw when I made the painting. I’ve done several—I think it’s four pieces now, this is either the 4thor the 5th—where the background is essentially white, even though it’s not really white. It’s—you know—natural color and light gray and bleached white and thin threads and thick threads. But one of the things that one of my tapestry teachers pointed out is that if a weaver wants to place a shape in a field of white, the weaver has to make the field of white. You can’t—like a painter could paint a leaf on a white canvas and there would be the leaf—well I’m kind of getting a similar effect except I’m having to make the background as I’m making the positive.
Read MoreJenny Fine on her photographic series “The Saddest Day”:
They had invested all of their savings in becoming farmers…They had gotten a load of, I think they call them guilts… from some farmer…One of those pigs were sick and so it introduced …dysentery into all the pigs and they had to all be slaughtered on the same day …Basically it devastated my family. And so I was really interested in that narrative of my father and my uncle as young people having to slaughter 100 pigs or whatever all in the same day.
And that they often referred to that story as the saddest day. And so, we went to the farm to really kind of reenact that and that was just sort of the narrative I wanted to reenact. I wasn’t really sure what was gonna happen because I knew that no matter what you do— this performance for the camera— no matter how much you prepare, that you’re always at the mercy of the moment.
And I was using my twin lens Mamiya camera— which you don’t look straight forward. You actually look down into the camera. And so I wasn’t actually facing this narrative —my family— straight on. We were in the landscape of the farm and I’m looking through this square viewfinder straight down. The landscape in a way became the stage. And as they were moving in and out of the frame they were coming on and off stage. And It became really this theatrical reenactment or attempt to reenact the saddest day.
Read MoreCourtney Sanborn on medieval art and the iconography in her work:
Sanborn: Like I said, I love Medieval art. And I love the iconography. I love that in that period of art …there’s no words to describe evil. How do you describe something that’s evil or negative? There’s no words, but there are pictures. And so, the artists of that time made their demons out of—like there are these weird conglomerations—of like pigs, bats and like weird creatures that they had like deemed evil. Right? And so that’s how they portrayed the dark side of things. There’s always happy. There’s always sad. There’s evil. There’s good. There’s temptation. There’s like peace and like wholeness… and I love that they showed that. Cause I’ve found that no matter what narrative or whatever situation I’ve found myself in there’s always good. There’s always bad. And they exist together…
So, the demons in this embroidery are acting out the wedding rituals. She’s getting her nails done. She’s getting her hair done. And down here, this is the demon wedding. So this is the culmination of their day…which is happening at the same time as my day.
Liddell: So there’s the flip—it’s like the yin-yang of weddings.
Sanborn: Yeah, yeah. So here’s this happy wedding that was happening… here’s the garden party. These are my friends. And then here’s the demon wedding that’s happening.
Liddell: Do the demons have their friends here?
Sanborn: They don’t have friends. It’s just them..
Read MoreShanequa Gay on starting her new body of work:
There was something Dr. Napoleon Wells—he is a professor/psychologist over at Columbia College in South Carolina—there was something he said. He was like in charge of facilitating my artist talk when I was in South Carolina and he said, “African-American women, black women, are the best to tell the American story.” Why? Because we are the ones who are the furthest on these fringes, on these edges. And so, It made me begin to think about… his why. We’re observers, you know, the ones who are … kind of at the edges and including our children. Right? And so, you very rarely hear our stories. You very rarely hear our information. And yet we’re the ones in spaces of service. … His understanding or his sharing of that— I was like, I’m African-American. So why am I a best story teller and why am I a good story teller? And what makes my narrative important? And why is my narrative just as American as a white male?
Our society tells us that it’s not. I’m hyphenated. I’m hyphenated in how I move here, in my space. And so, if mine is just as American with or without the African-American— what does that look like and what does that mean? Which is why I’m seeking out spirituality, because I don’t always know where my work comes from. I don’t always know where these ideas are coming from. But I do like to move on them.
Read MoreHannah Tarr on how Instagram has affected her process:
I’ve deleted the app. I’ve like told myself I’m not allowed to go on it. It just makes me sad. …
I’ve found that I see other people’s works sneaking into mine and I see mine sneaking into others that follow me too much lately. And I’m wanting to kind of be more secretive and under wraps at least until I have enough that I feel like I’m ready to show, or I have the opportunity to show a bunch of work. And then it’s unleashed and it’s gonna wow everyone and be awesome…
But it’s weird. I think I look at things differently. I measure up myself differently and my own work differently. I think about the product instead of the process a lot more. Because I’m just seeing these images; I’m seeing so many images. ... And I’m like “Oh this is good” and “I like this painting”… But I don’t think about what it is that gives me the subtle joys. Why I love painting is surprising myself and making little jokes in my head and having fun with kind of what turns up. And Instead when I’m like “Oh my painting looks like this” or “it needs to be this”— I get too focused on the end result. And I think that that’s a product of looking at too much right now, but not in person…
Read MoreYvonne Studevan on how her family history relates to her artwork:
I could just feel my heart jump out of my chest. … I didn’t like speaking in front of a group when I was a kid. … I didn’t like writing reports. And I didn’t like history. You know, having to go back and study all those people. I was like who wants to remember “1492 somebody sailed the ocean blue”—you know, all those type things. It was not until I could relate the history to me that I really started developing my passion.
It’s like, when I watched movies about the Alamo as a child, I never knew that any people who were African Americans served in the Texas Revolution until I was contacted by somebody from Texas to say that, you know your ancestor was killed by Santa Anna and inherited 2040 acres of land and we need you to verify this. And I was like verify this?! I don’t know anything about this! And so, I started reading through all the wills—because Richard Allen had a will, and all of his children had wills. And I had copies of them. So, I read through my great-great-great grandmother’s will, and she said the property in Texas is to be sold for the education of my grandchildren. That was the thing that they needed. The stories are out there, and nobody knows about them. And I’m just like, well, I can tell the story orally and I can draw the pictures and let people know. I guess that’s my new passion in life.
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