Janice Zhai

November 7, 2021

Feature by Mel Wang

Photos by Madalynn Hay

Janice Zhai is a first-year at Columbia College and a rising mixed media artist. Her art pieces are a blend of the traditional and unconventional, with mediums ranging from fashion design to video editing.

Please tell us about yourself!

I'm Janice Zhai, a freshman at Columbia College hoping to major in something related to the Arts, but I’m still not sure. In terms of my own art, I’d describe myself as a mixed media artist. I’m primarily interested in fashion design, but I’ve also been getting into video editing.

Can you walk me through your fashion-based mixed media pieces?

For sure! I think that clothes are always a formative experience - they form so much of our everyday lives. They showcase who you are but also serve a function.

But what I’m really interested in is how we can take fashion––which is always so functional––and make it art. For example, one of my pieces, “The Swan,” is a dress made out of old ACT entrance tests. I thought, “I’m not gonna be needing these anymore, might as well make something out of them.” I really wanted to experiment with more unconventional material. Out of the paper, I tore a lot of them and folded pieces into origami butterflies. The base of the dress is mostly cork my mom had in her storage closet.

I was also listening to a lot of Harry Styles at the time. I’m not sure how that relates to my process, but whenever I see this piece, I think of Harry.

Maybe Harry’s music is a big influence on your art! And while we’re on that subject, who or what else are your artistic influences?

That’s tough. I’m very influenced by music. I’ll pick a song––let’s say a Harry Styles song––and then I’ll start to think about what the song looks like visually. Or maybe I’ll watch a movie like “Fight Club” and think about how cool it would be to make a leather jacket based on that.

I also think my friends play a big role in my art, especially because so many of them are creatively driven. A lot of the stuff they make is really inspiring, and I get a little competitive. So whenever I see their art, it pushes me to do a little better.

Circling back to “The Swan” - was that your first time playing with multimedia? Is that something you do now with all your projects?

My high school art teacher was very big on using unconventional materials, especially because I started really working with her more towards the end of high school. Because of COVID, I didn’t have too much access to traditional art materials. My teacher really encouraged me to experiment. I remember during one of her classes, I made this portrait of wine corks because my dad is so obsessed with wine, and she pushed me to play with that idea even more.

With “The Swan,” I specifically chose to use ACT paper because I was so stressed. I needed an outlet after taking the ACT, you know? Ripping up all my practice exams felt right to me.

I love that. Do you think paper will be a medium you play with in the future?

Definitely. Word of warning though, paper is very delicate––I’d love to make a big sculpture out of paper, but we will see.

I really want to talk about your video editing skills. Can you walk me through them?

Honestly, I started making them because I just saw a lot of really cool edits on Instagram. At first, I wasn’t planning on doing any crazy editing. But now that I’ve gotten better, I’m starting to play around with text and more visuals.

In terms of process, I take a lot of random photos and edit them together. I also love making videos to remember big events, like an important weekend or freshman orientation. Inspiration-wise, I pretty much live on Instagram and Pinterest.

I’m seeing a running theme of capturing moments in all your pieces. Is that a theme you really care about?

Yeah, I definitely care about capturing the moment, especially because I want to remember all my experiences. For example, even though orientation was just a week, NSOP taught me a lot about myself and I met a lot of my friends during it. Which is weird, because a lot of people tell you that you’re not going to make friends during NSOP.

What do you think of the artistic community here at Columbia?

I think it’s really great. What I love about Columbia is that it gives you both the academic world but also a strong, artsy community where everyone is so willing to share their art. And we’re in New York! So many museums, galleries, fashion houses, Soho. I love Soho.

Any Soho recs?

Hmmmm, good question. I’m not great at names, but I love how you can just walk through Soho and end up in a tiny hole in the wall that sells the best local fashion brands. You meet the best artists there.

Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started at Ratrock?

Well, I kind of applied because I was involved with literary magazines during high school. My high school was super small, so you never really had a publication that was specifically dedicated to art.

I remember going by the Ratrock table during the club thinking that it was super cool. I just submitted on a whim, and here I am.

Are you part of anything else on campus?

I’m also an illustrator for the Blue & White! I’ll probably get more involved later on, but I’ve only been here for two months, so we’ll see!

Are you currently working on any projects?

I was thinking about doing another multimedia piece, but this time with video editing. Not too sure, but I’d love to work in some drawings or paintings or even more fashion design. Or collages! I’d love to get back into that again.

I want to talk about your collages for a bit. Can you walk me through that process?

My collages work a lot like my other pieces. I hear a song, and I can just picture the visual in my head. With collages though, I get to be especially chaotic because that’s just how my thoughts work.

I know it’s a little too soon to ask, but are you planning to pursue the arts after college?

My dream for the longest time was to be part of the fashion industry. I think I definitely still want to pursue that. Maybe I’ll get into film, edit a movie. I definitely want to pursue something creative after college. I don't know what that is yet, but I still have a lot of time.

What’s your dream art piece?

Oh, that's so interesting. The first thing that comes to mind would be curating a fashion collection. I remember the Met’s 2015 Gala theme was “China: Through the Looking Glass,” and all the pieces in that collection were perfect. I loved the traditional Chinese elements blending with the Western. I think now, with the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, an Asian-centered fashion collection would do so much good in spreading awareness and humanizing Asian-Americans.

Is your Asian-American identity something you want to explore more in your art?

Definitely. My grandmother is one of the reasons I got into art; she handmakes qipaos, and when I was young she’d show me how the whole dress-making process works. She’s probably where my love for fashion comes from.

Is your family supportive of your art?

Pretty supportive! I like to joke that my dad’s side of the family all have unfulfilled artistic passions. My grandfather was really into writing Chinese poetry, and my dad probably would have been an architect in another life. We used to go building-gazing around Hong Kong when we lived there. My brother’s also very into film, and in his other life, I think he would have been a filmmaker.

I’d say there are spurts of creativity within my family that informed my choice to explore a career in the arts, but I think I’m the first one to actually make it my career.

Where else can people find your art?

If you want to find my editing that's mainly on my Instagram, @jjanicezhai, and @janicedumps. I’ll set up a website soon, so I’ll keep you posted!

Victoire Mandonnaud

October 28, 2021

Feature by Justin Liang

Photos by JP Schuchter

Entering Victoire Mandonnaud’s one-bedroom apartment on W 113th Street, I was impressed by a profusion of canvas paintings laid upright against the wall in the hallway. In one corner of her bedroom is a keyboard and microphone; in another is a bookcase full of camera equipment. The first thing Victoire shows me is a pair of film photographs she took during her yearlong program at the International Center of Photography (ICP), now framed on the wall: in the first frame, the camera looks out past a green mailbox to a row of hedges and a suburban barn house; the other features a man in a green shirt who stands on a beach and fills the frame, with glimpses of blue sky and a housing project in the background.

*Confrontation* and *Between* from *En Alerte* (2018-2019)

The two photos are distinct in subject matter, but they mirror each other in subtle ways: the green of the man’s shirt and the mailbox; the loneliness of the foregrounded figures; the horizontality of the road and beach; the glimpse of architectural forms in the background. “Through the practice of photography, in the physicality of taking photos, you realize what everyone has in common, and the world makes so much sense,” Victoire tells me.

Victoire is a renaissance woman who has dabbled in many art forms: “photography is the medium where I feel sharpest in what I want to do,” she says, but she first began with painting at the precocious age of eight. “I grew up around painting materials and in an artistic environment,” as her father, retired by the time she was born, had a house in the French countryside where he kept a studio for pottery and painting.

After high school, Victoire enrolled briefly in an art school in Paris. “I was using a lot of paper and pastel, I was smashing things in a violent way because I was really angry. People liked it and I didn’t like that people liked it, because it was abstract expressionist kind of stuff that seemed to be banal, easy, and meaningless.” Her recent work has a deeper emotional quality to it: her canvases are populated with lonely figures who occupy surrealist dreamscapes, lonely even if they are together. “For a while, I was healing from the end of a romantic relationship so I was processing a lot of emotions around that, which meant a lot of colors.”

Some of her later paintings have a more explicit sociopolitical orientation: in one work, the text “we should stop with oil” is incorporated into an eerie dreamscape of houses, human figures, oil derricks, and power plants. Yet, she says, “compared to painting, I feel that photography is more socially engaged. In our world today, people are still put into boxes in terms of sex and race and gender. Photography helps me imagine a world where people are not spoiled by the idea of difference.”

There is a restlessness that drives Victoire to experiment, not only within the arts but across different disciplines. “When I was younger,” she said, “I wanted to be an economist.” She described an adolescent fascination with sociopolitical issues, including the problems of income redistribution and global inequality. These wide-spanning interests influenced her decision to major in anthropology and economics here at Columbia.

*Pro-Palestine March in Washington D.C.*, 2021

In her venture to figure out if art can inspire policy implementation, she has written a play, created a zine, and even made a short film that was inspired by Med Hondo’s Soleil O: “the movie was really funny, but it was also tackling a serious social issue, and it was doing that by making fun of people. I thought, I want to make fun of people too.” After art school in Paris, Victoire enrolled briefly in film school before a series of student strikes put an end to her time there.

Victoire has also written a book of poetry, and produced an album of songs after taking a songwriting workshop. In her music, the same themes emerge: “I think my first album is a combination of romantic songs, and other songs that explore the emotions people feel around sociopolitical issues.” Victoire acknowledges that the range of her interests may come across as overly ambitious. Her songs are on Spotify, but the book of poetry, play, and short film have not been made available to view. She also has ideas for experimenting with sculpture, performance, and installation art.

The struggle of artistic creation is necessarily wrapped up with anxieties around recognition and conventional standards of success. Even painting, she says, can be challenging because “I wasn’t interested in the gallery world. I thought I’d just paint, and wait for someone to like what they see. But then after a point, it becomes destabilizing because I was accumulating a lot of finished work with nowhere to put it.”

There is always the fantasy of escape, enabled in part by family wealth: “I would love to stop studying economics, and I would love to stop going to Columbia, and I would love to just spend a whole day in my father’s home writing, or just doing photography.” Yet driving her on is a desire “to try everything and bring everything to a point of exhaustion so that I don’t want to do it anymore. I have this need to go until the very end of something. It’s the same with relationships.” She wonders if this restlessness will stop when she finds true love.

In the arts, it seems her true love is photography: “it’s who I am. Everything else is just experimentation. When you’re just experimenting without any real intention, then everything is just about emotion, because emotion is what’s in you. With painting or music, I start with emotion because that’s the only thing I have and then I try to add ideas that are meaningful to me.”

Victoire contrasts her approach to photography with that of her schoolwork: “I feel that a lot of scholarship is about making a statement, having an idea and then trying to prove it, but photography is the absence of statement, or at least it is not about trying to prove something. You must first find what is out there in the world. That being said, photography is also in danger of becoming academic. Towards the end of my program, I was asked to write about what I was doing; I didn’t like that, it just made my photography feel flat. I thought my photos were precise enough as to be autonomous and didn’t need explanation.”

Asked about her process, Victoire is adamant that “photography is not just something you can do half time. You have to be a photographer full time.” She describes waking up some days before sunrise and walking all day, going wherever inspiration takes her: the botanical garden one day, Long Island the next. Sometimes she will see someone she’s interested in and follow where they go. “When I was living in Chinatown, I would go out for two hours, then come back and edit my photos, then go out again,” she reminisces.

On being asked what her inspirations are, Victoire says, “for painting or music, I tell them I don’t know, but with photography, I do really have people I admire.” She cites Elliott Erwitt as an example––a photographer for Magnum in the second half of the twentieth century, he became famous for his ironic and absurd approach to serious everyday settings. Victoire’s own work displays a preoccupation with the nature of the individual in society and the invisible connections between otherwise disparate seeming people and places.

In her restless need to experiment with different media, Victoire’s wide range of artwork has a searching, restive quality. Yet her photography shows a different side: one more meditative and more at ease in the universe, curious to explore the world and open to its wonders. Victoire’s quest appears far from over, but one might hope it is precisely in the process of being lost that she might ultimately find herself.

The entirety of Victoire’s work can be found on her website, www.victoiremandonnaud.com, and Spotify artist page The Victories. You can also find her on Instagram @vmandonnaud.

Carina Sun

October 12, 2021

Feature by Jane Loughman

Photos by Gillian Cohen

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Carina Sun. I am a freshman at Columbia College hoping to study computer science with a concentration in visual arts. I grew up mainly in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It's a pretty small suburb. It's about an hour outside of Philly, but it's a very quaint town.

I'm a multimedia artist so I do pen and ink, sketching, oils, acrylics, and I also dabble in pastels. Recently I've been getting into graphic design work, so I've been really looking at animation and design softwares like Adobe. I've been studying art for about nine years now.

How did your interest in art come about?

I started art classes when I was six. Throughout middle school and growing up, I was kind of isolated in my ideas just because I grew up in a community that was very white, and there was not a lot of diversity. Art was my way to express my identity through my work because it was a time when I felt alone. I felt like nobody really understood what I was feeling so I turned to my art to convey these emotions. In the future, I hope that my art will be able to serve as a collaboration space, especially for Asian-Americans, to come together and find a shared identity.

You've said that you take a lot of inspiration from European, specifically Dutch art. Is there one artist in particular that you feel is your biggest inspiration?

I feel like it's a combination just because I use so many different mediums. Rembrandt’s use of lighting and portraits inspired my own portraits and human figures. The faces and emotions that he was able to convey play into how I paint my own figures. On the other hand, Hayao Miyazaki has a very different style and he does these amazing animations in terms of world-building, detail, and design. I take inspiration from that for a lot of my digital work that requires scenery or storytelling.

What does it mean to you to be an artist?

I want to put a piece of work out there and have people be able to tell what it is without having to wrack their brains to interpret it. I like to just put everything out there because I believe that art should be what the artists see and how they see beauty, and then they put that on the canvas for other people to imagine for themselves.

Do you like giving backstory for your art or do you prefer to keep it to yourself?

I like telling people about my vision, but only after they interpret it themselves. That’s how I am with movies; I like to watch it first and interpret it, but afterwards, I'll go and do all my research. I like having that final revelation.

Do you feel you're drawn to certain mediums depending on mood or is it about the subject of the art?

It's more about the mood I want to convey. I don't really do anything with sculpture or 3D design, but it’s something that I would like to get more into. I prefer traditional media like painting and drawing because it's nice to have the physical aspect there. Even if you're doing it on a tablet or your computer, you're not holding your piece of art; you don't have it physically with you. For traditional media, you can see the different stages it's in. You can prop it there, you can leave it for two years and not look at it and it'll still be exactly like that and you can still pick it up. I think that's really important to me and how I consider my chosen media.

I wanted to ask you about your film, The Last Journey. What inspired you to take on an animated short film?

During the pandemic, I had this big chunk of time and I needed to fill it with something. I was really big on watching movies, especially during the beginning of COVID. I just watched all the Miyazaki movies over again, and felt really inspired. After you see something that great, you just want to emulate it yourself. I wanted to pay tribute to his films in a way by taking inspiration from them. I really heavily studied the imagery and the backgrounds and I wanted to make this film beautiful.

It was my first time animating, and it was all frame by frame, which is so tedious. You have to draw every single movement, so that was pretty difficult. Figuring out the physics of it all too––there's a lot more math and physics than you would expect in making an animation, because the movements of the body have to do with how fast or how slow you pan the camera. It was nice and satisfying to see it fully with the music and the effects.

Did the pandemic affect your artwork or your work ethic?

I definitely found more time for my art. I started doing my art not just for school projects but for myself. During that time, with the rise in hate crimes against Asians in America, I started this nonprofit called DeclarASIAN. It's basically an empowerment platform. I started this initiative to distribute art supply packages and lessons to Asian-American artists who come from lower-income families and who weren't able to pursue art themselves. During that time, I felt expression was really needed, especially for people in the Asian-American community.

All these artists have their different stories and they tell their stories through the little descriptions on the website. It’s crazy to think that without these resources, they wouldn't have been able to show their voice, and get their art out there. I wanted DeclarASIAN to be that platform for them. So that was a big project that I worked on. We were also lucky enough to be featured on Next Shark!

Seeing these artists’ work was also really inspiring and revealing in the sense that you get this bond between their art and yourself, just being part of the same community. This also influenced my work when we went back to school in the fall and I started working on my AP Art portfolio. I was originally going to do these little tidbits of life, snapshots of going to the cafe, for example, for my theme, but instead, I chose to focus on this idea of Asian-American empowerment in my paintings.

I was really intrigued by your work Cherish. What is the story behind it and what do the fish and the mirror image mean to you?

The mirror is a metaphor for looking at yourself and not being able to see which side, or who, you are. I have this more Westernized version of myself in the purple jacket and everything, and I'm looking into the mirror at this very traditional Eastern dress, showing the idea of being okay with that. I chose to make her expression very serene and calming. For the background, I wanted to make it more Westernized to contrast the Eastern element of the reflection, and so I have the pearls. The mirrors are very ornamental in a Western-style, and the candles and everything. For the fish, I took inspiration from woodblock cut fish from Japanese culture. They're supposed to be swimming around in this kind of surrealistic setting. That was inspired by the surrealistic nature of Miyazaki’s works and how he combines reality with imagination.

Thought Process: Cherish, 2020 — *Thought Process: Cherish,* 2020

I would love to know more about Ancestry as well. Who is this, and what's the story behind it?

I started Ancestry pre-COVID, but it took me all the way until the end of 2020 to complete. I wanted to explore the juxtaposition between Eastern and Western culture in this piece as well. The background is very Eastern: you have the traditional Chinese folding screen. It’s subtle in the inclusion of the two elements, and they blend together if you're not paying attention. So the face is supposed to be Chinese, or she's supposed to be Chinese-American, but then she's dressed in this very traditional Marie Antoinette-esque attire––she has the headdress on and everything. If you don't look anywhere else but her face or her hair, you can't tell that there's this juxtaposition, these two themes going on. I wanted to play into that kind of blending of the two and show that they're not so different and that you can have both of them, blended smoothly, simultaneously. If you look closely, you'll notice. I don't know if you've ever watched Miyazaki movies, but the earrings she's wearing, there’s a green emerald, and then a red pearl. That's the earring of Howl.

Your painting Turmoil also caught my eye. Is it meant to be a depiction of The Little Mermaid or is there a different story for it?

It is not meant to be The Little Mermaid, but I see it now. This is the second biggest painting that I did. I was really unfamiliar with acrylics when I started it. It took me almost a year, just going back and amending stuff. This is supposed to highlight inner turmoil. This painting was made before I did my other works on Asian-Americans, so it’s just me getting my bearings. It's supposed to be this ship crashing into the rocks and this big fiery action scene. You also have the mermaid who's sitting there, supposed to be pointing at the little people. I don't know if you can see from the picture but they're standing on the helm of the ship. I also added that little area of blue sky to symbolize how there's always light coming through and this is not the end. Kind of like a symbol of hope for the clouds to open up.

Do you have an idea of what you want to do after college?

I would love to stay in New York just because it’s the perfect place to share and find ideas. The world of art galleries and directors and collectors and designers here is so big and I would love to do something where I could work with an art gallery.

On the other hand, with my computer science major, I would love to do something with graphic design. That plays into how I said that art should transcend the boundaries of the canvas because with graphic design, there are so many canvases: it'll literally get posted everywhere if it’s successful. That power to reach millions of people is important to me. I would obviously want to do it with something that has meaning, so I would enjoy working as a designer for a nonprofit in the city or something.

If you had to pick one piece as your favorite, what would it be?

Whenever I asked my art teacher this, he's always like, “it's like you're asking me to pick my favorite child!” So rather than a piece, my favorites would be my collection of originals, which are the first six paintings in my portfolio, the ones that have to do with my Asian identity. That collection contains the topic that matters most to me.

Do you have any advice for budding artists?

I think I would say having an artistic mindset isn’t something that comes naturally; you have to train at it like you have to train any other skill. Don’t be discouraged with your first piece or your second piece or even your third piece, because it takes more than that to create a work that you're satisfied with. Definitely just keep going at it because, no matter what age you are, you still have the time. If you just have a pencil and paper, you can do it. You can make art.

Thank you so much, Carina! Where else can we find your work and stay up to date?

My website is www.carinasunn.com/ and my Instagram is @carinasunn.

Lucy Blumenfield

October 8, 2021

Feature by Susanna Chang

Photos by Rommel Nunez

Can you introduce yourself and your work?

My name is Lucy Blumenfield. I'm a junior studying film and media studies at Columbia College. I am a photographer, filmmaker, and director. I work in photo and film medium right now, but who knows what’ll happen in the future?

Could you describe a couple of projects you've worked on in the past?

I co-directed and co-wrote a short film called ‘Countdown’ last October with my creative partner Arielle Friedman, who’s a student at GS. We actually just finished post-production on it and it's going into festival applications right now. I made a film in high school but this felt like a new moment for me as a filmmaker. We also shot another film together in May––we didn't write this one. We were in a creative class together and read a short play that had been written by a Columbia MFA student and our professor connected us with her. So we adapted the play into a short film and shot that in May. I also directed a music video last month that’s still being edited. Recently, I've been doing more technical roles, which I guess isn't super related to me as an artist, but I feel like that kind of stuff has helped me think about film in a different way, like all the stuff that is behind directing or writing something.

The interesting thing about movies and films and music videos is that there are so many people working on the production, which is easy to forget sometimes.

Totally! When I was a photographer, it was very much centered on me and my art, but since getting into film, it’s been very much a collaborative process. It’s me and other people all working towards the same goal, and I find that really interesting because there’s creative input from all these different people and you wouldn’t have made the same thing if it was just you.

How did you get into photography and film initially?

For photography, I think I was in 5th or 6th grade on Instagram and I was like “Wow, I could do that, I'm gonna try to do that.” I tried and realized I can't do that, actually. I also did this project in 7th grade where I edited a photo every day for a year. But I think maybe in high school I kind of knew I was focusing on photography to eventually kind of transition into film, because film always felt like the next step. I learned a lot about composition and lighting and color from photography which I think has really helped me as I moved to film.

That's really cool. I noticed from your website that you have worked on so many different kinds of projects--wedding photography, portraits, digital photography, 35mm, short films, etc., yet there still feels like there's a consistent style or theme, whether you're photographing a landscape or a concert or a group of people. How would you describe your style?

It sounds really weird because all photography is made of light and color but I like focusing on specific interactions of light––how light plays with a subject matter, and also how colors interact with each other.

People as a subject matter are also very interesting to me, which is pretty consistent in my work I think. Maybe part of the reason why I kind of stopped photography is that it became harder for me to find subject matter that was meaningful to me and I started prioritizing what I was doing, and not just how things looked.

With films, I could take a lot longer to focus on a project and what it meant to me rather than just taking a quick image. But I still do some concert photography and music is a big part of my work. Concert photography is fun because I can capture the energy of a performer. Music videos are a really collaborative process because I can take what I hear in a song and create it visually. A lot of the time my subject matter does have to do with music and other forms of expression that I can re-represent visually.

For films, what kinds of subject matter have you been finding meaningful?

It's jumped around a bit.

My first project, "Countdown" is a coming-of-age story of a girl discovering her sexuality while having a really strong female friendship and the intimacy in that relationship. We talked about not having a lot of super supportive female friendships growing up, so we represented that a little bit-- Arielle and I took a bunch of experiences we had and wove them into one thing. The emotions that the main character experiences are very close to how I felt growing up and I still feel this way, in terms of other people perceiving you and your own goals and desires. So my own personal experience influenced me in that film.

The film we worked on in May was a really good play that we both really resonated with. But I had a harder time directing it since it wasn't something that I had written. So I was trying to find my own emotions in a story that wasn't really mine. That's where I think it being a collaborative process was helpful, like working with the cinematographer. We could discuss how to portray the story. For music videos, it's mostly my own reaction to the song and how I see that visually, along with talking to the artist about what they want. But the emotion in the song is really inspiring for me.

Stills from Countdown — Stills from *Countdown*

Your collaborator, Arielle, how did you guys meet and bond?

We met in a film discussion section. We realized we had a mutual friend who has an art magazine that we both really connected to, and we both really liked the visual aesthetic. So we realized we had similar tastes and interests in theme and subject matter. We did these two films and now we’re at a point where we’ve gotten a lot of practice working together so we’re going to help support each other to do our own projects.

I'm curious about where you usually get inspiration from. Is it mostly from your own personal experiences or do you find inspiration when you consume other content that you enjoy?

Again, I think music is a big part of capturing emotions that I'm already feeling, and then I kind of use that to get back into that emotion. Past experiences and remembering the way I felt in those moments is really helpful to me because film, at least for me, has a big focus on evoking emotion. I find it really interesting when people experience art and have a similar emotional response to it. I want to be able to create that emotional response. Listening to music is a way to get me into that.

What kind of music do you like to listen to?

I always say indie or alternative but that's such a big category. I think my guilty pleasures is 2000s or 2010s indie, like The National or Death Cab for Cutie, but I also like contemporary alternative. But those are the bands that I unfortunately always keep going back to. I can't get away from them!

Do you have a dream artist that you would love directing a music video for or going on tour with?

I can't say Phoebe Bridgers because that would be too basic at this point...Fontaine DC, a post-punk band--that would be fun. I guess it kind of varies depending on what I'm listening to. I really like the new Indigo de Souza album so she would be super cool to work with.

Photos from Hot Flash Heat Wave Tour

You talked about this a little already but I’d like to hear more about your process and workflow. Are they different for when you're making films vs when you're shooting photos?

Yeah, if I'm doing a photoshoot with someone, or doing music portraiture, normally I would talk to them about what they’re generally looking for in terms of vibe and location. And then I like using Pinterest. I think it's super helpful to have a collection of different stuff that you can try and be inspired by. Again, for films, a playlist is helpful. For this recent music video I was working on for example, the artist and I were talking about what we were thinking and I wrote a kind of script that corresponded to different parts of the song. Then I did a shot list with the cinematographer where we broke down what each segment in the script would look like. I did a preshooting cut list for this project and think it was really helpful since it was a narrative music video. We gave that list to the editor, like a roadmap. It's a lot of pre-production so that when you’re actually shooting you know exactly what you want.

Teaser for Immutable Uncertainties, shot in May

What about post-production? Is that also a big part of your work as well?

When I first started film, I would edit everything myself, do everything myself. But I’ve been working with more people recently. I edited the first short film myself but for the second one we worked with a sound designer, colorist, and composer. It’s very collaborative, you go back and forth or meet in person and discuss all the cuts.

What is it like to go from being a photographer, which as you mentioned is very based on your vision and you generally act as the sole director, to being a part of something really collaborative? Was that a challenge for you or did it feel natural to make that transition?

Having it be more collaborative allows you to do so much more. It feels really expansive compared to photography. I do want to get back into more experimental film where it is very much an individual process where I know what I want and I’m editing it and capturing it myself. But I think they're different and yield different results--both are super fun and interesting.

I'm interested in this idea of music influencing your work. You talked about how when you're listening to music, you're able to visualize how you want it to look. Where do you think that visual language comes from for you?

My dad's a musician and music was an important part of growing up for me. I associate memories with certain music I was listening to as a child. My brother is also a musician. Because music is tied to life experience for me, and life experience is super visual, that's maybe why. Music is one way of expressing something and for me, and visuals are just another extension of that.

Music video for James the Seventh. Cinematography by Lucy

What is it like translating between all of these different mediums—writing, visuals. and music?

I am just starting now to think about another short film that I maybe want to write. It's still a vague idea. I'm very much thinking about how to create structure but also talk about these themes and emotions and how much I need to focus on events. I'm starting by creating a playlist. Also, I find it easier to start in poetry because poetry to me feels more like a more visual type of writing. So if I can start with small visual vignettes then it's easier for me to transition into traditional narrative.

What are some of your favorite films? Do you watch a lot of films?

I don't watch as many films as I should. That’s why I like studying film because I'm forced to watch a lot of movies. The last one I saw was a movie called Zola. It was really beautiful visually. Eliza Hittman, Chloe Zhao, and Andrea Arnold are some of my favorite directors. They capture very raw experiences, especially coming-of-age, female-centered narratives, visually but not super explicitly.

You said earlier that when you were doing photography you kind of saw film as your next step. Now that you've made some short films, what do you see as the next step and where do you want to go from here?

The technical side of film is super interesting to me. I think I do enjoy being in a creative role but being an assistant camera and working on lighting in film is a way to supplement income after college while I'm trying to direct which obviously is a lot harder to do full time. I work at an equipment rental house for film. I like it and I'm learning a lot about lighting. But artistically I definitely want to keep doing music videos. When I was directing that music video a couple of weeks ago, I thought “Wow this is really right for me because it's taking someone else's artistic expression and meshing it with my own.” Eventually, I want to direct features but that is a long time from now. I can also see myself going back to photography, especially to work with musicians again. But right now I'm very much in the film world.

What is it like being a student and also having these projects to work on?

Last year it felt pretty good but this year I feel like I just want to work full time in film! It's hard and I'm trying to find that balance right now, like how many projects I can take on while still being in school? During the summer, it was like “Oh, I can really see myself doing this full time,” because that was all I was doing. Now I'm working towards trying to find that balance.

What about the distribution of your work? I would assume that sharing something like photography looks very different from sharing something like a short film.

I was posting my photography a lot on my Instagram and that was my main way of distributing my work. And I kind of stopped posting because film is such a longer process and you’re not continually producing content. In a way I’m really grateful for that because in some ways I felt like I was photographing for Instagram, which is related to what I was saying about how I was losing connection with the subject matter because I was just pumping out content. But people don’t watch short films as much and that’s tough because you always want as many people to be a viewer. But I do appreciate that change in workflow and output.

I’m still trying to figure out how film distribution works. We’re submitting both short films to festivals so hopefully it’ll screen at some festivals and eventually be released online. So we’ll be able to share it that way.

Thank you so much, Lucy! Where else can we find your work and stay up to date?

My website is https://www.lucyellephotograp hy.com/ and my Instagram is @lucyblumenfield.

Angela Wei

October 7, 2021

Feature by Melissa Wang

Photos by Rommel Nunez

Angela Wei is a senior at Barnard College and an artist skilled in illustration and mixed media. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including VICE’s Garage magazine.

Please introduce yourself!

My name is Angela Wei. I'm currently a senior at Barnard majoring in Art History with a concentration in Visual Arts. I'm an artist, I guess, and hopefully, I’ll be working in some type of creative space when I graduate.

Can you walk me through the acrylic series you submitted to Ratrock?

I've been painting my entire life and doing creative things just because my mom's an artist. She’s always been a creative inspiration and I grew up in a very supportive environment. So I've always liked to draw, but I think I began to take art more seriously in college. Especially in the past year with quarantine, I was able to stay home and figure out what kind of style I wanted to work on.

I started developing a series of large acrylic pieces that’s fantastical, imaginary, and colorful. All good vibes. A lot of the things I draw upon are children's books or fairy tales, but I like to give them a bit of a twist - whether it's something a little bit gruesome, something a little bit weird. And it’s been great practice for my thesis project, which is what I’ve been working on lately.

Can you talk about your thesis project?

It'll probably be like something similar to the acrylic series, except I don’t know what subject matter I want to focus on yet. I do want to experiment a bit more with materials - I still want to use acrylic but when I figure out how to use different types of textures, I want to create a glittery effect, or maybe add more volumes onto the canvas.

Each painting of my series tells a story. For instance, one of them is called ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and that's very much based on the children's storybook. I wanted to capture that feeling of weirdness and mysticism like you’re walking in a forest but there are monsters in it.

But just in general, I wanted the story of each piece to reveal itself. I added all these little details which you have to really look for to appreciate the painting. I like to put a spin on things, adding it’s a little devil giving you the evil eye or an elf in a corner, I just wanted to make something fun for the viewer.

And those weird details are so surreal, but also so innocent. How do you find a balance between those two things?

Well, child-like art is really big in the art world right now, with artists trying to emulate a childish style. I’m also not the best technical drawer, but I do think it’s fun to play with perspectives and human bodies. And honestly, if I’m focusing on a subject that’s serious, I want to leave room for fun in my piece. And vice versa.

I asked about the surrealism because it’s very different from your other works of art. You’ve work with all different mediums, from acrylics, to fashion photography, to illustrations; how did you become so versatile in different mediums?

Well, hmm. Because my mom is classically trained in China, which means she values realism and figure drawing techniques, she really pushed me to do a lot of observational drawing when I was younger. At the same time, I recognize that it’s important to incorporate your own imagination into your art - the job of the artist isn’t to just accurately represent something on paper.

Growing up, I did a lot of pencil drawings, a lot of watercolors, and a lot of ink. I was really scared of paint though, because I used to think that if you mess up, you mess up - you can’t control that. So I stayed away from acrylics and oils, and I’ve only just started experimenting with it in college.

Was your mother a big influence on your art?

I would say so. She was classically trained, but she also studied graphic design and animation. And she’s been making art since forever, so I just thought it was normal to do something creative. I also still go to her for her opinion - I value that.

Do you have other artistic influences?

James Jean - I’m obsessed with him. He’s a Taiwanese American artist and I think our styles are pretty similar. I would literally die if I got to meet him. I once DMed him just saying, “Hey, do you need help on any of your projects?” and he never replied, but I shot my shot.

I also really like classical artists and old 19th-century paintings. And actually, I probably write my art history thesis on that. I love the impressionists, especially Degas and Monet, because I think that their use of color is so beautiful and so special. I also went to see the Kusama exhibition the other week and I just loved the geometric shapes and interactiveness in every piece.

What was your favorite Kusama piece at the exhibit?

I’d have to say the Infinity Room with the mirror panels around the room and the Christmas lights. It was the interactiveness that did it for me. I love immersive experiences in art, where the viewer feels like they’re a part of the story. I would love to incorporate that feeling into my own art.

Going back to your website - you included a number of pieces you helped with while interning at different companies. What was it like choosing and working at these internships?

I wanted to get into fashion for a really long time - and then I did these internships and realized I didn’t want to do fashion design. I got my internship at Garage Magazine, which unfortunately no longer exists, by reaching out to someone who worked there. I started working as a stylist intern for him, and I realized that you don’t really need to know how to design clothes per se in order to work in the fashion industry. Stylists, creative directors, bloggers, editors - none of them really need to know how to create the clothes themselves.

What was cool about working at Garage was that it was at the intersection of art and fashion. They had one cover with Billie Eilish where her face was split in half but it was still Billie, you know? And it was still about her, but also about the fashion. That made me recognize that fashion isn’t something that you can just wear, but it’s also an art form.

With my graphic design internships, one of the coolest things I did was be in charge of designing a couple of billboards for some Vice shows. I didn’t think I was capable of leading a project as big as that, but I did, and the boards just came up!

Speaking about careers, do you know where you want to be in the next five to ten years?

I know I don’t want to work for a corporation. I don’t see myself doing the nine to five, although obviously, that’s something I’m going to have to do right after I graduate. But long term? I just want to be a visual artist. I know that’s hard, but if I’m lucky enough and work hard enough, I want to do my own stuff. Make some commissions, collaborate with fashion brands, the whole thing.

What’s it been like studying Art History with a Visual Arts concentration at Barnard?

So I actually transferred to Barnard - or well, I transferred a million times. Before this, I was at Parsons, which granted me a very concentrated, art-focused experience. While I thought that that was great, I wanted a broader education for my undergrad. And I think having a liberal arts education definitely informs your art-making and makes you more of a critical thinker in general.

I think my experience here at Barnard - it’s been very proactive. There are professors and students here who are very committed to their craft, but you have to be more proactive in making your own art or submitting to competitions or applying to internships. It’s not hard because you’re in the city.

Has your family been supportive of your choice to pursue your career as an artist?

I mean - that’s hard. My dad’s a Ph.D. Economics guy - a businessman. This isn’t really a world he understands. My mom’s really supportive but I think she’s also wary because she knows how hard this lifestyle can be. I think I’ve satisfied my dad for now, though, just by coming to Barnard from Parsons, I was only focusing on the arts, while here at Barnard I’ve gotten to explore other fields.

Are you considering grad school?

I'm thinking about that right now because… well, I have to apply right now. I want to work after I graduate for a little bit and then go to grad school but also I don't know if I should keep my options open right now and just apply to grad school as well.

If you had all the time and money in the world to make art, what would you make?

Something big. Something that goes from the wall to the ground, probably very immersive. Maybe paint a car, or something functional, and turn that into a work of art. Just something that makes a connection, you know?

Thank you so much, Angela! Where else can we find your work and stay up to date?

My website is https://angela wei.cargo.site / and my Instagram is @theangelawei.

Nicolas Ouporov

September 19, 2021

Feature by Raunak Lally

Photos by Rommel Nunez

Go ahead and introduce yourself.

I'm Nicolas. I am an artist at Columbia College studying Computer Science and Mathematics.

Where are you from and how have you found your Columbia experience so far?

I'm from the Boca Raton area in Florida and I have a 14-year background in pre-professional ballet. I've also been really interested in visual arts, sculpture, and photography, and sort of the intersection of where all those mediums lie. I definitely have an interest in the human body and form and how to integrate that with aspects of technology––as I said, I’m interested in Computer Science and things along those lines. I've really enjoyed the Columbia community so far. I was here on campus all year, so I really got a pretty interesting look into how the community functions, especially at this time.

Did you manage to get involved in any student organizations or clubs on campus?

Yeah! I'm part of the entrepreneurial space on campus, I'm a board member of CORE, I've sort of been pushing arts entrepreneurship activities; the main argument I've been making is that artists are, in many ways, entrepreneurs––they use the same tools, they have the same self-starting mentality, the playful idealism, and the spirit to create. There’s a natural connection between art and entrepreneurship, as tenuous as that may be.

That's a really cool connection! Speaking of starting things up, what got you into dancing in the first place, and what are some of the highlights of your 14 years of dancing?

Well, I actually trained to become Billy Elliot, the main character in the Broadway show of the same name, and I was doing that when I was around six or eight years old. The auditions have a very strict height requirement because they want kids to look young throughout their entire three years on Broadway, so when I actually auditioned after two years of training––I learned dance and I had studied all of the musical compositions and the singing, the tap-dancing––I was too tall for the role and I wasn't able to audition the way I liked. What was kind of nice about that is that, through that experience, I gained an appreciation for contemporary modern ballet, and I really fell in love with dance in a way that I wasn't expecting. I stuck with that for the next few years until I found other forms of art, and I looked into creating art and photography and all these other aspects with the dance that I love.

Would you say that dancing is how you got into exploring your creativity through different mediums?

Yeah, I definitely started with dance and it branched out into different other mediums, but always through the lens of dance, which informs all of my work now.

What would you say are the most common threads between all of your current work and dance? What are some major themes you see?

I definitely have an interest in movement. I'd say movement, human and natural forms, are aspects of temporality. A lot of my work is focused on the difference between dance and these other art forms, and seeks to create and establish a connection. I have one piece called Ephemeralities, and the focus of that piece was to examine, through a critical lens, what dance and photography have in common but also how they diverge. In that piece, I took stills of a moving dance performance with the idea that I would show that dance is something ephemeral and can only be experienced in the moment, and that's what makes it have the grit that you can only experience in person.

But then photography seems to do the exact opposite; in photography, it takes a moment away in time ––I think it was Roland Barthes who talked about that a lot in Camera Lucida. Photography takes a moment out of its context in time and place and presents a still. It’s like some version of time travel. It takes a moment, snaps it, and then presents it devoid of that temporal context. Dance is something that can only really be experienced in person, ephemerally, in the moment, the performance aspect brings a lot to it: the tension between the viewer and the performer. Photography, on the other hand, is like something that separates a moment from time; it's anti-ephemeral. I was trying to salvage a connection between them, so I took a snapshot of the dance performance and lined them up as a composition. I highlighted areas where dance and photography intersected and called them poses, because, if you think about it, a pose in dance is trying to isolate a certain position or a certain pose in time, in the same way that photography isolates an image in time.

That's a really cool way of describing how you translate these movements into these stills. In some of your pieces, like Composition 7N and Composition 10S, are those found images, or did you take those yourself?

All of my pictures are taken.

That's great. What were some of the sort of movements you were trying to highlight in the Composition pieces? Was there a specific theme of movement?

I can talk about that a little bit. The Composition series started as a scientific inquiry. I was looking to replicate the same aspects of the scientific process, or what I thought was interesting in surveys or statistical experiments, by following the subject of a photograph in the actual process of creation. There's sort of a history of photography of exploiting the subject; the photographer can be completely separate from the subject and still profit off of their image. I thought it would be interesting to instead, identify an interest group, which were artists around my own age in my school, and people I had known from my local area, and to involve them in the creative process of the photographs in a way that created defined roles for each of us; being the leader and participant of the experiment.

So for all of the people in the Composition series, each Composition corresponded to a single individual. I invited them to the studio, asked them to list all of their favorite things about themselves. My goal of the test, the sample, the experiment, was to identify what young artists in my age and my area thought about themselves and how they expressed that through their art. I asked them to list all of their favorite things about themselves, and the number of each Composition refers to how many things they listed about themselves. It became a challenge for me, the photographer, the leader of the experiment, to interpret it and to move them into a pose and to collaborate with them to take a picture that represented that concept, that favorite thing about themselves, as accurately as possible.

After we took those images, after a week or so, they'd come back into the studio and they would select the images that they felt represented them most faithfully, and those images were highlighted in red. The idea is that there's a back and forth between the artist and the participants. That interplay leads to art that is collaborative and doesn't exploit the subject but it invites them into the process. There's also this idea of semi-transparency, so I printed those photographs on Vellum paper, which is semi-transparent, and I mounted them on boards. It can also be viewed in different ways so that it's hanging from the ceiling. The idea was that those people have a difference between their public selves and their private selves, and what we're seeing are aspects of their private self, their artistic self, through their public self that they present to us. Those images, while they capture what is an attempt at the real thing, can only ever grasp the surface of an individual, and so that's semi-transparent.

That's a really cool way of connecting to your community and everyone around you and highlighting these really unique traits about these people. Speaking of community, how has your time at Columbia affected your work, or what have you drawn inspiration from, if anything, from your time here?

I've been really inspired by the artists, the scientists, and the mathematicians around me. In a way, I try to synthesize my work to a large extent. It's been incredible. I come from an arts high school background and there weren't that many people in STEM subjects, but it's been incredible seeing the vast, diverse things that people do here, it's been really incredible. I've also been inspired by my peers in art and things like that. I've sort of slowed down a little bit. This is a sort of lesson that I've learned through the pandemic, that art does not necessarily have to come through the creation of a physical object, but that it can be more akin to something like a way of living, of lifestyle, of observation. I think that, to a large extent, there's a lot of art to be found in observation, so I think it's been interesting moving around the city with my friends, noticing things like a light on a building or a certain pattern in the way that the street lamps light up, certain things that are either out of place that create a story or invite intrigue. I think there's definitely a lesson to be learned there, which is that observation is certainly a vital component of the artistic process.

Going back to your love of arts and science, I'm really interested in those sort of ends of a spectrum, and the link is definitely present in your work from your focus on anatomy in a lot of pieces. How do you find the scientific and analytical parts of your mind influencing your art, and also vice versa, does your creativity ever affect the way you approach scientific ventures?

Definitely, definitely. I try to lead my artistic endeavors as a sort of scientific inquiry. In many ways, I seek to understand the concepts I'm representing and try to let my opinion on things evolve as I explore them through art. I think that many of my works build upon lessons that I've learned from technology or lessons that I've learned from medicine, and analyze the ethics of many of the things that we do. A lot of my sculpture analyzes the ethics of medical treatment, whether I give my own thesis on certain types of medicine, like amputations or transplants and prosthetics, or consider what the ethics of that are in a human context. I build upon those technological principles to establish my art. Also, my artistic mind has really helped me develop a way of thinking about the sciences and mathematics in a novel and interesting way. I took a proof-based math class throughout my entire freshman year, and I found myself drawing upon the same connections and thought processes that I use in art in mathematics to come up with new ways of approaching a solution. In that way, the thought process of the arts and sciences are incredibly interlinked––way more than we might admit.

I really like that there was a lot of interdisciplinary interest going on there! Do you have a favorite place to create at Columbia right now, or do you have a favorite place you've been to do research?

Yeah, I actually work in the Columbia Creative Machines Lab, which focuses on creative applications of artificial intelligence and robotics, and that's definitely an interesting place to explore and experiment and think about different things. I started getting into robotics through art. I was interested in learning in embedded systems and I figured that the best way to probably learn about that was to involve myself in some sort of project, and I chose an art project, which was the replication of an abstract lung, which is one of my sculptures, Portrait of a Sphere. I learned embedded systems through that project and that's what led me to work in the Creative Machines Lab. They have a ton of different objects that line the walls there, and each one has been the source of interest for me in the start of an inquiry on where the line is drawn between aesthetic and functionality, and how those things can interact in many ways. I think I gravitate to a lot of spaces on roofs or open spaces with large windows, like the sky lounge in Schapiro or the lounge on top of Broadway, which is my hall. I definitely am able to explore concepts that I think about in my art in large spaces like that.

Have you ever considered venturing into nature photography, or are your favorite subjects more scientific or anatomically related?

I'm more interested in people. With photography, I'm interested in photographing people and I like the formal aspects of studio photography for that reason. In the same way I love observing the world and drawing upon that for inspiration, I like to have a clean, blank slate when I create photography or sculpture and I like to build things from the ground up, and studio photography is great for that reason. You've got the subject, you have the background, any props you want to bring in, the limits are endless.

I think your sculptures are so interesting and use really cool, unconventional materials that I can't say I've ever seen in other sculptures before––like how you use acid in your piece Totem and dry ice in Repleti Rasa! Where do you find these materials, and what inspires you to use them?

I think that definitely comes from an interest in the sciences. When I think of concepts, I don't think of their actuality first. I usually think first of the material's function, how they're going to work. It’s a broad, abstract sense of how they're going to function, particularly with sculptures that move or interact with the space around them or incite inquiry through some function that they perform. I definitely think about it in the abstract sense first, and then once I come up with some function, like 'I want to represent a lung,' I come up with different ways of implementing that detail. For example, I used a balloon in Portrait of a Sphere, to represent the inflation and deflation of the lung. Yet, when it came down to representing the aorta and the blood vessels in the lung, I actually cut holes through plexiglass and used fluid to interact and move around it. In that way, I try to break down the idea of the lung into two different functions that have the same related function.

In my piece Totem, my abstraction was that I wanted to compare the repeating cycle of nature that is constantly replenishing and refreshing with the human cycle of creation and degradation. In that way, I knew I wanted to use a natural substance like acid that could dissolve something that I believe was emblematic of human gusto and confidence in machines and technology like metal. I needed some acid that would dissolve that metal and prove constant degradation, versus the evaporation-condensation cycle of nature and the replenishing cycle it has. My sub-thesis was represented with a Swiss army knife, which represented the ultimate testament to humans believing in their own technological capability. The sheer presence of a Swiss army knife in a pocket or on your person comes with the confidence that that little tool is going to give you control over any situation nature throws at you. It's concerning that there's some piece of technology that can do it all, and I chose that to be emblematic of human confidence in technology. I put it in acid to degrade it and the symbol of replenishing right above it, indicating a natural hierarchy. Constant degradation versus cyclic forces of nature.

I'm also a fan of your smaller-scale projects like the Modular Bag and the Bubble-Cube Candles! They're both like innovative spins on more conventional materials that we see in everyday life. How were you inspired to create these pieces that share similarities with everyday materials?

In my art, I definitely try not to focus on one medium or sculpture, but I try to think of each product that I work on as sort of an assignment, and I try to be material-agnostic and choose whatever is best for the concept. For Modular Bag and Bubble-Cube Candles, I realized that art doesn't necessarily need to be exhibited in a gallery or considered as high art in order to appreciate it as pushing boundaries. It can be a functional product, it can be an item that presides aesthetic value. It can be something that you gift to your family, like what I did with the candles. There's a value in craft and the disciplines that aren't necessarily represented in contemporary art. For Modular Bag, I was thinking of innovating the typical tote bag structure and providing radical customization. It was a little project that I wanted to use to demonstrate space for change and creation in all of these things. The straps on the bag are modular, so they're highly interchangeable, you can swap them out with any different color, any different style, and you can create things by that system.

In the same way that Legos interlock together, those straps can interlock together with those snaps. From the basic building block of the straps with clips on them, you can create a ton of different objects––a belt, a bag, or maybe even a shirt or a sweater. It's just the foundation layer.

You talked about how you shared these as gifts. Have you ever talked about sharing or collaborating on any pieces, or have you created any of your pieces with any artists in the past?

I would collaborate with my dad on a number of pieces, like on the photographs, also with public installations. I'm definitely interested and looking to collaborate with people in the Columbia community. I don't think that an artist should sit in isolation, they should be involved in the broader community, which informs their ideas.

For sure! I've really loved talking about your process and your work as a whole. Thinking about the future, do you have any upcoming projects that you're excited to work on?

Yeah! I'm working with a gallery to display a continuation on my works that involve the photography of dance and I'm creating a series of 10 or 20 alternative portraits that don't involve a traditional sense of portraiture but involve acts of creation or certain portions of them that represent the assets of that person––similar to how I tried to gain the essence of a person in the Compositions. I'm trying to look at dancers and see what sort of movements and actions they take in their daily life that represents them in a unique portrait of a person.

Thank you so much, Nicolas! Where else can we find your work and stay up to date?

You can find my work on my website: nicolasouporov.com or on my Instagram @nic.rso which will both be updated continuously.

KARINA ENCARNACION

May 3, 2021

Interview by Isabella Rafky

Photos by Rommel Nunez

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Okay. I am 22 years old. I am originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Kind of random, but it’s a fun place to be and I feel that I’ve gotten to appreciate it more and more the longer I’ve spent away from home. I’m an only child, which is kinda good and bad; I wish I had a sibling, but at the same time I love my parents. I studied architecture, I’m a senior, but I also do a bunch of random design projects in my personal time. Oh! and I’m a dancer. I feel like I’ve kind of neglected that because of the pandemic. But yeah, I’m also a dancer.

When did you know you wanted to practice architecture?

My first exposure to it was when I was in 6th grade. So I was like, 12 years old or something. I feel like that’s kind of the natural path for kids who like both math and art, and I was a really big math and art kid. So, one of my teachers recommended that I look into architecture, but as a 12 year old there’s really not much you can do at that time. But then, the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I did this architecture camp at Washington University in St. Louis. This was while I was in high school, I was going into my senior year and it was like a sustainability and architecture high school program. It was so stressful, but I ended up loving it. Like that type of weird stress that’s like drawing lines constantly until like 2 in the morning. So I figured that I liked that after doing that little summer camp. And then yeah, in 2016 I did a program for high school kids also. It was really my only career choice, I’ve always kinda known that I wanted to go into architecture.

So, what inspires you in your work currently?

I feel like recently I've been getting... I don’t want to say further away from traditional architecture, but I have been interested more in furniture and objects recently. I think it’s because I’m dealing with the struggle of whether I want to create or help create more skyscrapers or other things that are not so environmentally friendly. It’s a little bit better if I narrow down and create smaller architectures, something that’s more personal and intimate rather than something that’s large and urban.

Furniture is something that allows me to use those skills that I’ve gotten from architecture to create something a lot more personal. Also, they are a lot easier to produce, a lot quicker to produce, rather than getting into a huge project team and creating a whole building. The process is a lot more personal and a lot more prolific and exciting to me. There are a lot more possibilities.

What sparked your dynamic love affair with furniture?

I’ve mostly covered it, but the main thing is that I have a more personal connection. I see a lot of architects creating furniture that are part of their line or brand, and that's really cool because the furniture kind of becomes a symbol for their architecture as a whole, becomes a more accessible form of the architecture. It’s very consistent with their design language, but yeah, it’s on a one-to-one scale rather than a large community or global scale which I find really fascinating.

I saw your lamps by the way, beautiful! Do you make them from the bottom up or how do you design them? I want one in my home!

Thanks, the ultimate goal is to get them manufactured but that’s gonna take a lot of time. So that was a project for Design Milk, they collaborated with this annual competition called LAMP. It’s an annual competition, open to students and professionals, and they call people to design lamps and they can be anything. My friend who I met when we studied abroad in Copenhagen, her name is Krista [Lebovitz], we collaborated. She’s a studio art major, I’m an architecture major, so neither one of us has experience in industrial design so it was quite a challenge for us. But it was really fun, we wanted to create something that was very approachable and accessible to the general public because some of those lamps get very avant-garde, very sculptural, just not accessible.

The lamp kind of symbolizes my desires and my goals in design, to create something interesting and exciting but not so completely unattainable to a general crowd. As you said, you can just put it in your room, in your house, on your desk, whenever, and it’s not something that is a giant investment. So far it’s just a rendering, but hopefully, we can figure that out. We actually ended up winning the student popular vote section which is really fun! Thanks for the votes from all my friends.

How long does that process take you? How long did it take to do that lamp project?

So, Krista reached out to me when I was in quarantine, starting the fall semester and I was so bored. She was like, hey, do you wanna do this project with me? That was the first week of September and the project went until late October, early November. So it was just a few months and we met about every week. As I said, the timeline for these projects is a lot shorter, which is why I think they’re more fulfilling, more exciting.

Do you think you’re going to keep going in the furniture and object direction? In industrial object types rather than buildings or different things of that nature?

Yeah, that’s been something I’m thinking about a lot, especially because I’m going to apply to graduate school next year and I’m applying for jobs in the city now so I have to figure out what field I want to go into. Right now it’ll be a bit better for me to go into architecture, and I still love architecture, but I think it'll be a lot easier for me to narrow down my interests later on. Start with architecture and later if I want to go into furniture, then I can more easily. If I were to go to school for furniture design or object design it would be a lot more difficult for me to go into architecture after that. Because architecture is a much wider field, has a lot more technical skills, and I would be able to translate those skills easily into more specific fields rather than going the opposite direction.

What do you find yourself gravitated towards when you’re in the process of building something? And this can mean music, this can mean art, different references that you have, it can mean whatever it wants to mean to you.

Like I mentioned, making objects is a lot more personal than creating these huge architectural projects. There’s a lot less of an environmental impact, a lot less of social and political connotation that architecture might have. I really want to make objects that are inclusive to all people and that are exciting for all different types of people. I also am very interested in fun colors as well, as you could probably tell from my lamps. I also want to start doing more with different textures and materials. My goal this year is to start knitting. But yeah, I definitely want to be making furniture as well as architecture and my ultimate goal is to have a small design firm where I can do both. I create a space as well as the objects inside of them. Very inclusive, very fun, nothing big or elite.

What is your artistic process like? How do you get from point A to point B when creating something like your chairs? Is it something that’s assigned to you or how does that come about?

Generally for all of my projects, like many others, they just start with a sketch. I’m not very strong with sketching though, so I just try to make study models out of paper. My sketches start to translate into little models like that. And then, I usually go into Rhino or other software and start modeling them digitally. From there, it just depends on what medium the project is going to take. For the chair project, I was actually assigned in Denmark when I was there from January to March in 2020. That was a class project where we were making chairs and I went through a series of study models, both small as well as one-to-one scale out of cardboard.

That program actually got canceled because of the coronavirus so then I had to go home. I was really sad that I wasn’t able to finish it. So I just went and luckily had all the 3D files that I was using to experiment with form, and I just took them to a studio where they cut them out from a machine and I was able to build it there. That was actually my first project where it was made to full completion. Because my other architecture projects are buildings, they’re not actually going to be made right now. So I thought that was very fulfilling, actually getting to see my sketches totally coming to life. Now the chair is in my basement and I can sit in it and do my homework while sitting in it. So yeah, it’s different for every project but that’s generally how it goes.

How have you and your work changed through the pandemic, if it’s changed at all?

I definitely was more into traditional architecture prior to the pandemic. It’s also interesting because I was in Denmark right before it all started, which kind of started that shift, and then the pandemic completed the shift. I was definitely more into architecture prior to the start of the pandemic and then I’ve kind of not been dancing as much as well. So I’ve been focusing a lot more on my design and more on art. Before I felt like dance and architecture were kind of splitting my time and I wasn’t able to get fully immersed in either one. I definitely feel a lot more connected to my work, I’m a lot more excited about my work, and I’m able to use my free time because now we have infinite free time [laughs]. So I’m able to use all of that and produce more work. Before I never felt that I was making work during my free time, it was always for school. Now I have projects that I’m proud of that I can say like, I’ve created this opportunity for myself, or I’ve found this independent from school, so that’s been really exciting.

That’s super cool. Do you feel that your practices intersect? You were saying just now that dancing and architecture were different worlds pre-pandemic, could you elaborate on that a little more?

Both of them are very closely related to space and the body. Working with furniture has definitely helped me understand the body even more, in a different way, with different proportions. I would like to do a project in the future where I make a chair and I have a video where I dance with it or something. But right now, it makes me really sad that I put dance on hold because now that I’ve gotten so immersed in design I definitely feel like there’s even more of an opportunity for me to integrate those two. Right now, I don't have any projects right now where they integrate each other. I actually did one project with my friend Melody in 2019 where we choreographed a piece that was kind of inspired by some of the work that I did. That was really fun, but I definitely want to do something on my own that’s like my choreography and my art shown in it. So stay tuned, maybe that’ll come soon.

How do you practice architecture in your personal life, outside of academic projects and the classroom?

I don’t necessarily practice formal architecture on my own because it’s such a huge process to tackle, but I definitely do translate the skills I’ve learned in architecture to do other projects. I enjoy making cards for my friends, using whatever graphic skills I’ve acquired, or painting or drawing, stuff like that. I also like fashion, I like lines, my love of architecture and lines is very readily apparent everywhere. It’s not necessarily formal architecture but I think my love of design is kind of apparent in everything that I do and everything that I wear.

Are there any new projects you’re working on?

Yes, I am actually working on this project with my friend Krista who I did the lamp with, and we’re collaborating with a furniture studio based in LA. I’m not quite sure what form exactly that project is going to take, because we’re only in our second week, but it’s also a pretty short project. I guess more updates on that to come. I don’t know if it’s going to be furniture necessarily, but it’s going to be somewhere between furniture and objects and architecture. Very experimental and fun as always.

Do you feel like living in St. Louis and growing up there impacts your person, or impacts how you see and treat the architecture field in any way?

The first thing that comes to mind is how segregated St. Louis was when I was growing up, and the more that I come back the more integrated I see it has become. There are a lot more artists and a lot more people integrating with each other, but then at the same time, I see a lot more gentrification going on. I kind of have mixed feelings about that. It’s really great that all that is happening, and I’m very excited to see all these artists and designers and new restaurants and places coming up. I was always kind of uncomfortable or interested in how all these different worlds came together in St. Louis because I grew up in a predominantly white area and danced in the city, where it was mostly POC. I was like the only Asian person that I knew, really it was just a few of us. It’s exciting that through the arts St. Louis has become more integrated. I definitely would love to work there at some point or do some sort of project there because it’s a really interesting place. People kind of gloss over it because it’s in Missouri and no one really thinks much about Missouri, but there are definitely a lot of interesting things, a lot of different artists, and surprising things that I wish more people knew about.

Do you have any final notes or takeaways?

That’s mostly it! My brain isn’t functioning at its peak right now [laughs].

Say less, literally my brain is smooth [laughs]. Thank you so much for this!

Karina’s Portfolio

Samantha Blumenfeld

March 9, 2021

Interview by Jane Ellen Loughman

Photos by Madalyn Hay

I'd love for you to first introduce yourself.

My name is Samantha Blumenfeld. I'm originally from New Jersey, USA, and I've been living in Seoul, South Korea for a little over seven years. I originally studied printmaking, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that. I'm a GS student, so, originally, I went to art school, which was really conceptual. But I really liked the idea of the editioning studio, where you make artwork for other artists. I didn't realize that was a possibility, so four years ago, I started a printing studio with my husband, and we were exclusively an editioning studio alongside a personal studio. From there, we were able to expand our community programming, and we do all kinds of things, like workshops, mentoring, and community classes. Between the time of being an undergrad the first time and then making my own print studio, I didn't have access to a print shop, and it was from there that I started to experiment with new media just because it was really the only thing that was accessible.

You're based in South Korea at the moment, so what drew you to a fine art BA at Columbia? Have you been doing it online from South Korea this entire time?

Yeah, I’ve just been in South Korea this whole time. I didn't realize a non-traditional student program existed at all pretty much. I had left undergrad originally in 2010; I was slated to graduate in 2011. It was an opportunity that I didn't realize, so I took a chance. I applied [to GS] and I was really excited. I don't know how you guys do it; you're kind of like college age, but I was so immature. I was not ready for that experience. Now that I'm an adult, I feel like I really know what I want from school and how I want to finish this program.

Did the pandemic affect your experience of taking classes with Columbia?

It's been really interesting, because I work two jobs during the day, and, you know, there's the 14 hour time difference between here and the US. It's definitely not ideal; I go to the studio from midnight until 6am. It's been interesting, because it allows me to create space in my personal time, that, maybe, I wouldn't have been devoting towards art making. It really forces me to focus on that. So it’s actually been really nice to do classes online because I can still do all the things I need to do in my daily life and have access to my own studio. I'm comfortable working and experimenting here, and I don't really have to worry about what the administration might say about my own projects. So actually, it's been a really nice experience. I know for other students it's been really negative, but it's integrated into my daily life really well.

Why did you move to South Korea? Was it something that you were drawn to for your career?

I was in a long-distance relationship with my now-husband, and he’s Korean. I actually met him in high school. While he was in school, he got drafted for the Korean military, so he had to go back, and we were in that long-distance stage for a while. It got to a point where I was only really seeing him once a year. Because I didn't finish my degree, I wasn't eligible to get a working visa. So I was kind of like, well, you have to marry me. He said, sure!

You call yourself a multimedia artist, and I was just wondering, what does that mean to you? How broad is multimedia, or is it limitless?

I mean, for me, when I was in undergrad, I was majoring in printmaking and minoring in painting, hoping there would be some kind of overlap between them or that my painting process would inform my print work. I ended up struggling with this for probably like ten years, trying to make these two ideas make sense––trying to incorporate screen printing into painting and vice versa was a really big struggle. So, I moved on to new media and thought about the fact that it’s a form of information dissemination, not unlike print media. It was a little bit easier to find a connection there.

Based on the things that I've done online, there's really no limit to what you can do on the internet. Columbia is doing exhibitions online for undergraduates and the CU Arts Collective and things. I've been in a ridiculous amount of exhibitions in Croatia because everything's visual. You just send them a movie file, and then they put it in an exhibition. There’s also web-based performance, where you can broadcast to everyone. I was thinking about these ideas and then incorporated them into installations, performative installations, and interactive performances. I have some main topics in my work, and that manifests either through new media, printmaking, or a combination of the two.

I saw on your Instagram that you recently put forward some pieces to the Art Teleported 2021 Show in South Korea. Can you tell me about the pieces (“Signal,” “online”) you recently submitted for that exhibition?

I haven't really made a tremendous amount of new video work. I feel like this is the age that demands or expects video work since we're now engaging with exhibitions predominantly through online platforms. The idea of performance, or the idea of painting, they come across better in video than in stills. We have an open world of video art. For video work, I need either some really good material or some really specific concept. For “online,” I was definitely thinking about online surveillance, but I was also thinking about the way that we curate ourselves online. We're victims of surveillance, but then there's a sort of voyeuristic interaction that we have with other people we engage with online. Especially as a woman on the internet, I think there's an extra level of expectation and self-curation for how you create an online persona.

Is there anyone or anything in particular that inspires your new media work?

If you're doing new media, it’s hard to not bring up Nam June Paik, a Korean media artist; he’s the one who created the idea of TV installations. His work is everywhere in Seoul. I think what he did was, and is still, really cutting edge. It's timeless––the idea of integrating these new media technologies into daily life or into spiritual experiences is still something we're talking about today. So I'm definitely interested in his work as far as videos and installations go.

As for the glitch art, it's really interesting, because the whole community is really crowd-sourced. You can find tutorials for any kind of skill that you're really interested in learning and there's really nothing stopping you from acquiring and developing a new visual language. Aside from that, I feel like John Berger’s Ways of Seeing [inspires me]; how we see, interpret and understand art, what it means to exist in this super, super ultra-commodified space and how there is a consistent reference to art and art history.

How did the pandemic affect your life, artwork, and your work ethic?

I guess it gave me a little bit more incentive to go back onto the web as a platform. Obviously, there's less in-person exhibition opportunities now than there were before the pandemic. Now it's not so much about creating art as it is about creating content. The idea of branding as an artist is part of this; creating something tangible to post and just being able to utilize the platform in a performative way or to even use it as its own medium, I guess. The pandemic is definitely pushing me more in that direction.

I’ve been messing around with AR (augmented reality). A lot of my work is based on these animated gifs of abstract artwork. I was thinking about how it'd be really interesting to be able to integrate them into a real-life experience so that it becomes a universal experience accessible in people's real, lived experiences. I am just starting off with AR, so there's a huge amount to learn, but I'm currently creating some virtual objects based on the same pieces because a lot of my work is a dialogue with itself. It’s very self-referential; I'm looking at this particular frame from this video or this animation, and then turning it into a screen print or turning it into an AR sculpture. Hopefully, this summer, I'm going to start doing some 3D printing. There's going to be a translation from the AR, from the internet to a new kind of object. So I'm really excited to just be able to utilize new technologies and experiment.

Can you tell me more about your performance art piece ‘Art Object’ from 2018?

That was definitely one of those pieces that, after really reflecting on Ways of Seeing, I was like, I have to make this. It was also inspired by the idea of art dissemination and art ownership, and what it means to be able to view a piece of art in your own house as a sense of ownership. I started to think about this idea of virtual ownership in relation to the female image. We have all these famous works of art with women pressured to fit into a certain mold or certain set of standards. I’m looking at classical examples from art, and then it was up to the audience or the viewer to mold me into this perception of this idealized Venus. I almost got thrown off Facebook for that, because I did a Facebook live stream and a bunch of people reported me for pornography. I'm actually wearing a very light pink top and leggings, but they just didn't listen to reason. I've never been, I guess, censored in that way before. So I was just like, this is dumb! It's just classic artwork.

I was totally enraged, like absolutely, unbelievably infuriated. I'm not nude, and I'm utilizing these ideas from Renaissance art. These are examples of art that people think of when they think of the female nude, these depictions of Venus by all these different artists. It's this idea of what the Guerilla Girls say: the only way to be a woman in the Met is to be nude, right? So we're seeing this, we're being told this is the default. It's fine, it's whatever. But then the idea that if I'm utilizing or appropriating these images through a little bit of a different lens, then I'm wrong. And so it's the same bullshit, right?

Is there any one piece or group of work that is your favorite? Or is that just impossible to pick?

It's hard. When I was doing exclusively new media, I was at a really specific point in my life, emotionally and maturity-wise; I was trying to understand myself. So, projecting this avatar or this facsimile of the kind of person I wanted to be allowed me to experiment and play, even if I missed out on that chance when I was younger. I feel there's some of that work that is really superficial and visual. They’ve been called “screensavers” by art critics. I feel really connected to that work because I did so much; I generated thousands of images for that body of work. And then I started to go back into painting as I was dealing with some personal things because I thought oh, this new media isn't really relevant for me anymore. And then I moved more into screen print, and then more into experimentation, and then more into incorporating or expanding what could be a screen print, pushing that process in a couple of different directions. So I guess I really like the work now. Now, I'm starting to experiment with some textile installation that also brings in screen printing. There's just a lot of different things going on. But I think that where I'm at right now makes sense for this moment.

Why were you drawn to art as either a hobby or as a career, or both?

The abridged answer is because my parents didn't want me to do it, and I hated my parents. But art gives you a really unique opportunity to really hear people's stories. It’s an interesting way to see through the lens of someone else, to really try to engage and struggle with some of the things that they're struggling with. Using the internet, I wasn't playing online games, but I was always in chat rooms; I just enjoyed hearing people talk and see what they had to say. And nowadays, it's a changed platform, but I'm still doing the same thing on the internet that I was doing since I was nine. I think art channels a lot of that similarly.

Have you found a community for yourself in Seoul from your printmaking studio or from making art in general?

With our printmaking studio in Seoul, we are in touch with a few other printmaking studios because they're all connected. I wouldn't say it's a niche form of art, but it's very particular. There's a really specific process that you have to do for print. A lot of studios aren't really equipped for it. We are in touch with a lot of community studios in some way, where we work and collaborate together. There's that general printmaking network going on. The other side of it is the people in our studio––we have studio memberships. The one thing I really like about printmaking is that it's usually a communal practice. You're sharing a studio space, you're working with others, or you're collaborating with others. We've done everything we can to build that community here. So we have a lot of screen printers that come from all different types of artistry backgrounds. They collaborate and do exhibitions together, and you know, they become friends. It’s really cool then to see how it affects their practice, and then what projects they do moving forward.

left to right: blur11, 2020. Wave Vr 2, 2020. Ocean Vr 2, 2020.

If you could do anything you wanted, a dream piece, installation, exhibition, anything that you may be thinking of doing or want to do soon or you can't do yet, what would it be?

Yeah, there's kind of a new body, and it's related to some of my textile work. I got sidetracked because of school. A lot of the new media stuff and earlier screen printing stuff that was glitch, I refer to as “the mind mimetic.” It’s a metaphor for the way that we approach our own personal narratives and there are two recurring motives that we return to, regardless of where we're at in our lives. I'm really interested in this dissemination but within a macrocosm of the self or the psyche. And so, now, I'm really interested in the internet tactile––how can we make the internet a tactile, real experience? So, incorporating augmented reality into 2D work––but not being completely reliant on it––to make things that people can touch and really experience and perceive; I'd essentially like to make an exhibition dealing with that.

Are there any new projects you want to plug?

Oh, well, there is a separate project that I'm working on, but I feel it's going to be more of a long-term project. I ideally would like this project to take a minimum of ten years. It’s more of a personal archive of the screen printing work I've made. I have these prints on traditional Korean paper, and they're almost two meters long. They're very unwieldy in size, but I have a series of them. I realized this was a transitional body of work that I was making, so it was this idea of incorporating painting into screen print, incorporating new media, and then creating a screen printed collage with 12 or 15 layers. I have a couple of pages, these giant sheets. I'd like to continue this idea of the archive, and then essentially make these into a very small edition of gigantic books. This is something I'll just be working on in the background while I'm doing other projects I'm more focused on. Ideally, I'd like to have a document that shows all of my artwork in a way that it becomes the artwork, that challenges the idea of what an edition is, which is also something I'm really interested in as a printmaker.

Where else can we find your work?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roribleu/

Website: https://srb.neocities.org/

Raymond Banke

February 8, 2021

Interview by Sophie Paquette

Photos by Gillian Cohen on FaceTime

Introduce yourself.

My name is Raymond, I’m a sophomore from Northern California studying Visual Arts. A big part of my upbringing that influences how I perceive the world is my dual ethnicity being Chinese-Caucasian. Always having lived bridging two cultures, two ideologies, that’s reflected in everything I do. For me, the idea of an aquarium as a piece of fine art is similar in that you’re bridging these two disparate but linkable subjects. I see myself at the intersection of many different interests––I love cars, aquariums, art, animals, which intersect in surprising, odd ways.

I was thinking a lot about how, with the aquariums, you’re not only working with disparate media in the same piece but often fostering interaction between two structures, like two tanks communicating. Sculpture is obviously reliant on form and structure, and a lot of people see it as static. How does working with living media change the shape of your pieces? Does animal and plant life interact with your sculptures in a way that might surprise you or bring them new meaning?

With the aquariums, I mainly took after Takashi Amano. He was kind of the father of the aquarium aquascaping practice. His whole thing is kind of like, “To know mother nature is to love her smallest creations,” paying attention to detail, to the smallest, more static forms and elements of life. A big part of his sculpture practice was not even putting that many fish but focusing on the environment, the plants, wood, and rocks.

It’s slow. It requires so much patience to really blossom. The labor of aquascaping isn’t in carving or chiseling, and it isn’t an additive process where you’re putting clay together; it’s a testament of time. Doing it for a couple of weeks is easy, but doing it to the point where the aquarium is stable for months? That’s the challenge of this art form.

I integrate artificial materials into my aquariums, things that we consider ugly, like PVC pipe, recycled beer bottles, and try to find aesthetic and material value in these manmade materials. Another part of the process is asking, what if I assign narrative to them too? That’s why a lot of my pieces discuss gentrification and issues pertaining to the climate. I see these living aquariums as models for social issues, stretching the boundaries of what materials are associated with. Not only can PVC pipes be aesthetically striking, but they can also tell a story.

I was really interested in how your sculptures personify mechanical media. I love this line from your website about Inter-Aquarium Conversation: “The installation ponders the notion of architectural spaces being able to converse with each other, depend on one another, and perhaps have a beer together!”

It’s making me think a lot about how, right now, we have to reconsider connection mechanically, digitally. We’re learning how to communicate intimacy without physical touch, asking how “inorganic” elements can connect.

There’s a technological and mechanical aspect to aquariums, not just with the filtration but with lighting. A lot of modern aquarium equipment can be controlled by your smartphone––it’s kind of crazy what you can do now. Aspects of technology, design, and biology all intersect so nicely with the aquarium. I like the aspect of working with elements developed by someone who isn’t really an “artist,” so when you return to the art world with more advanced equipment or a new rare species, you have a ton of confounding factors, you have unlimited choice, despite being framed within this glass box.

*A Manifestation of Urban PVC in Terracotta Suburbia*

But there’s also a big ethical responsibility as an artist working in this space, with living things like fish. These works can’t last forever, unfortunately, but I think that’s the most interesting part. You think of sculpture as being something that can pass the test of time––sculpture from antiquity has lasted so long. But a lot of contemporary work often uses found objects that won’t last forever, and then there’s kinetic work which definitely won’t because everything will eventually stop moving.

The difference between 3D and 2D art is this ability to view in the round. There is more to be learned than just looking at it from one angle, one plane. Modern sculpture adds the fourth dimension of time. You can look at my work from one plane, but the fish is going to be in a different position from one moment to the next. Eventually, it will decay.

There’s a performative aspect to it too––this is why I think performance art is fundamentally an extension of sculpture. I’ve always been very intrigued by performance; I used to do choir, sing, play piano, do debate… while they didn’t really stick I did love the performing aspect. There’s always this thrill you get from public performance: you’re making a point, a great expression for a short period of time; it’s fleeting.

Aquariums might be first interpreted as being all about containment, but a lot of your sculptures open up the space of the aquarium in really interesting ways. What do you see as the physical limits of a sculpture? What is interior, and what is exterior?

This is one of the things I thought about when creating sculptures with two aquariums. How much space can an aquarium occupy? Can an aquarium occupy space outside of its glass box? I think that’s where aquariums start to be considered art. It’s not just a nice design piece or something for the home, now it’s something that’s really interacting with installation. It’s unclear where it starts or ends spatially, and you’re enveloped in this space with multiple aquariums. How do you make an ecosystem not just for the fish but an entire ecosystem for humans to explore as well? How do various organic and live creatures take part in that ecosystem?

I don’t like the quiet or staticity of visual art as much as being able to make something that can draw people in, that captivates and enthralls. Moving water is fascinating to everyone––there’s a reason why aquariums are proven therapeutics. With aquariums, you don’t really need a proclamation as to why you should view it, because it’s already fascinating to watch it slowly change over time. There’s noise to it.

When you first started talking about how aquariums are inherently temporary, it felt intuitive that, of course working in environmental media and thinking about ecology and the climate crisis, there is the immediate concern that we’re realizing our planet is not a certainty, and these natural things are not going to last forever.

But the more you spoke, it felt more hopeful, with the focus on how media can be repurposed and reborn. Opening up the space of the aquarium can have different implications on how we think about our natural world and our participation in it.

Right, and especially thinking about the pandemic, aquariums more than ever have become a way for people to engage with nature in a contained and safe way. While I don’t like the idea of mere containment, I do think there’s a benefit in that you have this beautiful slice of the ocean or the river, of nature, indoors where you can appreciate it.

Aquariums are also a great way to show people the value of biodiversity and the importance of protecting our ecosystem. You can view a lot of different species of plants or pieces of architecture in a miniature form, and then apply that to what’s happening in the macro world. I think of the aquarium as a smaller, more digestible package that makes the viewer think more critically about what's happening broadly in our environment at-large.

I’ve spent a lot of my life working in this field. I used to work at the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a volunteer guide and ambassador. A big part of it was just scientific interpretation, teaching people who have never seen the ocean about climate change, acidification, and why they should care about it. For me, communicating those ideas literally and scientifically is personable. You’re empathizing with issues in a way that makes them more digestible. Aquariums do that too.

A lot of outsiders criticize the ethics of the aquarium hobby; they’re like, you’re trying to harm our ecosystems, you’re harming these animals. And they have a point. They used to use cyanide to connect live saltwater fish in Australia. Fish caught by cyanide capture will most likely die or live a much shorter lifespan. It’s not sustainable for the consumer, and more importantly, it’s unethical. But I also think there is a huge awareness put into aquaculture. A vast majority of aquariums are captive-bred. There’s way less wild capture today than has happened in the past; most freshwater fish have been bred. There were fish we couldn’t dream of breeding ten years ago. The self-sustaining element of the aquarium makes us less dependent on nature while simultaneously allowing us to enjoy it more.

It’s going to be interesting to see the effect this has in the future, as environments degrade (or hopefully not), and as Covid-19 continues and people fear going outside. This might be too dystopian, but I can foresee a world where you see more species of a certain type in an aquarium than in the wild. I hope that’s not the case; I don’t want aquariums to be the only figment of nature that we have. But I still see them as being a valuable way to teach people about what’s happening in the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means for the image to not only replace but displace the original. That feels really crucial when you’re talking about species that are more populous in aquariums than the ocean or people whose first interaction with the ocean is an aquarium. Do you think the copy or reproduction is in some way equally “real” as the thing it’s replicating, or what different powers do they hold?

This was a big question for me last fall because YoungArts wanted to show one of my pieces in their Miami exhibition. They wanted the real thing in person, so for three months, the aquarium would be placed there. It’s a question of logistical setup but also asking, will this aquarium, in this location, be the same as the initial piece?

Every piece I make can’t be replicated. Artificial pieces might be replaced, but the fish won’t be the same, the placement won’t be the same… there’s no original that’s transportable. I think that’s kind of awesome because every time you make it it’s a new piece of art in a sense. There’s this idea that the original artwork will always have the highest value, but it’s not the same for aquarium-building. The real world inherently makes it such that every piece, every copy, is different than the original, but not necessarily better or worse.

It’s also interesting to think about this in the performing sense. With singing or acting, the performance won’t sound the same every time, but there are ways for you to improve every time, there is a certain aim for consistency. In visual art, though, you are performing and composing at the same time, and with my aquariums, a big part of the performance is spontaneity. How I put the PVC pipe structure for one exhibition or another is going to look different, because I make decisions based on how I feel about it at that moment.

I always feel for artists working in sculpture who have to document their work with photos, because that can be one of the most difficult forms to translate into a flattened plane. Especially working with living media, seeing your sculptures in real life must be a temporal, spatial, and sonic experience. So many things get lost when communicated as a still image. Have these competing boundaries of digital and physical space affected the way you define sculpture, form, and space?

I think there’s a great analogy to be made with the aquarium because, just like the Zoom screen, it’s a standard rectangle. It’s impossible to make a practical aquarium that is super huge or abstract in form. The aquarium, like every video interface, fundamentally exists in a box. The internet is a very rectangular, boxy media. It’s nice because I have a third dimension, which brings a wealth of exponentially greater possibilities compared to the two-dimensional computer screen. It’s a very comfortable restriction.

New aquascape slide copy.jpg — *Untitled*

Just like how I play with aquariums now, not just as a hobby but as an art form that takes up space outside the glass box, I can also Zoom people and play a game of Among Us with them simultaneously. The video has become a secondary way of expressing communication while you’re doing something else. The way you can interact with multiple people at once over video is kind of an extension or adaptation of one-on-one interactions.

I used to submit a lot of stills of my aquarium work. Initially, I saw aquariums as design-like, architectural. Now, they are much more about sculpture and installation, much more fine-art oriented. That’s one of the things I always liked about aquariums, how it creates these intersections of nontraditional media. It felt connected to my identity as biracial and having conflicting interests. Sotheby’s and the MoMA might make you think you need some kind of cultural knowledge to “understand” art, but I think ultimately, art is a way to visually express something personal. Good design and architecture, on the other hand, is invisible. Most humans know how to interact with and how to use good design because it’s intuitive, based on ecology, based on our inner nature. There’s not as much of a cultural barrier, if any, for design.

That’s where my work has been fluctuating around. It went from being a functional way for the public to learn more about ecology and enabling a home for fish and plants, to being more about expressing a certain personal viewpoint. It’s not merely functional; it’s representing something much greater than itself. Unlike an architectural model, which is made to represent an actual larger building, I think aquariums are models and art in and of themselves. You appreciate them for what they are, not just what they can represent.

Going from design to art has made replication harder. That, along with the spontaneity of working with live creatures and water, has made my work so much more dynamic, so much more difficult to document and to place in a certain setting, but that’s kind of the beautiful part about it too. That’s where I kind of think sculpture is heading, work that is a lot more fleeting.

On the topic of accessibility and performance, I feel like there’s something so crucial about the aquarium, as contained by transparent glass, being a space the viewer cannot and will not be able to enter. Unlike other installations, the aquarium space is not necessarily one you can participate in. Seeing how the art is operating and being forced to recognize your vantage point and the position of your body feels really important. With other sculptures, I’m not sure you think as much about where your body could participate in that piece.

I think installation and some modernist sculptures definitely changed how viewers interact with the work. Aquariums in one sense are very performative, but there some are also participatory. Touching a stingray at a petting pond––I mean, is that performance art, or is that just active viewership? Do the viewers become actors as well? At the very least, my work challenges what traditional viewership is. I want them to press their faces against the glass. I want them to be able to come close, to stare through the top of the aquarium, to hear what’s happening, to look at the hidden equipment running below. I want people to see all those living, mechanical, breathing parts, and take it all in.

What is the experience of moving from this embodied, physically participatory practice to digital media, which might feel divorced from the body?

Before I was making aquariums I was classically trained doing 2D work. The value in learning multiple media as an artist is not so much because you’re skilled, but it gives you more tools to express the ideas you have. That’s the value of knowing printmaking and painting, welding and woodworking.

I think now, I’ve probably grown most recently in terms of that transition into digital space. While I have been maintaining aquariums at home that are more traditional, I’ve been re-exploring what you can do with media. I got a much better understanding of Photoshop and InDesign, and some Illustrator too, over the summer and through this Barnard class Designing Design. So what I’ve been doing now is everything from making zines to graphic design pieces in Photoshop, really just pushing myself to learn these software tools to better express my ideas. Being at home has given me an opportunity to truly embrace digital media that I’ve always taken for granted. I think I started taking digital media seriously when I first learned photography to document my sculptural work and my paintings. I learned photography in the first place, and then it became creative as I got better at it, better at documenting my things.

But there is a huge limit, like I said with aquariums, when you have to document them digitally. It’s a wholly immersive experience but with photos, there’s no audio, there’s no kinetics, you can only view it from a few certain angles you choose. The view is so much more restricted. That’s the trickiest part, I don’t know in the near future what presenting aquariums will look like. It’s not something I’m worried about, but digital media definitely alters a big part of what it means to be a sculptor.

Over the summer, I taught an art portfolio camp for teens over Zoom. Portfolios have always been submitted digitally, but over Zoom, even I couldn’t see their work in person; it was like I was always viewing it in the way a reviewer would. Going digital definitely trains artists to think hard, to think outside of themselves, to be the judge and the creator. Especially during this digital media era, you have to view your work outside of yourself. Work is always going to be processed in a two-dimensional way, so knowing how to present it will help improve the quality of your 3D work too. That’s definitely been something big for me.

What are you looking forward to, artistic or otherwise?

I’m moving back to New York in the spring which is really exciting. I hope there’s an art class I can take in-person. I want to get back in the habit of creating––especially going to a school like Columbia, where you’re so academically busy. Even if I do a Zoom drawing class, that’s definitely going to be great, just to sit down and draw. Yeah, pragmatically you get a class done. But it’s also really nice to have a structured environment to do that in. For me that’s something I’m looking forward to more, I haven’t had that in a while, I’ve only taken two art classes at Columbia so far, and one design class.

But I’m interested in working more on visual projects, infographics, photos. There’s so much opportunity that’s untapped in the journalism space. That’s probably my big Spectator project, which ties into digital media and work too. How do we optimize what an illustrator can do, for more than just like a mere illustration for an article, you know? Maybe I’ll even get into more advertising and marketing––I’ve always been fascinated by creative marketing. Because I haven’t been able to produce as much fine art as I would like, I’m seeking other avenues to apply art. That really excites me. I think that’s the next step for me; applying my art and curatorial work to journalism or business is something that I do want to pursue more of in the future.

Sophie Lee

January 27, 2021

Interview by Melissa Wang

Photos by Madalyn Hay on FaceTime

Hello!

Hi!

Introduce yourself.

My name is Sophie. I'm a junior in CC. I'm studying creative writing and history, and I write poetry and I make zines.

Ok, first question - why all the bees in your zines? What do they mean?

That's a good question. I guess I'm not trying to put in a lot of bees into my work, but I've always really liked them. I'm terrified of needles, which is weird, because bees are essentially flying needles; I've always said that if I get a tattoo, it would be a bee.

And a lot of poets have written about bees, right? I'm thinking of Sylvia Plath, in particular. They're so fascinating. I love their social lives and their hierarchy. So cool. I don't know. There's just, there's a lot to talk about.

Is that why your pseudonym is “Princess of Bees”?

Um, I wouldn’t call it my pseudonym. I think I like the idea of royalty and how that ties in with bees. People always talk about queen bees, and I think it's interesting to think about a princess of bees, and what that means. I don't know. But yeah, I’ve never written under a pseudonym - usually I write under Sophie. Sophia is my legal name, but for some reason I've gone by Sophie my whole life.

You mentioned Sylvia Plath as a big influence on your poetry. Who are your main influences?

Good question. I am trying to branch out a lot more. I really like Plath. I've also been reading Joe Brainard. He wrote this incredible collection called “I Remember.” The whole book is just little short snippets where he'll say, “I remember this instance,” or “I remember this.” It goes on for the length of the book. I think there’s something about that kind of collaging of memories that is so interesting.

I love how you say “the collaging of memories,” because that’s kind of the vibe of all your poetry. It’s like every stanza in your poems is a different memory. How do you plan the memories you add into your poems?

I guess I usually write around a specific feeling or specific memory that I have. I'm inspired by a lot of the poets I mentioned, in the sense that I like to stitch together different images to create a collage-like experience. And yeah, I guess I just revolve around what sounds good to my ear and what feels right in terms of conveying the feeling that I'm trying to convey.

You mentioned Joe Brainard and, in fact, you have a bunch of pop culture references scattered around your zines. How significant are these references in your poetry?

I think I wrote an entire poem based on Joe Brainard, and that stemmed out of an assignment I was given in a poetry workshop. And––I don't know, I really liked this assignment. I continued to edit it and then I just stuck it in the zine. I think something that is unique to zines is that kind of capability to collage different ideas together, most of it from my brain. But I have a lot of outside pop culture influences too. And whether it's an actual, literal magazine collage, or just bringing in different things, sketches and stuff––I don't know, zines are just so flexible. The medium is so fun, there's basically no rules.

What got you into making zines?

I guess I've been journaling ever since I was a kid. I never really considered myself an artist. I did like writing. When I discovered zines, which was maybe in early high school, it seemed natural. It was such a fun way to casually combine art, poetry, and whatever else I was writing. And the idea that it's self-published and self-distributed most of the time just made a lot of sense to me. I like the idea of being able to control what I’m doing, and to remove that pressure of needing to be published or needing to have my work be shown somewhere. So I’d make these zines and pass them out to my friends. Which, I guess, did feel a little bit selfish because I was basically being like, “I made this, please look at it.” But it was fun and I've always really liked snail mail and sending letters, so zines just came naturally to me.

How do you choose the visuals that go into your zines?

That's a good question. I am not the best at drawing. I like collage, though. I guess it depends on what materials are available to me. The good thing about zines is that you can make them with anything you have on hand. So if I'm in the mood to draw, or if I have sketches from a journal or something, then I add them in. Or if it feels like a work that's more personal or recalls specific memories, I might look for photos.

Does each zine have a specific theme?

Sometimes I start with a theme and then I incorporate different elements around it. That was probably the case with the Princess of Bees zine, where I wanted to do something about bees. And in other ones, I will come up with the poetry that I want to incorporate and create some visuals to accompany the poems, and then maybe create a title that somehow ties it all together. Coming up with titles is so fun.

And that fun shines in all your zines! Especially in “Flowerheads.” By the way, what are the flowerheads supposed to represent?

You know, I don't really know. “Flowerheads” was the first scene that I'd ever done digitally. I used Adobe InDesign, which I was super unfamiliar with. I've always done hand drawn scenes or printed out something and then taped it into the zine, so this was a new experience for me. Those flowerheads were easy to draw digitally; I liked the idea of having a cast of characters for the zine and creating this world that's populated with the flowers.

Will you make more digital zines? Or do you prefer the hand-making process?

I might do more digital. I was thinking about doing a second one over winter break, but it’s kind of time consuming. Plus, once I start on a zine, I feel like I need to finish it. I need to set out a good chunk of time for it.

What’s your work ethic when it comes to zine-making?

I guess I work on zines when I feel like it. I think I started out making more chapbooks than zines, where I was just collecting poetry that I'd written and then creating visuals to accompany them. But now that I've made a few zines, I just really like the flexibility of the medium. They also stemmed from work I was already doing with my writing or from my journal entries. So I guess sometimes, yeah, they are more organic. Like, when I have an idea, I just throw myself into making the zine. But sometimes I’ll just pull together a lot of different things that I've already written or drawn.

Are zines your main medium?

I think it's mostly zines and poetry. Like I said, I'm not a trained visual artist, by any means. But I do enjoy the ability to create something visual to accompany poems that I've written, because I feel like the visuals help make the poems fly off the page in a new way. They make the poems more fun. Does that make sense?

Yeah it does! Would you say humor plays a big role in your work? I noticed that while your poems are hilarious, they also touch really sensitive topics, like toxicity or existential crises. Do you use humor to confront these issues in your own life?

Well, I hope others see me as a funny person! I consider myself to be a person with a good sense of humor. I do improv on campus with Third Wheel, so humor has been a big part of my life. I also did drama in high school, so I’ve always liked the idea of entertaining others and making other people laugh. So I guess all of that seeps into my zines. I think humor is a great coping mechanism. Maybe that’s not always extremely healthy, but it’s definitely fun. And, yeah, especially given the pandemic and everything that's everyone's been dealing with, I think humor is really important…. I don't want to say “now more than ever,” but I was about to!

Would you say you’re an optimistic or a pessimistic person?

I want to say optimistic. And I think the goal with my poetry and zines is to always provide a feeling or experience that is not necessarily directly uplifting, but can maybe provide some comfort or nostalgia and through that have a positive impact on somebody. But yeah, like we've been talking about, the subject matter is not always the happiest. But I don't think we can expect people to only talk about happy things.

Tying back to the topic of themes, I also noticed that your family and friends are featured in several of your poems. Would you say they’ve had a big impact on your work?

Um, I guess pretty big. I'm not making them with the goal of having them published, and like I said, I tend to only distribute them among my inner circle of support. I guess they’re the main audience for these zines. Close family and friends, and then occasionally other people if they want to read my zines.

There’s also a repetition of specific images across your collection of zines. I’ve seen recurring images of bees, flowers, and even peach rings - how do you choose which themes to return to?

Hmm. I guess if they're just continually in my brain, or if I'm still thinking about them, then they will make their way back into a zine. Sometimes, I'm influenced by older things that I've written, or I will revise something old, and produce multiple things from it. So that might also be where some of these motifs come from. And sometimes they're just from super prominent memories that I have, and these memories always have a way of making it into my work.

The word “oriental” is also repeated a lot in different zines. What is your connection to that word, and to culture?

This is such a big, big topic.

In one of my workshops, we were talking about what it means to be an “identity poet.” And it's kind of crazy, because nobody wants to be pigeonholed into writing about one specific experience. I'm Korean-American, but I don't want to feel like I have to write only about the Korean-American experience, and what that experience looks like to other people, or how other people might interpret my own experience. But at the same time, identity is everywhere, in all of anything that we produce. I guess my workshop decided that everybody was an identity poet. And what that means is different for different people. I personally will always have my heritage in mind when I create zines, but I also don't want to feel restricted in what I create. So I don't try to hold myself to any standard or subject matter, but culture’s definitely there. I'm always thinking about my family and their story, too. Yeah, it's a big, big issue. Or not necessarily an issue. Just a big thing to think about.

What is the future of your poetry? What do you see yourself writing ten years down the line?

I have no idea. I think I need to make some new memories because being stuck at home has not been good for my archive of experiences. I feel like I've been pretty deprived in terms of sensory experiences, and I've been drawing a lot on past experiences or memories that I’ve already made. So I guess to answer your question, the poems in the future will just have to come out of whatever happens in the future.

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Would you say 2020 has had a negative impact on your work?

Hmm, I don't know. I guess everyone has experienced 2020 a different way. I guess I do feel kind of stifled being stuck at home with my family. Not that I don't like my family! But it's just a different, different experience. And it's very quiet here. But at the same time, it's been good to be able to reflect on the past year, and my life leading up to this year. I've been talking to friends, and it seems like a lot of people have come to a new understanding of themselves, in quarantine, and in being at home. I think that’s pretty inspiring.

I’ve got another question, but I can’t segue into it.

Go ahead, hit me with it.

Flowcharts! How did you start incorporating them into your zines?

Well, I’ve never been a techie person per se, but I’ve always found flowcharts kind of funny. Like, we usually use them in business presentations, but they can be translated into anything! I remember, maybe six or seven years ago, we were trying to convince my dad to let us get a dog. So we made a flowchart called “Why We Should Get A Dog,” and it had all these scenarios with different responses that he might have given and our corresponding rebuttals. I guess I like how practical they are; they also have this interesting , choose-your-own adventure vibe that I have so much fun exploring. It’s so much fun to explore all these different possibilities of answers for a single question.

Do you look back on your zines and see how much you’ve changed over the years?

Yeah, I definitely feel like I've grown, maybe most notably, in the fact that I feel like I have more of a style or poetic voice that is unique to me now. Not that it’s fully developed, or perfect by any means; I think I’m just more comfortable with the way that I write and the way that I collage and produce zines. So definitely, with some of my older ones, I look back and I'm like, wow, six-year-old me made this. But I can still appreciate the sentiments that went into them at the time, for sure.

Do you have any advice for people who are just getting into zines?

Well, I wouldn't call myself a zine expert. The world of zines is just so big and amazing. People can basically just do whatever they want. So I advise people to do whatever they want, and to not feel like they're restricted to certain methods of distribution or publication or, or even like artistic mediums within the paper book. Just go for it.

Finally, what’s your next project?

I think I will be collecting a lot of the things that I've written and doodled and made during the past year. And maybe create some kind of… I don't wanna say “pandemic experience,” that might not be a good idea. But I would like to synthesize some kind of transformation from the past nine or so months. I don't think I can claim that the work will be all encompassing of the pandemic or even of my own experience. But I don’t know, it’ll just take some more collecting.

Sofia Grosso

January 27, 2021

Interview by Leni Sperry-Fromm

Photos by Emma Snoddy on FaceTime

Introduce yourself.

I’m Sofia Grosso, I’m Colombian-American but I grew up in South Florida. I think both of these things have a lot to do with my work, which I didn’t realize until recently. I’ve always made art because both of my parents are artists so I grew up around that. My work is mostly about color and light that move me. So in my collages, I look for color relationships, and then they kind of make themself.

What have you been studying at school?

Originally, I was double majoring in Art History and Economics, but now I think I’m gonna double major in Latin American Studies and Economics instead. Just because I wanted to look more specifically at Latino cultural production.

Are you currently in Florida?

Yes, I’ve been here for the fall semester.

I know you work with collage, but also across other mediums. Did you get started in one medium in particular? Or more generally, how did you get started with art, what mediums grabbed you?

I think in a drawing class in middle school––I went to an arts middle school and I took this drawing class and the teacher was like, You’re kinda good at this. That’s weird. You should probably take more of these classes. So, I think that drawing class was maybe my first official introduction. I mean, I always made little crafts and things but I never thought of it as “art.” But my teacher said, this can have a meaning, you can do this on purpose. Then, in high school––I also went to an arts high school––I focused on visual art and got more into printmaking, which was kind of an extension of drawing. I liked the process of it, how tactile it is. I started collaging my prints, which made me think, what if I just made regular collages? And currently, I’m exploring more collage and collaging my own photographs as opposed to going and finding things in magazines and other things.

I’m interested to hear more about color. What are the differences for you, if there are, between how color comes up in your different mediums?

Color is my favorite part of the work. I don’t really use color theory specifically, but in my paintings, on principle, I never like to use black. It just kills every other color. Just finding two colors that work well together, they’re greater than the sum of its parts. That sounds so cheesy, but I think it’s really evocative of something. Color can be so evocative. I think that’s what draws me to it and why it comes up in my work so often. It all feels like part of one idea for me because it’s always the same kind of feeling that I’m trying to evoke. Maybe a feeling of wonder. I think what’s fun about it for me is the process, because in painting and collaging you have to search for the colors so differently.

Painting is really dependent on you and the colors you can put together, and it’s much more delicate because if you mix something wrong it can throw off the whole balance. It can turn south very quickly which is part of the challenge, part of what makes it fun. But then in collage, it’s more of a search, like a scavenger hunt, where you’re always looking for the missing piece that will complement whatever you found. I feel like they’re both really fun, it just depends. Maybe in collage, it just makes itself more because there’s whatever other color is waiting for you in the material you’re working with. Whereas with paint you have to be more intentional and set out to have a specific relationship and balance.

It’s really interesting that a lot of your work deals with tensions, or, as you put it in your artist statement, “fundamentally unfixed objects.” When you go into creating a collage or another piece, are you specifically thinking about these things or does that more come forward naturally?

I do think about it because I want there to be an element of fantasy or comedy to it. I want there to be some whimsy. Maybe because my dad’s a cartoonist, so he’s always thinking about visual metaphors or paradoxes and I think that makes for really powerful work in general. I like to see that, so that’s why I put it into my work, to see how you can change the way you see things, re-contextualize things in your day-to-day life after seeing them used differently in collage.

That’s awesome. You mentioned that both of your parents are artists, so I wonder how that has affected your work, in a similar way potentially?

My dad is a cartoonist and he’s always working, so that’s part of my reality. I think he just revealed to me the ease with which you can create things. It doesn’t have to be hard. A lot of times when I was first starting, it felt hard to even come up with an idea of what to paint or focus on. But I think the more I paid attention to him, the more I realized that it’s quite simple. You just have to follow what your gut tells you. You know what you like, and you just have to listen to that. So he’s always helped me with that.

My mom studied art history and was an artist for a good while, but in my life, she’s always been other things like an art teacher, and more recently she’s worked with kids. There’s always been a creative aspect in that too. She always finds ways to get the need to make things out into the world. So that’s always been interesting to see, and also I think the way that kids take to art is really beautiful. I’m grateful to have always had a connection to that through her, even past the point of when I was little or when my siblings were little. I could still be reminded of that joy.

You also mentioned you went to an arts high school; how was that for you and how did it influence you as an artist? Have you been able to take art classes at Columbia or find other creatives?

It was so cool! I didn’t realize it was an experience that not everyone shared until I got to Columbia. I think what was coolest about it is that the environment supported you on whatever journey that you were taking because everyone was looking for what kind of work it was they wanted to make, or what message they were trying to send through the work. So you always had a sounding board, and you always had someone to, just like help you mix a color. The community aspect of it was definitely my favorite part. Everyone just wanted to help each other do their best. Honestly, I didn’t think that would be the case at Columbia but people here have been very helpful as well. With creatives, I’m not exactly sure how to explain it, but it’s just different. Maybe because it’s understood that everyone likes art and that at the end of the day everyone wants to see an exciting image, people understand each other more. Yeah, ultimately I just felt safe to grow in that space and that’s all I could ask for.

I think Ratrock has definitely helped me find that community at Columbia. I was so excited when I went to my first meeting. The other art hoes! I had finally found them! [laughs] I haven’t been able to take any art classes because they’re just really long blocks, but hopefully I’ll get to do that in the future. I walked into the printmaking studio once though, I think it’s the one that the M.A. students use. I was so excited, I walked in even though I wasn’t really supposed to and it was just so beautiful. All the people were so welcoming and showed me around, even though they were kinda like why are you here? [laughs] and I was like I have no idea and while I was on my way back out and apologizing they turned around saying No, no it’s fine! Come look at our work! So, I was really excited to see that the community is still there, and hopefully to be a bigger part of it.

As you're talking, it makes me think about how the pandemic has recontextualized all of these things, like location, maybe in a more literal way. Has the pandemic affected your work in any particular way?

Because I’m faced with the same three rooms every day, I’ve gotten more into photography, which has changed my perspective on my house in a sense. And more generally, I realized how important creating art is in terms of self-care. Like, I just feel the need to make it now. I had never physically needed to make art like that, but recently it’s helped me think through things, I guess. I was never the kind of artist who, like, when they were really sad and going through a breakup or something, they made a painting about it. That was never really me; I did it because it was fun. But with all the intense and horrible things happening in the world, art is a good medium to express those feelings.

I also think this experience has made me want to explore more than I did before. I was getting pretty comfortable with collage, but now I want to see what I can do beyond that. I’ve been painting again for a little while and exploring other mediums, especially closer together than I had before.

You mentioned earlier that you’ve recently been thinking more about how being Colombian-American affects your work. I’m curious to hear where that’s come up for you and how you see it in your work. I saw on your website that you use “symbols of Latin American otherness” which sounded so interesting, could you expand on that a bit?

I often go for stereotypes, like there was this one painting I made of a plate of beans and a serape table cover. It speaks to the concept of Latinos as a monolith in the country, and how I observed how people at my school and in my life would refer to Latinos, and feeling othered because I was part of that.

My print work and my painting are more geared towards being Latina and that part of my identity, speaking to that experience as opposed to speaking to interesting composition. I find it kind of hard to do that through my collage work, but in combining my own photography with collage, I’m finding ways to do that. There’s this new project that I’m gonna do where I’ll take pictures of people who work at—there are a lot of these small Latino supermarkets in my area—so I’m taking pictures of them and of the supermarket and collaging that. I think that will be really interesting.

I understand that a sense of place and location belongs in your work. So, how has that experience of moving to New York and then back to Florida affected your work?

I’m from a part of Florida that is very suburban, so I always thought it was interesting that I could be anywhere in the world and it would look the same. Going to New York, where every place has such a specific identity, that contrast was kind of difficult to get used to. I think for my work, being back home has made me very nostalgic for New York, even though I’ve only spent nine months there. And being in New York also made me very nostalgic about home, so that was interesting too. Like, I got back into my old collage materials and I was reconsidering certain compositions because they reminded me of home.

Being home raises these questions of roots, hometown, and what it means to be “from somewhere.” I’m curious if you can speak to that at all? What are the things you’ve noticed or found that ground it in a sense of place?

Yeah, that’s definitely something I’ve been considering. I’m interested in talking about placeless places. The place I’m from has this; it’s very placeless in that it could be anywhere. But being back in Florida, I’ve realized how it does have certain distinctive things that ultimately, I do identify with. I feel like a lot of people from Florida, they just don’t like being from Florida, and that’s their personality trait [laughs]. I feel like I relate to that a lot, but I also have a different appreciation for it being back here. There’s a kind of beauty here that I used to take for granted.

Maybe it’s just getting more acquainted with my specific area, like my specific block. I’ve been going on walks a lot and there will be dogs that live in specific parts of the walk and now I know where they live, and they only live here. Things like that, the little parts of it that didn’t seem important before but now it’s the little parts that build up the whole. They’re important too.

It’s interesting this sense of place, because like you were saying earlier, New York has that real sense of place and I think that makes moving here such a distinct experience. I’m from a rural area, and I remember moving to New York, being struck by just how much metal and concrete was around. And it reminds me of this tension between the interior/exterior, natural/mechanized that you use in your work. Could you talk a little bit about that balance?

Yeah, I thought it was very interesting because it felt more natural to be in New York than to be in Florida. Maybe because of who I expected to be in Florida. It really is a lot of retired people here [laughs], and I don’t particularly identify with that demographic. So, it was hard to feel like part of this community, whereas in New York the whole point is that everyone is different. So that was interesting, that being different made me feel like part of it.

I remember in New York the first thing I noticed is that the sky felt smaller because the buildings were so much taller, there was just so little space left. I guess in Florida, I always feel like I’m looking out into nature, but I can’t really interact with it most of the time, because it’s really hot or it’s a manicured lawn so you’re not really supposed to be on it. It’s made to look at rather than be part of. Whereas in New York, I found that nothing is off-limits so that line is gone. You can sit anywhere and have a picnic on any patch of grass you find. It’s interesting you bring up metal and concrete because I felt like it was all one big interior space.

It seems like you started photographing pretty recently. How did you get into that and how has that been for you?

I just began this year. At my high school, you couldn’t really delve into other media, because our classes really only let you explore what it was that you signed up for, and photography and visual arts were separate. So I never got to do photography then, even though I wanted to try it. I got a camera for my birthday this year and I’ve been experimenting with it a lot. I’m looking for a lot of the same things that I usually look for, and try to create in my paintings and in my collages, in terms of color and light. I’ve had a lot of fun with portraiture, with photography, and with drawings as well. Drawing is cool because you have so much control over the light and the specifics, and for me, it’s very much about lines, I like to cross-sect the whole thing. It’s more tactile in that sense. But, photography gives me a lot of the same satisfaction, because it’s about finding that moment, and that composition that you want to keep. It’s so much fun because you can capture the moment so quickly.

It’s really interesting to me, you’ve brought up this idea of the tactile nature of art or the mechanics of it. How do you see that coming up in your work or in your process?

It’s such a big part of the process. It’s so much fun. It’s interesting how it kind of is a performance, but for yourself. I thought a lot about performance art, especially compared to visual art because the disciplines were very segregated in my high school. Sometimes it feels like they really can’t come together, even though they do in something like set design. It just seems like they’re fundamentally not the same, or you can’t do both. But, I think you always do both because the whole point of making art is making art, which is the process of putting it together. I love watching people draw. I think that, in itself, is a very interesting performance. So yeah, I like that you can capture all that movement into that one frame.

Photographing is so interesting in that way because the action itself is almost like freezing motion.

Yeah. That’s very true. I think about it more as being about the motion of the light. Freezing the light in that particular moment, because it’s always moving, is part of what makes it so powerful for me. And, I think movement is a really big part of my collages too because whenever I collage, I put all the pieces together but then I’m all across the floor, shifting things and layering them until I decide that it’s right. It is about that dance between the pieces and how they want to fit together. So that has a very physical, tactile, element to it.

That’s so cool. So you just started working with photography; what else are you looking to work with in the future? Are there other mediums, themes, or anything else?

I want to do a mural. I’ve really been contemplating that for a while. I think a mural is very much about location because it becomes part of a place. Potentially more multimedia collage as well, not just photo collage but maybe mixing in printmaking, or even painting and drawing. I find that kind of difficult because I don’t think I’ve found the balance yet. I’m still searching for that and I want to keep working with that.

I’m curious to hear what you think about consuming and making art in this current moment. It’s something we talked about a bit earlier, but I’d love to know more about what art has meant for you during this extraordinary time.

It definitely goes back to what I was saying earlier about looking more closely at my surroundings. I find that every time I go on a walk or any time I turn my head I feel like that composition I see could be a painting. So, I’ve been able to find the inspiration in that, instead of in things that I normally would in a museum. I think it’s also become more about my friends’ work, not looking for the inspiration or the interesting bits on the outside, like at an exhibition. Instead finding it within a community, and drawing inspiration from that. Maybe getting back to the things I like the most, which is seeing other people create. And getting excited because they’re excited.

That’s such a beautiful thing to see. Lastly, I just wanted to check in to see if there was anything you want to plug or let people know about any work you have coming up?

Wow. It’s crazy I can do that. [laughs] I’m gonna have a show with PostCrypt in January, I think. So that’s coming up, and it’ll be an online gallery so we’re hoping to make it really interactive, people should check that out! And my work is always on my website.

Vivian Lu

January 26, 2021

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Interview by Jane Loughman and Melissa Wang

Photos by Gillian Cohen on FaceTime

What’s your major? Or are you undeclared?

I haven't declared my major yet, but I'm planning to declare in art history.

Where are you right now?

Shanghai.

Oh, cool! So we did stalk your Instagram and we noticed that you have a lot of really cool architectural pieces––I think one of them was of an apartment building near Barnard. Do you miss New York, and how have you and your art been affected by the change in location this year?

I definitely miss New York. It's really weird to take online classes. It's just... I feel I really need this community. I don’t know, I don't want to just take online classes, stay at home, and not do everything that I could have done on campus. Yeah, and I miss all my friends.

Tell us about your piece Melancholy. What was the story behind it? The process?

I feel like the process when I create art is very random. I usually want to express things like chaos and intensity, so there isn't always a specific topic, but rather a really ambiguous feeling. When I created this piece, I just felt… nothing. Or well, it wasn’t like I couldn’t feel anything. It felt like––I couldn’t feel happiness, nor could I feel sadness. So yeah, I wanted to create a piece to convey this complexity. What I usually do is I combine two things––I take different pieces of imagery, put them together, and try to turn them into an art piece.

With this piece, I made the conscious choice to draw on rice paper because I have a very traditional, classical way of thinking, and I wanted to see that in this piece. Also, rice paper just creates a sort of barrier, between the "now” and the “then.” I connected this barrier to what I felt was a barrier between my reality and my nothingness––my consciousness.

Then, I started playing with floral imagery, because I wanted to see how they connected to this barrier. When I drew this, I did some research on the meaning of those flowers; I can’t remember exactly what it is, but I remember feeling a deep connection with those flowers while drawing them. I also played with adding more detail in the smoke and the clothes––they're so fragile, like they could just disappear anytime. You can almost catch them, but not quite; I couldn't really catch my emotion either.

The stained glass on the other hand reminded me of a Gothic cathedral. When I walk into a Gothic cathedral, I feel a sense of mystery––it is quite solid. I don't feel like I'm with others when I enter a cathedral, instead I'm fully conscious of myself.

Even though this piece is colorless, I feel like the stained glass and the flower could give some imagination of color to that piece. However, this is colorless. There’s supposed to be color, but there's no color.

Do you mean you were going to add color or that there is supposed to be color in your own interpretation of it?

Yeah, I think there should be color, for those subject matters. But I removed the color because at the time, I just didn't feel like there should be color––it's really hard to explain. I know there are a lot of things around me, but I don't really feel them. I feel silence, I feel they’re all like silence. I guess I convey soundlessness with visual elements.

You talked about how the flowers have symbolism. How much metaphor goes into the different objects you draw or paint?

I definitely think each object has its own meaning. I think that's how I create my art. I love reading and watching movies, because I tend to take different pieces of imagery and expand on them, connecting them to my emotions. For example, for the butterflies in the middle, composition-wise, I made sure to clump them all together. I think that shows how I felt confused and how I was struggling at the time. But the more important thing is how the butterflies fly off. There's a traditional story in China about a butterfly, and the butterfly in that story symbolizes dreams. So, what I want to tell is there is a kind of an interaction or a confusion between reality and dreams.

When we were looking at your Instagram, we noticed that you had other artworks beyond drawing and paint––what compels you to play around with different mediums?

I started to learn how to draw in kindergarten. I’d go to art class after school until high school. After that, I was always practicing my skills, but I don't see the purpose of just always improving my skill but not creating my own art. The first time I created my own art, it was a painting or sketching. But then I was like, why don't I just try it with other media? Even for paintings, I try to make it not two-dimensional but three-dimensional. So, for example, there is a piece on my Instagram which is basically a woman’s face on the right and there are several flowers on the left. This is an oil painting, and the flower is kind of like a sculpture. I used an icing pipe.

I also used some golden foils and things. I always want to experiment with different media; there are so many things I can use. Art is just so inclusive. So yeah, I just want to try stuff. It's not like I only use the one medium. For example, with this sculpture, there's this black mask in the middle of wooden boards, wooden sticks, clay, and wire. I used clay to make a mold of a human face, and then put the cloth into a liquid mix of water, glue and black watercolour. I then covered the mask in the cloth while it was still damp, and when I took it off after it had dried, the color had seeped into the mask underneath. So yeah, I use multiple media, it’s more like playtime for me when creating art. I just want to try and play with the art––it doesn't really matter to me if it fails.

Are you ever scared of taking on bigger, more ambitious projects?

I’m pretty comfortable. For example, one of my bigger sculptures was a requirement for an architecture class at Barnard; maybe it was because it was a class requirement, [but] I didn’t feel so scared about messing up. When I wanna do something, I just do it. Like, one day I just woke up and decided I wanted to dye my hair pink. Just went to the parlor and did it. I knew it would be a big change, sure, but hair is just hair! It can grow again.

We noticed that you’ve shifted to posting more minimalistic ink sketches on your Instagram. Was this shift deliberate?

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Oh yeah, those! I did those sketches for an internship. I’m working as a branding designer for a new fragrance brand––the perfume’s going to be out this month!

And in terms of a deliberate shift, I mean, sometimes I feel like my more intricate pieces are too dramatic, and more can be said with less. I know detail is usually my personal aesthetic, but I wanted to push myself and focus on basic sketching for a while.

How has 2020 affected your art and work ethic? What’s it like making art at home?

To be honest, I feel like I haven’t accomplished much. For the first part of 2020, when I was still in New York, it was fine. But now, when I’m stuck in my own room? It’s so small, and there’s no space to make art. So I’ve only been able to create really small pieces, like B5-sized.

And to be even more honest, I don’t feel like creating art. After I came back to Shanghai, I just didn’t have the energy to create anything. I mean, I know I’ll use this experience––this 2020 disaster––to make some art in the future. But now… I treat all my pieces like they’re real people, because of their connections to my own emotions. Right now, I think I’m failing at making anything because I just don’t feel anything.

Although… I’ve written some short novels? I guess that’s my version of art now. I just needed an outlet for my emotions this year, and writing’s been that outlet for me.

What are you writing about?

Basically, it's about two girls, traveling by themselves and meeting in Venice. Tying back to the way I make art, one of the girls represents who I really am: creative, reckless. But the other girl is more like my rational self. I guess they’re basically how I view myself and how I try to like, kind of control myself.

It’s a really dynamic interaction between those two. It reminds me of when, in my high school, my art teacher said that I have a controlled chaos, which is really accurate.

And I wasn’t always a “controlled-chaos” type of person. Early in high school, I was more of the “entrepreneur” type, wanting to start my own business and things. But then I became a person who just wanted to focus on art, to try different things. I guess I changed when I went to the Van Gogh museum; I mean, here was an artist who clearly died for art. I felt like he was a real artist, and that moved me. His passion for everything was just so great, and I wanted to pursue that artistic frenzy.

Why Venice?

I think the reason I put the setting in Venice is that firstly, I really like Italy. I like it a lot. And the second reason is like, I read this book by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice. It’s one of my favorite books, and passion plays a really big role in it. I think there was passion in that novel, and that was something I was trying to capture.

If you could do anything you wanted, like, what would your dream piece be? Like, your dream art piece.

My dream art piece. That's a big question.

I don't feel I would ever plan to have one. It's more like I don't want to have a dream piece. It's really weird. I feel like if I have a goal, it limits my vision. I may start to view things really narrowly and only focus on that goal––it's not realizable. Actually, when I create art, my style always changes and the final work is so different from my initial thought. I’m just wandering around and trying to fetch things and I've absorbed different ideas and created pieces. I have a feeling that my dream piece will largely involve myself, like of course it will involve myself, but myself as in my physical body. And it might not be an art piece. It could be some behavior for me. For example, I want to see how I die. It's really weird, but I guess…

I love this.

Haha, yeah. I just want to combine art with life, you know?

But hmmm, in terms of real, concrete pieces? Right now, I’m thinking of working on a music video… but I don’t know where to start. I’m planning on asking my friends who make music to see if I can do a video for them.

Where can people find your work?

They can follow my Instagram @vivisfantasy (https://www.instagram.com/vivisfantasy/)!

Lexis Rangell-Onwuegbuzia

December 9, 2020

Interview by Hanna Andrews

Photos by Emma Snoddy on Facetime

Introduce yourself.

My name is Lexis, I’m a junior in CC, I use they/them/theirs pronouns, I’m a Sagittarius, and I’m currently living in Long Beach, CA.

Did you grow up in California?

Yeah, all around Southern California… I’ve moved like thirteen times, but it’s always been Southern California.

How did you get into costume design, digital design and other art disciplines?

I had been interested in fashion design since I was in third grade. Middle school was an awful experience, I had no friends… I decided in high school to put myself out there… some friends I made during my freshmen orientation did choir and dance and some theater, so I was like, oh, let me try theater, that's what all my friends are doing. So at first I was really into acting... I didn't really get cast frequently; part of it was I wasn't experienced, the other part was typical nepotism bullshit, and there was also definitely some anti-Blackness there that I haven't fully unpacked, so I was often backstage instead. Because I was into fashion design when I was trying to figure out what to do with theater since I couldn't act, that's how I discovered costume design.

So I’m completely self-taught; freshman year [of high school] I worked on Lord of the Flies so I got to just tear up some school uniforms and stuff, which was super cathartic especially because some were from my old middle school... it was great. After doing that, I was like, oh costume design is really cool...By junior year I was designing for most of the shows, and I sort of became the resident costume designer and it blossomed into a passion.

I still felt like acting was what I wanted to do primarily, but then my first year of college I acted in a Barnard Department show which was super exciting, because I didn't even think I would get cast in anything, but that was kind of the last nail on the head when I realized I didn't like acting anymore. Especially since my sister acts, I realized that the work it takes to do it well is not something I feel like putting in, but the work it takes to do costume design well, is what I can put in. And so now it’s sort of my favorite thing to do.

In terms of graphic design, that was a little different. During my freshman year [of high school], we had a required arts extracurricular class that we had to pick, so I decided to do the design class, and I knew it wasn't fashion design, and it taught like Photoshop and Illustrator, but I thought, oh it could be convenient, and an important skill to have. But then I just completely fell in love with it… it was just really cool to have that outlet that had nothing to do with theater but was still creative and was for me, and non-competitive, because I think acting and theater was really competitive. With graphic design, it was just my outlet, it was my thing, and just what I wanted to do, and I got to work with a teacher I really adored.

I would say those are the two main artistic mediums that I do, I’m into poetry but I’m not that good at it, because I did a poetry recitation competition all through high school and I got to know poetry a little bit better and appreciate it more. It’s something I try to incorporate in my graphic designs sometimes. I guess that's my path from multiple angles.

You mentioned writing poetry and you also experiment with video; how do these disciplines map onto your other work and art making disciplines?

From my experience, everything sort of maps from theater onto everything else. They say live theatre is dying, but it’s still my favorite discipline because it's the peak of multimedia, inter-disciplinary community, so I think questions of motion, color, and texture really map out well onto theater and onto everything else I do. Especially with video, I think having to learn about bodily motion through acting experience but also through costuming for musicals and things in which motion is extremely important, I think that just changes the way I look at things. Color is a big thing for me too, especially when I do costume design; I see worlds inside of it, like worlds of meaning inside the color green—why would someone want to wear it and where would they wear it?

That influences my graphic design a lot. I tend to do neon, very harsh-looking pieces, turning colors on their head. Colorful doesn't always have to be gentle, it can be harsh sometimes. I think when it comes to poetry, that's what I try to capture most. I have a very hard time with creative writing, I think I'm a good essay writer but a very challenged creative writer. I think it has a lot to do with my impulse to explain and put things into boxes, which is probably related to my OCD, so it's interesting then, that I'm most interested in creative disciplines that kind of force me to be more abstract, where not everything can fit into a box, myself included. So that's kind of an interesting back and forth that I feel I have going on all the time.

So on your personal style in costume making—you’ve mentioned your use of neon colors, sometimes loud or sharp color expression; do you gravitate toward specific silhouettes, textures, colors in your costume making? This could apply to your graphic design as well.

I think that it really depends on the project. A big influence would come from the Stanislavski style of acting, the idea that everything is driven by objective, and all people are driven by objectives and things like that. I try to take that into different pieces and consider how someone thinks of themselves, how they want people to think about them, and then how do those two things combine into how they dress? I don't always remember people’s names but I remember what they were wearing, and that's how I remember most things. It probably has something to do with me being trans in retrospect, but I've always had a fixation on what people wear and the silhouettes of their bodies, and I think that kind of maps out into detailed focus onto small accessories to large costume pieces. I definitely tend to mix patterns and loud colors, and I notice that gets mapped out onto my design, but I also on occasion have to reel it back depending on what the piece requires, especially if its naturalistic, but I tend to work on shows that are very fantastical or otherworldly, so I get a lot more room to experiment.

One of the latest things I’ve worked on, The Bachhae 2.1 with the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe (KCST), was inherently all over the place, queer and dramatic, and there was poetry in there, there were selections from different pieces and a sort of patchwork, in a very loud and clashing kind of queer and trans style, sort of encapuslating the different worlds going on. I think lately it's been interesting how my need to categorize maps out onto different designs, thinking of The Bacchae, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, it sort of became this two-world dynamic, creating the aesthetics of one world and the aesthetics of another world and how they collide. That’s been exciting and interesting, and I find there's always one or two transient characters who sort of embody more than one world, and I think perhaps that's sort of myself inserted, for better or for worse.

I like working with media that aren't traditional; when I worked on A Midsummer Night's Dream, our concept of bioluminescence was our one word to capture the forest. I’m Puerto Rican, and I've been to Puerto Rico twice now, and the first time I went, we went to one of the bioluminescent bays, and I saw it up close, you drag your finger through it and it lights up, and it was amazing. So I had a very clear picture in my mind of what bioluminescence was and what it meant to me, so I had the idea to put lights inside of the costumes and react to the world around them in that way. I had no idea how I was going to do it…. a good friend of mine Zena, who had designed costumes with me before on a different show, is this amazing seamstress, and at the time was studying civil engineering, so knew shit about engineering, and I asked her to work on it with me, and I was lucky enough for her to say yes. It was so cool to sew lights into costumes and use different embroidery tactics to transform costumes altogether, and we even 3-D printed butterfly wings to mask battery boxes for the lights. We worked with a set designer, Kristian, he’s incredible, and he had this awesome idea to play with black lights and UV paint, so when the fairies walked the world lit up with them, and it was just amazing. I like to be very interdisciplinary, I never want it to just be about the clothes; I want to see how I can interact with lights and sets to really transform the show.

I was going to ask you, does your major (East Asian Languages and Cultures) at all influence your work, or anything relevant to theater?

I feel like yes, in very indirect ways. It doesn't come to my mind as an influence, but when I reflect, the influence is definitely there. I was originally going to be a theater major, but after my first experience with the department, I realized there was just a lot of anti-Blackness that I had no interest in dealing with, and then the design aspect didn't really suit what I wanted. I was just taking Japanese as my language requirement, and took one of the department’s required classes, just to see what it was like, and absolutely fell in love with it. And then I took my first film class, a Japanese contemporary cinema class, and loved the professor and the material. I was like, movies for homework, this is awesome...I think those classes specifically have really influenced how I think about art, how I write about it, and how theory interacts with my art...it certainly has me more excited about film, and making costumes for film. I think my major gives me an increased appreciation for doing theater, I think if [theater] was my major I would just be burned out by now, and be sick of theater and the theater community, but because I have something to go to that also extremely interests me, it's not a burden to do theater; it still gets to remain fun.

Working on film projects now, what major differences exist between preparing for a new project for a film versus a stage production, and the research; how does that differ in creating a specific universe around a cast in a film versus a stage production?

For me the main difference is that with theater I have to have all the costumes figured out early on; with film, especially with the documentary I worked on, because we had different subjects each week, it was like a week-by-week process of coming up with that and creating it. With film, I think it's a much faster process; I’ll usually have a minimum of 5 weeks with a play, and with film time is even more compressed.

I will say, with costuming, it's a pretty standard practice so things are pretty similar. You have to make sure people’s sizes are correct, you’re purchasing different clothes and thrifting. I do closet visits often, which is essentially either over Facetime or in person. I take a look at a person’s clothes and figure out what of theirs I can use to costume them. I've done that for both film and theater; I slightly prefer film, and what's different about it is that the details are noticed by people other than the actors. For example, with The Bacchae, one of the main characters was meant to embody American patriarchy, nationalism, and conservatism, so he had a tiny lapel pin that was an eagle, and it was also a script reference. No one in the audience would ever notice it probably, but it was really for me and the actor to make the costume more authentic. The best compliment I can ever receive is that the actor really felt like the character for the first time or transformed into the character through their costume.

When I worked on Soorim’s film, all of the characters worked in a movie theater, so they got to wear pins on their name tag; We were very intentional about having the pins we picked match the character’s personality, and that enough is contentment for me, because the actor transformed into the character, but it's also cool that the audience can see that too.

I'm interested in this transformative quality you’ve talked about; what other thoughts do you have on the second life of a garment when it lives on another person’s body, in a performative way or otherwise?

It’s my favorite part of the process. I think because I used to act, I know what it takes to create that character in your head, so I try to work very closely with the actors and ask them questions that seem very unrelated to their clothes. Just the other day, I did a virtual closet visit with someone I’m doing a Zoom show with, and it was really fun because I got to ask how the character feels about this other X character, and all of these more psychological questions that on the surface have nothing to do with the clothes, but really informed the world of how I would make somebody dress. I think that detail allows people to give back a response as a different person and they feel very connected.

I think there's a way that your body changes depending on the clothes you wear that makes you feel like a different person, whether its a tailored garment or a custom fit, or the softness or roughness, or how flashy something is, it just brings out something in people that they didn't know was there before, like seeing some of the nicest people in the world turn into real villains when wearing the right costumes. It's exciting to bring out the best and sometimes even the darkest parts of people just through what they wear. I think it's really important to me being trans; I know how much different clothes I wear will help me recognize my sense of identity and it's something I don't take lightly, a power I don’t underestimate.

Image from production of Midsummer, costume design by Rangell-Onwuegbuzia

Watching cosplayers at conventions, seeing them turn into a character I've known my whole life, it emphasizes that power for me. In high school I never really had a budget, it was always use and reuse and shit like that, so now at Columbia it's crazy to have budgets in the hundreds of dollars. One time for [KCST’s] Spring Show, I had a budget of like $3,000 and I was floored; I had never seen that much money! So now I’ve become a somewhat expensive designer, but I do like borrowing clothes when I can.

For The Bacchae I tried to have people borrow each others clothes, because it was sort of this commune of womxn and non-binary folks kind of living in the forest and doing their thing, and I feel like there’s a sense of community that’s inherent when you borrow people’s clothes and see someone else wearing what you own; there’s sort of a sense of togetherness that’s created, and I think it really enhanced the dynamic of those five characters as one body. I think clothes have a transformative quality, and even if I'm having a bad day, if I wear clothes that make me feel like a badass that will help me get through.

You’re self-taught and you've talked about creating your own network at Columbia and your high school to help train new costume designers and meet new collaborators. Are there any influences or mentors that you channel in your designs? Maybe this extends to cosplayers, the queering of worlds in “The Bacchae,” or just certain themes you go after?

I was trying to think about this, and I don't think I have particular influences, but if I were to point to a figure, Stanislavski would be an influence, because motivation, internal dialogue, and concepts on method all go into how I think about costuming. For “The Bacchae” I looked at Pose especially, and Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, the “emotion picture,” because I liked the way each crossed boundaries and created these distinct characters out of clothes. For “Midsummer,” one concept was bioluminescence, and the other was this geometric, un-abstract, patriarchal black and white aesthetic, retro-futurism is what I went on; for bioluminescence, thinking of different ways to imagine a fairy besides the typical, like what could that be? So I tried to avoid folklore, and instead turned to cartoons. Cartoons, anime, any kind of animation is very important to me; I looked up Steven Universe, a little bit of She-Ra, and picked up on those colorful, soft aesthetics, and this one anime called Princess Jellyfish, thinking about how to take silhouettes of bioluminescent creatures like jellyfish and transpose them, so a lot of animal work; I looked at animals a lot.

For period pieces, right now I’m working on a hybrid, contemporary period piece. I like to use The Met, their Costume Institute is amazing and they have a lot of selections on their website, so I look at that to see what people would have worn back then, limited to certain social classes to be fair, and then I sort of adapt that, especially Steampunk stuff, I love Steampunk stuff, I like to work it into everything I do, and it doesn't always work but I try. I think there's various aesthetics I'm into, but I don't think I can point to one designer as an influence, which is how I want it to be since I tailor it to each show. I would say Moschino is a very important designer to me, I like the very loud, Harajuku-type patterns, I like the weird, out-there shit. As far as an aesthetic that I prefer to work with, I would say it's The Bacchae, like Pose, Dirty Computer, Harajuku, all-over-the-place, aesthetic.

I love that. This next question is kind of specific-- I read in a Spectator article featuring your process for conceptualizing costumes for KCST’s “The Tempest,” you discussed a mindfulness in avoiding “the stereotype of associating indigenous people with nature” in your costume designs when incorporating flowy, organic designs. Could you share your thoughts on authenticity and breaking stereotypes in representing characters or groups in your costume designs?

I think it's something that's extremely important to me as a Black person, a Latinx person, and a trans person, those are the most salient identities I think that come into play with things like that. During my freshmen spring, I worked on a play called “The Hungry Woman,” which in retrospect was very problematic in and of itself, and it was supposed to be an all Hispanic and Latinx cast, and it was, but I think some people thought that superposed itself on the fact that the entire cast were either white or white-passing except for one or two people. It was a very strange dynamic, and very problematic… but I tried to do my due diligence and follow through on committing to the project. Four of the characters were Aztec gods, and one person out of those four was Navajo, a friend of mine, Shaun, and we were trying to design headdresses for the characters, and it was a futuristic show so I tried to design junk scrap headdresses, nothing that could be connected to a pre-existing culture but was sort of emulative of that idea, because the script called for them. So I was trying to think how to best adapt that, and then Shaun approached me saying he wanted to be involved with that process. First, he didn't want people to be wearing traditional headdresses when it was inappropriate, but second, although he's Indigenous, he's not of Azetc heritage at all, he’s Navajo, so he didn't feel comfortable wearing someone else's traditional clothing in that way, which totally made sense to me. So I had him involved from start to finish and it was something we were very mindful of from that point on, and he was really who brought it to my mind. It's a process I think about a lot because I learned a lot, and it wasn't his place to teach me, and I also don't know where else I would go to learn, so it pointed to a lot of traps for me. From then on, it influenced how I think about identity in the different shows I work on.

With “The Tempest,” it was something I was very aware of from the start, and the show itself includes a lot of nature imagery, like wind gods, and sea gods, and things like that, so I tried to play with creatures from each domain. But then, one of the dramaturges who is Indigenous pointed out to me that we should be wary of that; I had a raw, initial idea, and had to then apply a lens to it where I’m aware of like, I’m coming from that idea because there's nature imagery in the play, but how else will other people interpret it regardless of where I’m coming from?

I'm involved in a lot of conversations on campus about diversity in theater, inclusivity in theater, and creating those safe spaces, and something I bring up frequently, especially in casting, is that no matter what someone’s identity is on paper (and I find this the most with Latinx folks, because we are all kind of born with that identity crisis) it’s ultimately a visual medium, so an entire cast could identify as Latinx or Hispanic, but if they all look white, what's the point, basically? When it comes to costumes I try to be aware of that too. Some of it is just basic shit, like being aware of people’s skin tone to see what makes them look best because white designers just have a history of not doing that, but then also things like, what do the villains look like? What color are the villains, what color are the protagonists? How do my costumes either enhance or mitigate that? I try to breach basic tropes like, oh, all the bad guys are going to wear all black and things like that. Recently, I like to put the antagonist in all white and just play with that, and it creates such an interesting dynamic and avoids those tropes that have been used to death.

That's my biggest thing, I’m very hard-stanced against the idea of colorblind casting, and in fact I think it's one of the biggest problems that theaters deal with, and thus I try to be very color conscious when I'm engaged with casting, when I'm engaged with costumes, and any kind of design. I’m very hyper-aware, at the very least visually, of this idea of color, of this idea of race, especially because I think theater has a colorism problem. When Black folks, especially Black women are cast, they are usually light-skinned, so it’s like, in what roles are we casting different people? It's very complicated I think, and I think it's something I think about often.

With that show, the idea was to reclaim. Reclamation was a big part of it because it was a very colonial piece to begin with, the colonizer’s mark is all over it, so I think I was hyper aware from the beginning as opposed to “The Hungry Woman,” in which case I was an adamant freshman who just didn't know what to be thinking about and it was sort of something that had to be brought to my attention.

Also, being a trans designer is a big thing for me, even just with knowing what to ask. When I worked on Soorim’s film, one of the reasons she brought me on is because one of the actors is trans-masc, and I worked with her before with the trans actor, and she had never heard of a binder or what that meant with being trans or things like that, and I was able to be a resource for that actor who's also a friend of mine. I think I bring that perspective, I know what questions to ask, like do you bind, do you pack, do you tape, things like that, and I also emotionally know what it's like to be put in something uncomfortable, not just physically but emotionally, so I think I feel very hyper-aware of these things when I do design. I think thats why its important to have non-cis-, non-white designers who just think of questions like that and take non-cis- and non-white actors seriously.

You mentioned earlier you’re doing a Zoom show this semester, what is the status of your work in COVID-19?

Right now I’m working on a play for NOMADS… I adore the playright, I adore the show, it’s fucking awesome, it’s gay, it takes place in the 1990s and the 1890s in Half Moon Bay, California, and it’s so fucking cool. I’m so obsessed with this show and I’m also on the [NOMADS] board so it was so easy to volunteer myself. I'm working on that right now and it goes up the weekend of December 14th, so that's happening, and then I'll probably do more Zoom designing next semester because I'm realizing I really like it. I've done remote designing before with Soorim’s film so it’s not totally out of the water with me, although there are definitely some challenges.

Where can people find your work?

My portfolio is probably the best place because a lot of the shows I've worked on have not been recorded. I have a costume design portfolio and a graphic design portfolio. I don't have any public work for my poetry because it's very much for myself, but with NOMADS, the upcoming show, Lily Kepler and the Graveyard Shift, is going on Zoom live on the weekend of the 14th, so that's where you can see that. Honestly, to see my work you usually have to come see it live, so I like it, it's ephemeral, it doesn't last.

Lexis's Full Portfolio

Lexis's Ratrock Portfolio

sam choi

May 5, 2020

In conversation with Sophie Paquette

Photographs by Caitlyn Stachura

On your website, I noticed that you had your work divided into three primary groups. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about these disparate projects: how you group them, and where they diverge or overlap for you?

So, the three groups are Realitas, Phantasia, and Macabre. I’ll start with the first, Realitas. Those are simply my reality. They are mostly 35 mm film prints or photos, or candids I guess. I took Photo I almost four years ago, and that was the class that made me really want to be a visual arts major. Most of the things that I would shoot, before I had any concrete direction with film photography or studio photography and makeup, were candids, or I would say maybe commercial work—you know, photoshoots or Columbia runway shows. Most of the things that I would document were my life. When I was taking them, they were just like snapshots, you know, something for the Gram. I categorized them later.

In 2017, when I left school, and left all my friends and my life in New York, I had to go back to Korea, to the most toxic environment—the most machismo, culturally hierarchical, suppressive environment—one that I escaped and then was forced to go back to. I was looking back to a lot of my older works, and to my life in general. I have probably 70 rolls of film that I shot and a lot of them are shit, especially my first few months, completely exposed the wrong way—but the ones that I do have, and a lot of them, they’re just a great reminder of a life that’s not about death, and disease, sick people, stress, and cultural anxiety. I was working as a paramedic—EMT, very loosely—and in my district, unfortunately, we had a lot of suicides, a lot of sick people, and a lot of income inequality. You’d see some people with barely any housing, with alcoholism, and we’d have to transport them, or you’d see people with insane amounts of wealth who call 911 in Korea because they hurt their pinky. So I was just trying to get away from that by going through and documenting all of my old previous work and my life. That was my little escape, my little nostalgic moment that I documented on my website. That was Realitas.

Then Phantasia was actually the category that I made because I had already made the Macabre category, so the ones in Phantasia don’t really fit the same vibe. Under Phantasia, a lot of them are experiments as well, because I just recently got a home studio connected to my apartment back in Korea. I would get a backdrop, and I would get the soft boxes and cellophane and make colored lights, and I would do all of these works at like 2 am on a Friday, or on the weekends when I had the days off back home. Phantasia is more about me experimenting with makeup. Lavinia, Uranus… these were heavily inspired by this artist, @isshehungry on Instagram, who did Björk’s makeup for the recent tours with James T. Merry, creative director and headpiece designer. I was really obsessed with her new album and her shows—I mean, it’s Björk, come on, she’s amazing—recently with this new visual, virtual reality thing that she’s really pushing through, and this kind of environmentalism that she’s incorporating into her work, that really inspired me. It blew me away.

So I was researching, like, who is doing this insane makeup. And I found on Instagram @ishehungry, this German artist. I’m a firm believer that imitation is the highest form of flattery. To learn anything, you really have to. Trying to be original off the bat is so difficult. If it’s not something you’re proudly releasing to the world as your own, I feel like it’s okay to copy, and to try to do it. I adapted some of my looks from Hungry’s looks, and I really experimented with that. I realized I was more extra terrestrial, kind of out there, on a lighter note. Phantasia’s mostly about that: experimenting with colors and lights, and just having fun.

Macabre: they’re the things that are slightly more unsettling, discomforting, almost even grotesque. In my new work, too, the barrier between reality and unreality is lessened. I’ve always been interested in the horror genre, horror films, especially the 70’s Italian Giallo films, like Suspiria and Dario Argento’s other films. Those very campy, slightly creepy things I’ve always been obsessed with. So Macabre, I wanted something that’s not too campy, something that’s not too overt or direct. I didn’t want to be too obvious. One of the series, the ones in German, these are the ones that came almost out of a mental breakdown. Most of the work, especially in the Macabre series, are not from a great time in my life—I was missing Columbia, missing my friends. I was more upset by the fact that when I would come back after my service all of my friends would have graduated because I left sophomore year and it’s a 2-year service.

I got this lace front wig online. I played with it for a long time—it was blonde, it was Cali, valley girl blonde, it basically became so fried that I couldn’t really make it look good on its own. Because it was a cheap lace front, right, synthetic, not like human hair. I was thinking, “How can I dye it to a darker color and stick it so it doesn’t wash away immediately?” I used sumi ink and poured it in a basin, dunked the wig overnight, let it dry, did shampoo and conditioner, and it turned out this beautiful, ashy gray color. That basically set the tone for my project. I went down to my studio, sewed in some black extensions as well to give it some length, some volume, a little wild something.

So I had that wig on. I basically just got my dirty brushes, I don’t think I even used any actual products, I just rubbed dirty brushes all over my face and eyes. I got that dirty, grungy, lived-in, almost a mask-like look. I had taken like 700 photos for 4 photos that I uploaded. But that was basically the way I could deal with the life I was living, doing something so creative, and engaging with and exploring my creative side. I was very suppressed when I was working in the emergency medical field. I didn’t want to let go of the momentum I had when I was in my sophomore year, when I picked up photography and did a lot of my makeup work, like individual studio sessions and photoshoots with Columbia students as models, and Kevin Chiu, the infamous Kevin Chiu, the amazing Kevin Chiu, class of 2017, who would take the photographs, and my best friend, Kosta Karakashyan, class of 2019, he was a stylist. Us three, we’d book the Wallach lounge from like 7 am to noon and have students as models, and we would make beautiful photos, and I would experiment and really practice mastering my makeup skills.

The Macabre, it is my favorite category of the three—well, I’d be lying if I said it all came from a dark, depressing place. A lot of these works are just exploring my old love for the horror genre, you know, the monsters, the creature features, the supernatural kind of shit. One of my favorites, Markos, was from before I had a proper DSLR, I only had my iPhone 7 in Portrait Mode. I had a studio setup, but I was mostly doing iPhone photography, and film occasionally. This one was when I got some black body paint and some acrylic sticker nails, you know, the ones they sell in Duane Reade, and I stacked them—three, because I couldn’t find the super long ones—and it kind of looks like an insect, more offsetting. I had two sets of contact lenses on one eye to intensify the color, so I got that milky but also really intense light look, because I have really dark eyes. This red, magenta, blue lighting, it’s directly stolen from the original Suspiria film by Dario Argento.

I was definitely curious about the process of photographing these pieces. To me, I imagined it must be kind of like documenting a sculpture--trying to find an angle that successfully flattens this dynamic piece into this more stagnant, permanent form; also maintaining that plasticity while creating this new product, the photo, which exists as its own piece separate from the body in life.

I say that I’m a photographer as well, but really I just stick to my guns. If I’m doing photographic work or shooting for my own purposes, I usually stick to 35 mm film, 50 mm lens, and my Nikon FE camera. The camera that I used for these is actually my sister’s. My sister lent me her camera for the photoshoots in my studio back home. I had no idea. I’m a luddite at heart, I’m so overwhelmed by all these buttons and options and settings. Luckily, I was able to get to know the basics—how to turn it on, how to use a remote control, and to play with the settings until I find something that works. Then I got an Adobe Cloud subscription for Lightroom and Photoshop. Photographing has always been a struggle, especially with digitals. I would take like 800 or 900 photos of one look, and it would take hours and hours. For each frame I would take the shot, scurry back to the camera, look, and then reference it—you know, I’m a little bit too close to the edge of the frame, or I should turn, orm that’s not a flattering angle. Also, I’m blind without my glasses, and in none of the work am I wearing glasses.

I actually think of it as kind of taking a photograph of a sculpture. The actual work is a sculpture itself but you’re just seeing a representation, a portrayal. But with sculpture you can have it moved, taken around, exhibited. Makeup is such a temporal medium. If I take it off, or if it smudges a little, it’s completely different. So the photograph automatically has such a huge importance to me. They have to be right. The photographs, the makeup, the styling, they all have equal importance to me because if one fails, then all of it crumbles.

Could you talk a bit more about stylistic decisions you make when photographing, such as the extra-media elements added that might not be in the body’s immediate space—for example, the smoke shrouding the figure in “Typhoon Soulik,” or the yarn in “Lavinia”?

“Lavinia” is based on the Shakespeare play “Titus Andronicus”, which was a book I read at Columbia. I took a course called “Tragic Bodies,” it was a Barnard course, my first ever college class, and it was amazing. We were talking about the physical body, and the demise of the body, the hero’s demise in terms of the physical body, and other bodies—queer bodies, trans bodies, sick bodies. With that foundation, and working in a field where you are hands on with the physical body, I feel like it was just a natural progression that I would have an obsession with the physical form. “Lavinia” was during my peak experimental phase, with makeup and everything. I got those really black contact lenses, I was really feeling myself. I was still very inspired by Hungry’s Björk look and her personal work as well, but I wanted to do something a bit different, and I wanted to utilize some props I had lying around my house.

So the yarn, they are tiny little ropes. I had them lying around for about a month, and I was in my studio and I wanted to do something, so I decided I was gonna cut these up and glue them on my mouth. It was some strong glue that took me hours to delicately rip out. I would get pleasantly drunk in my studio, because it’s my studio, and I could just do whatever I want. So that look actually came from that specific prop. Because often, you know a certain makeup inspires the look, or a certain eye look, or a mouth, a wig, something. A lot of my works come from a beginning point. So I looked at it, I decided I wanted it on my mouth: it kinda looks like blood, and in a theater, in a play, when you can’t have spraying blood they use red fabric or yarn to flow around, so it’s like a fluid, red motion. The eye look was completely separate. I had the wig on. And it was just the shirt that I was wearing, but that whole mouth piece really solidified my intention. I immediately thought of Lavinia, who is the daughter of the general Titus—she was assaulted and dismembered by the two sons of Titus’ enemy.

With “Typhoon Soulik,” that one’s a little on the nose because around two years ago, East Asia had a really bad typhoon. This was shot the night before it was supposed to hit Korea. It was rainy, it was a very depressing day. I wanted something to fit the general mood of the entire East Asian side of the continent. I’m obsessed with storms, there’s something so primordial and raw about them, a break from manmade society. So I went down to my studio on that rainy night, probably 1 am, put some blue cellophane on my studio lights, and created this bluey, emerald eye. Just playing around, using the stuff I had out from my kit. Then I decided to get a spray bottle and wet myself, you know, because it’s the storm. I underestimated how much water I needed, so I ended up basically pouring the whole thing on my head. And this is just me being playful, experimenting, but I wanted something a little more misty, something of the elements. I was like, that’s basically vape! So I just *mimes vaping* and clicked. That took, like, I don’t know how many shots to get one good photo. But it’s also me trying to go along with the mood, to be inspired and go with the flow. But yeah, having fun. That’s my motto. Living life through the prism of pleasure.

With the idea of fun, I noticed you had a statement on your website about taking the work at “face value,” and you talked about working mostly with people you know, people you’re close to. I guess this applies to working with yourself too, but do you think that there’s something that layer of intimacy and familiarity adds to your work and the process?

Yeah, like I said, all of the things I do are personal. That’s why I don’t really like street photography or taking random photos of people. Because, a) I have really bad social anxiety in uncomfortable or awkward situations, like sometimes I can’t even order my own shit from McDonald’s, I have to have a friend do it for me because it’s so bad. People think otherwise, because I’m loud and boisterous, but outside in the streets, I can’t fucking do that. Also, unless I get their permission and consent to photograph them, when you’re on the go you have to ask permission later. But I can’t do that, because ethically it’s just kind of off. You end up with a very uncomfortable situation, so I don’t like that. All of the models and the subjects are all my friends. It’s also an event, it’s not just the art form or the practice itself. You know, I’m hanging out with my friends, and I want to document this great time. It doesn’t have to be amazing magazine-style portraits or spreads, it can just be them, you know, squinting their eyes at the camera, or hugging each other.

It doesn’t have to be so serious all the time. It helps if you’re familiar and have an intimate relationship with the subjects, that’s when that kind of true happiness emerges. That’s why I say always take it at face value, don’t think too deep. That’s my thing with art: just fucking enjoy it. Look at it, and if it sparks joy, then it sparks joy, if it doesn’t, just move on. Especially because I’m now taking a lot more art classes, things get highly academic when you’re talking about art. The context—the social, cultural, political context—behind your art can become so convoluted and complex that it becomes inaccessible, I think.

So, you mentioned this a little bit, but I wanted to ask about your upcoming project. Specifically, you said it was based on both Suspiria movies, and then the original prose piece they are based on. I was wondering for you as an artist, what that process of translation is like? So, getting something that was once text, and then lived through bodies in one film, and then another film, and where do you plan to go with that? Where do you see yourself in this lineage of translation, and how does that inform your work?

The thing with Suspiria is that it’s an unhealthy obsession. I was a huge fan of the 1977 film because it’s a cult classic, any horror buff will be like, “Oh yeah, Suspiria, classic!” But as a horror film, it’s not that “horror,” it’s very campy. The visuals are stunning, and that’s where they take the gold prize. But it was always kind of lacking in the story telling and plot to me. I was always curious, why call it Suspiria, because they never mention the word suspiria—it’s a movie about witches but what the hell does that mean? Later I found out there’s a source material, it’s actually not about witches and the director adapted that material into this universe of witches. But that was never really expanded in his later work. And then in 2018 or something, I learned that Luca Guadagnino, one of my favorite directors, was directing the remake. I kid you not, I almost shit my pants. Two of my babies, Suspiria and Luca Guadagnino, were being involved. And then I realized Tilda Swinton is in it, who’s like my mother. She’s an artist I love, and adore, and admire.

I saw the trailer when it came out and my mind was fucking blown, because it’s so different from the original. When I watched the new one, I was obsessed. The remake is about a coven of witches in a dance company, it’s modern dance, and it’s choreographed by Damien Jalet, who’s an amazing choreographer that I’ve been obsessed with lately as well. So much intention is in the body, and the spells, and the structural hierarchy of the witches, which I could relate to, having worked in that kind of Korean environment. So that seed was planted in my head the moment I knew about the first film, and I did a lot more research about the original source material, the original storyline.

So, I read the source material, and I didn’t realize how rich it was. Thomas de Quincey writes about how, as there are three muses, three inspirations, there are three ladies of sorrow. So there are three mothers, Mother Suspiriorum, Mother Tenebraum, and Mother Lachrymarum, mother of size, darkness, and tears. The prose goes on to explain in detail about each of these mother figures—their domain, what kind of sorrow they bring, what kind of chaos and havoc they bring as well. That fit so much with my vibe, my direction, I could really explore the depths of sorrow. When I started to work on this project, it was an insanely emotional, chaotic, stressful time. I needed this. Because the cinematic universe of Suspiria had such an important place in my heart, I didn’t want to half ass this. That’s why it’s still an ongoing project, I’m constantly introducing—not just with makeup and photography, but now with modern dance inspired by the choreography in the remake.

Sam's work

tess majors

April 14, 2020

Tess Majors was a Ratrock featured artist for the month of December 2019. We are all grateful to have helped document her passion for music and thoughts as an artist. It was truly a privilege to feature Tess and her work, and we hope that this interview serves as a meaningful testament to her art and her spirit.

——

Interview by Yao Lin

Photographs by Gillian Rae Cohen

Tessa Majors is a grunge-rock musician from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Introduce yourself.

My name is Tessa Majors. I usually go by Tess, though. I am a first-year at Barnard, and I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Did you grow up in the big city, or did you grow up in a more rural area of the town?

I grew up in more of a suburban area than an urban one. I spent most of my time in a town right outside of Charlottesville—about 20, 30 minutes away, called Waynesboro. It was kinda in between suburban and rural, like a small town. And then I moved to Charlottesville at the start of high school, and that was a bit more urban. But it was still nothing in comparison to the scale of New York City.

Tell me a little about [your band], Patient 0. Why the name Patient 0?

I honestly don’t have a lot of significance behind the name. We mostly just thought it sounded cool. Patient 0 is like, when someone is the first person to get a certain disease in an area. So I guess we’re like the Patient 0 for our music, and then it spreads out from us. I thought it kinda went with our edgy, punk music image.

How did the band come together?

I went to a new school in seventh grade, and one of the first people I met there was a girl named Hannah Fowler. She had just started playing guitar when I met her. I was already a musician—I played the piano at the time—and we started doing music together. The two of us worked together on music stuff for like, years, starting in seventh all the way through the end of high school. So Patient 0 is basically our project. We had a couple different drummers play for us. It was what we arrived at, after we played for a ton of different bands together. That was like the final resting place for us.

How would you describe the friendship between you and Hannah?

Our musical relationship has always been good. Our friendship’s kind of up and down, but I feel like—I mean, the past year has been pretty good. But I feel like the ups-and-downs of our friendship are pretty typical of musicians who work together. If you hear about, I don’t know, famous duos—they always have their arguments and they don’t always get along. I think that’s pretty normal. But we’ve always written together, and played together, even when we weren’t getting along super well in our friendship. And she’s still one of my best friends, to this day. She’s going to Smith College now. And we have a show planned for our winter break—but I’m not sure what the future of the band is, since we’re going to different schools.

Describe your writing process in terms of musical scores and lyrics. Are they simultaneous? Or do you produce the lyrics first, then the music to accompany it?

That’s a good question. My music writing process doesn’t happen in any particular order. It’s kinda just what comes to me first. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a score progression and melody line—so I’ll roll with that, and come up with lyrics later. Or on the flip side, I’ll come up with some lyrics, and then I’ll come up with something to accompany those lyrics later. Sometimes I will have lyrics and music, and I realize they actually go together, so I combine them—like two separate entities. Hannah and I, for our album, wrote probably five out of nine songs together. Two of the rest were mine, and two of them were hers, so it was an even split in terms of writing. But I also have a lot of songs that are mine that haven’t been recorded yet, or put out anywhere.

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What is your favorite song you have ever written, and what is the story behind it?

My favorite song I have ever written is “Prom Queen,” which is on our album Girl Problems. It’s the last song on the album, and it’s been the most popular one recently—it’s been doing pretty well on Spotify. That song was really personal to me, and almost hard to put out because I wrote it about one of my friends. I had to get this one person’s consent before I recorded it and put it out, because it was a personal song about this individual. It’s kinda just about—you get this idea of someone in your head, and you kinda idolize them and build them up to a certain thing. And you realize at the end of the day they’re just a person. And the song starts out—or the first line is, ‘Remember the night she rose from the sea.’ And that’s me painting this person as an Aphrodite-like figure, coming out of the sea. It’s just my realization that I’ve built up this whole narrative in my head of what I think is going on, and this person doesn’t feel the same way about me at all. It’s me coming to that realization, and [being] really crushed by it. I guess it makes it more complicated that it was one of my female friends, who I realized I had feelings for. I kinda had to grapple with that, and grapple with what exactly that meant for my identity, you know? It was a whole mess. But luckily I’m still really good friends with the person, and we got our stuff sorted out. She actually likes the song, so it didn’t end up being a big deal at the end of the day. But that was definitely my way of dealing with the situation and processing it, so I understood it a little bit better.

So you mentioned the idealized view of your friend in “Prom Queen,” and you also mentioned stereotypes—the simplified ideals people hold for others. What were the stereotypes when you were growing up in Charlottesville, and do you feel like you are a departure from them?

Luckily, Charlottesville is a pretty diverse community—I definitely struggled less when I moved there, because I found lots of people who were like me. The music scene is really great and really welcoming. But I will say the main stereotype that I depart from—the stereotypes for all women, particularly so in the South—is that you have to be nice, and be complacent, because you don’t want to start any conflicts. And that was never my personality. I would get into a lot of verbal arguments in high school with people, because they would say things that I didn’t agree with, or that I felt demeaned by. Instead of just sitting there and taking it, I would say something about it. And that wasn’t always received super well, and I guess that was the way I was a bit different from other people. And I am sure that other girls wanted to do the same thing—I’m not blaming them or faulting them for not standing up for themselves. But we’ve just been so conditioned as women to behave a certain way, that it’s really hard to do that.

That reminds me of the Riot Grrrl scene of the 90s. Back then, punk rock was a very misogynistic industry. The male bands were using very misogynistic names—but on the other hand, there were a bunch of female bands coming out and writing these rebellious songs. Do you feel that there is still misogyny in today’s music scene?

I think there’s definitely still misogyny within the scene. I find that to be the case sometimes when I’m trying to get my music out there, and I feel like people don’t want to hear me as much because I am a woman. But luckily I think that that’s changing. I think the trend overall is changing, because there are so many incredible women in the rock genre right now. And not just the rock genre! There are so many women in hip hop right now as well, which is traditionally a male-dominated genre. So the fact that there is a female presence in these historically male-dominated fields—it gives me hope for the future.

How did you discover punk rock, and how has punk rock influenced you?

I grew up with punk rock. My parents both put me onto a lot of older music. I remember my dad playing 90s bands, like Pixies, when I was younger. And my mom played me Hole and Nirvana. So a lot of it was my parents’ music taste, for sure. And it’s definitely influenced me in pretty much every aspect of my life. Once I started listening to all of these amazing female punk rock singers—like Joan Jett, or Courtney Love, or more modern people like Courtney Barnett—I realized that I didn’t have to sit there and take anything from anyone. I had a voice and I had power and autonomy. I think it’s definitely changed the way I carry myself; music overall gave me a lot of confidence.

Do you think the writing process, for you, is a process of figuring yourself out?

For sure! Every song I write usually starts out as an unresolved question I have—something that’s lingering in my mind, that’s bothering me, usually. And these songs become a way for me to answer those questions. I gave the example of “Prom Queen” earlier, but another one is my song “Not the First One,” which is on the album. I wrote it after I got out of a brief romantic fling with someone, and they kinda thought they could walk all over me. I had this question in my head like, “What made this person think that they could do that?” And the whole premise is that, “You’re not special, you’re not the first one to walk all over me, and so go fuck off!” Essentially.

So you mentioned earlier that you’ve been on gigs with Hannah, or with your band. How does it feel to have connections with your audience through music?

See, I love Charlottesville—and I love the spaces that they have for musicians to perform. I wish there were more, but the ones that they have are pretty good. I got to gig a lot when I was in high school, and I played shows pretty frequently. My friends would show up to them in pretty big numbers, just to have a great time and dance. It was so fun to see people connecting with my music, and it’s just a very powerful experience to see that other people relate to what you’re saying. Towards the end, people actually started knowing the words to songs, and singing along, which is also really fun. It was the same friends who came to see me for three years—so they know my songs by heart, which I think is really special.

Have you ever played any covers at your gigs?

Yeah! That’s how I started out gigging, I only did covers. I played in a lot of bands in middle school that were just cover bands. We would cover Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Foo Fighters—all that classic stuff. And gradually, we were just kinda incorporating more and more original music into the set. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, it was half covers and half originals. And by the time I made it to the end of senior year, it was all originals.

What’s your favorite instrument?

My favorite instrument to play is for sure the bass. I play piano, guitar, and bass—but bass is my favorite because I like how it’s at the intersection between melody and rhythm. This makes it really fun, because bass drives songs a lot of times. When you want to dance, it’s usually the bass that makes you want to dance. I also really like being a bassist because there aren’t too many people who are bassists and singers, so that makes me kinda unique in terms of bands—because it’s just not as common as being a guitarist and a singer.

How would you describe your particular bass sound?

I would say I definitely base my bass sound off a lot of 90s bands, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and definitely Sonic Youth. But I also like a lot of the modern R&B bass lines. Recently I learned the bass line of “Pink + White” by Frank Ocean, and that’s so fun to play. I think R&B has a very special way of articulating the bass, and it’s just—I connect to that.

Where do you see yourself in five years as a musician?

I hope that I’m touring. Music is what I love and what I’m passionate about, so I really want to do something with it. So ideally, in five years, I would have a steady band, and be in the studio and touring—making a career out of music. It’s hard to do, but I think I can do it.

What about ten years? Still touring?

That is an interesting question, because I actually want to get into some of the audio engineering business. I think after a while—I mean, great music is great music, but there’s something to be said for being young and more marketable. It would be nice to have a plan that’s more long-term, because you can’t tour forever. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting. So I would ideally get involved with producing somehow—mixing, mastering, all that happens in the studio. That will be really helpful for my own music too, because then I wouldn’t have to pay someone else to do it. I could just do it myself. I was actually going to try to learn how to do that at CU Records sometime this semester, because they have classes that teach you how to use the software.

What about your parents? You mentioned earlier that they are strong influences.

My parents are incredibly supportive, and I’m so grateful for them. I’m pretty sure that they’re cool with me doing whatever I want, as long as I’m happy. And they know that music is what makes me happy. My dad is actually a writer, so he knows what it’s like being in the arts field and trying to make a career out of what you love. So I think that he’s supportive, but at the same time he’s also like, “Be aware, it’s a hard field to go into.” He wants to be supportive, but he also wants to warn me of how difficult it can be. My parents are great. I have a younger brother who is also great.

What is your favorite band?

That’s a really hard question. I have a couple. But none of them are bands, they’re all solo performers. I will say my three favorite artists are Courtney Barnett, David Bowie, and Frank Ocean. Which is kind of an eclectic mix—but I think that David Bowie definitely influenced Frank Ocean, and, I mean, everyone. He’s incredibly iconic. In terms of fashion sense too, I really love David Bowie. One thing I’ve been trying to do in my shows is to always have a really fun outfit— and I think that is definitely because I grew up listening to and watching David Bowie. It’s not just about the music, it’s about the overall image.

Bowie has gone through a series of changes throughout his career. His music is a reflection of his life, and I can definitely see that in you too. Do you see yourself switching from punk rock to another genre in the future?

For sure! I never want to limit myself in terms of genre. And in terms of listening, I listen to everything. My music taste is really expansive, so if I feel compelled to make music that is in a different genre, I’ll just go with it. But I think that what my music is always going to be—even if not stylistically punk—it’ll be influenced by the punk attitude and the punk spirit.

How would you describe the punk attitude and the punk spirit?

Don’t let other people’s opinions of you influence your opinions of yourself. Dress and act in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, even if it’s outside of the societal norm. Don’t blindly trust authority figures. Always ask [hard] questions, no matter what—even to people you love, you should ask questions. I think questioning is a big part of the punk mentality—not just accepting stuff but thinking deeply about it, which is so often overlooked because punk is so simplistic. But when you think about it, [punk] can be really intellectual in that way, because it’s constantly asking the big questions about what’s important. And I will say, in terms of advocacy—and I think that’s also an important part of the punk movement—I really care a lot about the environment. I feel like my music has gotten increasingly anti-consumerist. Music, it’s about your emotions, but it can also be used to spread a message. And the message I want to spread is that something has to change about the system that we’re in right now. It’s just not sustainable.

Are you involved in any other social movements? Do those also influence you?

I’m involved with some environmental advocacy groups, and I’m signed up for a bunch of social justice related email lists. I’m just trying to stay updated by watching the news and stuff like that. And I think it’s so important to be informed.

How would you describe your music?

My music is a pretty true depiction of teenage life, because it’s an equal mix of sincere emotions and sarcasm and snarkiness—which I think is pretty typical of the teenage mentality, because you kind of switch between being super mad, super sad, super happy. Feeling these strong emotions, to just being super disenchanted by everything, like, “Nah, this is stupid.” It’s a contradiction, but it’s a contradiction a lot of people live with, especially teenagers.

Is there anything else that you want to add?

I guess it makes sense to talk about what I’ve been doing since I got up here. I played one show for Snock at Columbia, which hosts shows—all student bands, pretty much. I had a friend of mine, J.C., playing guitar for me. He goes to Columbia. And I had my friend Chris, who goes to NYU, playing drums. And we did some of my new songs, and that was fun. I’ve written like three or four songs since I’ve come up here. So for the future, I’m just trying to get a steady group up here. I think that will be really helpful because I want to start playing shows again. Over winter break, I’m going to try to go home and record an EP. I’m not sure if that’s gonna be by myself, with Patient 0, or with another group—but I have a lot of songs of mine that are written and just haven’t been recorded yet, so I want to get those out. I feel like there is this need as a musician to be constantly producing new content—which can be really hard. But if you want to keep your band and your audience engaged, you have to put new stuff out there.

What’s a favorite song of yours?

I want to shout out my friend Chris Murphy, because he played drums for me for my Snock show, and he’s been one of my long-time inspirations, competitors, collaborators. We went to school together in Charlottesville. He goes to NYU. He has an album out that’s really great, and I’ll shout out his song called “Can’t Fight.” He wrote it when he was gonna be opening for me for a show, and he realized none of his songs were punk rock enough. He wrote it specifically for the show—which I think it’s just hilarious, and demonstrates how we push each other as musicians.

You mentioned new songs. What are those about?

My new songs, they’ve kinda been tackling similar [issues] as my old songs. Relationships, and just general emotions about the world. But I feel like my lyricism has gotten more nuanced. Like, I’m getting much better at saying exactly what I want to say, because that has been a problem for me in the past—deciding what exactly I want to say. So I think I’ve gotten better at doing that.

Interesting! So you think that it’s a growing process to be constantly producing music. The more you do it, the more mature you become.

For sure.

Any parting words for our readers?

High school sucks. Don’t judge the rest of your life based off how high school is. And—listen to my album! [laughs]

Tess's Work

In Tess's own words

aaron jackson

March 4, 2020

In conversation with Isabella Rafky

Photographed by Annie Millman

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Okay, so I’m Aaron, I’m a sophomore in Columbia College. I do digital art. I’m from Harlem, but I’m also not really from Harlem; I migrated in 2014 from the Caribbean. So I formerly lived on an island called St. Kitts. From there to Harlem and now here, still in Harlem. And yeah, I don’t know what I have to say about myself.

What inspired you to create digital art?

Like my initial inspiration—I feel like that’s digital artists, self-trained digital artists. A lot of them were inspired by anime initially, which is also a category I fall into. That whole late 2000’s subculture of DeviantArt, Tumblr, OCs and shit, fanfiction, that was me. Through drawing I got involved in the artistic community, when I was eleven, online, and just drawing shit. First it was on paper, and then I would see people doing digital art I was like, “Oh how do you do that?” And I got pirated software to do it, but I also did not have a drawing tablet at the time. I would make all this shit purely by mouse, which is difficult and looked bad, but y’know I couldn’t afford a drawing tablet, I’m sorry. [laughs] Once I got into different drawing communities like Tumblr I was like, “Oh these are people who do this as a job, these people have gone to art school and shit. They’re not just drawing their anime graphics or whatever.” I was like, “Oh, I wanna be like them, I wanna draw, actually draw shit.” And so that’s when I think I tried to make the break from just drawing anime to getting my own unique style and actually putting artistic, creative effort into it, so just illustrating if that makes any sense. At that point, I got a drawing tablet to actually practice and do shit with all the software. So yeah, and I don’t think there have been any changes since then, so that’s pretty much been my artistic journey of sorts.

What makes your style unique?

I don’t really know; I mean going based off of what people have told me I guess colors maybe? People seem to like the colors, so I’m gonna say the colors. My style is really developing; like I said before, I was just drawing anime and I was like—hmm, I need to break away from doing this. It wasn’t really successful because people still look at my shit and are like, “Oh, this is very anime influenced,”—at one point it used to annoy me, I’d be like, “Please don’t say that.” You know what, it’s true, that’s the reason I started drawing in the first place, if it’s anime-influenced then who cares? It is. So, final rundown I guess, tldr, colors, and kinda anime-inspired, yeah.

In terms of your pastel palette, what draws you to those colors? Would you ever think about expanding past that?

I just like what they look like. I just feel they work together. I’m trying to think of when I started using them and why I started using them. I mean at one point during my whole Tumblr phase I was obsessed with pastels. When I would draw people would be like, “oh they use pastels,” or whatever the fuck. It’s just that I think they’re really neat. I like them. I remember at one point they [my colors] were very saturated and borderline neon. So I took a break from digital art to do some traditional shit. I actually had to put effort into making colors pigmented which affected my color palette and how I went about using it. If you want neon or saturated watercolors you have to be there layering shit for a while. So me being lazy, I’m just not gonna do that. I definitely feel after doing that I’ve been impressed by the colors I wanted to put down in my work and how they work together.

How long have you been doing it for and how have you seen it change over the years?

Okay, so drawing drawing, just on paper—I’ve liked drawing since Kindergarten, doodling. But when I got to high school in St. Kitts, which is equivalent to seventh grade, sixth grade here, I was already drawing, and my shit was not ugly, but it also was not artistically good in any way or form or shape. So I would just create these cute doodles and I thought I was doing something [laughs]. And then I showed it to one of my friends and they were like, “Oh this is cute, when you get better show me something.” What do you mean when I get better [laughs]! I was like, “How could I get better than this?” [laughs] So, I was like okay, at this time I'm gonna actually start taking it seriously and stop making little doodles and learn anatomy and shit, color theory, which I still don’t know [laughs], but I am gonna attempt to know. From there, I was, what? Eleven, twelve? I was like, okay, I’m going to actually take this shit seriously now, learn and grow. I mean all this shit evolved from, again, seeing artists I really admire. Like hmm—I want to just secretly steal this component of your style [laughs] and incorporate it into mine. Hope no one notices, so yeah.

All art is just borrowing style.

It is!

Do you have any artists that you specifically look up to or you take inspiration from?

Okay, I’m gonna sound really stupid cause I’m just gonna say various Instagram names and Tumblr names. First, this artist I really really really like is @mookie000 on Tumblr. Do you know—okay, I’m not sure how knowledgeable about anime you are. Do you like Haikyuu!!?

I don’t know, I am not super knowledgeable personally.

Okay, so there was a really popular sports anime called, I still don’t know how to pronounce it— “hike-you”—and they [fans] would draw this really good fanart of it. I was like, the colors are amazing and the anatomy is amazing, this shit looks very pretty. I’m trying to base everything I do after you. Then, eventually I was like—I don’t want to do this anymore. That was on Tumblr, and I was like hmm… I’m tired of digital, so I took a break and just did traditional for a year, got a bunch of watercolors and copic markers—not even copic because I couldn’t afford them. I used the cheap AliExpress shit. I got those one dollar markers from AliExpress, but y’know what– they worked [laughs]. By the time I started to do digital again it was also on Instagram. Looking at that community there, there’s a really good artist called @jellyflavor. They probably had the most impact on me. It’s also crazy, she’s just a year older than me and her stuff is amazing. I’m just like, how? [laughs]

How would you put your work in context with fanart?

So, a lot of the stuff I got inspired by was fanart, like @jellyflavor. They make original pieces, as well as fanart. @mookie000 was primarily fanart. I was also not interested in making fanart myself—I don’t know, I was just interested in drawing my own shit. The thing was, if you wanted to get popular, or in these artistic circles, or get notes on Tumblr whatever, you would draw fanart. That’s the shit that people search for. They aren’t only searching for original illustrations, they are searching for art of the characters they like. Yeah, it’s been a thing. I don’t know, I have just never been into actually drawing fanart, even though a lot of the artists I like, that’s what they do. I draw it here and there, but I don’t think I have ever been attached enough to a form of media that I would make fanart of it consistently. I mean not to say I haven’t done it, but it certainly has not been consistent in any way. All the times I’ve done it I was just trying to get people to reblog my art.

Do you have a favorite subject (person, thing, etc.) to portray?

I mean, in terms of subjects, I think I just like drawing black people and portraying them really softly. I haven’t even figured out for myself if it’s possible to display a black person non-politically because to exist as a black person is to be a political being and exist politically. In a lot of the art I see drawn by non-black people that draw black people, there’s always I feel an agenda for what they’re trying to say about themselves for including this black person in their illustrations. That’s just also very tiring for me. So that’s also why. I also just like drawing black people and darker skin tones. I just think it’s neat. Yeah, there’s not any major reason. I’m just saying I’m black and I like black people, so why wouldn’t I want to draw black people.

Where is your favorite place to create art (on or off campus)?

I mean anywhere to an extent. Being in Columbia I don’t really have time to draw in my free time. I joined some organizations on campus that I have to illustrate for. If it feels mandated, or that I have to do it or else—I don’t think they’d kick me out and I don’t think somebody would hate me, but I don’t know, they’d dislike me extremely—then ok, I have to get it done. So it’s kinda up on par with my homework. I have to do my calculus homework but I also have to do this. I'm not just drawing for the sake of drawing, I’m drawing as an extracurricular. To put out my resume. To build my portfolio. So at that point I just started drawing anywhere. But it’s also not really anywhere. Because again, I’m doing this shit on a computer. If this shit breaks I can’t get another one. So I’m pretty choosy where I bring my supplies—libraries, anywhere there’s a very clean, hard surface that I can put my computer down on and draw on. When it’s not a part of any organization on campus I just draw in my dorm. Pretty exclusively.

What organizations on campus are you involved in?

Oh I’m in Spec, the Blue and White magazine, and Rare Candy—It’s the music magazine, the DIY music magazine on campus— it’s really cool. I haven’t illustrated anything for them yet but we’re working on it.

How do you decide what is a gif and what is not? What is the process to make an image move and turn into a gif?

A lot of it is preemptive. Because I feel a lot of the things don’t work in gif form. If I make it a fully rendered piece I don’t have any intention to make it a gif. I think if you’re playing a video game, but the art style is fully rendered complete paintings—personally I feel that’s real jarring. So usually I do a simplified style [for gifs]. Not fully rendered. And you know like, make some shit move! Again, a lot of it is preemptive and i’m more interested in adding shit to add it. Just illustrating visuals over anything. If you look at any of my gifs and you’re like, “oh this is interesting, what is it about,” I could not tell you because it’s just I made it to make it. It’s very much style over substance. I have no political, deep, extra spiritual reason, I just thought it would look cool. It’s preemptive. I’m like, “I’m gonna make the edges hard, or use these colors, or make this shit fold or whatever. And you know it’ll look cute, don’t ask me about it.” And that’s it. If I’m gonna fully render something then there you go. People don’t give visuals enough credit. Because that shit makes you feel something. You look at something visually and you don’t understand what it means, but you notice the way this person is looking or that accessory they have in their hair that’s glistening—I don’t fucking know, it’s like all this shit looks cool and I think it looks cool or sad or whatever the fuck. I think that’s so underestimated, not given enough credit. Because again, I think that’s maybe me being a being a Libra, being ruled by Venus, but I think just give the source the credit that they’re due. A lot of the shit I grew up with and get inspiration from, I just have no idea what the fuck it means but it sounds or looks very cool, so I’m going try to immitate that. Imitate that feeling that I got from a visual. It could also be a Tumblr person. Random pictures can just show up on your dashboard, and I have no idea what the fuck meaning it has or the context of this, but I think it looks pretty cool. And so that’s pretty much my philosophy for drawing.

If your work had a thesis, what would it be?

I just like drawing cute shit. Just cute and cool. Those are the only two things I focus on. That’s it. If the thing I draw is cool, and/or cute, then I’ve accomplished something.

Do you have any plugs?

I’m pretty proud of my Tumblr account but that shit will never be leaked to be public! [laughs] But I still use it. My art Instagram is @54aaron and my personal Instagram is @holoangels.

AARON'S WORK

marisa murillo

February 6, 2020

In conversation with Lorenzo Barajas

Photographed by Lola Lafia

Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’m Mari, or Marisa. I am a junior in SEAS studying mechanical engineering. This past year I served as publicity director for WKCR-FM New York, and co-captain of Columbia Women’s Water Polo. I’m also involved in Columbia BlueShift, which is our undergraduate astrophysics society. I am a member of the Barnard Clay Collective, and I’m a tour guide with the Undergraduate Recruitment Committee. I’m a proud Mexican-American from Houston, Texas—and I am super excited to be a featured artist!

Could you describe your work’s aesthetic in five words?

I thought about this a little bit. I think it’s kinda hard to do, but I guess I can narrow it down to five words. And that would be noisy, vibrant, dynamic, coalescent, and playful.

Sick! So going back to your background in STEM—as a mechanical engineering student and an astrophysics researcher—how did you find art? How did your relationship with art begin?

I always kid of liked doing things with my hands. Being creative, things like that. One of my earliest memories of being super excited about something I made was when I was designing and making jewelry with my mom. I made this necklace when I was five, and I still wear it sometimes—I just love it so much. And I always sort of liked working with my hands and thinking, what if. And then trying to see if I could do it. At the same time, I was always really fascinated by science. In school, I just had this burning, undying curiosity. My very first science teacher, Ms. Kiley, told me that we’re all scientists— because we all ask questions. And I thought, well, I can’t stop asking questions. I guess that makes me a great scientist! I think now I’m really fascinated by the intersection of science and art, which I sort of see in engineering. I am really interested in finding creative solutions—to build the tools we need to answer all of these questions that we have. And that’s something that I’m super excited to be able to do in my research right now.

Yeah, I think a lot of people do sort of claim that there is an art to science. Do you think that there’s a reverse? Do you see a science in art form?

I would say yes, definitely. So speaking about the first relationship, the art that is in science—I do see that every day when I’m choosing how to visualize my data in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, communicates the results that I want people to understand from my work. And, you know, there’s an art in the technical, hands-on part of research. Whether that’s putting together the hardware assemblies, or pipetting, or whatever it is you’re doing that’s technical with your hands in your research.

At the same time, I think in engineering especially, I tend to associate the most elegant solution with simplicity. And I think that’s something that’s completely opposite from my art. I think minimalism in engineering is something that I value, but it’s something that I don’t necessarily see in my art. So in the reverse, with the science in art, I see it especially in two media that I use—I see it in ceramics and I see it in textile arts. In ceramics, especially when I’m working on the wheel, I’m sort of thinking about forces on a rotating object. I’m thinking about cross-sections of a rotated solid, just like [what] I think about in calculus. When I’m hand-building, I’m thinking about structural integrity and support, and whether what I’m doing is able to hold its own weight. I was recently talking with my friend Rachel, who’s a professional fiber artist, about the similarities between computer programming and fiber arts— especially knitting. I taught myself to knit when I was seven years old, and ever since I’ve been able to use different knitting techniques to do things other than just a straight knit stitch. I’ve been writing patterns—cable patterns and fair isle patterns and other things like that. And I see it as a form of object-oriented programming, where you see these objects and instance variables. It reads like a bunch of for loops. A lot of the first computer programs were actually written for weaving machines, so there is, I think, a very strong connection between the arts and sciences—and there is a presence of science in art.

Do you feel your art is working toward making science more accessible and palatable to people who maybe aren’t familiar with science? Or non-majors in general?

I would hope so. A lot of the work I’ve done is for BlueShift’s Arts & Astro Festival, which is this annual event that we put on to explore the beauty that there is in science. And I think there is great beauty in unveiling the secrets of the universe, and answering our most burning questions. I think especially in astronomy, a lot of what we see can be super visually appealing—but it gets clouded and buried under these differential equations and things like that. I like to bring science into my art just to remind myself that there’s a reason I’m asking these questions. Because I have a personal interest in knowing these things—because they’re so captivating, they’re so beautiful.

So, getting into how exactly you’re mixing science and art, I wanted to talk about one of your pieces, Screaming Interference, in particular.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun making this piece. It was also for Arts & Astro. I’ve been really interested in the idea of gravitational waves, and the way that the detection works. I wanted to make a piece that shows one small aspect of gravitational wave detection—and [those were] the first gravitational wave signatures that were picked up by the LIGO Livingston and Hanford observatories. So I’ve worked a lot with electroluminescent wire in the past, and I wanted to incorporate that into my work. I essentially took the gravitational wave signals and sculpted them in a slightly abstracted form in the electroluminescent wire. [I used] two different colors—one for Livingston and one for Hanford. And I sort of overlaid them in the same way that the gravitational wave signatures were overlaid, to confirm that it was a gravitational wave event and not just some sort of weird background noise that was happening at one observatory. I also wanted to play with reflection and dimension and color, so I sort of set it up as a tunnel with a mirror at the back end, and a sheet of tinted acrylic at the front end. I had these alternating electroluminescent wires going on and off. You could also look deep into one end of the tunnel and see their reflections—but in a different color, because of the tinted acrylic on the front.

It seems like distortion is a big aspect of your process. Is this distortion more tactile or digital?

I think a great deal of it starts with the physical, tactile distortion. I think it’s really cool that whatever physical process you do to the film that you’re shooting on is an irremovable part of the image that you’re capturing. And I think that’s really interesting. When I distort the film, I sometimes shoot on expired film, and I soak it in various household acids. Sometimes, for example, it’s an old disposable camera and the battery will have leaked into it already. Maybe I’ll add soap or lemon juice or something like that, and just see what that does to it. I’m not looking for any sort of effect in particular, I’m just sort of asking, “What happens if I do this?” From there, I let the results of that image sort of guide the rest of the process—which tends to be mostly collage, some physical cutting and pasting, and also some digital stuff. I like to mix a lot of my photos with some data visualization in Python that I think might be kind of fun to go with them.

Cool. So many of your photos tend to mix analog and digital technology. Do you feel that analog has a nostalgic value to you? Or do you feel that it evokes a different emotion than digital?

Yeah, I think so. Like I touched on a little bit before, I think the scratches and the wear and tear on the analog media we use is super fascinating. It just becomes a part of the piece. It’s kind of like rereading your own copy of your favorite book. The more you read it, the more it just sort of wears out—and you can see the love that’s gone into handling it. At the same time, I do think it’s really interesting to combine digital with analog. I almost feel like I’m making little cyborgs when I make art in this way.

You also work with mixtapes. Would you like to speak on those? What sort of sounds are you interested in?

Yeah. So I did mention I’m from Houston, Texas, and a favorite local legend of ours is DJ Screw. He is known for the development of his technique of playing with the speeds of different records when he sampled various, mostly local artists on his mixtapes—and created the ‘Chopped and Screwed’ style of mixing and cutting and pasting, and using different bits of sound and slowing them down. So I take a lot of inspiration from that. While some of my mixtapes are pretty traditional—in the way that you think of a mixtape on cassette—a lot of them experiment with the same kinds of things that DJ Screw did. So I like to sample things from underground 1990’s and 2000’s artists, especially from Houston. And just put things together in ways that I haven’t really seen before. But also, being at WKCR has exposed me to a lot of different ways that music can be put together. I wasn't familiar with New Music as a genre before I started WKCR, but now I think it’s interesting, especially the history of its technology. Some of my mixtapes take samples and inspiration from New Music, especially Computer Music from the 1970’s, and also samples from old nostalgic digital sounds. Even the sound of dial-up Internet, for example. I’m also building a synthesizer as my final project for a class I’m taking on sound, and I’d like to incorporate it on my mixtapes.

So going into your inspiration, is there any artist specifically—a musician, filmmaker, or someone who produces media of any kind—that you feel inspired by?

I think right now one of my biggest artistic inspirations is Susan Kare. She’s the graphic designer who worked on creating the original user interface for Apple computers. So she made the command symbol, and the smiling Mac, and the bomb, and the click symbol, and all of that. I just think it’s so interesting how she was able to take a 64x64 pixel grid of yes and no, on and off, black and white—and actually communicate, symbolically, what was going on inside a complex machine. And I think that she really did a good job of doing what I would like to do, which is to use my art to communicate scientific information.

I think going into communication leads to your poetry. In what ways does coding interact with your poetry?

I’d never written poetry before this poetry collection. I have a really good relationship with my University Writing professor from freshman year, and she’s always sort of pushing me to pursue writing on a deeper level, and keep expanding the bounds of my comfort zone in writing. So she encouraged me to take on the project of a poetry series. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to write poems using a skill set that had, to this point, only been familiar to me in an academic or technical context. And to use it for something creative and expressive in its own way. When I was starting out on this project, I didn’t know if I would actually be able to do it—if I would be able to write poetry in Java that made sense, and was able to stand on its own. But at the same time, be syntactically correct so that once I pushed run and compile, I would get an output that was a poem in plain English.

With your poetry, I’m wondering if there’s any sort of narrative you’re trying to tell. Or is it completely abstracted?

So each of the poems is based on a different experience that I’ve lived and have not immediately been able to make sense of. And I think I’m sort of using the poems as a way to display a sort of thought process. So, you know, I’m structuring it on the input side, and trying to logically organize and make sense of these thoughts that are going through my head—and ending up with an output which is sort of a deliberate thing that I’ve put together. I think it’s especially important to note what stays on the input side, and doesn’t make it over into the output. There are some things that just stay as thoughts and don’t really end up becoming conclusions, or being super vocalized or anything like that. So I think it’s important to notice what goes into one side might not necessarily come out the other side.

Is it a therapeutic experience for you to write poetry, or is it just sort of documenting the experience? Is there any sort of reflection that’s happening?

Yeah! I think it’s super reflective, especially having to think within the context of [making] your actual poem compile and run in the computer. And, I think, it’s something of a tool—a way to document how my thoughts are shaping as I’m trying to make sense of things. It’s also a different way to think about these things that are going on, and to look at problems in this analytical but at the same time creative lens.

I was really fascinated by one of your poems in Input-Output, and the ending of it, where it trails off in a series of curly brackets. Would you like to talk a little bit on the ending of that poem?

Sure. So all of the characters that aren’t white space that you see in my poetry are actually part of Java syntax. I chose Java over any other programming language for this series, just because it feels comfortable to me. And, I really like the aesthetic of the syntax and the structure of it. So, for every curly bracket at the bottom, there’s a corresponding curly bracket at the top. Everything is sort of sandwiched in and fits securely into the program. So it’s actually just sort of built into the syntax of the program. But at the same time I did appreciate the aesthetic of the Java syntax over other languages. It’s the first programming language that I learned, and it just felt the most natural and the most like my own voice.

Is there any advice you’d give to someone who would like to be involved in the sciences, but doesn’t have the experience? Or is interested in incorporating sciences into their art?

I guess the first thing I would say is to just get in there, and get started and try. Don’t let the math scare you away. If I let the math scare me away I don’t think I’d be an engineer. I think it’s important to go into [science] with a mindset of just doing it for fun with no expectations—and seeing what you can end up with. I do think that, because there is a highly technical aspect to art, that the sciences already are pretty accessible to artists. My high school physics teacher told me [that] we all already know the laws of physics. They’re sort of ingrained in the ways we interact with the world and live our lives. We just have to stop and think about why we know what the consequences of a physical action are going to be. So, I think it’s all really there—you just have to tap into it. I think learning to program is sort of an organized way of thinking about things. If you are a super detail-oriented person, which is a trait that I see in a lot of artists, I think programming is definitely accessible to you. Because it's all about putting in the details to get the big picture.

You talk about being detail-oriented. Do you see any of your other qualities coming into your work? What aspect of your personality is reflected throughout your process?

I think that when I started out wanting to be an engineer, I didn’t see a lot of examples of what it was to be a woman in STEM. And I thought the only way to be a woman in STEM was to try to resemble a man in STEM. So I just sort of tried to be super serious, and never really show emotion or anything. For school events where we had to travel, I always tried to pack the smallest bag to avoid stereotypes and things like that. I never showed emotion, even when I had to call out things that just weren’t right or fair. And I think now I’ve gotten to a point where I realize I don’t need to try to be someone else to be taken seriously, or respected in my field. It’s very important to be authentic when you’re trying to do what you love. I’m unapologetic about being lots of different things. I don’t like to label myself as any just one, or even multiple things. I think it’s important, if you have an interest in something, to pursue it and not let labels stop you—[to] not let people tell you, because you are this one thing, you can’t do something else.

Speaking of labels, do you see yourself as an artist, or as a scientist, or a mix of both?

I’d say probably a mix of both. I think it’s an important part of my identity to be lots of different things at once. I really see these different parts of my identity come together and work as one, even though they seem really separate. I think that they’re all me. They’re all who I am.

Marisa's work

amber chong

December 9, 2019

Interviewed by Yosan Alemu

Photographs by Caitlyn Stachura

Amber Chong is a junior at Barnard College studying sociology and education in the Urban Teaching Program.

What is the ceramic process like? What's your favorite part of the process, if you do have one?

What is the process like? Well, I usually start out by sketching the general shape that I want to make, and then you decide how much clay you need for that. You wedge it—the clay—and get all the air bubbles out of it. And I make a lot of stuff on the wheel. So I'll smush the clay onto the wheel and get it centered. See, you want [the clay] at the very center of the wheel so that your piece will be symmetrical. This part usually takes the most time to learn, and the most time to get it actually there on the center. After, you sort of just pull the clay around into the shape you want while still being mindful of the center. Also, a lot of my pieces have hand-built attachments, so I build those separately and kind of pop them onto the piece. Then the piece goes through the bisque kiln. It gets fired until the clay hardens, and then I glaze it! I really like the glazing process, because there's a little bit of unpredictability with it—and I make a lot of the glazes because I work at the studio, and part of the job is to mix [them]. It's become really exciting now that I understand the chemistry behind it. So after I glaze it, I put it into the glaze fire and just kind of hope for the best!

Can you explain the relationship between your hands and the clay? Compared to other mediums—like photo or like painting—there's obviously involvement with your body and your work.

I think your hands, in a lot of ways, are like the most powerful [part] of this medium. When you're throwing, when you're at the wheel, it's nice that it requires your absolute focus. It's nice that it makes you really present. You know, if your hands slip, the whole thing can flop over or get smushed. So you have to be very conscious about every microscopic hand movement, because the tiniest little bit of pressure could change the entire shape. It makes you really self-aware of your body in relation to the clay, and in relation to everything around you.

I really do like the idea of noticing, with absolute focus, your body, your hands, in relation to the clay and piece at work. When you're making your pieces, what do you have in mind in terms of style and inspiration?

Working in ceramics brings out this childlike energy in me. It reminds me of days way back in art class—of just messing around but then creating something out of this frenzy. And I like to bring that childlike energy into the work. I like big, friendly looking forms, and a lot of really bright colors. A lot of vibrant glazes. When I'm making pieces, I like to think about what's going to make me happy, and what's going to make others happy. Whether it be sitting around the room, or used for meals—I really want to be able to use my pieces and to share them with others. For instance, I have an elephant teapot with flower designs that I love and use practically everyday.

What are you trying to convey to yourself and to those looking or using your work? Is there a story behind each piece?

A lot of the pieces I've been making lately—because I'm working at this studio near campus, where I also teach—have been made as examples or to show someone how to do something. So that's kind of exciting to me. I really enjoy working alongside people and using pieces as a tool for teaching. That's one of my favorite parts about the ceramics I'm doing right now, especially because I'm studying education. I like to use my art and the process as a way to possibly unlock new teaching methods, or to think more about hands-on learning. As for the story behind each piece, I think each piece just reminds me of the meticulous work that went [into it]. You can look at some of the handled pieces and you can see every carve, every line on the leaves—like on the teapot that I made. Or even think back to every single chemical you had to mix to get the right glaze mixture. It's just cool to look at a piece for which you have been so involved in the process. Everything from the glaze to the firing technique requires careful work. For example, some of the pieces that I do are roku, which means you take the piece out of the kiln when it's at the peak temperature, 1700 degrees. And the glaze is still molten. Then you put it in this trash can full of combustibles like leaves and newspapers, and you put your piece in the can and watch it burst into flames. When you take your piece out, it's got all of these weird markings from being exposed to the fire. So yes, I tend to look at my pieces and see the work, awareness, and the care that went into its making.

What's your favorite piece?

That's a good question. I have this one mug where the glaze just came out really unexpectedly. The interesting thing is when you combine glazes, you could have like a yellow and blue—and when you layer them together, instead of making green, the colors can make red just because the chemicals interact weirdly. That's one of the best parts for me, when you get this super random, unintentional color. On my mug I had a deep green, and this kind of reddish glaze over it. Where they met, there was this really bright turquoise color. So, it's just this mug with a huge turquoise spot at the bottom. And that's what I drink my coffee and tea out of every morning. That's my favorite—my green, red, turquoise spotted mug.

How has pottery and ceramics influenced your life? Everyday experiences?

I've been working with pottery and ceramics since high school. It's opened up a lot of job opportunities for me. Like this summer, I was teaching pottery in Washington State, and now I'm working at a studio. I would say these opportunities have really allowed me to see how my artistic interests and my education interests collide and collaborate with one another. More recently, they have really begun to inform each other. I feel like I'm learning a lot about teaching pottery that can be applied to other forms of teaching.

Absolutely! It's really interesting to see that translation. Could you give an example of where your art and teaching interact?

I teach the kids class at the studio, and some of them are very young. I'm learning that when you put this piece of clay in front of a child, they're not going to listen to anything that you have to say. All they're going to want to do is play [with] and squish the clay, and you really can't blame them. But that's part of the magic about the clay, you know? It's exciting to see sheer joy just because of a tiny piece of clay. I guess channeling that excitement about the task and clay at hand is something I feel like can apply to any arena of education, because you’re working with children and are helping them create something by the end of the class. And as I said earlier, creating a pottery piece is difficult, and requires careful attention to the work. It's amazing to see how the children's excitement for the clay is transformed to this sort of eager attention and focus.

This idea of intimacy, whether it be your own work or teaching children, is integral to your process. Like you said, every step is important and has to be dealt with with awareness and attention. Could you elaborate more on the intimacy aspect?

Yes! Every step and every curve, every color that comes out in the blaze, every task you perform, every bit of work you put into your piece and its process, is an intimate kind of work. So at the end, I feel as if I become really tied to these pieces. Like it holds some part of myself. And especially in my case, I love using my pieces for the everyday. Being able to use and be in contact with your work further shows this intimacy. My pieces become part of my life. Intimacy lies there.

What was your favorite art class at Barnard or Columbia?

I've only taken one, actually, but I took Sculpture I freshman year with Kambui Olujimi and he was a really wonderful professor. I initially thought that we were going to be making little things out of clay, and that the class would be a sort of de-stressor. And it wasn't! It was one of the most stressful classes I've ever taken. We weren’t working with clay, we were working with metal. I literally learned how to weld!

Really? Oh my god!

Yes, really! On the top floor of Prentis, they have these metal shops. You get these sheets of steel, your big mask, your plasma cutter, and you're just welding! Once for the class, I made this metal wall that had all of these windows that opened up. [For] some of the windows you'd be able to see through to the other side, while others had mirrors. If you saw one on the opposite side, it was like you were playing hide-and-seek, but sometimes you were only finding yourself. The assignment was to make a mask, and that wall was my mask. That class was so much more work than I thought it was going to be, but it was really worth it. It was fun and inspiring being surrounded by people that were also invested in making these really crazy structures and sculptures. Also, working with a professor who is doing art in the real world was amazing. It was such a fascinating class. I would take it again and again and again. To be completely honest, I think I spent more time working for that class than I have for any class since then.

What would be your ideal, dream piece? What would you make?

My ceramics teacher in high school, Bob, who wore Crocs and a kimono to class all of the time, always talked about this friend he had in Oregon who threw ceramic hot tubs that were completely massive. He said that his friend kept breaking his wrist—because when you're throwing that much clay, if you have your hand slightly at the wrong angle, it'll literally just snap. Which is crazy. Sometimes I dream about throwing or creating a piece that massive. Maybe I'll make a fountain, or just grand monuments, and place them in random locations. That would be a dream piece. A massive structure placed—gently, of course—in random places everywhere I go.

Amber's work

olivia treynor

December 1, 2019

In conversation with Elizabeth Meyer

Photographs by Ellis Sandro Shapiro-Barnum

Could you start by telling me a little bit about yourself, whatever that means to you?

My name is Olivia, I’m from California. My biggest identities [that] influence my art are being a young person, being a girl, and being queer. I don’t monopolize identities, but I feel part of these communities based on those [identities], and they definitely kind of influence how I perceive things, and think about things, and interact with things.

Is photography your main medium?

Yes. I started doing photography and filmmaking in high school. I wasn’t introduced to photography in a clinical art school way, I was introduced to it as something my peers were doing and that girls that felt like my peers were doing. I grew up with Rookie magazine and that was this great equalizer [to me]. [It] really emphasized young queer voices and female voices and non male voices. To me, it felt like “Of course I could take pictures!” It felt like there were so many people that were doing [it] and they were doing it so well and so beautifully and so powerfully. I just understood things as yes, the female gaze is something that of course I am going to try to reclaim and explore what that means

I [also] took an art class [in high school] where you had to put together a portfolio with all different mediums, so I put together a sewing project, which was out of my element. I’ve done some drawing and other things But mainly photography and filmmaking are my big artistic practices. I’ve been doing creative writing more recently, but I’m still feeling that one out.

What is your definition of perception, and how does that fit into creation—especially through photography?

I think that photography is a medium about looking. Photography is so rooted in reality and observing reality, that there is less freedom inherent in the medium to make it about inner emotional content. To some extent, photography is always documentary because you have to work with what exists in the real, tangible world—and then distort that in some way to create an artistic statement. I think [in] the way photography is thought of, we imagine that the camera is your eye, and that's what’s dominant. The most important part of taking a photo is thinking about how the camera views something and, to me, that feels distant from what I think good photography is. I hope to use my photography as an empathetic, bodily observation rather than an objectifying tool. I’m trying to reframe ideas that the camera is the most important tool. [When taking photos of someone] I think about how I would naturally perceive and interact with them. The camera comes ranked lower in importance than my personal, empathetic, human gaze.

How do you take your photos?

I’m not thinking [about doing] something that’s never been done before or what the queer/female way of looking at [a subject is]. I retrospectively look back at things and be like “Oh, I looked at that thing in a way that is different from how another person would look at it,” but I don't think that’s an active goal of mine, to counter some sort of hegemony in the photo world. I’m just like “What makes sense in this [photo]?”, and then I can write an artist’s statement that applies that [sense] onto [the photo].

[In photography], I really believe that bodily intuition is much more important than being a rational thinker. That may just be an art thing but, to me, feeling comes over technical competence or objective analysis or trying to do something the “best” way. Being the “best” at something is so emphasized [in our society], and I think you can technically be the “best,” but that doesn't necessarily give you the skill to create an empathetic photo which, to me, is the most important part of photography. The best picture is the one that is most empathetic. So I'm cognizant of trying to look at things in a way that is bodily first and technical second. Photography, in a lot of ways, is dominated by the male gaze because its been appropriated as a tool for the male gaze but i don't think it has to be like that but I think the goal of a female photographer or anyone who is trying to conceive a photograph that exists outside of the male gaze has to think about it as an empathetic tool rather than an objectifying tool.

How do you form an empathetic connection with a subject when photographing individuals whose identities differ from your own?

I think that empathy is not bound by identities. I think that I need to acknowledge that there are narratives that I won’t necessarily perceive that the person I’m photographing perceives because of their role or how they exist in society. As empowering as it is to be a young, queer woman, it means that I have not existed in a lot of different identities. I think acknowledging that, and believing that the photographer is not the most important person when taking a photo, is crucial. Like, [when I’m taking pictures], I feel like I’m a medium somehow, or messenger. The act [of photography] is of an interaction. I try to take photos that feel like they are an exchange rather than something that’s imposing on someone or taking from someone. doesn’t have to be about giving or receiving. It can be something mutual, not a give or take exchange.

Olivia's Work

viola hibbett

November 25, 2019

In conversation with Uma Halsted

Photographs by Zita Surprenant

Introduce yourself.

I’m Viola. I’m a junior at Barnard, doing a philosophy major. I’m from Central Massachusetts—part rural, part suburban.

Describe your work in three words. Describe yourself in three words.

My work: Irrelevant Ransom Note. Me: Short Imposter Ginger.

Do you have any favorite artists that inspire you?

For animation, Terry Gilliam, the “Monty Python” animator.

When did you start making art, conscious of it being a product?

Probably not until the end of freshman year here. Before, I was indoctrinated into the STEM world. I came in as a physics major, switched to math at the end of my freshman year, and then to philosophy at the end of my sophomore year.

Did you notice any shifts in what you were interested in artistically as your academic focus changed?

When I was doing a physics track, anything that wasn’t [physics] felt like a side project. Whereas, once I started doing more non-STEM things, I was like, “Oh, this can actually be a thing that I can think about, and put work and time into.”

Do you find that holding onto, and relinquishing, control comes into play in that kind of creative process?

When you try to hold onto the idea of something turning out the way it should in your mind, it always ends up winding up a little off. And then that ‘being off’ seems disnoble—[it] turns into feeling worthless. But then you realize that chain of reasoning doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter whether one little thing’s at an angle or not.

Do you have a first memory of creating when you were young?

Honestly, not so much. I do have some memories of making weird drinks to consume as a kid, with a bunch of lemon juice and vanilla extract—with kids putting all of [the] other spices into a liquid and then being like, “Let’s drink it!” So that was probably my entry into creating.

When you are physically making the work, do you feel like you snap into the experience of being removed from reality? Or are you usually quite grounded in reality, and just recalling past experiences and ideas?

I’m not super floaty or whatever. I’m definitely there. I do tend to get super drawn into it though, as in I forget about other things.

You talk about detaching from reality and from the need to make a ‘good’ product. And then having the space to be silly and fun, and not take yourself too seriously. I am wondering what that looks like when you’re making your art. What does that look and feel like for you as the creator?

We’re all raised in the capitalist world, and so we’re all taught that your value is tied to you producing things—producing things which are good and can be marketed, or which serve some sort of purpose in that world. Once you realize that that’s nonsense, it opens things up a lot more.

Do you feel like you can ever fully detach yourself from that world?

No… I don’t know. I’ve had some times where I’ve legitimately detached from reality, and my brain’s doing interesting kinds of moves. In those times… yeah. I can [detach] and I have. There are other things that you don’t want to detach from. But at the same time, when you’re in that kind of space—thinking about production and making things that are good, and would have a high monetary value—is just so ridiculous and out there that it seems entirely foreign.

What did you end up doing in that space? Was there any connection to making art?

Try to be calm and wait until eventually things settle down. And then they did. Since then, I’ve done some artwork in which part of what I’m thinking about are those experiences I’ve had. I did one where I was trying to capture the feeling of being in one of those photo stand-ins, with the cut-out faces. It’s like that, but the whole world is just that board. And then it’s just your eyes looking out.

Who or what are you making your art for? And because of that, how does your process change?

When I’m making things, I like to be having fun with it, and let things be silly. Then when I have something that’s done and I’m going to give it to someone, it’s almost more like comics—like, “Here’s something that will make you laugh.” If I stay in a fun mindset, then hopefully [my work] winds up more light than if not.

Why do you want your art to be light?

Not everything that I’ve made is intended to be light. But I feel like everything is so meaningless, or crap like that. So why not have things that are fun and light?

Viola's Work

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