Joanne Hewko - Review of Precarious Circumstances by Debora Alanna - first published 6 April 2013 on Exhibit-v

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Precarious Circumstances ( Joanne Hewko )

Joanne Hewko
Precarious Circumstances

12 March – 6 April 2013
Gallery 1580
1580 Cook Street
Victoria BC
Review by Debora Alanna
For details on Joanne Hewko’s practice, see her interview here: http://exhibit-v.blogspot.ca/2013/04/joanne-hewko-intervied-by-debora-alanna.html
This review concerns the work of Joanne Hewko, one of the artists in the two person show, Precarious Circumstances at the Gallery 1580 Gallery in Victoria
Joanne Hewko extracts intensity, transforms life experience into fueled insistence, some constituents of loss clarified and enlarged. She translates her experience of precarious circumstance into five glimpses of her emerging might made of charcoal on thick, ample paper sheets, with chalk, and acrylic resist, floor wax. Predominantly, charcoal fusain. Hewko charges as forcefully as Susan Rothenberg’s horses or ravens, a more singular story telling that William Kittredge, leading us through a living memory.
The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
― C.G. Jung

Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Gravitas”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011
Hewko’s veins encase a charcoal sphere, humane. Wielding significance is suspended, tilted to emulate the precarious posture of the unknown, which enables shadows.Gravitas appears from the unseen, wavers in the unwarranted, entreating with an inflection. Senselessness swung, immense, nearly one way, not close darkly, stolid - the pitch contingent on what is unfathomable. Hewko’s dignity weighs pendulously, encapsulated.
As his eyes rested upon her, he was struck by her strangely ethereal appearance. She seemed suddenly to have dissolved into the tenuous substance of a dream, and as he continued to gaze upon her, she faded slowly from his sight. ~ Chapter X: Kar Komak, the Bowman. Thuvia, Maid of Mars. 1920. Edgar Rice Burroughs. [1]

Title: “Tenuous, At Best”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011
Hewko depicted a downward swing with Gravitas, while Tenuous, At Best is upheaval rising. She draws on unsubstantiated conviction netted to sustain what cannot remain. Grief councillors use balloons to help the bereaved symbolically release attachment to a loved one. In Hewko’s drawing, all influence is draw together and held. Here, Hewko gathers the promise of memories, like Louise Bourgeois’ Maman gathered her eggs. Potential horded.
Indubitable is Hewko’s appreciation of dilution with time. Time tethers, calculating fragile holds. And the possibilities that were available, in life, in causality are tenuous, at best.

Artist: Joanne Hewko
Name: “Barometer”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011
The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. ~ Lionel Trilling (American Literary Critic, Author and Teacher. 1905-1975).
Hewko’s Barometer is the isolated bulk and darkness of despair centered on her drawing, absorbing the viewer. You can almost hear a hiss as the sharp cloud points puncture the solid gloom bottom, with effervescing escaping. With a Robert Morris/Jeroen Witvliet influence marking thunderous oppression, Hewko succeeds in individualizing her imagery.
With the weight of hovering stillness, she articulates significance of loss, obstinacy buoyant with a smidgeon of spirited underbelly. She ascertains and draws a delicate intercession where globules assert, desert the deprecation of death, as in a chemical or electrical conduction, some substrate, a protected area, isolated, a confidence.
Barometer is instrumentation for a sustained weathering, change, or imminent change pressurized, levitating a deadening attitude, the height and distance the segregation of heart and spirit can figure while allowing the paroxysm of elation with gaseous flutter to be more powerful than death.

Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Small Mercies”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011
Small Mercies is a close up look at the beauty and beast in Hewko’s Barometer. We are shown the implacable mourning with the tender fizzy life and tickle interacting to challenge what is overbearing, the weighty mass of grief. Using chalk to carbonate, minute optimal life-giving forms transgress grief’s ascendancy, ejecting hope. Hewko’s work is her mien - the poignant disruption and sensitive, mood and spirit edification. She gives herself clemency from bereavement.

Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Grace”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal
Size: 22”x 30”
Date: Spring 2011
Hewko’s Grace is an asymmetrical embellishment, vague, a sheer hammock, or a pubis covering composed of elongated diamonds. The netting between nonexistent supports, whether for human recline or as a garment, or a theological call for mercy, Grace is self-conscious, as grace should be.
Although Hewko produced Grace a couple of seasons prior to the trauma depicted in the work above, including this piece in the exhibition shows the precariousness of suspended belief, predicating the scourge of the other work. And yet it is also a circumnavigation of understanding and implication, a resolve and teeter for future experiences into the realm of mortality. Without grace, we could be a casualty too. Hewko demonstrates how perilous responses to death, the impact of loss on existence can be absolute without the delicate potency of grace.

---

[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/72/72-h/72-h.htm

Review - Precarious Circumstances - Sarah Cowan by Debora Alanna first published on 6 April 2013 on Exhibit-v

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Precarious Circumstances ( Sara Cowan )

Sarah Cowan  Precarious Circumstances

Gallery 1580

1580 Cook St

Victoria BC

Review by Debora Alanna

Read a transcription Sarah Cowan’s interview with Debora Alanna here: http://exhibit-v.blogspot.ca/2013/03/sarah-cowan-interview-with-debora-alanna.html

Precarious Circumstances is a two person show. This review is concerned with Sarah Cowan’s work in this exhibition.

For surely it is time that the effect of disencouragement upon the mind of the artist should be measured, as I have seen a dairy company measure the effect of ordinary milk and Grade A milk upon the body of the rat. They set two rats in cages side by side, and of the two one was furtive, timid and small, and the other was glossy, bold and big. Now what food do we feed women as artists upon?

~ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

As scientist Sheldon H. Geller explains, “scientific research cannot prove anything…it disproves error.” By contrast, the perceptive artist learns how to repeat and magnify his errors in order to create his own distinctive style for sharing new truth.

~ ABC of Prophecy: Understanding the Environment, Barrington Nevitt, 1985, pg. 77

There are messages whose codes seem sometimes to be without a key, streaming away from our grasp. Yet through these apparently haphazard infusions, we apprehend the mystery thrall. It is this pulse that moves us ever deeper into those interpenetrating moments where intimations of new mythologies begin.

~ Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose, B.W. Powe, Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto, Ontario, 2007. pg. 178-9

Sarah Cowan (Houghton) shares her truth, with a universally accessible medium, paper, cutting in herself, as her part of the two person exhibition, Precarious Circumstances. This version of her truth is new to us. A departure from her previous intensely minute diary drawings/paintings, they are the papery feeling Sylvia Plath wrote about in her poem, Cut. ('O my homunculus, I am ill,/ I have taken a pill to kill/ the thin papery feeling.) Cowan simultaneously cuts out her streams of consciousness while feeding us what cannot be measured. Ironically, Cowan’s work is meticulous, succinct in size, length, fit within the gallery architecture. Codes that become pulse points.

Cowan cut the same forms from single sheets of white paper to create a module, connecting one to another, and repeating the process forming consistent verticals traversing of material suspensions, many throughout the gallery space. Sometimes they break as people weave between the hung streams. Cowan says she doesn’t mind. She says they evoke cellular structure, as round shapes might. These are the negative of a cell, vacant capsules; empty spaces strung together, an interconnectivity of the cellular void intact and together.

Resolute, repetitive, fragile paper cut-out tresses suspended from the Gallery 1580 ceiling to the floor evoke fantasy, nostalgia, for many, Cowan says. Her interpretive intimations of inscrutability, profoundly wispy and tenuous, that would be a feeling, fleeting and nearly indiscernible, Cowan magnifies for our experience.

Paper cutting, cutting as drawing has a substantial tradition. Crafted paper cutting by Mexicans, papel picado. German paper cut art is scherenschnitte, areknippen – Netherlands, monkiri  by the Japanese, and guajian in China or k’e-chih, Chinese paper carving. Polish paper cuts - wycinanki. Psaligraphy is paper cut silhouette. Frenchdécouper. Mattise, famously relied on paper cutting in the last decade of his life.

Contemporary artists using this medium including Tomoko Ishida, Ayuk Kuperus, Yuko Takada Keller, cut paper to make installations, using multiples and monochromes as Cowan does. They too occupy rooms. Cowan’s work, unlike the mentioned artists uses the outline of the circles cut out to assert form. This is significant. She asserts what was as having form. Her cavities have structure; take their own shape, mutated by the hanging, yet the remnants assert over and over.

Peril lived becomes a condition, the repetition of scored living, incidents circling and dangling. Cowan chose white paper for her work, which colours shadows well. She develops mystery and distraction, holding the audience captive, and in awe of beauteous equivalency that is vulnerability bared.

Cowan’s strength in this document to her sharpness is her resolute work practice, her indomitable rendering of personal history’s endowment that translates into ‘mystery’s thrall’ (Mystic Trudeau: The Fire and the Rose, B.W. Powe – see quote above) giving advantage to her enlivening structure. Walking through Sarah Cowan’s work is walking within wonder. She suspends time, and her beauty as Precarious Circumstances is unquantifiable. What a nourishing feeling.

Interview with Joanne Hewko - first published 4 April 2013 on Exhibit-v

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Joanne Hewko interviewed by Debora Alanna

Debora How do you feel about the title of the show (Precarious Circumstances)?

Joanne Well, it is actually something Sarah (Cowan) and I came up with together. The word precarious is a word I have been personally meditating on for a couple of years. Sarah and I are friends from quite a ways back, we reconnected at VISA (Vancouver Island School of Art), seven years ago. She and I took courses together, and have maintained a very close friendship that talks about our art, our art process, and our kids, and our families. This word, precarious, is a notion that came to me to think about in art practice. A few years ago, when I was thinking about being at this place in my life, where I am middle aged, and I am watching people’s relationships change, and different things were happening. Babies were being born, people were passing away. People were getting sick, people were losing their jobs, losing their partners. It made me think that in a way we live, really, on a knife’s edge. We go about our day thinking that we have plans of what we are going to achieve during the day. We get up in the morning, we figure out what we are going to do. We follow through that, yet at any moment in time it could change. And it could change in a way that is unexpected. And what was startling for me was in thinking that our lives could change completely in a moment. That one could go through their day, and at the end of the day, have an appointment and find out that they have a terminal disease. Everything they understood is over.
So, this particular body of work was created at a time when a very, very close friend of mine was very sick, with a terminal disease. Creating this work part of my process of figuring out and understanding what my emotions. What I tried to do in my artwork was condense a physical, visceral and emotional response and distil it into a single image. What came forward for me were feelings of lightness and heaviness. Joy and grief. There was a lot of contrast.
These two drawings were made around the same time. It was a pair. This one, being, sort of heaviness, and the swinging feeling of pendulum. And this one, was more expansive. and light.


Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Gravitas”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011


Title: “Tenuous, At Best”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011


Artist: Joanne Hewko
Name: “Barometer”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011

These two drawings are about the impossibility of lightness in the face of heaviness. This drawing, which looks like a big dark cloud with tiny little bubbles underneath was me trying to understand this feeling of depression, that I was feeling. And yet in that depression, because I have close family and friends, people that care about me, were these tiny moments of joy and happiness, and effervescence.
This particular drawing is about how hope can actually... something so small, can hold up something that is so large, and pressing down. That was my intention with that drawing.
And this one was intended as a detail of the other.


Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Small Mercies”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal, white chalk
Size: 38”x 50”
Date: Autumn 2011

In this exploration of my understanding that often we live in hope and faith, and our perceptions are often quite tenuous. That is where this particular group of drawings came from. The idea of precariousness is something that has resonated with for some time.

Debora And this drawing here...?


Artist: Joanne Hewko
Title: “Grace”
Media: graphite powder, floor wax, charcoal
Size: 22”x 30”
Date: Spring 2011

Joanne This drawing is from the previous series before I did this larger body of work and again, I was looking at heaviness and something being held tenuously at either end, and trying to feel weighted-ness and weightlessness at the same time. So, the contrasting – between the two.

Debora This (previous) series was shown where?

Joanne None of this work had been shown. It is all part of my private body of work. I am an emerging artist.

Debora So, this is your first, first?

Joanne I have done a couple of shows at VISA. Painting. These particular drawings were done while I was a student. I have not had an opportunity to have them hung together. This is the first time they have hung together as a group.

Debora What material are you using?

Joanne The surface is printmaking paper with graphite powder, graphite, charcoal, erasure, and alittle bit of white chalk. Then I use– I engage floor wax as a way of getting the graphite powder to go deep into the fibre of the painting. That burnished effect is using waxes with the graphite.

Debora These are large. What size are they?

Joanne They are, the sheet sizes are 38 x 50”.

Debora What, if any are your influences?

Joanne There are both painters, and artists draw that have influenced me.
Modernist Robert Morris: for the powerful way that he is able to distil emotions and expressions into form, and also for the rawness and emotion of his drawings. Contemporary artist William Kentridge: for the beauty of his drawing and the deep black charcoal that he uses in his work. Sculptor Antony Gormley: for his persistence in exploring deeply one idea over his artistic career. Painter Sean Scully: for the way that he expresses humanity, strength, and vulnerability through abstract painting.
Debora Is there something you would like your audience to take away with them?
Joanne It is a very personal story that I am working through, but I hope that behind it there is an emotional charge. I hope that when people look at these drawings that they can feel a connection to me, a depth.

Debora Have you had any public responses?

Joanne We have had some terrific feedback to the show. People seem to be moved by it. I shared as much as I felt comfortable sharing in my artist statement, about why I made the work. It seems to be connecting with people. I hope they have a power, the drawings.
Debora They do.

Joanne. Thank you.

Debora They are stunning.

I was wondering, did you ever have a class with Jeroen Witvliet, the instructor at VISA?
Joanne I did. I had some painting courses with him and I did a theory course with him. He is a very complicated, deep thinking man. I had some excellent instruction at VISA. Danielle Hogan was also one of my favourite teachers who was very supportive. Also Rachel Hellner. Wendy (Welch), of course. I was very fortunate to be able to take courses over a seven year period and had a full gamut of different instructors, very caring – Xane (St Phillip), and John Luna. And I also met some really terrific artists as well, students who have been incredibly supportive.

I have a huge debt to Sarah (Cowan). She and I have a lot of deep conversations about our thinking, our work. There are elements of each other’s thinking and ideas between and through both parts of the (respective) work.

Debora It seems like a companionable double show.

Joanne And it came together very serendipitously... The other thing I wanted to talk about in the work is the actual process of drawing... I really like it because it is very forgiving, it is very physical. The work comes up very quickly, and I can respond to it. As in painting, there is a much larger commitment of time. And for me, doing work that is specifically trying to connect with visceral, emotional experience, drawing works really well. In that way. I do like to paint, but my paintings have a lot of drawing in them, my drawings have painting technique in them. I am finding myself drawn to drawing, more, in the art practice that I have.

Debora The wax use. How did you come to think about that?

Joanne I took an amazing two day workshop at VISA with Leslie Clark, an artist from up in Nanaimo. She is a print maker, and she taught this amazing process using resists and wax and Graphite

Debora How did she find out about that?

Joanne I think she created it out of her printmaking – she’s a painter and printmaker. With printmaking you deal with oily substances, pigments. She combined drawing elements with oils and wax. Great stuff.

Debora This is really exciting.

Debora One thing I am finding about VISA students, and I have been speaking with many different ones, is that you are articulate about your work and your process. Which is great. A great testament to the school.

Joanne I think so too. Because they ask you to think about why you are doing what you are doing. Not just because it feels good, or you like it. To go beyond that and say why do you like it, why does it resonate with you, why does this work for you as opposed to this. I feel very fortunate to have access to VISA, as a school because they give such high quality courses that are available to anyone. As compared to taking something at a community recreation centre, which is perfectly good, but to want to go deeper, without having to make a commitment to a university program... it is an excellent school.

Debora Do you think you are going on to the (VISA) opportunity in Cheltenham?

Joanne In Gloucestershire? (University of Gloucestershire). I don’t know. Sarah (Cowan) keeps talking about it. I have a family, and a son who is still in high school. So I don’t know. I would love to. I would love to keep studying, working with different people. And continuing to expand my practice and my thinking. At this point in time, the work that I do is very much an adjunct to my thinking and my being.

Debora Do you have an idea for future projects?

Joanne I am just exploring that. I am not entirely sure. I think that I want to dive into trying to combine drawing work like this with painting. And maybe working on hard supports and doing drawings and then interacting with painting and continuing. Just finding this hybrid between the two. Because there is all kinds of opportunity in that.

Debora Thank you for your time.

Joanne I really enjoyed this conversation.

Debora Me too.

Precarious Circumstances

Gallery 1580
1580 Cook Street
Victoria BC
27 March 2013

Interview with Sarah Cowan - first published on Exhibit-v on 24 March 2013

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Sarah Cowan interview with Debora Alanna

Debora                 So, tell me. Tell me how you started doing this (work)?

Sarah                    How I started this?

Debora                 Yes.

Sarah                    Well, I guess a long, long time ago, about four years ago, I took a course with Wendy Welch and I discovered paper cutting. And I loved it. But then, I kinda put it away,

I did one, kind of like these shapes, but separate. I had painted them with water colours. I did kind of like a rainbow, a spectrum over one wall of the school (Vancouver Island School of Art  - aka VISA).  It was really beautiful.

And I put it away. I discovered drawing again. I was still painting. But I kept cutting paper, and things like this. When I had my studio at Xchanges, I was walking to it, I was standing on the corner of the sidewalk, and there was this wire thing, and I thought, this is really interesting. I wonder,  I bet I can do something with that. I took it to my studio and leaned it up against the wall. I had some of these cut outs, and I started  hanging them on them, and the idea just grew.

Debora                 What is your impetus behind this? What is the force that causes you to do... cut in multiples, and hanging?

Sarah                   There are so many levels to it for me. There is the... I have a bit of a sordid past.

Debora                Don’t we all?!

Sarah                   Don’t we all. I was... I have a mental illness. And sometimes some behaviours surface. Like a long time ago I used to cut myself. And so the cutting is cathartic in a way. It is also transferring something that I used to do in a very self harmful way into something I can make something beautiful with. The shape is something that... the shape comes from... well, for me, they are cells. And the importance of... the cells within our body – the importance of them all being connected... taking a sheet of paper and making one strip, from one sheet of paper is that our cells need to  communicate. They need the proper nutrients, they need water,  salt, all that stuff in order to communicate, so we work well. That is something I am really interested in. The conductivity that I don’t even know about... I don’t know how my body works. But it does. And I know that is one of the things. So taking myself outside of myself, I am putting it into a tactile form.

Debora                Your work makes me think of Wendy’s cellular pictures – that is what came to mind immediately. That was your inspiration?

Sarah                   Yeah. A couple of years ago I took out a book from the school on – photographs of the insides of us. It is just fascinating. I did a whole series of drawings on organs and right down to the micro micro . Little filaments that... it is mind boggling.  Really, it is mind boggling.

Debora                I see this work enlarged from your drawings. Because your drawings have such detail, diary, just lines. These are large, compared to your previous work.

Sarah                    It was really interesting working on a larger scale and keeping it really simple. Really simple. When I use the knife I do feel as though I am drawing. I am drawing with a knife. It is just another level.

But the other thing too is they are so ethereal. I really wanted to call this show, my part in it anyways... there is that famous book by Milan Kundera,The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Debora                 Oh, yes.

Sarah                    And, I really wanted to call this, ‘The Unbearable Heaviness of Being’, because I feel so heavy. And... I never actually really wanted to be here.

Debora                 In the studio? Or...

Sarah                    In this world.

Debora                 In this world.

Sarah.                   Yeah. My whole life, it has been a struggle for me to be here. I have used some means, I have developed some ways of coping with being here in a physical sense. And then my art just evolved. With that always at the back of my mind, that when I make art, I am here, I am present. I am safe. I am being creative, I am meditative. When I am finished a piece, I can put it up and look at and say, okay, I did that. I did that so that means I am here. Whatever that means. It is almost like... It is a real, tangible document – that I am here.

Debora                 Great. I am glad you are here.

                              You are still working on this (installation), you are still cutting and hanging?

Sarah                    Yep. Yeah, I had an idea that it would grow.

Debora                 So, it is a work in progress.

Sarah                    Yes. It is a work in progress. I just hung 6 more (strands) this morning. I noticed some of them are breaking... I don’t know what is happening to the ones that are breaking, but some of them are really short now. I am not here all the time.  I don’t mind. The way I hung it... I want people to be able to move through it, I want them to feel touched. Physically touched by it. And I want them to touch it.

Debora                 Being an installation, it is quite a departure from your paper drawings that you were doing.

Sarah                    Ya.

Debora                 Or paintings. Paintings and drawing.

Sarah                    Painting and drawing. Ya. But I always have...I don’t know if you remember my Grad exhibition at VISA.

Debora                 You were in the corner?

Sarah                    I was in the closet.

Debora                 Right! The closet.            

Sarah                    So everything comes from something that you have already done. With that installation, which incorporated drawing as well as installation... this is now pure installation.

Debora                 At Xchanges you had a show, and you were in a container as well.

Sarah                    Yes. I am really interested in the three dimensional aspect of making art, of being creative.

Debora                 Would you call this sculpture?

Sarah                    Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Ya, but you know, it is a mix. It is sculpture, it is drawing.

Debora                 That is why I am asking. I did not want to assume. Because some people would say this is a three dimensional drawing.

Sarah                    Yeah.

Debora                 I think of it as sculpture, but that is my bias.

Sarah                    I don’t really mind how people see it. What I really want... is for people... I make it because I make it, I make it because I need to, have to, or I need to complete this idea. This concept. I don’t make for anybody else. But I hang it for other people. All I really want, and this is for anything that I do, I want a response. And whether people like it or not... I would rather that they liked it, obviously, but if they don’t really like it, so long as they have some kind of an emotional response to it... and I found with this piece that that is what is happening. They come in and say, oh, it reminds me of... oh, it makes me think of...

Debora                 Can you tell me more of what they said? What it reminds them of, makes them think of, think about?

Sarah                    They feel underwater.

Debora                 Oh yes?

Sarah                    Ah... Snowflakes. Ice. Snow. Not a cold climate but a snowy place. Forest. I had a little 5 year-old just call them weeds. Often it makes them, it reminds them of a childhood thing.

Debora                 Oh yes?

Sarah                    Yes. Lots of childhood memories. There was one fellow who said it reminded him of when he lived in Quebec and he would go hunting with his grandfather, and it was so quiet. Because when he was standing in the middle of it, and there was no sound, there was no music on, nothing. He was just standing. And he felt... he said he felt as if he was standing in the snowy, snow clad trees in northern Quebec.  I like that.

Debora                 Do you have any conceptual thoughts on these besides the act of drawing or the process you are involved with? Is there anything else that you bring to it that is the context within the art making practice in the world?

Sarah                    I haven’t really thought about it that way. To me, it is more about just making the art. Having an idea, and being curious about what that would look like.

                              Before I hung the work, even, it is always at the back of my mind, this kind of thing. I don’t know what I am going to do. I have an idea. Then I try. So the week before I hung this, I was trying to figure out how I would, and what I wanted . Did I want it as a circle? Did I want it on the periphery of the room?  Did I want it all in the centre? What I find is that the work works me. I start to hang. I look at it. That doesn’t really work. So, I get back up the ladder and do it again. I think I am really an organic artist. I work to, through intuition. This piece was hard for me because even though it is very... the shapes are very organic, I knew that I had to stay within certain bounds. I couldn’t start being really extravagant with circles or ... I knew I had to stay within certain parameters. Like, four to a loop.

Debora                 It is very labour intensive. There is a lot of work here. How long did it take you, so far?

Sarah                    I don’t know. Maybe two... I think I started it mid December. Ya, mid December.

Debora                 Several months.

Sarah                    Ya. But that is okay, because a lot of my work is about labour. It is about doing something. Not because I have to or because there is going to be an outcome that I am going to get rewarded for. It is very different from being in the world and having a job. This work is made just because. Just like, you are in this world, just because you are in this world. There doesn’t need to be a reason.

Debora                 It is gorgeous.

Sarah                    For me, it is a real spiritual practice. Ya, I think it is about the spirit. In my artist statement, I say that I am an incorrigible liar. Because I am. I lie to myself. I lie to... not intentionally. I think when I am really working on something that means something to me, then my work doesn’t lie. And it is just what it is. Does that make sense?

Debora                 Oh, ya. How comfortable are you with me transcribing this?

Sarah                    Yeah. Sure.

Debora                 Okay.

(...)

Sarah                    When I was playing, exploring with the wire, the circles I had already cut what intrigued me was the shadows. Yeah, just the shadows it created. So the next step I think is making photographs of them. And having them printed properly. Because I think they are really quite stunning. It really was the shadows they created, and hanging them together, and also playing with the light. Different lights differently. Warm light and cool light. And the kind of colours that would come out of white paper. And the shadows.

                              One of the first things I was taught in art school was that shadow is never grey. Or black. It ‘s mauve, it’s burgundy. It’s yellow. It’s all different colours. It was my son who pointed it out to me. Seriously. We were driving home on a day like today, really cloudy and he was only three or something. Three and a half. We were driving home, and he was sitting in the back seat. He say, ‘Mummy, look. Look at all the colours in the clouds.’ And I looked. And I think that is the first time in my life I ever saw colours in clouds. So then I asked him, ‘what colours do you see?’ And he started, ‘I see pink, I see green, I see yellow, I see purple, I see...’ It was the darndest thing. I never have forgotten (obviously) I have never forgotten it. So, my three year old taught me to look. Differently.

Debora                 Lovely. I love that story.

Sarah                    So, I think that is why I love grey, and I love anything with white, and shadow. Not using manufactured colour. The shadows, they stir something in me.

Debora                 It will be interesting to see how you use that in your next body of work. Do you have something in mind?

Sarah                    What I am going to do is submit this piece to various galleries around, and outside of Victoria, too. And I am also going to start exploring with different materials. I would like to start playing around with plastics, things like that that are more durable, although, I love the fact that paper is natural, is biodegradable, and it is transient. That is the other thing I love about this... is that it is not going to stay like this forever. The other thing too, is that, and I learned this as an artist, once i am kind of done with the work, I don’t really care what happens to it. Someone can come and buy it, or take it or I can give it away, or whatever, but when I am done, I don’t have any... there is only one painting I have an emotional attachment to that I will never sell, but anything else... It is kind of strange. Like if someone came in and said they wanted to buy this right now, I would say, oh great. Although, maybe not quite yet, I don’t’ think I am not really quite finished. But you know...

Debora                 Yes. This could be a template for a manufacturer too. It not is easily repeated, but it is not impossible to repeat.

Sarah                    I know I have had a few people say I need to get a design person in, and a marketing person. No. I just want to do the work. That is the most important thing to me.

Debora                 Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. 

Precarious Circumstances

Gallery 1580

1580 Cook St

Victoria BC

Debora Alanna is a multimedia artist living in Victoria, BC  visit her blog here: http://embellish4art.blogspot.ca/