First day questionnaire

Erin Willett


Senior



Material

What was the first material that you used to make art? How did that material come into your hands? Who told you how to use it? What was their background with that material? How is that material connected to your current process?
Drifting towards the elementary, my first material that I remember using in a way to create art was the pencil. I remember being in a drawing class when I was around five or six. My mother put me in this class due to the fact that I was drawing on things around the house. In this class, I was given a set of pencils ranging from 6B to 6H and guidance on how to use them. In this class we mainly drew from life. At this point I realized how difficult and entertaining drawing was, and how challenging it was to try and capture the world around me.



What materials have you worked with along the way that you would consider important to you current work? How did they each influence you current work?
I have worked with a lot of materials, but the ones that I still use in almost all my work are fabric, wood, paint, pencil, paper, pen, and printing. Whether it is a painting or a sculpture, all these materials are usually there. I tend to fancy myself more of a painter that sometimes creates 3-demensional paintings. My sculptures employ more questions that lie with painting aesthetic than with sculptural focus. In this way, using wood, fabric, and paint to make something that is not considered a painting is fun play on what an object truly is verses what an object is made from. I want to stop myself here and say that I do use many other materials in my sculptural work. These materials are just ever present and have led me to think about them.



Whose uses of material outside your work do you think most influenced you sense of materiality? Why?
I supposed manufactures and industrial creation of objects would be a large influence. The differences in the way things are created at the machined level and the way of creating from the hand interests me. The process that must have had to go into the development of a machine in order for that machine to then create an object. This removes an independent hand creating an object, thus removing the creators’ touch. The object comes out perfect and re-creatable, and is important to industry, but what is lost is the value of creation and materiality. Which spawns a wasteful society. Fine arts rely on the value of a created object and more value is placed upon it because it holds a deeper meaning than just its material statues. This leads me to a disappointing conclusion of the devaluing importance of art because of the devaluing importance of material.



Do you think of materials as foundational or contextual? Discuss?

In the arts, materials are very contextual in my viewpoint. One thing can be made in many different materials but the decision to make an object in one material relates to the meaning in which that material holds. It also relates to the current times and trends in the history of object making. For example, the use of plastic speaks of the past 150 years, the use of marble speaks of Grecian times and of indestructibility, and the use of wood speaks of nature and a semi temporary work.



How does the materiality and physicality of you body relate to the material of your work?

Mostly, my physicality relates in the importance of the handmade element to my work. This is important both contextually and visually. My physicality also relates to my work in scale. I am bound by my physical size and thus create in accordance with this size.



Think about your relationship to color as a material. Do you think about color as an objective force or as a subjective personal opportunity? And how has that played out in you work?

Color is very contextual and symbolic in my work. Color and color relationships hold a lot of back weight. It is one of the first noticeable things when looking at something. Whether I leave something is natural color, e.g. unfinished wood brown, it is still thought about in a subjective way as to define meaning, even though it is the objective color that it naturally comes. Color is so prominent that it has to ability to change the meaning and feeling of the work. As of lately, I use a lot of whites and blacks because of all of the symbolism that it holds. I have been very interested in the color gray as well, because I feel that it is anti- color but the most perceivable “color” to the human eye. We can see more variations of gray in the tonal range that any other color. Also it is simultaneously white and black.



Process

What was the first image making or material process that you saw that you found moving of inspirational?

Lately, I have realized that I have a process-oriented mind. Going back to that drawing class when I was five, I remember discovering a process of how to draw one particular thing down to a way to shade it and then practicing that way in which to do it. For this reason I tend to make and draw multiples of things and use variants with in them. I have done quite a bit of printmaking, and have come to really enjoy finding the glitches and self-destructing aspects of process creation and multiple runs. This process inspires me to try other ways of creating process-based images



What was the first process that you used in making art that felt powerful to you?

When I first started printmaking and had to use the lithography press. It had so much pressure and the images came out with very deep blacks, this felt very powerful in its own way. It also felt very fragile because there were so many steps in the creation of the image that had to be followed directly. There was an interesting duality to the printing, it resisted water and was printed on archival paper so come last lifetimes, but at any point in the printing one mistake could destroy it forever. This feeling of controlling the image was also powerful in its own regard.



What art process do you hate?

Personally, I hate tig welding. Its dark in the helmet and its hot and just really isn’t very rewarding when the creation is complete. I also hate talking for three hour about a work of art that took an hour for someone to make. I feel that it is an injustice to fellow arts time to talk about work that isn’t well thought out and isn’t well crafted. I don’t believe any artist to be so intelligent that they don’t have to actually create their work, and that they only have to think it for it to be in some way relevant to the art world. I don’t side with the artist as genius viewpoint, thus the artist only has to think it. Einstein was a genius but that genius is measured in his invention and studious practice.



What non-art process of making do you believe in?

I believe that all making of objects relies on intent. I believe in making something like a bed strictly for the function that it follows if that is the intent. Raushenberg made a bed for an art purpose and thus it functions in that way and not it a functional way.



What non-art process of making do you object to?

I object to the wasteful excessive object making that goes hand in hand with industry packaging. I object to that fact that tons of plastic is wasted on bottled water because the tap water isn’t clean enough. Even after recycling, there is waste. If every single bottle was recycled a large percentage is still lost in the remaking of a new plastic object for that aforementioned plastic bottle.



How does technique (both historical and your own) function in relation to materials that you have used?

Technique functions in much the same way that process functions. It is a large part of my work. The process of printing is also the technique that has been developed and then taught to me. With all technique, there is the taught verbatim way and then the learned edited variation of that way that comes from experimentation. In woodworking there is the way that I have been taught to cut and adjoin the wood and the way that I experiment with how to do that same task. Both of these are important, the taught way gave me an understanding of how to work with the material and the learning way helps me grow and expand as an artist and creator.



Do you think of there being a morality in terms of technique or process?

No, I don’t believe there to be a right or wrong, good or bad element to technique or process. There are artist that have painted with their own blood, which is part of their process, but I don’t believe moral is in any way related to a process until the technique or process impedes on another living things livelihood.



Make a list of ten verbs that go into the process of making your work?

Think draw cut build paint edit sand glue nail curse



What are the elements of your process in your work that feels the most private?

The anger and frustration that sometimes goes along trying to achieve exactly what I want from a piece. I feel really stupid getting so upset at a piece of paper or wood. There are many other things to get upset at in this world and it shouldn’t be a few pieces of wood. Also some of my work has a personal meaning to me that try to both hide in ambiguity but show in the work. This makes for a confusing piece that no one wants to dig deeper to find the meaning. I am working with choosing a side of the track to be on, whether it is showing this private element in an understandable way, or not putting it in the work at all.



What aspects of you process do you want to demonstrate/ have visible in your work?

I like to reference the process aspect in my work, but not so much that it is the meaning behind the work. I believe that this referring to the creation helps to enforce the handmade aspect of single person creation. With sculpture, I am not trying to fool someone into believing that the thing I created is something other that what it is. Each element to the creation holds its own weight.



How do you think about your work showing its relationship to time? Ie. Do you want the time/ process put into your work to show itself as it really happened or is that something you play around with?

The time it takes to create something is always secondary to whatever I’m creating. I don’t use time in any conceptual or contextual way in my work. Sometimes it takes hours or days to make something that looks like it took a second, and its not necessary that someone know that that occurred. The necessary aspect was to make it look instantaneous. This occurs only if it couldn’t truly happen instantaneously. I not trying to hide or highlight how much time sometime something took. If a work needs a moment of fast and immediacy, sometime it doesn’t occur on those terms. In this way, I suppose the viewer is fooled but that is not the intention and not relevant to the concept.



Where do you set limits in your process?

I set limits with in a process in order to hopefully achieve a new outcome. For example, I ask myself: if I stop myself from finishing a piece of wood and leave it in its rough state, what will that add to the overall finished work? What will that take away?



What processes are you interested in bringing into your work?

I would like to work with more carving and mold making processes. Since I am a minor in sculpture I have not had the chance to take many classes that the majors have. Material wise there is still a lot that I do not know how to do. This is only my fourth sculpture class so there are many sculptural processes that I would love to learn.







Meaning

What was you first metaphor that you can remember using in your work?

This question predates my explicit memory. I have been using symbols and metaphors in drawings since at least middle school. I found a painting from 7th grade where I drew an eye in the sky and a metaphor for religion. Also I think my dad used to listen to a lot of Alan Parsons Project, so this might not have been a metaphor but more an illustration of a song. Either way, metaphors and symbolic uses of imagery appear a lot in my work. Sometimes it gets too heavy and no one besides be can understand what I am saying. This next year I want to work with clarity of meaning.



What metaphor/s have meant the most to you in your life?

I relate to metaphors about the working class, the poor, and the underprivileged. Not that I consider myself that poor or underprivileged, I just relate to it well. My mother and father teach special needs children, so I was raised very hardworking and in a way of thinking that is very sympathetic if not empathetic. As an adult, I believe that issues of injustice need to be brought to light more often than they are. I hate the feeling of living blissfully ignorant in my American society even though often time I am sucked into it.



Where else is meaning found in your work aside from metaphor?

I portray meaning in my work through historic references and symbolic references. Sometimes I will be so forward to use text that is a pun. I use found objects to imply meaning (which I realize isn’t the Duchamp’ian way of using found objects) Really I use anything that is in some way referential to social, political, or cultural times to imply meaning. Even if that thing is texture, color, object, or size. I’m beginning to believe I place too much meaning into things.



How do you use know metaphors (or even clichés) in relation to mysteries of meaning (or unknown meanings)

Sometimes this line gets fussy in my work. Simply because one thing might hold meaning to me and thus I believe it holds meaning to others, when in truth it has no meaning to anyone else than myself. I am trying to be clearer in my work to a degree, but not dumb it down so much that there is a lose of meaning or sincerity.



Do you find more meaning in the realization of a work or in the process of making it? Discuss how these two relate for you?

Making work helps me investigate and really contemplate my initial idea of meaning. Making work is like meditating with an idea. The initial realization of the work is only a spark and thus is usually very surface level in its realization. Even if the initial idea seems golden and profound, the actual making of the work show why and if it was truly golden or just gold plated.





Give an example where the “meaning” of a work of yours has evolved over the making of it?

I started with this idea of carving an androgynous bottom and torso with all sex indicator obscured. It was going to be painted in all the colors of Maybeline, which was supposed to represent all colors of people. This torso was supposed to symbolize all people’s sexual desires. I was trying to make a statement about how forwardly sexual our society has become and how that relates to our excessive nature. I used sugar cubes as a symbolic element to represent modern excess. Sugar represented this to me because of the oppressive history of sugar and because it was once highly desired but is now cheap as dirt. People lost lives and families were destroyed to have more flavorful food. That’s short phrasing it obviously, but I thought it was a good metaphor to show the depreciating nature of wanting something to excess. What happened in the end of the piece was a riddle of symbols. I realized that the one bottom and torso cannot possibly represent all sexual desires and that sugar has many other connotations than the slave trade and Brazilian sugar farming. I reworked the piece and put in more open sexual references, painted the torso gray to represent lack of color and placed it in an awkward position upon the wall to force the viewer feel sexualized and objectified. This was an effort to make the viewer feel spotlighted in their sexuality. There were still a few problems with understanding of meaning. What I truly wanted was to raise the question of whether our society has become over sexualized thus devaluing the beauty and intimacy within sex or whether we are a forward thinking society that realizes we are all sexual beings and is coming to terms with that. I realized my true intent a little too late in the piece but it allowed me to realized my question and understand it more thoroughly. So the next piece I did with this same question in mind was much clearer and easier to wrap my mind around.