“I really thrive off of obstacles and often see them as a director, so whenever I’m challenged by something, it’s just an opportunity for me to sit still, look and wait for the answer.”
Did you have any performance background prior to Living Theater?
Not at all. I ended up there after I dropped out of the San Francisco Art Institute. Poets, writers, musicians, actors — all different kinds of people were at the Living Theater. It was really an incubator for thought.
Part of learning and being there was working toward developing an intuitive muscle and becoming attuned to signals inside myself. A lot of those techniques were practiced in performance, in response to an audience member or just fully engaging with being human. It’s where I understood what it meant to be a living and working artist.
Seeing how your experience at Living Theater carries into your work today, were there any newly developed techniques from this show that you want to explore further in the future?
First we did explosions. I poured pulp and took it under the eight ton press, pressing down really fast until it exploded. This was the first time they’d ever done that in the studio. It created these really beautiful, almost impressionistic points that we used as a transfer onto the paper.
Then I started using my arm to draw directly through the pulp. This made a pattern that, on the surface, almost looked like tire marks. It’s a signature technique that I’m going to keep exploring — different ways my hands can separate and interact with the pulp to create these unique “constellations.”
The technique that really got me where I wanted to go didn’t come until the end of my time there. I was having trouble getting the right hues and saturation, so as soon as I did my first press, I’d pour pigment directly onto the papers. Throughout my career, pouring has been such a big part of my discovery process. A lot of that was from my own painting practice, but I was also thinking about Helen Frankenthaler and her pours – how revolutionary they were to abstract painting, their simplicity and power. They became a really nice compositional grounding for how I approached the transfers.
You’re also playing with time and permanence in maybe a different or new way.
That’s exactly how the title of the show and the sensation of the work happened. It really created this moment, this sensation of something being still in time and floating without gravity.
Were there any moments in experimenting that were particularly unexpected or challenging? Or was it more about leaning into an element of chance?
The process is what makes it fun. I really thrive off of obstacles and often see them as a director, so whenever I’m challenged by something, it’s just an opportunity for me to sit still, look and wait for the answer.
