Gallery Hours:     12:30-5:00 Tuesday through Friday

1:30-5:00 Saturday, 2:00-4:00 Sunday

The Figure Untamed: Desire as Resistance

Bodies are seen, experienced, and represented through a nexus of powerful cultural taboos designed to regulate pleasure. Even in our contemporary, western experience, ideas about decorum work to create unspoken myths and fantasies around bodies as loci of desire. Those who are outspokenly positive regarding issues of pleasure, like advice columnist Dan Savage and performance artist Susie Bright, operate outside of the mainstream. Despite the gains of recent decades we still live in a patriarchal society where those who demand a right to desire and pleasure are marginalized, where women are warned not to dress "slutty" or else risk "getting themselves raped," and where some American politicians continue to curtail access to reproductive health services for their constituents.

Those who succumb to the "pleasures of the flesh" are often seen as weak, wicked, sinful, sick, and in need of reformation. Take, for example, athlete Tiger Woods' tearful announcement that he was seeking "treatment" after his many extramarital affairs became public knowledge, or New York representative Anthony Weiner's resignation from Congress after sending images via text message of his shirtless torso and underwear-clad erection to young women who were not his wife. How different would public discourse be if those men had just come out and said, "Sexting gets me off," or, "I really enjoy sex." What if President Bill Clinton had said, "Hillary and I have an open relationship," instead of lying under oath about the nature of his encounters with Monica Lewinsky? And then there are the confusing homophobic proclamations by presidential candidate Michelle Bachman's husband, Marcus Bachman. According to Mr. Bachman,

"Barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined; and, just because
someone thinks it or feels it, doesn't mean we're supposed to go down that road.
That's what's called 'the sinful nature,' and we have a responsibility as parents
and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings to move
into the action steps..."1

The word barbarians in this case stands in for homosexuals, but by extending the logic of this argument, he could just as easily be talking about anyone who takes guiltless pleasure in his/her bodily existence. Eschewing pleasure, or at least expressing one's reluctance to fully experience it, is not limited to right-wing political figures, partisan pundits, and religious fundamentalists. In a 1983 interview published in Ethos, radical theorist and writer, Michel Foucault admitted,

"I think that pleasure is a very difficult behaviour. It's not as simple as that to enjoy one's self. And I must say it's my dream. I would like and hope I die of an overdose of pleasure of any kind. Because I think it's really difficult and I always have the feeling that I do not feel the pleasure, the complete total pleasure and, for me, it's related to death. Because I think that the kind of pleasure I would consider as the real pleasure would be so deep, so intense, so overwhelming that I couldn't survive it."2

Foucault expressed an anxiety shared by many of us as we engage is a system of commodification and commerce that is specifically designed to either help us ignore our own mortality, or to conceal the abject condition of our corporeality (think Botox, boob-jobs, and Viagra). What this exhibition explores instead are artworks that locate power in pleasure, celebrate sensuality of form, and show the human figure without the usual controlling devices of modesty, shame, and fear.

Erin Finley creates outrageous imagery with meticulous line work to bring the viewer into her compulsive, violent, gratifying dream-world, where pin-up girls unabashedly spread their legs to reveal that they are, in fact, menstruating; where innocent-looking nymphs torture hooded men; and where fresh-faced co-eds assault us with their casual disregard for themselves and others. Finley is influenced as much by Tarantino and Disney as by historical Dutch still-life painting and contemporary performance art. Each one of her discomfiting images imply multiple, non-linear narratives, and offer viewers an ambivalent, unsettling experience.

Heyd Fontenot jokingly claims to be "creat[ing] a little rest area on the highway of controlling, judgemental, porn-consuming, right-wing perversion." Using paint on panel and paper, Fontenot strives to allow people to approach the shame and dissatisfaction they feel about their own bodies with empathy, kindness, and patience. The nude figures in his paintings offer seduction and eroticism in their power. Their focused stares reject objectification and suggest that our secrets are not to be found in our pants but in our eyes, instead.

Keira Sunshine Norton draws upon her experience as a sex worker when making her strange, anthropomorphic, ceramic sculptures. The works playfully encourage us to enjoy our animal natures, while also warning us of the Siren's song. In as much as the pieces evoke folk tales, they also suggest contemporary narratives about desire in which we are beset with confusion regarding how (or if) we might inhabit traditional roles.

The interviews that follow are a window into the artists' creative processes, and a venue for the artists to explain the framework of ideas that inform their practices. The un-cut interviews have been edited collaboratively by the interviewer and interviewee.

--Darren Lee Miller, Assistant Professor of Art
Director, Bowman~Penelec~Megahan Art Galleries

1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8spCOEePSo

2 "Michel Foucault: An Interview," Ethos, 1 (2), 1983, pp. 4-9. Reprinted as "The Minimalist Self." In Lawrence Kritzman (Ed.), Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings of Michel Foucault, 1977-1984, pp. 3-16. New York: Methuen, 1988. This quotation, and part of the title for this exhibition, also came to our attention indirectly from bell hooks in, "Eating the other: Desire and resistance." Black Looks: Race and Representation, pp. 21-39. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Erin Finley
Sex By Proxy, 2011
Image courtesy of the artist

Interview with ERIN FINLEY

Darren Lee Miller: Cinderacula? (This is the chat ID that appeared on my computer when Erin and I began our Skype session).

Erin Finley: I didn’t know you could even see that. It’s from my MFA thesis. I made these huge punk paintings and the series was called ‘Cinderacula’, which, as a word, is made from the reverse parts of Warhol's nickname, "Drella”….because he was part Cinderella and part vampire, according to people who knew him.

DLM: Do you count Warhol as an influence?

EF: I enjoy his flattening of things, metaphorically speaking. He’s got all these loaded images – whether it’s Marilyn or an electric chair -- and although they are all charged with their own symbolic import, he unsentimentally pares them down to their essence. I recently read that his work comes without any extraneous existential baggage and I like that characterization.

DLM: Though I have always attached my own anti-establishment agenda to his work. You know, I always imagined he was working against fame/culture/commodity in DuChampian-style, undermining normative values from the inside; but I may just be seeing what I want to see.

EF: Yeah, I have this great black and white photo in my studio of Warhol co-conspiring with some of the other Anti-Establishmenteers, like Burroughs and Duchamp.

DLM: So, this is not much of a segue, but I really enjoy your work. My colleagues and I admire your drawings, but some find the work to be discomfiting.

EF: Perfect, that's part of the intention.

DLM: In one of your drawings, there's a woman bent in half wearing big, expensive, heels, a Yoko Ono bikini-top, and nothing else. Her head rests in a pool of her own hair, suggesting a surface on which she’s doing yoga or some kind of head-stand-contortion. The focal points of the work are her vagina and anus. The pose is impossible, contorted, and creates interesting shapes in the negative spaces. In the foreground, we see tiny, little people, maybe a string duo accompanying the fat-lady as she sings, and the little people appear to be from the 19th century. The nude figure acknowledges them, and seems to use a toothpick to conduct, as if she's the conductor. A small audience watches their balcony seats in one of the shoes, topped by a golden ribbon -- the only color in the image.

EF: Yes, you’re right, it’s really not the shoes and the mini-opera going on around her feet that are the focal point in “Operetta Yoko”. Instead, the eye is drawn upward toward those orifices and then cascades back down again, sort of traversing the body. I got the idea for the pose from Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”, in a section about the ‘Arabic Zero’. The negative spaces in “Operetta Yoko” are designed to be engaging to look at, in terms of space and line. The whole image is sort of a re-hash of an earlier drawing called "Woman with D’Orsay Manolo Blahniks and Bong.” Opera is an elevated art form and I loved the look of it in miniature scale, against the larger, pointedly offensive scenario over head. The gold ribbon is just a touch of ink bling.

DLM: You seem to play a lot with “High” vs. “Low.”

EF: I'm really into clashes between polar opposites: high/low, right/wrong, light/dark.

DLM: Why do binary extremes interest you?

EF: I enjoy working with tension. I'm always looking for an ambivalent dynamic and so my tendency is to work with polarized ideas – issues, motifs and so on -- because I like feeling unresolved tension in the work.

DLM: Personally, I find the images to be erotic, and I like that. I always want more eroticism in my world. I think that's why I'm so fascinated by popular advertising, and I'm surprised by what they can get away with, but the divide between high and low is often not so clear. I'm thinking specifically of shoes, for which you seem to either have a fetish, or maybe you just use them as signifiers of some of the extremes you mentioned. As the world economy collapses, how do we feel about a $1400 pair of shoes?

EF: I enjoy that people have different responses. Though, to be honest, I don’t think of my drawings as erotic, and I generally feel disdain for erotic art. I prefer to think of my work as "Jackass," starring women. In the Seventies, Iggy Pop would cut himself onstage to make the audience feel bad. “I’m going to hurt their feelings”, he’d say. I’m interested in cruelty and hurt feelings.

DLM: Well, whether you meant it to be erotic or not, your drawing of Rafael Nadal was my "Teenage Dream" moment.

EF: That one was fun to draw. I wanted a Sofia Coppola look for that one, very soft and cotton candy-ish. To go back to your earlier question about the shoes in my drawings, you are right to observe loadedness in terms of the shoes, particularly since I usually do mention brands in my titles. Manolo Blahnik and Louis Vuitton are status brands. I’d read an article in the “New York Times” about the height of women's platform heels and how this height tends to have an inverse relationship to the performance of the stock market. But I also just really love shoes.

DLM: So there's some coded reference to economic conditions; perhaps, but what I meant by the high-low line being blurry for me is this: is it classy or trashy to spend more money than most people make in a week or two for a pair of Louboutins or Manolo Blahniks? Is conspicuous consumption high or low? Or something else? One person's bling is another person's gaudy ostentation.

EF: I don’t imbue the work with judgments like that. Yes, the Louboutin shoes carry a whole array of associations surrounding the kind of people who wear them, but I prefer to have the work unapologetically shrug these determinations off. I like that the work becomes more problematic because I haven’t taken a position on consumerism via the shoes. In this way the shoes are foremost beautiful pseudo-sculptural entities, and secondarily they function as a device for contrast against, say, some of the more foul aspects of the imagery.

DLM: Like exposed maxi-pads and glamorized drug use? And three hot girls in lingerie who are poised to torture a bound, hooded man in "Guantanamo Girls?” (Except there's an intimation that maybe he wants it).

EF: Yes, definitely those things. With that Guantanamo image the man's foot is tilted just enough that we might suppose he's getting comfortable, but we can’t be sure.

DLM: There's an implied narrative, as much as there can be in a single, still image, but I'm unsure of where it's going, and I'm definitely unsure of how I feel about it. Mostly, the beauty of it seduces me. I mean, I know how angry and betrayed I'd feel if a student of mine were sitting in the back of my class snorting cocaine off the table while I was lecturing, but your willingness to suspend judgment in favor of presenting a humorous, magical-realist tableau also seems to translate to a viewer's judgment-free, yet ambivalent experience.

EF: That's really the response I like best: that you feel ambivalent about the drawings because they are about really bad things, but they’re also so measuredly calibrated that you’re not entirely sure. This is why I stay away from employing symbols as tools of judgment, since those things would so transparently sway a viewer.  I like for the images to imply certain ideas, but offer no certain narrative trajectory, no absolutely recognizable pattern.

DLM: How did you get started on this series? You play a lot with scale, line/shading/rendering and other compositional elements, and many of the images seem to be moments from a dream or some other reality.

EF: A lot of the drawings are autobiographical though, granted, they’ve been put through what Kurt Vonnegut called the “hocus-pocus Laundromat.” As an artist I want freedom and so I try to relinquish any feelings of guilt or judgment when I work. Humor is used to complicate the work a little, to make it harder to contend with all the gravitas. You're looking at macabre things and yet there's some slapstick element, or some tiny comedic vignette happening in a corner.

DLM: Can you also talk a little about the formal choices you make when building the drawings?

EF: I work on the drawings upside down as much as right side up. I flip them around because I love cutting intricate angles and working with negative spaces. Laying them out in pencil takes a good portion of the time spent on a whole piece, but in the end, I use a cartographer’s pen to get the details. During the process stage, I'll draw and erase a ton of times until the composition has the dynamism that I'm after, which is why the maxi pad image has all these tiny little renderings at the bottom of the page. Those are spots where I couldn’t completely erase previous marks, so I drew in a lot of minutiae. Somewhere at the bottom of the page there’s a tiny little man, he’s a writer with a desk and a typewriter, and someone’s got a gun to his head. That drawing has a bunch of small vignettes like this.

DLM: Are you working as much for visual harmony as to illustrate one moment of a narrative?

EF: Yes I would say that's true, though sometimes overthinking that stuff can be a handicap because it keeps me from, you know, being fluid about the process.

DLM: I once did some research to link Freud's theory of "The Uncanny" to humor, jokes. The basic gist is that some subjects are unspeakable in polite company and that we can only break the silence of decorum by making bawdy jokes. Think Sarah Silverman. So, in your work, "Sex By Proxy," we see a transvestite licking a telephone receiver. The phone kind of looks like a cake, and it is held aloft by a little fairy in flip-flops and a bathing suit. At first I thought the main character was a flat-chested woman, but the bulging crotch gave her away. She's kneeling on some wrinkled fabric, a blanket maybe. There's a bucket of dead fish at the edge of the blanket. My first reactions to this image were: Wow, gorgeous! And what's with the bucket of fish?

EF: I love that idea about the uncanny being connected to humor. I recently had Eric Cameron (one of my MFA mentors) mention that a similar theme (regarding Harold Bloom's thoughts on "strangeness") is present in my work. I added the bucket to "Sex by Proxy" because fish carry all sorts of religious meanings. I wanted them to suggest plentitude, or, as a motif, to recall some Renaissance still-life scene, but I also wanted them to appear un-special, so that despite the fact they are plainly visible in the composition, their function is only to accent the larger scene.

DLM: To what extent is it important for viewers to clearly understand the content of your work? The bucket of fish did bring Dutch still-life painting to my mind, but I'm trained as an artist.

EF: An audience doesn’t need to get my work. I suppose there are specific nods to things other artists know about, and not just the history of art surrounding Dutch still-lifes. One look at "Girl Doing Blow During an Art History Lecture," reminds anyone who went to art school of getting sleepy, and maybe a little bored, during those darkened lectures.

DLM:  How do you support yourself and your studio art practice?

EF: I teach art part-time with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, mostly anatomical drawing classes.

DLM: I can see how that level of observation and craft really plays out in your drawings, though I’d characterize the drawing style as self-referential. The outline-work and stippling acknowledges that it is drawing, rather than being photo-realistic rendering.

EF: I also look at Disney movies when I’m making my own artwork, because I love their use of elastic line.

DLM: "The Princess and the Dildo-Bong!"

EF: In “Sex by Proxy,” I designed the central figure by riffing off Goofy’s long, elastic torso.

DLM: So, Disney and Warhol are in your "influence" wheelhouse. What and who else?

EF: There’s Laurel Nakadate and Attila Lukacs, but I also draw a lot from things that aren’t art, which helps me stay receptive to all sorts of inspiration. I'll watch a Quentin Tarantino movie and think, "How can I make this happen as a drawing?”

DLM: You're Canadian, from Toronto. Do you think your nationality is an important consideration for us viewing your work down here below the great lakes?

EF: At the Hallwalls show (Buffalo, 2011) I was wondering whether anyone would object to “Guantanamo Girls.”  No one did.  Overall, I think the sensibilities translate pretty easily.

Heyd Fontenot
Aleks with Seven Others, 2008
Image courtesy of the artist

Interview with HEYD FONTENOT

Valerie Gilman: Lets start with the essay - can you tell me what stands out for you as something that you are in agreement with?
Heyd Fontenot: Well, the idea of a public sex scandal and why someone else's sex life is of concern to the public. People seem to be shocked when a public figure has an active sex life.  We have so much shame associated with desire in American culture, so much so that I think most people can't enjoy anything sexual unless they can configure it to be naughty and forbidden. We've raised a nation of perverts because we've been so actively oppressive. We are still haunted by the deep roots of our puritanical beginnings. It's because that rigid mindset is off balance and not accepting of our biology. There is no give-take, push-pull, yin-yang ...it's all very black and white, with no sense of the harmony between opposing forces. There is no balance between desire and responsibility – these are ideas that are not approached reasonably by conservatives. To them, it’s all about control. Look at nature as the metaphor for desire.  We are at nature's mercy, and nature has no conscience.  Of course, people try to personify nature as "God".  "God spared us" or "God has a plan, to which we are not privy." But Nature will do what it will - without regard for our plans or our tastes. Look at New Orleans, they push that Mississippi River around with levies, but the River seeks out it's intended path and it will flood the city.  I mean, I love New Orleans - I don't want it to be destroyed, but it is in the path of a mighty river
VG: Yes, I couldn't agree more about New Orleans.  In a sense I think you are talking about the dieter’s control and binge, right.
HF: Yes, it's a struggle to control the body. The diet metaphor is good. And some people look much better when they are 30 pounds "overweight.” We may have this ideal in our minds, but it has nothing to do with nature and what will eventually come to pass.
VG: I guess the question is if we take away the sense of control and allow a more free flow and balance- do we lose the excitement of heightened energy with the push against taboo?
HF: We've been programmed to act and react to the oppressive/judgmental, so yes, we would lose that sense of excitement - that tension.  This generation, and all the previous generations of Americans, we have this relationship with our bodies, but perhaps future Americans and citizens of the world could benefit from a more holistic approach to bodies and relationships.
VG: So how do you see your artwork playing with these ideas if you do?
 HF: Well, I do. I think and perhaps I'm misguided but I think that my work approaches these issues in a roundabout manner. Firstly, I feel that if an artist’s works are figurative, and perhaps have a narrative or a political stance, they are in danger of becoming illustrations. I am careful not to spell out ideas so specifically, but I do "model behavior" in my work.
VG: Model a kind of open acceptance of sexuality as a part of the human relationship?
HF: I try to present the nude in an approachable, intimate, positive light - in opposition to presenting the figure as object. What's funny about this is that I'm realizing my hypocrisy, because what I call "controlling" in Conservative, I call "behavior modeling" in myself, and it's two sides of the same coin.
VG: I had a lot of fun thinking about how your figures play for me. What I was thinking about was that they are like character sketches- specific people engaged in a specific narrative that I do not know the whole story of.
HF: Yes, I don't know the whole story either. In fact, sometimes there's a vision, sometimes there is just a vague notion of the narrative.  I don't think I'm writing the narrative as much as I'm experiencing it WITH you.
VG: I was going to ask about your experience of making them- and how they function for you- this seems to touch on it- can you say more?
HF: I feel like it's my responsibility to manifest these works for the time being - perhaps for a larger public, but maybe just for me and MY understanding of my place in the world. I feel like these aren't completed concepts that I am then recording, I feel like they accrue meaning AS they are being made. And the human figure is compelling- it's our mirror. I've also always been interested in biographies.  I want to know how other people have functioned and negotiated the world. And our bodies are temporary and of this world and our carriage as we try to move through this world and relate to other people. So, our bodies are actually NOT ourselves, but it's the closest thing we have at the moment to identify with.  It's our physical place-holder, so that we can be a part of the world Going back to the idea of the human figure and how we are obsessed with our own images, not necessarily our own portraits, but images of fellow humans.  How often are we looking at some completely abstract or random pattern or texture and we happen upon a human face.  We have some inherent need to SEE ourselves or at least another mammal. This idea reminds me of what I call "house porn" - home decorating magazines. This is the model to aspire towards, this perfect house, everything is in place, and it shows no signs of life.  There is no mess.  Perhaps they've "staged" the photos with a cutting board and a single apple, but it's complete artifice, and THAT is what we feel most comfortable displaying.  "LOOK at my life, see how perfect it is???"  No loose ends, nothing out of place, and a complete and utter FICTION.
HF: We have difficulty with our messiness and our uncertainty; and actually, I think that's why fundamentalism is so popular. It takes away questions. It's all answers, and if they don't have the answers, then it's God's plan. What's so frightening about not knowing? Not knowing compels me to search, but when I know everything, it's finished.
VG: It is almost like you are talking to me about my current life situation and you don't even know it! I guess this is one of the things about art making- that others stories can be brought in.
HF: I'm laughing now.  You had no idea what you were getting into, did you? Yes, absolutely - there are those universal truths.
VG: I do not think there are universal truths, but there are common experiences.  And there is a heck of a lot of room for projection. I can see something in your work and say it relates to my life- and in fact when you were making it it had nothing to do with either my life or what I thought was similar.
HF: I think by universal truth, I meant some wisdom that is very broad, like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" ...but maybe, if we can divorce ourselves from our concept of time, and everything is happening right now, maybe I made this work just for you or I haven't even made it yet, and I'm going to be inspired by what's happening in your life at this moment. So, yes, I think in my work, I'm attempting to model behavior, so that people can approach their own trauma with more kindness and patience.  And I think by trauma, I'm referring to how much shame and fear and dissatisfaction we feel with ourselves and our bodies, and how unfortunate that is.
VG: Progress is a figment of our imagination- a way to make us feel better about ourselves and our struggles.
HF:  Well bummer! ha ha.  Oh, I know it's all futile, but if I "go there", then I'll lose all interest in working, and working is what makes me the happiest and most peaceful. So I will agree with your statement about "progress being bogus", but I will decline to think about it this week- I have too much futile scrambling around to do...
VG: That is fair. I want to pull us back around on a thought: I see some relationship happening between the need to make work that responds to some of the challenges of our lives- the messiness- the not knowing- and the compulsion to search instead of believing that we know just because it is more comfortable to believe that, and the heightened sexual energy that comes with working against the taboos. It is about creating art out of tension, and living in tension. There is a need to find a sense of peace. And there is a need to have a sense of aliveness and reason.  I find work that is all about peace, calm, pleasure rather boring. I need the sense of tension- the real life struggle. On the other hand- I could use a little rest from the constant searching.
HF: Oh, no need to fear - we will always be surrounded by tension!
I think maybe I've just created a little "rest area" on the highway of controlling, judgmental, porno-consuming, right-wing perversion.  I know there are certain things that are sexier and more exciting because someone has described it as "wrong", but I also think there is terrific excitement about really SEEING someone, and in turn, having someone really know you.  I think what is missing from so much sexually-themed work is a real sense of intimacy.
VG: Ah.  And maybe that is why we have a compulsion toward the new lover instead of the profound intimacy of the long term lover.
HF: Well, yes, we get hung up on that "new love" and those "new love chemicals", because they are very different than the married feelings. Once a woman told me, "I think your work is sexy, but it's not because of the nudity, it's because of the expressions."  I loved that, and I think she totally understood my work.  Our secrets are not in our pants, or our secrets are in our eyes.
VG: I was just thinking about how many of your figures look out of the canvas at the viewer.
HF: I found it important when I first began working with the figure to not present the models as passive.  "Oh, you want to look at me, well, I'm going to look back at you."  They express a  rejection of being objectified.
VG:  Much like Ingres'  Odalisque.
HF: Yes, which was a scandalous painting in it's day!
VG: It still has energy today and I think for the same reason.
HF: ...but also, going back to the idea of "new love" and "old married love", it's different - but I think it's also the same.  In either case, we're looking to connect.
VG: But they do not have a "come hither" expression. It is more a “yes I am here”...and….
 HF: I don't ask my models to "make love to the camera". I don't necessarily want them to "act".  I want them to "be".  ...Although, in certain situations, I will ask them to act, for a particular pose.  But I want the experience of modeling for them, to be one that focuses on their being. I am careful not to sexualize my sessions with models - I think there is that very popular scenario of the artist being "involved" with his/her models.  And for the sake of up-ending that story, I don't often enter into sexually explicit subject matter in my work.
VG: So then are you always working from photographs?
HF: yes, photographs.
VG: I have wondered why I do not experience them as titillating - but rather as direct and vulnerable… maybe vulnerable is the wrong word.
HF: Well, they ARE nude, and there's something inherently vulnerable about being uncovered. But perhaps not entirely vulnerable, because they seem also self-possessed, I would think.
VG: They are not just nude.
HF: Right, nudity can be a metaphor, because eventually - what they are is “available” and “present” and...In fact, some people will hesitate to model, saying "Do I have to be naked?" and I usually counter with, "No, you GET to be naked." We are so hung up about being naked.  (I'm including myself, because I have hesitation about it too - of course, if it weren't a powerful subject for me, why would I be engaged in this work for so long?)  But nakedness isn't any more real than the concept of time.  I feel that some of my models have gone through a major transition when modeling for me.  It's a powerful thing to throw out your fears about being vulnerable and exposed, and I think it's revelatory to find out that you may be exposed, but you aren't "over-exposed".
VG: Is there a moral issue with being "involved " with the model?
HF: Well, usually, my models are people in my life, and among those have been people with whom I have had intimate relationships.  But I think my hesitation about it has more to do with the tradition of artists recruiting models but really, it's a way to recruit new lovers.  So, it's a bait-and-switch.  It's not ethical - that's a scam. And the producers of artists bio-pics LOVE LOVE LOVE that kind of lewd scenario. It's a cliché' about being decadent and sleazy. It's almost laughable, if it weren’t so tragic.
HF: and that's not at all what I want for my work...  Models have to trust me, not just to show up and take off their clothes, but to be present and powerful and to LET me see them. I spend hours looking at someone, as I'm rendering their image.  I get to know them in a very specific way - not just becoming familiar with their features, but I find that I'm actually meditating over their images. I didn't realize this at first, but by asking someone to model, I'm agreeing to spending a long time being with them and thinking about them. They leave the studio after an hour or two, then I have all of this work to do.  I could be with their image for weeks, months, years...I'm studying them. They are my subject ...and my focus.
VG: And when you see them again- after working with the images for a long time- has your relationship to them or your perception of them changed?
HF: Oh, absolutely - they are strangely familiar, if that makes sense - even if it's someone that's been in my life for a while, the amount of attention and focus I've given them is jarring when I see them again.  In our regular lives, we just don't spend that kind of time focused on someone in the same way. Sometimes, I think the work becomes even more real for me than the person.  Sometimes I would have the impulse to tell them, "Hey!  I have a drawing in my studio that looks just like you...!"
VG: That is great! I am thinking about projection- and our human need to project our reality/experience/emotions onto what we are seeing in front of us. Do you think it is really possible for an artist to see beyond his projection, or even important for him to, to the other persons reality? At the beginning of the interview you talked about the figure as a mirror.
HF: Ok, too much to think about! Well, it's all through our own filters.  What I see may be specific to me, and as we were talking about universal truths, this would NOT be a universal truth, but my experience in reporting would be a truth for me.
VG: I am thinking about the way in which looking- really seeing another person by painting them- is also a way to see ourselves.
HF: Yes, absolutely, I think that's it. I'm sure that I like biographies, because in truth, I'm trying to find my OWN way through the world, and so I'm projecting myself all along THEIR story. And in looking at these people’s portraits that you don't know, and you may never meet, but still there is something compelling...  and what is that?
VG: And then as audience we get to project ourselves into your paintings.  And understand ourselves a bit better for the looking through a different lens.
HF: Yes, and I think that's actually been useful to me in my practice as an artist, and it's helped me recruit models - they CAN see themselves in my work.  It's like watching a ride at the amusement park - why just watch, when you can ride??? I'm afraid that as I get older and lose more and more impulse control that I will start to interrupt plays and movies and performances, because I will want to join in.  I can't just watch, I'll want to participate.
VG: I thought you were supposed to gain impulse control with age... It is a great image of someone climbing up on stage to be a part of it all.
HF: I think it's a bell curve.  1) You don't have it as a child, then 2) you are socialized and learn to be obedient, and you have it for a period, then 3) you realize it wasn’t' so important and that you have limited time so "fuck it, I'm going to do what I need to do." And again we find ourselves at this topic of control.  Being controlled or exercising self-control. Maybe this struggle is supposed to exist.  If it's a moral question, then you have to say, "God granted us free will", so the infuriating thing is, GOD grants us free will, but there are PEOPLE that deny our free will and want to dictate behavior.
HF: Are you tired yet?
VG: I love how this conversation has come around full circle.
Yes, I was just thinking that it may be time to draw it to a close.
HF: Thank you for doing this.
VG: It has been a great pleasure. Thank you.

Keira Sunshine Norton
Encantadas Series, Crimson Jane, 2009
Image courtesy of the artist

Interview with KEIRA SUNSHINE NORTON

Valerie  Gilman: I thought we could start with a little bit of your background. I see that you finished an undergrad degree in Anthropology with a minor in Art- then went back for BFA a few years later and then a few years later went for the MFA at Indiana University. Can you tell me a little more about the personal journey and the decisions that you made?

Keira Sunshine Norton: It took me awhile to commit to an academic career as an artist- I had the impulse to create- to draw, sculpt, make jewelry since I was a kid, but felt more secure going into an academic field (anthropology, ha ha!), because I guess I wasn't ready for the commitment of pursuing art.  I also spent much of my adolescence and early twenties battling depression and low self-esteem, and trying to somehow discover the key to existence through self-indulgence/self-destructive lifestyle choices. I worked for several years as a stripper, which was in some ways a waste, but has become a powerful source of inspiration for my work-there is almost something karmic about it.

VG: Tell me more about that sense of inspiration coming from the experience and what you mean by it being karmic.

KSN: I knew from an early age that I wanted to be an artist, but, naturally, I had not yet found my struggle, or the thing I wanted my work to be about. This would have to come with experience. It sounds easy to say in hindsight, but I was also depressed as a teen, and so my motivation to create would come and go.  As I struggled with feelings of low self-worth and weirdness, I started being labeled as "sexy", and found my sexual attractiveness to be a source of confusion and power.  I kind of knew that I would somehow utilize this power-that it would be something I "did", but that it was problematic and not an end in itself. The time I spent in the sex industry was in many ways wasteful-I didn't save any money, I didn't concentrate on academics, I was in some harmful and stupid relationships, but I knew that it would give me some knowledge I needed, some part I could take away when I was through, and I have.  I guess I consider it Karmic because I felt that I had to do it in order to understand what I'm doing now- a cause and effect relationship. Despite my issues, I always felt confident that I would find my way back to art.

VG: I have spoken with women who said sex work was empowering- that there is a way in which owning the stage with your sexual presence is powerful. It does seem complex though. I can see where this is great fodder for the work that you are doing now. Can you tell me about how you see these pieces playing with the ideas?
KSN: For me, these sculptures transmit a sense of the power of the seductive woman, both individually, and multiplied several times, as it is in the club setting, where you have several simultaneously public and private performances occurring at once. When working in such a competitive setting, you spend as much time observing other performers as you do wrapped up in your own performance.  However, when they encounter my sculptures most people probably do not put them in this context.  The essential impact I aim to make is that they be both sexually captivating, and confusing.  Seductive and dangerous.  I want them to remind the viewer of his/her own animal nature.


VG: I see them as both very provocative and also very approachable- in a way I think that the animal aspect makes them feel less threatening- more mythic- less taboo. They allow me to enjoy my sexual animal nature. I am intrigued by the choice of the dolphin. In your artist statement you talk about the "Legendary half-human, half- dolphin trickster of the Amazon river, Los Encantados (the Enchanted Ones). Can you tell me more about the legend and how your work relates to it?

KSN: Yes, they are approachable, even humorous.  I'm making fun of the whole sexy woman thing, and also saying that it can be fun and powerful.  I chose dolphins as a subject of exaggerated sexuality because they are one of the few species of animals that are both self-aware and highly sexual. The danger that my pieces convey is supposed to come from their teeth, and I've heard (mostly men) say that they felt them to be disturbing, though this is mostly due to their overtly sexual nature. The legend of the Encantado comes from the Amazon regions, where the Boto, or Amazon River dolphin lives.  There are many versions of this legend, but my favorite is a popular one, wherein the Boto transforms into a tall, light-skinned man, who wears a big woven hat to conceal the blow hole in his forehead.  This good-looking, charming man likes to party, and he usually leaves the party with a woman, whom he transports to the underwater regions, the Encante, a kind of watery paradise.  Though it involves a male figure, I connect this with mermaid fables, which warn about the consequences of temptation, and the fear that too much pleasure could be dangerous. I particularly enjoy this version for its humorous details and modern context.

VG: In the Boto legend aren't there also love children that come of the escapades in pleasure?

KSN: Yes, I think so, but my Encantadas are not these.  They refer more to the partially transformed animal or human.  They are chimeras, siren-like.

VG: The sirens were fabled to lead sailors to their deaths on the rocky islands as I recall. Do you have a sense of the narratives that your female version of the Encatados (las Encantadas?) are playing in? How does the female version differ from the traditional male version of the
story, and how might it function in our culture?
KSN: My Encantadas are not intended to function strictly in any one specific narrative, but a modern siren narrative from my own experience might play out as follows: a cute stripper takes money from a lonely customer. She doesn't hurt him physically, but he could be emotionally wounded, and feel as exploited as she does. A continuation of the war of the sexes, but also commentary on the performative nature of gender.  The stripper plays some form of extreme femininity; the customer plays the dominant through his ability to provide.

VG: So is it important to you that the viewer see these in the context of stripper and john?
KSN: Not necessarily- they can attach their own narrative, but the basic male/female archetypes are the same. I want my work to appeal to people, regardless of their experiences, by raising questions about these archetypes, and by expressing basic themes like the mutability between animal and human nature, and the strangeness of sexual desire.

VG: I am thinking about what you said in your artist statement, "By merging the human with the animal, the beautiful with the bestial, I aim to articulate a feminist stance more humorous than Didactic. Yet my critique is motivated by earnest questions about the relationship between sexual
exhibitionism and empowerment." I wonder if you could tell me more about how you see feminism today- or how you position your work in a feminist dialogue?

KSN: By using an animal figure to represent the female nude, I aim to engage a feminist response, which has, with the benefit of my words, been a positive one. Feminism is very important today as always, but mainstream heterosexual feminism seems very muted right now.  I agree with Darren's points about the importance of embracing pleasure, and how repressed we still are.  I spoke of my ambivalence about stripping- a lot of that comes out of the fact that as a society we are still contending with the fear of sin.

VG: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about heterosexual feminism as opposed to I am guessing queer feminism?
KSN: Obviously the feminist movement is not exclusively hetero-identified, but it seems to me that the GLBTQ movement (of which hetero women are a part) has a stronger pulse right now than the mainstream feminist movement. Of course, these movements are increasingly melding, and the ideas that I find most interesting come from this mix: ideas about the mutability and performative aspects of gender and sexuality, and about the ways in which the separation between sex and gender expression is relevant to the conditions of women’s everyday lives, both within and outside the GLBTQ community.

KSN: It seems like a lot of heterosexual women are disclaiming feminism.

VG: Why do you think heterosexual women are disclaiming feminism and why do you think feminism is still alive for you if it is?

KSN: In my experience at universities in the mid-west, you have to really search to find someone who'll come out and say she’s a feminist. It seems like there are a lot of people who see feminism as either a pass for women who act “unethically,” or form of political correctness. Of course, feminism can be both and neither of these things. I think the turn away from interest in feminism is part of the conservative spirit of the youngest generation, exacerbated by our poor economy, which makes people a little less idealistic.  Feminism is still alive for me because I feel burned by male privilege, by gender entrapment, and by misogyny and homophobia still being casually accepted prejudices.

VG: How does this suffering in our genders relate to the performative nature of gender that you refer to earlier?

KSN: I think that it is very empowering (and confusing at times) for us to realize the non-essential nature of gender.  Yes, our sex does influence the roles we take, but these change according to our own choices based on situations, not to mention hormonal aspects of ageing and
pregnancy, etc. We suffer less when we can make poke fun at of these roles, or at least choose how to make use of them.

VG:  Thus the making fun of the mud flap girl and the other classic sexualized roles- I love how playful this feminist critique is.

KSN: It almost seems as if there is a bit of built in tongue-in-cheek mockery in some of the classic pin-ups themselves, especially in the work of Gil Elvgren, though maybe I give too much credit.

VG: I wonder if we can shift gears for a moment and talk about some of the
more practical ends of the work.

KSN: Sure.

VG: can you describe briefly how you constructed the forms?

KSN: I built these pieces solid using an additive method, then cut them apart, hollowed them out, and re-attached the pieces.

VG: did they have any armature structure?

KSN: Maybe one or two of them.

VG: The close ups on your web site show a very beautiful glaze surface- what can you tell me about it?

KSN: This is a glaze recipe that I developed from a recipe I found online (maybe from Val Cushing). I added a few things to bring down the temperature, and to cause a very slight reticulation.  I tested its application many times before applying it to my thesis work.

VG: I wonder if you have anything else that you would like to add to the conversation before we bring it to a close?

KSN: Hmmm, I guess I just wanted to talk a little bit about my experience as a student, since I didn't touch too much on that in the beginning of our conversation.  I know that everybody talks about this, but as an undergrad it's easy to fall into a crisis where you doubt yourself, but at the same time think your ideas are great, and you don't have to delve too deeply into technical stuff in order to express yourself.  I want to stress the importance of getting the technical experience (in addition to the life experience), as a means to finding your voice as an artist.  It is frustrating when you know that you are capable of making the work you want to make, but not until you develop more skills.  Ceramics takes loads of patience, and the fact is that you have to choose what you are going to become good at.  You can't expect to be great at everything; you must devote major time to a limited thing to make it really good. I really am so excited about ceramics because there is just so much to learn.

VG: thank you so much for your time and thoughts!

Erin Finley acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $21.3 million in visual arts throughout Canada. Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada, qui a investi 21,3 millions de dollars l'an dernier dans les arts visuels à travers le Canada.

Ms. Finley is grateful that this exhibition was produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council. Furthermore, the artist wishes to thank the Ontario Arts Council for its assistance. The Ontario Arts Council is an arm of the government of Ontario.

Erin Finley extends personal thanks to Kevin Mercier, Allyson Mitchell, Eric Cameron, Paul Petro, and R.J. Santos.

This exhibition is part of the Year of Global Citizenship at Allegheny College.

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