Episode 1.1
Interview with Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, by Peter Hay on April 23rd, 2020
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Peter (P): The artist we are talking with in this episode currently lives in Farmington, New Mexico. She earned an MFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art (Hoffberger School of Painting) and a BFA from the University of North Texas. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Her work has been written about in several publications including the Huffington Post, Dallas Morning News, The Durango Herald, Wall Street International, and Interview Magazine. The cornerstone of her work is the female experience within a patriarchal society. She parallels her visual art themes with the written word and spoken word performances.
P: Thank you for joining us today, Rosemary. Really excited to talk with you.
Rosemary (RM): Thank you for having me on the podcast.
P: Would you like to tell us a little bit about who you are?
RM: Sure, I’m a visual artist and spoken word performer and I live in Farmington, NM. And as a visual artist, I focus on creating handsewn human-hair drawings, and watercolor paintings, and on-site drawing installations. And as a spoken word performer, I write poetry, create my costumes, rehearse, and then present spoken-word performances in different types of art venues.
P: Excellent and we’ve actually, we know each other, we’ve known each other for a few years, so um, I’ll try to, if there’s anything that I ask about that you think needs more context, feel free to throw in some more context. Because, I’ve seen your work and been to your studio and things like that in the past.
RM: Correct, ok.
P: So, how did you, how did you initially get into the arts?
RM: I actually grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so central Texas. You know, I guess my earliest kind of thoughts of getting into the arts was in high school, so I was taking art classes and I had a high school instructor named Vicki Shamburg, and she really encouraged me in the arts. Um, she also just encouraged me to learn about different artists that I wasn’t familiar with. And just based on that I went to the University of North Texas, initially to get a graphics arts degree, but after one semester of classes in graphic arts I switched to painting and drawing. So, I kind of just, decided I wanted to go into more fine art realm. And even before high school, probably an earlier kind of exposure to art would be, I have an uncle, Efrain Garza, and he was an artist in Del Rio, TX. And he was pretty traditional, painted landscapes, but when I was little we’d go visit my family, my mom’s family, in Del Rio, TX, and I was always fascinated by my uncle’s paints and pallet and I just loved looking at all of his art materials and I was just fascinated by it.
P: So, It sounds like you were drawn to being an artist from a pretty young age. Um, did you feel like that was a way to, I mean, did you feel like growing up, that that was a way that people could live? Like, that was a path you could take?
RM: You know, when I went to the University of North Texas, the reason I majored in graphic arts is because I thought that was a job, something where I could get a job, make a career. I really didn’t know what a fine artist did and when I went to go switch to being a painting drawing major, I talked to my parents and I sold my mom on it because I said, “well I’m going to get my masters after this and when I get my masters, then I’ll be teaching at the college level,” and she said, “Oh, ok, well then yeah, you can major in painting/drawing if your end game is to teach. Yeah, that works.”
P: Not just to be an artist, but as long as you were going somewhere with it, you know,
RM: Well, in her eyes, teaching is a respectable profession, you know, so, she was excited, we’ll have a teacher in the family, a college instructor, yay!
P: That sounds really fancy, you know! So, I guess to jump forward a little bit, what do you make exactly, you talked about stitching.
RM: So I started collecting my hair in 2000, and I had a friend who saw my wall drawings and she said that the line work in those drawings reminded her of hair, it looked like strands of hair climbing up the wall. And I thought, “Wow, I wonder if I could actually do something with hair?” So, I tried gluing it on paper and that just looked really messy and clumsy. And then I thought, “I wonder if I could sew it?” And so I tried. I have lots of kind of reject pieces that happened. I was not really a sewer, per se, I mean, when I was little I used to sew clothes for my Barbie dolls but I didn’t sew them well. So, it was something that I had to teach myself how to do. So, I would collect my hair and then I would thread it through small embroidery needles and then I would sew it, initially through a lot of different types of art papers, or mylar, or vellum, and then eventually, canvas, and I sew the hair to create images. And so the hair becomes the line work of the image or where there’s a passage of a lot of hair, then it becomes a value, a dark or a light value,
P: Ok, so based upon the density of the stitching you can get that value change you’re looking for.
RM: Right, right, and then I also as I was collecting the hair, I also, when I was younger I used to dye my hair a lot. And so I would dye it, you know, black-black, or I would dye it a violet or, you know, a red-brown, or red-blonde. So as I was dying it, I was collecting it each time. So I also got different values in my drawings just from the different dyed hair, from black to reddish-browns
P: Like a timeline of your hair color, or like, your life, you know, in your artwork.
RM: Yeah, it is. You know and then, I started going grey. And so then I started, like, sorting out and collecting the grey hair separately. I would collect my hair and then I would sit there in a very tedious manner and sit there and pick out grey hairs, apart from the brunette hairs. And so I started using my grey hair in 20… I guess end of 2017, beginning of 2018.
P: And I know you combined some of these materials, I mean some of these mediums as well. Well I’ve seen some of your work where it has, you know, it has graphite drawing, but it also has watercolor, and it also has stitching, like stitched back into it as well.
RM: Yeah, you know, initially, my goal was to get a drawing that was all hair. And I tried to get larger and larger. And then all of the sudden I felt like I needed to bring in these other materials that I like to work with. And so I would incorporate light watercolor washes and then sew hair on top, or I would incorporate collaged fabric and sew hair on top of it.
P: You mentioned trying to glue hair to surfaces or paper and that for me has a very, like in my mind when I picture hair stuck to something with glue it kind of like it’s a very different sort of visceral reaction then, you know… I’ve seen your work and the stitching is done with such care that it sort of, you don’t quite realize what it is at first. So I’m just curious to know, because some artists maybe would like that visceral hair stuck to a surface with glue, but it seems like you’re definitely going for a different feel than that.
RM: I am, I am. You know hair has, it’s loaded with a lot of meaning. I think in terms of, in general, you know, hair is tied into our identity. It ties into aging because your hair changes as you age. It ties into health and illness, because it’s a part of your body that might change if you’re ill, whether you have a certain disease. It ties into feminism, body image. So it has a lot meaning to it. And then the context of it is really what causes us to react to it in a certain way. So, if you saw a stray hair, in your soup at a restaurant, you would be repulsed, and ask for another bowl of soup. But if you are walking down the street and there’s a young lady and she’s got long luxurious hair, and her hair is, you know, the breeze picks it up, and it just looks beautiful. So in some cases, hair entices you and draws you to someone, and in other cases it repulses you or might disgust you and push you away. So it depends on the context, in which one sees it. You know, there’s a biblical references for hair, Samson and Delilah, hair was tied to this notion of strength and when she cut his hair, he lost his strength.
P: Yeah, for sure.
RM: So, I like all of those, kind of, references and ideas and metaphors and kind of symbols about hair, a kind of duality, of the response that it can get from the viewer.
P: Yeah, and I think that it does achieve that, and I mean, you’re talking about identity and our tie to hair with that and, you know, specifically, with the feminine, there’s this huge battle between, like, where hair is on the body and whether or not it’s attractive. And think that’s also a really interesting duality as well. And it’s interesting that the stitching as well has a very, almost feminine quality to it as well. And that action is a very historically, from a craft standpoint, stitching is a more feminine act, you know? So it’s an interesting way to soften that material, I feel like.
RM: Yeah, there’s a huge history in crafts of sewing. People that created quilts has a huge history, tapestries, if you go back into medieval art. And so sewing itself, it being more of a feminine type of task or labor certainly has its own history. And culturally as well, certain cultures, the person that sews for the family, mends the clothes or creates the clothes, or creates the dish towel, might be the woman of the family who’s sewing it.
P: Also the other thing that I’ve seen in museums are these Victorian era hair wreaths, that are, you know, I think sometimes or a lot of times they are post mortem. You know, where after somebody has died, they make a wreath from their hair as a way of a keepsake.
RM: Right, there’s actually a museum in Missouri, it’s Leila’s Hair Museum, and she has the largest collection of the Victorian hair works. And then she also has hair from different celebrities or political historical figures. I don’t know if all of them have been actually verified, but she does have a collection. I did go visit.
P: Did you? That was my next question; I have to ask if you’ve been there.
RM: Yeah, I had to go and see these, and they are amazing pieces. She actually has workshops where you can sign up, and she will teach you, I think it’s over a series of three or four days, and you will learn all, kind of the basic, hair techniques, that the Victorians used. And she also sold a booklet that had the different techniques in it. I bought the booklet. I thought, “one day I’ll come and do the workshop, but at least I’ll buy the booklet”, and I thought, “I’ll be able to teach this to myself”… not really…
P: No? Too complicated?
RM: Yeah, I really think I would actually need someone to kind of guide me through it. But, I like having the booklet. And I figure any time I’m kind of pausing and don’t have anything pressing to do in my studio, I can just sit there and play with it and try different things.
P: Sure, and so why do you think you make what you make? And, um, and kind of how do you determine what is an important idea or concept for you to pursue in your work?
RM: I tend to create work that revolves around a societal issue or a political issue. Most of the time, the issues are ones which, disproportionally impact women. And so, I tend to have more of a feminist look at the world and what’s going on and then decide on an issue to pursue. And usually it’s an issue that keeps cropping up. Like, I think about it and I write something down. And then I see a news article and so I clip the article out or I print it off online and I put it in my sketchbook because I want to remember it. And then I’ll see something on TV about it, or I’ll see something on twitter or social media. And it’s those issues that keep cropping up over and over, that I think, “it must be a sign that I’m supposed to like, start researching or investigating this,” and that’s usually how something starts.
P: I see, well then you’ve had no shortage of inspiration in the past few years.
RM: Um, that is true. That is true. There’s always something for me to think about, write about, create work about. You know, sometimes it’s something silly. Once I watched a film called “Columbiana” and it was about a woman whose parents were killed by drug dealers. And she becomes this kind of outlaw type figure getting her revenge. And throughout the movie, she ran around in her underwear with machine guns.
P: Oh wow, okay.
RM: And I kept wondering, “Why can’t she pause and put some jeans on?” So then I thought, “I’m going to start looking at films with women who are wearing, kind of, sexy outfits or little clothing, running around with, you know, large guns”…. There are tons of them… You know, and I just thought, “wow, this is really weird, so actually sex is selling violence.” And that just made me go into this, kind of research mode and eventually it turned into a series of artworks that I loosely called, Chicks with Guns. I took it one step further, instead of the sexy outfits or skimpy clothing; the women in my pieces were nude. And I hired models and I thought with them being nude it was this idea of vulnerability and yet they are holding a gun, or a rifle. And so it was this weird image of someone who is feminine and vulnerable because she’s nude and yet she’s holding a weapon and her face would be set with determination or look very stern.
P: (for the viewer) That’s a lot, that’s a lot of different things to digest, I mean you’re trying to put together exactly what’s being represented In the image because it’s so… Well, I remember years ago, when I took one of my first figure drawing classes, the teacher said if you want to draw a nude and your model isn’t willing to be nude, it’s always better to try to draw without whatever underwear there is or whatever they might be using to cover themselves because that idea of, um, the hidden, um, always becomes more attractive in a way than having everything exposed. You know, like that almost in a way takes away a little bit of that mystery. And it does. It changes your perception from sexy to vulnerable. And I think that that does come out in the pieces for sure. I wonder how many of the directors, of those films you’re talking about were made by women?
RM: They are mostly made by men…
P: I was assuming so…
RM: There’s a director, Jean Luc Godard and I used one of his quotes in my paper and artist statement for the series. And he said, “All I need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”.
P: That’s, yeah, that’s, that’s quite poignant, and that says a lot about our society doesn’t it.
RM: You know, just in terms of if you want a blockbuster and something that’s going to sell, if you give guys a sexy girl to look at and then give her a gun, assuming more guys like action, shoot’em up movies, then you got a winner.
P: For sure… and this is, I mean, I was joking about the last couple of years, of course, but, you know, how long and you been, sort of, pursuing this idea or concept of the female body and violence?
RM: Umm, that series was actually from 2012-2013.
P: Okay
RM: Um, so right, so right now, um, the last series I did was about anger as a tool for change. And as kind of a segue from that is, I’m now focused on this idea of marching and formation. Um, so Beyoncé has a song, and in her song, it’s called Formation, and in her song she goes, “Ladies, let’s get in formation.” And I was listening to the song and then I was thinking about the women’s marches and thinking about the idea of marching and certainly the recent women’s marches were not the first time that women marched. And so I was just trying to think of why women march, like, what propels them at certain times to think, “and now we need to get together and march,” and what are those issues that makes them get out and do it. And then just the idea of marching, of gathering, and marching, and the slogans you would see in the recent women’s marches, and the signs and I like going online and looking at the visuals of the faces and the gestures that women make. And so, that’s kind of what I’m focused on, right now is this idea of marching, this idea of political activism, so when I hear the song from Beyoncé, I think when she says, “ok ladies now let’s get in formation.” I think she’s saying, “ok ladies, now let’s get politically active.” And I think the first march worked because it inspired many women across the country to run for political office.
P: I agree
RM: And we saw that change happen, and so I’m interested in this idea of change, but the idea that it’s being propelled and this idea of marching and, I guess that image, the image of the march of a group of people, and why women march, and the gestures that they make when they march, and the look of their faces, and just that idea of the image, and most of the looks are angry, so, which goes back to the previous series as Anger as a Tool for Change. So, that’s what I’m currently working on.
P: And, I mean, have you been exploring similar themes do you think for a lot of your professional art practice or do you feel like they’ve evolved and what, you know, what do you do when you feel like you’ve come to the end of a series and maybe you need to break through to a new creative path?
RM: You know, for me it seems as if every series, like the next one, is kind of almost like a ghost, just hiding and kind of waiting to reveal itself, so it seems as if there’s a natural segue from one series into the next series.
P: Like, You find the, you find the bread crumbs, sort of, like the clues are in the pieces that you are making currently that sort of lead to the next.
RM: I think so, yeah, I mean, there’s a connection between all of it, even if sometimes the connections are not as obvious, I still think that the connections are there, you know, after I did the Chicks with Guns then I did Gender Based Burdens and one of the gender based burdens is violence, that women are disproportionately impacted by violence, whether it’s domestic violence or violence within a country that’s experiencing civil war, and so it seems that it was a natural segue, I see connections in the series.
P: It seems that if women are violent it becomes something that people really highlight, you know, but if men are violent, it’s almost normal, you know, so what I, being in Mexico, the thing that’s really interesting is the violent, I mean not even terribly violent, protests that have been happening here, protest of women who are saying look at us and they are maybe graffiting monuments and things to capture attention and how much attention that is actually receiving because they are not being submissive.
RM: They’ve gotten angry.
P: Yeah, yeah.
RM: Yeah. I’ve been reading about those, the protests in Mexico, so, and that in itself is another march and another protest,
P: Sure
RM: So, it seems as if you have to get angry in order to go and march.
P: Yeah, there has to be the emotion present, you know. So it seems interesting, it almost, I mean a lot of your influence right now is coming from sort of that rise of emotion, of that rise of sort of being fed up with the current situation and what is considered normal and how do we change what considered normal
RM: Right, you know, it’s hard to break long held patriarchal beliefs. So, if you think of like, the “Me Too” movement, I think that as a society we’ve thought for so long that there are certain things that men do and that’s okay, and it’s hard to convince people, it actually isn’t okay, because, we’re so used to it. There’s a lady that did, um, it started I think with a Twitter and it became a book and it was called Everyday Sexism. And it was about women who answered her tweet and told about their experiences and all of the experiences became a book, and I checked it out of the library here in Farmington, and I started reading it and I probably got through less than a quarter of the book, I had to stop, it was just, it was too overwhelming, and it was like, it’s amazing how every little thing, you don’t think about, and then, you know, some women would talk about, you know, sending their daughter into a store and you have to prepare her to go into the store as far as like, talking to men, not talking to men, which man talks to you, which do you answer back, which do you ignore, so you’re actually training your daughter to survive everyday sexism.
P: That’s definitely one of the things that needs to be acknowledged in our current situation so that, you know, I think boys need to be taught that these things are not okay, you know, why is it that girls have a different situation when they enter a store and a lot of that is from normalized behavior that’s been taught to boys, um, I feel like that’s, you know, how do we continue to highlight that to a point where people can internalize it.
RM: Right and so much of it is putting the burden on women to change, or women to adjust, but not making that burden for young men, for them to make changes, and adjust, or be taught differently.
P: I see, so I’m curious to know, um, it seems like a lot of your, your conceptual influences come from current events, um, but I’m curious to know what are some of your aesthetic or artistic influences?
RM: You know one of the painters I really like is Jackson Pollock, which might seem odd.
P: That seems a little bit counter intuitive.
RM: I know, it seems really odd, but, um, you know, I really like his line work, and I’m all about the line, either the line on a wall, the line in sewing, the line in watercolor, and so I’ve always been very intrigued and caught up with his line work, and that idea of these kind of tangling and undulating lines that just, you know, unravel across the canvas, and then, just the huge, immense scale of his work, and how they kind of, they almost soak you into the piece, you can get lost in one because you can’t find the line where he started or the line where you end to get out of the painting,
P: Or the layering, the space that’s also created, you get lost in that depth as well, it does, but the same happens with your hair because your stitching it, it has this, it comes off of the surface, you know, there is a 3 dimensional quality to it that changes focus and it functions as movement in the piece for sure.
RM: Exactly, yeah, and then, just in terms of the figure, I’m really drawn to Lucian Freud’s work and Alice Neel for how they handle the figure in a very honest manner, in terms of not, um, airbrushing over irregularities on the surface of the flesh. But actually celebrating the blemishes, and the blotches, and marks that are on our bodies, you know, as we age our bodies go through a change, and I think that they both celebrated that change in the human figure,
P: Yeah, there’s a real life that you can feel in their flesh and weight, you know, the weight in those pieces is always, you know, it’s, you can relate to it as a human who also feels weight, you know. It feels very real. It’s interesting that you mentioned at the beginning about somebody who had said that your line work looked like hair, um, and as artists, I think you always get all sorts of feedback and all sorts of suggestions or, um, criticisms and I’m just curious how you maybe work through all of that information, whether its solicited or unsolicited criticism or input and how do you, sort of feel your way through that and don’t let it hold you back?
RM: When I was in graduate school, which is when I was having a lot of studio visits with the visiting artists that would come to our program in Baltimore, and one of the things that, I guess that’s maybe the purpose of having visiting artists is to kind of help you grow a thicker skin because you hear so much information and part of the artists job that was coming to see us was to give us, you know, some constructive criticism about our work and to try to get us a little bit more removed from our work and think about it critically, and I had one artist who came to my studio and, this is like one of those things that I always remember that someone told me. Anyway, he was like, so you’re from Texas and I was like, yes, and he said, “So they have bluebonnet painters in Texas, right?” And I’m like, “yeah… yeah, blue bonnet, obviously”, he’s like, “how many people do you think like bluebonnet paintings in Texas?” And I said, “Um, I don’t know, a million people, I don’t know, lots of people love bluebonnet paintings”, and he said, “that’s right, he said blue bonnets are popular, its popular as an image it’s, um, easy on the eyes, it’s understandable for anybody, it’s a flower that’s on a painting”, and he said, “so, something you should know about your work is that your work may not have as big of an appreciative audience as a bluebonnet painter,” and I was like, okay… so he was telling me that the images and the issues that I chose to address could be off-putting to people, and that I should brace myself for not being as popular as the bluebonnet painter. And that actually was the best piece of advice, one of the best pieces of advice that I got, um, in grad school, because it made a lot of sense. You know, if you’re trying to reach a huge audience and have lots and lots of people like your work it might be that you need to have an image that a lot of people like and want to see. And so, at the same time, maybe, its content driven and maybe people don’t want to put up artwork that has political content on the walls of their home, so, you know, I like to think of criticism in that way,
P: It’s more of a determination of a person’s internal view or attraction than it is a reflection of your work?
RM: Right, that every person that criticizes it is coming from their own background experiences, and they might criticize something because it brings up negative feelings or brings up a bad memory and it doesn’t really have anything to do with my artwork so much that it has something to do with their own personal experience.
P: Yeah, and I know something we’ve talked about too, is art should make you feel something, you know and um, and that feeling doesn’t always have to be beauty.
RM: Right, but there are people that, for them, art has to be beautiful in order for them to like it.
P: Sure, sure, and we, well I mentioned at the beginning that I, I know you from the past and, um, you had a show at a gallery that I was the director of at the time, and, you know, we had kids come through the gallery and of course there’s nudity in your pieces, you know, and violence, and contemporary themes that are thought provoking, I’ll put it that way, and um, I was really impressed because never once did I have a complaint from any parent about that show, and I just thought that was, maybe a reflection of the community or the demographic of people that came through the gallery, but I also thought, well maybe, maybe that demographic is lucky enough to have somebody help explain the work to them, um, I wonder how many people see work that are disconnected and just don’t quite understand it.
RM: Right, um, I’m glad to hear that there were not any complaints, that’s always good news.
P: There was, There was one lady, you know, there was a restaurant across the street, and she parked the car and got out and turned around and looked into the window and said, “are those, are those boobs?” She came over and looked through the window and she was like, “Yeah, those are boobs! Look at this, there’s boobs!” but no, I never had anybody complain, about that particular show, but I thought that was really interesting, um, and of course, I did have some of the people who taught some of the youth education classes, from time to time would bring children in who had questions and they would say, “Hey, I think you’d be better at answering these questions than I am, so could you…”
RM: I think they passed the buck to you there
P: They did, they definitely did, but I don’t mind, you know, I don’t mind at all, and I, you know, I don’t mind talking about tough things, um, and I never really want to apologize for anybody having to explain something to their children, you know, these are real topics in our real world that those children are going to face and they should, you know, begin to have some healthy dialog about that and what better place than with art or in a gallery
RM: Right, absolutely.
P: Yeah, excellent, is there anything else you wanted to add about criticism?
RM: The criticism doesn’t really bother me that much, you know what really bothers me, is someone looks at my work on the wall for a second, turns on their heel, and walks away, to me it’s more offensive if someone doesn’t even look, or take the time, but for someone to be critical, it means that they took the time to look at it.
P: That you’ve done something to connect with them, you know,
RM: Right, I mean, I have had people who have had strong reactions to my work, and maybe strong negative reactions, and to me, that’s a win-win, I made you feel something, I didn’t make you like my work, but I made you hate my work, so much so that you remember it and you went and told other people and you felt compelled to tell me, so, I consider that to be good,
P: That’s a success, you know, I think it is, um, in its own way, all PR is good PR, right?
RM: It is, it is.
P: But at the same time, I mean, you wouldn’t be making this work if you didn’t want people to think and feel, so,
RM: That’s true, I mean, I’m addressing difficult topics, so
P: Yeah, Well, I’m curious, because, we’re in a, speaking of difficult things we’re in a particular time and I’m curious to know if the pandemic has impacted your art practice or interests at all?
RM: Well, I actually have more time to work in my studio, I’m not having to do the business of art, the shipping, and the emails, and the planning and the organizing because so many of my exhibitions have been canceled or postponed, so, it’s almost as if the art world paused in mid sentence. And I can’t move forward with any planning until I hear the rest of the sentence, and so I’m just kind of waiting.
P: I mean, are you, I’m just curious, are you, hearing back anything as far as their intentions to reschedule your work or postpone shows and offset schedules to, like this is just going to be like the pause button that going pause things for 3 months or 4 months and then it’s going to go back to play but reset where it was paused?
RM: Um, yeah, i mean, galleries and museums, they are communicating, i will say that, i do get the emails and stuff about the shows and then they’ll give an update like a month later and say where we’re at. Um, a lot of them are not committing to a specific date, like they’ll tell me the show is still on the schedule, we’re still doing it, um, please continue to hold this piece for us, or they’re saying well we think we’re going to do the show in the fall of 2020, or early 2021, so there’s like a long, you know, a long period of time of like 6-8 month where they want to know, do you think the work will be available from here to here and it’s kind of like, i think so, you know cause then there’s another institution that might want the same piece and they’re being vague as well, and they’re saying sometime in fall or early 2021 so….
P: Is any of your work stranded anywhere, just stuck in a gallery and you don’t know when it’s coming back?
RM: Several pieces, yes, um, i had 3 pieces that they are now back, and they were in Canada, they were in Toronto, and the college started to close and it was an exhibition that was tied to a feminist art conference and there was a young lady that was nice enough to take my works with her. She took them home with her and she ended up shipping them FedEx back to me and then they got caught in customs, it was around the time that we were having some sort of thing about the US and Canada and things, and so they got caught in customs for a little bit, so it took them a while to come back and then some other pieces were at institutions that are now closed and so they don’t know when the institution is going to reopen so they are not able to ship it back, but they say they are safe and i got a message today from a gentleman who’s a gallery director and he thought he shipped my work back to me but he actually shipped it to another artist.
P: Oh no!
RM: So there’s an artist in Colorado who has my piece from a show and he said, “I’m so sorry, I just had two FedEx billing labels and I thought I put the right one on the right box, but apparently I did not.” But he said that he doesn’t want me to pay for shipping again, he’s going to fix the situation, so I’m all good.
P: It could be a really interesting opportunity to get a new piece of art, maybe the artist can ship one of their pieces, in trade, you know?
RM: Right, so I’ve got, I’m keeping kind of an inventory tally of where everything is so that I know that I don’t actually have it back yet, so I don’t forget.
P: And you mentioned that there was a conference that was going to happen, a feminist conference, did that happen digitally, or did they just kind of cancel it all out?
RM: The feminist art conference managed to happen right before all of this really started to snowball.
P: Ok, ok.
RM: But there was another feminist art conference in, um, Madison, Wisconsin that i was supposed to do a spoken work performance for, and that got canceled, the entire conference got canceled, so that did not happen, so I had lots and lots of stuff simply cancel. But some things are postponed, and they are assuring me that’s it’s still going to happen, they’re just waiting to see when things reopen.
P: Sure, and I, you know, the Common Ground, um, conference is happening right now and they went all virtual and it’s free and I think a lot of their workshops are full right now, or their discussions are full, but think that there are still some available, but I you know, also the FuseBox Festival is going completely virtual this year and you it’s interesting, you know i love seeing art in person,
RM: Right, yeah.
P: But there’s a real, these conferences and virtual art, um, festivals have really added some sense of normalcy to my life, so I really have appreciated having them even if its, you know, its more fun always to travel somewhere and go to a conference and meet new people and that’s the thing that’s missing, but even sitting in front of my computer for 3 panel discussions in a row is like, you know, it’s very similar to what I would be doing if I had traveled only minus the travel, so, I really do appreciate that sort of sense of normalcy and that getting new ideas still connecting with the community, um, are there conferences or virtual art things that are happening now that you’re enjoying or would like people to know about?
RM: I actually went to a webinar today, um, I went… I was part of it on my computer, I wasn’t really there, it was in Washington DC and it was about art and environment, so artists that deal with the environment, climate change, things like that in their work and the history of that. And, it was sponsored by the Art Museum of the Americas in DC. And a friend of mine was the moderator, so I did that this morning. There is an artist in Taos NM named Sarah Stolar and she has been doing Zoom happy hours on like Fridays and she’ll invite like, the first one I went to she had the new curator at the Harwood Museum in Taos and it was an opportunity for that curator who actually was new to town and so she’s not been able to go out and meet people and so this was kind of a way to introduce her to the community, and so I went to that. She’s got one coming up who is an instructor who does work having to do with social activism, so I’m going to go to that one on Friday, tomorrow. So I’m enjoying those, you know it’s an hour and Sarah has some questions that she poses to her guest and then she opens it up for questions from the Zoom audience.
P: What do, all of this stuff is happening because of this pandemic, of course, and what do you think, kind of coat tailing that last discussion, what do you think the art community really needs during these times? And what do you feel like you need during these times?
RM: I think, I think the art community, you know, needs connection, and I, you know, because it is a community that’s creative, I think they’re finding creative ways of making that connection happen. Um, I’m with a gallery in New York called Amos Eno Gallery and they’re planning to start a series of virtual studio visits.
P: Oh, ok.
RM: So, I think, you know, because artists, by definition we’re creatures that sit by ourselves in the studio and work and so it’s that time when you go to museum, and you go to the galleries and you go to an artist talk or a workshop that you get to connect with people and once you take those away, it’s like, how do I connect with the other artists and so i think people are figuring it out, through, through instruments or platforms on the computer, you know, it might be Zoom or these virtual studio visits, artist talks that you have online, um, so I think people need to feel that the community is still out there for them.
P: And what, um, I mean this whole thing has really turned schedules on their head and all of this connection that we’re talking about and how, I mean are you finding it hard to structure your day in a normal way? What does a normal day look like for you right now?
RM: You know my studio is in my home, so, my daily routine hasn’t really changed. Um, I generally get up between 7 and 7:30 and I’m usually out the door by 8 or shortly there after, I do a 5 mile walk every morning, and that just kind of, just helps me, um, kind of meditative, it helps me find, kind of a peace, you know there’s the news cycle about the pandemic is really deafening and overwhelming and yet, I can’t look away. I want to read everything and hear everything, and so for those 2 hours or so when I’m out walking, it’s just a way for me to enjoy the sunshine, look at nature, look at the world around me, and look at the positivity in the world around me and the promise that it’s going to be okay.
P: I see.
RM: And then, I get back, I eat some lunch, and spend the rest of the day working in my studio. Sometimes I might have a couple of hours spent on the computer, but most of the time I work until about 5 or 6 and then I stop for the day and hang out with my husband and my cats.
P: Do you find it distracting to have your husband there all day long now?
RM: It’s really not, because his work now involves being on Zoom meetings a lot, so he’s actually involved in that all day, so it’s not really, it’s not that distracting, it’s nice because we get to have lunch together.
P: Sure, yeah.
RM: In the middle of the day, and we didn’t used to do that, so that’s really nice, but I don’t find it distracting at all.
P: Yeah, and he’s a pretty awesome guy, so not a hard person to hang out with.
RM: I’m also taking a beginning acting class this spring and my class which was on ground at the college is now online.
P: Oh, wow, ok.
RM: And so I’m still in the class and so we’ve been doing monologues and we have to memorize our monologue and then video ourselves and then we upload the video and then our instructor gives us feedback, and then based on the feedback, we redo our monologue and upload it again, so we might upload it 2 or 3 times depending on the feedback that he gives up. Um, so I’m really enjoying still doing the acting class and you know learning the monologue and going through that exercise of recording it is actually fun for me.
P: Yeah. It sounds like you have a few things in your life that really give you a, like a structure to your everyday which probably helps to now feel quite so crazy.
RM: It does yeah, and I like structure, I don’t like chaos, I like a very defined time for my day, I don’t like to have it chaotic
P: It sounds like you’re staying pretty motivated, but do you have any advice for somebody if they were having trouble staying motivated right now?
RM: I guess if somebody was having trouble staying motivated, I would say, you know, do something, something that you enjoy, maybe if your not making art, and you like to read, start reading, you know, reread some of the books in your library that you like, that you haven’t read in a while. Um or do little experiments in your studio, or work in a different media that you don’t normally work in. There’s also museums that have um, kind of exercises for artists right now that you could play along with, a lot of them are on Instagram, where you’re creating something based on their collection, and then uploading, um, a picture of what you did.
P: Yeah, those have been great comic relief even if you’re not making your own, you should go check those out, I think.
RM: Yeah, yeah, they are fun, so, you know, I’d recommend that.
P: Do you, I mean, do you feel like a lot of people do, I don’t think people should necessarily feel bad if they aren’t feeling creative right now. I think it’s also, it’s a pretty heavy time, so like, I just want to throw out there that I don’t feel like people necessarily need to feel bad because they don’t feel motivated during a global pandemic.
RM: No, they definitely don’t have to feel bad, you know, a lot of people I know, including my husband are cooking. A lot of people are baking bread by hand or, you know, my husband joined some sort of cooking book on Facebook, cooking group, and they all, um, when they make something they post a picture and people post comments. Um, but yeah, I notice a lot of people are cooking, which also is a form of creativity
P: For sure, yeah, and comfort. What’s better than instant gratification of getting to eat something delicious you just made.
RM: Yeah.
P: Well, um, I don’t want to keep you too much longer but I’m definitely curious to know what is the most interesting art form or art movement or concept that you see developing right now in the art world.
RM: Hard to say since we are in a pandemic… You know, um, at the beginning of the year before all of this happened, something that was interesting that was starting, um, was the, um, Feminist Art Coalition Project. And it was started by a woman who is the senior curator at the Berkeley art museum and she challenged all these different institutions across the country to come up with an art show or exhibition in this year of 2020, um, to highlight women. And so there’s a lot of exhibitions that were planned that were part of this effort to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, um, also kind of to heighten the idea of diversity in the art world, and a lot of those exhibitions have been canceled or postponed, but it was an exciting, um, coalition that started and it was for this year because they were also trying to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, women getting the right to vote. So, I’m sorry not to see some of those, to see that some of those exhibits are not happening and hoping that they’ll happen in the fall or maybe they can continue this effort into 2021.
P: I hope so too, I mean, I feel like it’s a lot of work and uh, the depth of meaning of these shows and how much has been organized, yeah, I really hope that they, they carry through and can figure out a way to keep them afloat. So I have a couple quick questions because people are, you know, stuck in their houses and are maybe looking for new or interesting things, so, um, what is your favorite album?
RM: My favorite album is going to be something I can listen to over and over and not get tired is Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
P: Excellent, excellent, and what is your, what is your favorite movie?
RM: It’s an oldie, 1954. But Federico Fellini’s, La Strada.
P: Oh, cool, we live like blocks from the Italian embassy and they had a big festival for him about a month ago, two months ago, something like that.
RM: Oh wow.
P: It was really fun.
RM: I love all of his movies, but “La Strada’s” one of my favorites.
P: I’ll have to rewatch that. And what is, do you have a favorite play, like a theater play?
RM: I do, um, because I was in it one time, Eve Ensler, Vagina Monologues.
P: Oh, excellent, I had a feeling, I mean, if I were to guess one, Rosemary, and do you have a favorite book?
RM: See, and this is going to be completely opposite spectrum, end of the spectrum. um, one of my favorite writers is Charles Bukowski, and my favorite book by him is, Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness.
P: That sounds like really good pandemic reading, I just have to say.
RM: I know, I’d be a really kind of goofy one to read at this time, he was just a nutty character but it’s one of my favorite books.
P: I love it, and what is your favorite work of art? That’s really hard for an artist, I think.
RM: It is… there’s too many to list, but, um, I used to teach art history, so, I do have a work that I always loved talking about, and so it’s a northern renaissance work, by Matthias Grünewald and it’s the “Isenheim Altarpiece” and it’s this large piece that has multiple wings that unfold and reveal like another narrative, and that’s what I liked about the piece, is that you might walk in and you would just see it when it’s closed but then as you, it becomes open, and they open the other panels, other things reveal themselves, and more information is given to you, so, that was one of my favorite pieces to talk about.
P: Ok, I’ll have to find an image of that and put it on the website with the podcast.
RM: Yeah, definitely.
P: I mean, this is such a weird question because we’re in a pandemic but do you have any feeling of when your next actual show or function will be?
RM: I think I know when it is, it should be at 516ARTS in Albuquerque.
P: Love that place.
RM: And it’s a show called Feminisms and it’s guest curated by, um, by Andrea Hanley who is the curator from the Wheelwright Museum for the American Indian.
P: Oh wow, Okay!
RM: So it should start late-September and go until January of 2021, we think.
P: Well, I hope so, I mean, I love 516 and Suzanne is an amazing director there and they do amazing work for being, they’re not a humongous organization, but they’ve definitely, I think, changed the face of contemporary art in New Mexico.
RM: They’re very thoughtful about the exhibits they put together.
P: They are, they are. Well excellent, well, I guess I have one last question. Is there anything that you wish to share to anybody, to like a young artist who is maybe beginning in their professional life as an artist, is there anything that maybe you wish you knew when you were first getting started, um, that you’d like to share with somebody?
RM: Absolutely. Um, you know one of the things I think is really important is to know your strengths, know what you’re good at. Um, if your not good at photographing your artwork, spend the money to have someone else photograph it, or trade out, you do something for that person that your good at, say your good at building stretchers, for painters, but know what your strengths are, so that you don’t um, sit there and labor over something that your really not that good at doing and produce something that isn’t really going to represent your artwork correctly. And the other thing I learned is to diversify, which is also about knowing your strengths. Maybe you are a painter but maybe you’re also a writer, you really enjoy writing. Do both of them, and maybe you’re a poet, and you’re also a sculptor, do both. Don’t feel like you only can do one art, like you can’t blend things or you can only be one thing. Try everything, and pursue all of it, do think that you can be in only one category. And it’s something I really did not realize until late in life, I always thought I only have time to do one, so I can only pursue visual art.
P: When did you start in poetry?
RM: I was doing poetry, when I was an undergrad in college I took classes in poetry writing. And then in the 90’s I was performing, but not a lot, you know, it was the time of the slam poetry type things, and so I was going to that, but I really didn’t feel like I had the time for it, I felt like, well I got to focus on my artwork and I can’t do this, and I think I think that I should have tried to do both and I just figured it out recently that I do have time to do both and I’ve always liked to write and it took me until 2013 to figure out if I like to write and I like to research then I can write academic papers and present them at conferences because I also like to speak. But it took me a long time to figure that out and so I would say, diversify, don’t feel like you can only do one thing. And the other, again know your strengths, I’ve always liked writing, I’m good at it, but I just didn’t pursue it.
P: I think that’s excellent advice, I mean, I really like the trade, how many artists, they’re not a web designer, or they’re not a graphic designer, or they’re not a photographer and they can, maybe they are a fantastic copy writer or whatever it might be and, you know that’s a really great way to enhance to quality of each others work, you know, you work together and have more of a trade economy based upon that because most young artists don’t have deep pockets.
RM: Right, right.
P: That is such good advice, and we live in such a multidisciplinary time, that yeah, I agree 100%. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
RM: I don’t think so….
P: Well, thank you so much for spending time with me, with this interview and, um, and I really hope that you and Ed stay sane and hang in there until we can see the light at the end of the tunnel here.
RM: Thank you very much, I hope that you all stay healthy and sane. Thank you for inviting me to do the interview, this is something fun to do during a pandemic and also not during a pandemic.
P: That’s really true, I’m really excited to see all of the art communication that is improved or created that comes from all of this, if there’s any kind of silver lining, maybe that’s part of it.
RM: Yeah, I mean, and that’s a good thing, so…
P: Excellent, Well thank you, Rosemary.
RM: Thank you very much, Peter.
P: Have a great afternoon.
RM: Bye-bye.
P: To find out more about Rosemary’s work, please check out her website, rosemarymeza.com
- Leila’s Hair Museum: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leilas-hair-museum
- ‘Everyday Sexism’ by Laura Bates. https://everydaysexism.com/
- Jackson Pollock: https://www.jackson-pollock.org/
- Lucian Freud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud
- Alice Neel: http://www.aliceneel.com/home/
- Common Field: https://www.commonfield.org/
- Fusebox Festival: https://www.fuseboxfestival.com/
- Amos Eno Gallery: https://www.amoseno.org/
- Lucinda Williams ‘Car wheels on a gravel road’: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLko7OGT0VoEPlHyJHZ44cZg-7ad_qhW6O
- La Strada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il1drFBRl2M
- Federico Fellini: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Fellini
- Eva Ensler: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Ensler
- Los monólogos de la vagina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rap5fYwSoAU&has_verified=1
- Charles Bukowski: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
- “Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erections,_Ejaculations,_Exhibitions,_and_General_Tales_of_Ordinary_Madness
- Matthias Grünewald: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Gr%C3%BCnewald
- Isenheim Altarpiece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece
- 516ARTS: https://www.516arts.org/
- Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian: https://wheelwright.org/