Learn About Current Artist-in-Residence Alise Anderson’s Studio Practice in Artists in Focus Studio Visit Video
UMOCA has launched a new video series, Artists in Focus: Studio Visits, to shine light on the studio practices of Utah artists. The series will feature interviews with current and past UMOCA Artists-in-Residence and artists working in Utah. The first studio visit in this series features 2021-22 UMOCA Artist-in-Residence Alise Anderson, filmed in her studio space in The Museum. Alise uses seemingly disparate mediums such as textile, needlepoint, painting, ceramics, and sculpture to explore her family history and, in particular, her relationship with her grandmother, Trudy, whose house Alise moved into when returning to Utah for her residency. Watch the video or read the interview below to find out more about Alise’s studio practice.
JS:
Jared Steffensen, Curator of Exhibitions, UMOCA
AA:
Alise Anderson, 2021-22 UMOCA Artist-in-Residence
JS:
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself—where you’re from, education background, etc.?
AA:
My name is Alise Anderson. I’m an artist-in-residence for 2022 at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. I grew up in Houston, Texas, and then I spent most of my twenties in the Bay Area and moved here about a year and a half ago. Before I moved here, I was living in Oakland and was going to school at SFAI.
JS:
How does living and working in Utah inform the work you’re making in this residency?
AA:
I think living in Utah, because of its rich history with religion and my own connection to that religion, has a big influence on the work that I’m making right now. Specifically as it pertains to my family history—I’m sixth generation Mormon and I’m doing a lot of work around my connection to family here.
JS:
Can you talk a bit about how the concept for the project you’re working on in this residency came about?
AA:
When I moved here, I was living in the home that my grandma Trudy, who was an incredible artist and archivist in her own right, built in the fifties and I just came across all of these archives and all of her life’s work, essentially. I started spending time with these archives and the work that’s coming out of that is sometimes like a blown up version of something really small that she created that was humorous because she made it humorous and then I think I’m responding to it in a similar way. I think coming into this residency and the the beginnings of wanting to do this work about Trudy and finding myself at a residency in Utah was really exciting because I think that there are so many undertones that people will respond to when seeing the work.
JS:
Do you think this work will be read the same way inside and outside of Utah?
AA:
I don’t think it’s specific to Utah and specific to Mormonism. I think that there are a lot of universal themes that are happening that if the work was seen outside of Utah, would still resonate.
JS:
Is it easier or more difficult to work with source material so close to you and your family?
AA:
I think it’s both easier and more difficult to make such personal work about family members. I think from an initial jumping off point, I find it really exciting and familiar and less scary for some reason to like talk about maybe what I know. But on the other side, I think it’s like, does anybody want to hear about my grandma Trudy? I think sometimes those thoughts come into mind.
JS:
What role does humor or absurdity play in your work, especially as it pertains to seemingly banal or mundane source material?
AA:
I definitely don’t want someone to see this work and think I’m poking fun. I want to treat Trudy’s life and work with so much care, and I want that to come through in the work. I get excited about making work about really specific, maybe sometimes mundane things because I’m just curious about humans and why they make the choices that they make and their strange weird oddities. I think it’s exciting to amplify those oddities.
JS:
Looking around your studio, it’s apparent that you have a strong and broad interest in materials. Can you talk about the role they play in your work?
AA:
I love materials, I love experimenting, I love color. It does often take a few steps of experimenting to see what kind of material makes the most sense for the work. I think I’m playing a lot with paint or sculpture or textile needlepoint. Some of the pieces I’ve started as a textile, but it might start to feel too heavy or too on the nose or too similar to the way that she would have done it rather than a way I want to respond to what she did or what she was thinking about.
JS:
How does your training at SFAI influence what materials you use and how you use them?
AA:
When I was in school I technically majored in new genres, which is very vague in California. I did some performance. I did some video. I did a lot of sculpture. I had never made a painting before, and for some reason I’ve been making some paintings while I’m here. But I think I often start with a material and can go from there. It sort of figures itself out through the material and so I think that’s why I, in so much of school, which has translated to now, is it starts sculpturally and might shift and evolve from there. But it generally starts with like wanting to get my hands on it immediately rather than conceptualizing or writing and thinking and then execution.
JS:
It’s interesting that you mention wanting to immediately get your hands on the work. Looking around your studio, so much of your work is hand-centric and, presumably, quite time-consuming to produce. What role do handwork and time play in the production of individual works—the needlepoints, for example?
AA:
The needlepoint work that I’m doing in this residency and for this show has kind of taken me by surprise. I think it is not my first choice because it is very time consuming and it definitely feels connected to the pandemic when everything slowed down in a way, and it was just this work that I could do in this slower paced environment. This kind of work is obviously very much connected to Trudy. She did many, many needlepoints in her life, and I was always aware of her hand in the busy work that she did throughout all of my childhood.
I think I get excited about a piece that I know is going to take me a really long time to make because it allows me to dive in in a way that having an image printed doesn’t allow for. I need the hands on experience in order to become familiar with the source material. I find myself doing a lot of work where I’m just stitching or painting very tiny letters that I understand I could send somewhere and have created. But I think I think it goes back to the wanting to dive in immediately and wanting my hands to be on the work as much as possible. And I think it is also connected to a meditative quality of just being with it.
Through all of this work I’m doing with Trudy, I’m realizing just how busy she was and how productive she was and how much time she spent on her work and her archives. And I’m noticing some similarities in myself about that. And I think that is connected to the choice to do work that takes hundreds of hours. I like to always be busy. I like to always be moving. Like, I sort of have this false sense that like, is it an art work if you didn’t spend 1000 hours to make it? And I think that it’s been funny to sort of see the connection between Trudy and myself in that sense. By doing the hand work that takes a while, by doing the painting that takes a while, it is like it’s connecting that collaboration even more. Whereas if I were to just have it printed or have it outsourced or something that would sort of lose the relationship that is I mean, even just the way something is made, you can have a sense of it in the way that she’s making it. And you can have a sense in the way that I’m making it by having your hands on the actual material.
JS:
Can you talk about what kinds of discoveries or connections you’re making through this work and this residency and what you hope develops through the process?
AA:
I definitely see the evolution of this possibly ten year collaboration with Trudy as maybe at certain points becoming more critical of of larger, like Mormon cultural conversation. I think that in order for me to get to that place of being critical of certain conversations or ways of living is going to take me time both in and understanding my relationship to her and understanding my relationship to Mormonism. And I think that’s really exciting. I think that I’m still in the politeness phase of my work with her and with these conversations, which I think is fine. But it’s exciting to think about how the work will evolve and change over the years. Honestly, I think that the work that I’m doing around Trudy will be maybe like ten years of work.
I think this is just the beginning.