Curator Meighan O’Toole presents a whole slew of low brow and contemporary artist on My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses. I was tempted to poach a lot of the artists she’s already showcases and do posts on them here but it made enough sense just to link you into her capable hands. Some of my favorites like Caitlin Hackett and AJ Fosik are extensively covered in interviews and images of artists in their process. If you are feeling culturally starved, consider MLFYIASOH an all day buffet.
The simple ideas are best ones. San Francisco artist Maria Forde was feeling lost and directionless. She decided to turn to perpetual founts of information and perspective: old folks. Forde interviewed and drew the portraits of 0ver a dozen elderly people living at her grandmother’s retirement village.
Forde’s style has a meticulous attention to detail but an innate sense of playfulness. She captures the spirit of people who’ve experienced good, bad, dark, light, up, down, everything in between and lived to tell the tale.
The most rewarding thing to take away from Long View is the message of happiness that permeates the portraits and interviews. A positive outlook on life is interconnected with longevity. Most zines are dripping with molten madness and youth played at full volume. Very rarely will a zine will warm your heart and give you fortitude. Like all great ideas, the simplicity of Long View effortlessly accomplishes this.
[images via]
Looks like Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance has been popping up around the internet. Lots of very attractive and intelligent people seem to be enjoying it, which is fantastic news.
Have you got your copy yet? Let’s see some pics!
Roxane Gay’s writing deals with sex, love, death, and the powerful conflicts that arise from those concepts. She’s published in roughly a bazillion print and online journals and her first collection, Ayiti, is coming out next year. Nina Hartmann’s photography tells stories about young people living and loving within an inch of their lives. She is currently pursueing her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where other photography students no doubt try to copy her style. Nina and Roxane’s forces were combined in Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance. This interview was conducted via Gmail chat.
A: Everyone here?
Roxane Gay: Yes.
Nina Hartmann: Yup.
A: Roxane meet Nina. Nina, Roxane
RG: Hi, Nina.
NH: Hey.
A: Thanks to the both of you for taking time to do this. I’ll start off with a few questions and we’ll go from there, if you have to take off just say so.
RG: I’m in my office grading so the only way I will take off is if some freak of nature accident happens and the Hand of God reaches into my office and takes me away.
A: I really hope that doesn’t happen.
RG: Me too.
A: Or if it does at least someone is there to see it. I thought the two of you were a good fit because you have this element to your style that sort of lulls an audience in then blindsides them with a powerful or frightening image. Nina, what sort of images take your attention?
NH: I try to take pictures of things that are beautiful to me but still have something off or strange about them. Redefining what beauty has been thought of throughout art history is something I try to personally address. Capturing strangeness or a relatable feeling is my main inspiration, I guess.
A: That’s interesting, I think the same things about Roxane’s work, a strangeness to your situations, but an ultimately relatable feeling because the characters are very human. What sorts of things take your attention when you begin writing, Roxane?
RG: I love to work from emotion. I like to find a moment of joy or pain or sorry and amplify those moments through exposition by just telling and telling and telling a story until it feels so claustrophobic I can’t bear it.
A: Haha, is that when you know it’s good?
RG: Yes, when I start to think, this might be too much, that’s when I know I’ve just about got it right.
A: Nina, are there ever moments like that for you, where you know something may be a good opportunity for a photo but you’re scared or apprehensive?
NH: Yeah for sure, but being uncomfortable is fleeting and a good picture is something that will be there forever so I usually try to just go for it. Most of my photos are photographer-subject relationship based so the amount the subject lets me in is usually based on how close we are.
A: I can really tell that from the photos on your site, there’s these two that come to mind of two young women at a spring, I think those were the first two images of yours I ever saw at a photo show in Florida. Something about capturing people in nature seems to open up a natural state, can you talk about that a bit?
NH: I’m definitely inclined to take photos outdoors. There’s more information available photographically and it is always a perfect backdrop for the subject. Living in Chicago has been a challenge since I have to stay inside most of the time.
A: Roxane, it feels like this is a theme that runs in the stories of yours that we’ve published, the characters continually escaping to nature, or maybe just escaping.
RG: My characters are often escaping because they find themselves in impossible situations. I spent the past five years living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula which is all about nature and my boyfriend is Mr. Nature while I am decidedly more interested in the pleasures of the indoors. A lot of my writing in the past couple years has been about learning about the solace nature can provide when you’re in mourning or in pain and you don’t want to feel boxed in by a room or the reminders that can be found in rooms.
A: That’s really cool. I just realized you’re both recent IL transplants.
RG: Oh? I moved here in July. It has been… interesting.
NH: Hahaha, yes interesting is a good word for it.
A: Nina, have you experienced a Midwestern winter yet?
NH: Yes, I’ve lived here for a year and a half almost now. It was rough, I really learned what depression was when i moved here, haha.
RG: It’s funny that people in IL think they have winters. The U.P. taught me about winter.
A: that is true, I could imagine U.P. winters are something along the lines of a metaphysical level of cold and isolation.
RG: The first two years made me question, ironically enough, the limits of my endurance.
A: Well, you made it, I think that speaks highly of your limits. How did you like the images we placed with your story, Roxane? I know it’s a bit different than what we’ve paired you with before.
RG: They are really interesting. I love how the colors feel muted and the images gave me the sense of, I’m not sure how to explain it, but I thought they were a really interesting complement to the story. It was like there was a distance there, but also an intimacy.
A: Yeah, I kind of felt the same way, they weirded me out on first glance but then made me feel good, like comforted almost. Nina, can you talk a little bit about how you came up for the idea and what the shooting process was like?
NH: I haven’t read the story in months, but I remember relating to parts of it in remembering feelings of dependency but the comfort that comes from it as well. Kind of wanted to create a “hand that feeds you” type situation. I shot it of my roommate and good friend, Sandra. I use her for a lot of photos, she lets me do whatever and is really interesting looking.
A: Her expression is so placid, but there’s this sort of vulnerability to her, I don’t know, to me the images say a lot about what it means to trust someone.
RG: I really like that vulnerability because I think the woman in my story is hard but not as hard as she thinks and she’s vulnerable in so many ways as the story unfolds.
A: Exactly, I’m always interested in people like that. The one’s who put up the hardest veneer are often the ones who are the softest inside.
RG: I love writing about women like that. I write the same story over and over and I’m so comfortable with that.
A: That’s a good place to be. A lot of artists are worried about repeating themselves. Do you ever worry about that sort of thing, Nina? Or maybe about worry that something may be interesting to you but not to others?
NH: I’ve always told myself sincerity is the only way to make art, so I try to take photos of what is important to me at the time and nothing else. If people like it, thats fine, but I ideally would like to secure myself in a place where I don’t have to depend on what people think of my photos to make a living so I can continue taking photos in the most honest way I can.
A: Yeah, that would be the ideal place to be, it’s very hard to get there though. Society doesn’t really value fine art photography like it should. I’ve noticed that in your photos that a lot of your subjects seem to be living on the outskirts of society, is this something that interests you or is this the default mode of someone pursuing creative work?
NH: I guess its just always been the type of person I’ve been drawn to. I don’t really know how it happened but I love photographing people who are true individuals and don’t buy into trends or scenes. I try not to get overly involved in the contemporary art world because it is more shallow then I could ever have imagined. It’s good to keep a distance and photograph your life uninfluenced by trying to make it in the art world.
A: I agree, that would make for a much more interesting arc of a life as well. Nina, did you go train hopping?
NH: Yeah, I did when I first graduated from high school when i was 18.
A: What was it like?
NH: It was a great time in my life, everything was easy and beautiful.
A: That sounds like a dream, like a lot of peoples lives at 18.
RG: I wouldn’t mind trying that
A: Go for it, Roxane. If there aren’t any more questions I think this is a good a place as any to wrap it up.
RG: Nina answered the question I would have asked!
NH: Haha.
A: All told then. Thanks again for taking part and I hope the both of you have a good evening.
NH: Night everyone!
RG: Thank you for having me, Chris!
A: Thanks Nina, I’ll be in touch.
RG: Or interviewing me, I reckon.
A: My pleasure, I’ll speak to you soon, I’m sure. Bye yall!
Recent contributing illustrators Ana Mouyis and Zachary Zezima have been lending their talents to Why Not Peace?, an initiative combining the creative work of artists with the voices of those closest to the war. Check out these short films animating the words of soldiers in Iraq.
Also check out the afiliated Peace Soldier project:
Advance copies of the Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance arrived and it looks so good it’s tear worthy. Here’s some Glamour Shots. Really proud of this one. I know I say this every time but it really is the best issue yet.
Issue Six: Sacrifice contributor Charles Bergquist got some big ups at YTFT recently and it reminded me how much I like Charles’s s work.
Chuck’s style has come into its own in the last few years. Delicious saturated colors doubled exposed over thick ink clouds making for opiate-hazed dreamlike images.
And then there’s these:
After a long day at work when everything is settled and you have a moment of quiet to yourself, check out his video work. It will decompress your brain.
Well done, Charles.
This weeks image contributor Matthew Genitempo is part of Austin based creative collective Public School. Check out their store where you can find a generous helping of original screen printed posters they’ve made for bands you are probably a fan of. I don’t really have much more to say on this subject other than I really like Austin and I really like art and design and Public School merges these things in a way that makes me pump my fist something fierce. Well done, fellas.
After interviewing Justin Taylor earlier this year, I learned about The Word Made Flesh book he was working on. I got a Bible verse cut into me a while back so I took a pic and sent it his way and it made it into the book. I got a chance to see an advance copy last night and it looks amazing. There’s a running tumbler here, but if you’re into tattoos, books and hope to merge the two somehow, you’re gonna want to purchase this. It’s also going to be required material for every tattoo shop coffee table from now on. Well done, Justin and Eva, you put together a fun one.
Before we started work on this upcoming issue, Annalemma sponsored a photo show in Orlando featuring all Floridian photographers, where I was introduced to Ted Hollins, a photographer who’s been documenting the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities for 21 years. The ZORA festival takes place every January in Eatonville, a town six miles north of Orlando, where Zora Neale Hurston grew up. I hadn’t actually read any Zora when I grew up in Florida. Eatonville is a predominantly black community and I grew up deeply entrenched in an affluent white community. I remember seeing banners and signs with the word ZORA! scattered along the outskirts of Eatonville around that time of year but I had no idea what the word meant or what it was advertising. It wasn’t until college that I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and a number of her short stories, effectively falling in love with the writing. It was an intense shift in my perception to see mention of the outlying cities and places where I grew up, but through the lens of young black woman in a poor community.
When it came time to choose the featured artist for Issue Seven: Endurance, Jen O’Malley (our graphic designer and curator of the previously mentioned photo show) and I started talking about Ted. It seemed like a perfect fit: Ted’s been documenting the endurance of Eatonville, a community that’s successfully battled with Orange County officials against encroaching development and gentrification, a community that inspired a titan of literature who went on to inspire a generation of writers. I also thought it would be a cool idea to reprint one of her stories in order to give a more full portrait to those ignorant of her work and influence like I once was. So I called up HarperCollins and asked for the rights to reprint “Sweat”, a story about a woman enduring the torments of an abusive husband, and what that abuse ultimately leads her to do.
And in an effort to express our gratitude to the memory and work of Zora Neale Hurston, a portion of the proceeds of Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance will go directly to The Hurston Museum in Eatonville, an organization dedicated to showcasing works of artists of African descent.
Image: Ted Hollins
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