Week 71: Stacy Lundeen

The rotating gallery features the work of an emerging photographer as well as an interview with him/her, and will change every Wednesday. The gallery is based off ‘collective curatorship’, where the photographer from week 1 chooses and interviews a photographer for week 2, week 2 chooses/interviews week 3, etc. There is only one stipulation to the process: Next weeks photographer has to be someone he/she has not had direct contact with yet. Ideally, this will take the gallery on a linked tour around the Internet, and exploring and unearthing new photographers as it goes.

This week, Vincent LaFrance interviews Stacy Lundeen.

Vincent Lafrance: I saw your last show in Montreal; there was two photographs of yours and tree drawings by the canadian artist Marc Séguin hanging in front of them. I haven’t had the chance to read anything about this gesture. Can you talk about it, did you do that using the posture of a curator or one of an artist using someone else’s work to underline some statement?

Stacy Lundeen: I saw that work By Marc Seguin several years ago and it really did something for me. Unfortunately the space we had to work with wasn’t  able to accommodate that entire series which I thought told a morality tale. When I approached Marc about doing the show I  was interested in presenting an opposing argument to my work which I think of as a morality tale without the moral at the end of it.

VL: That show also included a Saran wrap sculpture, the same type of work that you photographed a lot in the past months. How much do you think your sculpture can exist as art objects?

SL: I think you can find an appreciating viewer for anything, it doesn’t matter what. My current work relies so heavily on specific lighting that achieving the desired affect is more a question of installation, but given the right means they would be nice sculptures I think, both for your home or office. Why not have one for both.

VL: A lot of the elaborate that you create are low relief. They end up being flat photography as well. What is the biggest issue in the act of photographing the objects?

SL: For me the biggest issue is always trusting that it is time to do this now, because you can work and work on things. I often go back and rework sections of a piece then re-photograph them. Also getting the right lighting can be tricky. I still work with film so I make my exposures, process my film and take a look. If the work is half baked I know it at this point. I don’t have any problem abandoning a piece if it doesn’t do what I want it to.

VL: Your work tends to take meaning a lot from the title. Are you aware of that, how much does it have an importance?

SL: I used to be more inclined towards elaborate titles because I felt you were missing an opportunity to express yourself and expand on the scope of your work if you went the “untitled” road, but now I just like to call a thing what it is.

VL: I suppose you expect people to walk in front of your work and enjoy it. What do you expect from them when they leave the gallery? In other words: what is your work suppose to stimulate over time and distance?

SL: Im not sure I have huge expectations for responses to my work. I guess I’m just trying to connect with people and things in my environment. I feel like one of the best things that could happen is some one looks at a piece and feels like they get what Im driving at, that they are in on the joke or the tragedy.

VL: What kind of work ethic do you have? How many hours a week do you punch in at the studio?

SL: I work in spurts, I could be in the studio every day for weeks and then not go in for a month, also colder weather gets me up to the studio. I love being in the studio but sometimes I cant figure out what Im doing up there. Thats when I’ll switch things up and do some drawing or make a water colour or just piss around and look at all the stuff. I consider this research. Drinking beer and noodeling on the guitar is also research.

VL: Do you sometimes feel like you should learn a job, do you get afraid by moments?

SL: I have always worked jobs to support my art habit, and I have doubts about things. Who doesn’t. I guess I just wouldn’t know what I was unless I was making art.

VL: You are from the Canadian Prairies, you grew among cowboys and guns. Do you think it makes you be more exotic?

SL: I was certainly exotic amongst that crowd, out here in montreal everyone is doing something, making music, making films, its a wonderful environment to exist in. People like people who can bring something new to the table, they really like it when I bring my revolver.

VL: I would like to start my next question by a quote from the muppet show. Kermit once said: How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual art are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual artist.  Is Kermit right or is he prejudiced?

SL: Visual art is about as important as NASA the UN or spaghetti. Its really about checking things out and figuring out how we should get along and get by.

VL: Now If you had the chance to either play chess with Marcel Duchamps-arm-wrestle Bruce Nauman- Play trivial pursuit with Walter benjamin or sing karaoke with cindy Sherman. Wich one you pick and why?

SL: I’d sing bridge over troubled water with Cindy, but if I could I’d arm wrestle Duchamp. He could use getting taking down a peg the cocky bastard. I think Cindy sherman is fantastic and I like social people, plus we could speak English together. I need to  practice my English.

VL: Your work happens in the studio, you are a studio artist. Are you nostalgic?

SL: I just do what I need to do. I work outside the studio if thats what I need to do. I do suffer from nostalgia on occasion though, but to me the studio is just aplace to go and get your shit done, a place where you can concentrate and get loose. I would certainly be nostalgic about my studio if I didn’t have it any more.

VL: Would you like to be a painter?

SL: I would only switch if I could be the best painter ever. I like feeling connected and spending time with my work, feeling a sense of process and resolution but all the rest is just whatever. I think all work that is good is just good, fuck the materials or supports. Anyway I’d rather be a film maker then a painter, more people see films, and, if there any good they even see them again.

VL: You love the artist Ed Rusha. Ed Rusha said that that: Good art should elicit a response of Huh? Wow! as opposed to Wow!  Huh? Is it something you are working along especially with these well endowed monsters?

SL: Ed’s a Chevy man, I’m a Ford man so we think differently about some things, I think that as long as there is a “wow”  and a “Huh” your doing something right whatever the order.