Photographer Jordan Jurich-Weston on the importance of shooting film and the creeping rays of light that fill her home.
by Valerie Thompson
Date Posted: November 9, 2015
Valerie Thompson: What led you into your current art-making practice?
Jordan Jurich-Weston: Well, back in high school I was a very academic student... thinking I was going to be a biology major in college and be a doctor. And when I hit about 16 or 17, we had a pretty major family crisis - my dad got really sick and almost died. He actually survived, but in that sort of transformative period of my adolescence, teenage years, it kind of hit me all of a sudden like "wow," life can really be ripped from you for no reason, and suddenly; and we have no control over anything in our lives. Like I should really try and pursue something that I love as opposed to something I am supposed to do, so I took a photo class in my senior year of high school and was really excited about thinking and approaching the challenge of art-making, which to me for the first time was something I just really didn't...couldn't wrap my head around. Like how does this work, what is happening...if I take a picture from this angle it makes something look different. It was really challenging, so like I said for the first time I felt challenged, whereas math and science was just kind of easy, you know? Like there was "A" plus "B" equals "C" type of thing, and so I was really attracted to the challenge of expressing myself in a visual way. Now 10, 11 years later I'm here in grad school…it's been a longer journey than just that, but that was what got me started.
VT: How important are film photography principles to your practice? ...how important is the act of using film?
JJW: So, a photographer that I admire a lot - his name is Ryan Muirhead, he's actually more of a fashion photographer than anything - but he said this thing...that if he had a digital camera in front of him, shooting with a digital camera, it is so easy to get distracted by the screen on the back - checking the image, and all the things you can hide behind. But a film camera is so straightforward. You choose your f-stop and your shutter speed. Your film stock is already decided, and you can't see the image you're shooting. And that, to me, is huge in my process. Because I do shoot with a digital camera for professional purposes, but when I'm shooting my art images, I have twelve chances on a roll to get it right in that moment, and I usually only use one or two of them for a specific moment - one or two frames - and I can't review what I just shot. I have to just let that go. Plus, film is gorgeous (laughs) and working with the physicality of it...it's half timing and the way you shoot, you have to put a lot of emphasis on each image...it's just really fun to work with, you know. But it's a process, because I scan them in and print them.
VT: So what attracted you to film photography, specifically? Why did you choose it as the medium to communicate your ideas, versus, say - painting?
JJW: It has a lot to do with the fact that it's the first thing I picked up that I felt I could really express myself with. I tried painting, actually, when I was a kid...horrible with a paintbrush (laughs.) In undergrad I messed around a little with drawing, but I always come back to photography because... you can't get away from the real world when you're taking a picture, but you can orchestrate what it is you're taking a picture of. You have so much control over what you're taking a picture of. To me, I'm really excited about the idea of...transforming a space without the use of Photoshop, without the use of anything, just the use of light in a space, or my angle of the photograph, or the framing...can really distort and make an image that's interesting, and thats really fascinating to me.
VT: Well its particularly important these days, since Photoshop is so prevalent. You almost can't trust an image anymore.
JJW: Right, exactly. And for me...I just have no interest in that; I have no interest in Photoshopping myself in front of the Eiffel tower or whatever. It’s not exciting. But what is exciting to me is the scene using light, using time, and exposure to play with different things...there’s that playfulness, and there’s also just...distortion of reality.
VT: So photography has gone through many iterations through out history...first we had film technology, how the digital image...what do you say is the next iteration?
JJW: Where photography is right now is a weird space, I feel like. Because of how good cell phone cameras are, its kind of ...given everyone the ability to take good pictures. Its all digital right now it seems; Its all existing and being perpetuated through digital means. Just based on that alone, I think there's probably going to be a big resurgence in the print medium - hopefully. But I know at least for me, I know that ...even just the printed image or the image on the screen doesn't feel like enough, that's why I'm starting to try to do a little bit of installation work, where you have to be in the space to see it, to experience it - as opposed to seeing it on the computer.
VT: So how would you describe your relationship with your medium? Your camera?
JJW: I love my camera. I kind of hate battling with technology though, and I'm not a huge fan of editing on the computer. So maybe it's a love/hate relationship? (laughs)
VT: What do you shoot with?
JJW: I shoot with a Hasselblad 500 CM and a wide-angle 50 mm lens.
Valerie Thompson: When I first met you, I was very impressed with your technical skills in photography.
Jordan Jurich-Weston: It's crazy, I counted up the years recently and I've been professionally photographing for about 10 years now, which feels like a really long time because I'm not that old. When I was in undergrad, I got the opportunity to be a wedding photographer's assistant and I started getting paid to take pictures. And then in undergrad, because I needed to make money and have money for my art, I was also the paperweight photographer for a glass gallery. And then also was honing in on my skills in shooting film - both color and black and white - and I just spent all my time either working professionally for other people, or in the darkroom. That was my undergrad experience...and kind of just carried that into what I do now.
VT: Do you think working in the professional realm of photography for so long kind of launched you into this need to do something personal?
JJW: Yeah, well then I took a break. So when I graduated from undergrad, I was feeling really tumultuous inside with my personal work - I needed to sort a lot of real world things out. And my art was getting to a place I couldn't quite handle and I needed a break from it. And so I took about five years off, and in those five years [I] was photographing kids for a portrait company. And doing that kind of work was just so repetitive. It was working with people, but it wasn't creative, and it wasn't "me" necessarily. I was a technician - which I got to be pretty good at, but it really pushed the need for me to get back into the arts and explore a lot of those deeply personal spaces that I wasn't allowed to do for like five years...and I also sort of forced myself not to do, because I needed a break. It's one of those things for me, where in undergrad I was just digging, digging, digging...trying to get to something. I'm not quite sure I knew what it was then, and looking back at it now, I was trying to figure out who I was...those were very big years. Like 18, 19, 20, 21, you know. You're independent for the first time, trying to sort out where you are in relation to the world, and it's really hard to do, you know. And my art is a lot about trying to sort out that identity - trying to sort out who you are in relation to other people.
VT: I remember that first time when I tried to kind of like sit there and envision how other people could possibly see me, and you can never know. You can project a certain version of yourself in the hopes that people might see you in a certain way, but you can never be sure and that's really quite baffling.
JJW: Yeah, it is. I struggled with that a bit...my internal world is so much more complicated than I think my external self comes off. One of the assignments that really started me on this path when I was in undergrad...we were asked to do an autobiographical portrait of ourselves, and so I started taking some self-portraits and that was the first time that I really realized there's something really interesting in that relationship of taking a portrait of yourself and then printing it and looking - really looking - at yourself, externally, and trying to...push through some sort of connection, through a gaze or through an expression. I guess I've just always felt disconnected, my internal world feels disconnected from my external world, and so I've been trying to reconcile that for a long time in my photography...how to create some sort of document of how I feel.
VT: ...and it's very hard to transfer that to somebody else. There are these sensations that as humans we all have in common, but sometimes they're not necessarily things you can put into words, or into an image.
JJW: Well, you know in my earlier attempts, I would take just basic self-portraits, or I would set up a scene and put myself in it; mostly self-portraits in my own space...it used to be in my apartment that I shared with a roommate, then a big house that I shared with a bunch of roommates. Now I'm doing the same thing but in the house I live in now with my husband, and...there's something about that I feel like...if you can get through to that really personal space and show yourself in that personal space in an intimate way, it becomes very universal.
VT: So on the self-portraiture note, photography as a medium raises a lot of questions to do with "looking" and being looked at, especially with self-portraiture. When we look at a photograph - a portrait - of someone...something that happens where you...cross a barrier. So when you're doing self-portraiture, that kind of makes you the object of having people cross into your space. Is that part of why you do a lot of self-portraiture?
JJW: I kind of do a mixture of different perspectives in my self-portraiture. Some of them are...I'm trying to put the viewer in my eyes. Like, here's my hand in front of me...you're looking at my hands the way I look at my hands. And then there's also portraits...self-portraiture where I'm sort of acting out performative gesture; and in those instances...they're more about trying to tell a little bit of a narrative, a bit of a story; and then there are others that are straight portrait, and in those you see my whole face or most of my face. It's mostly about the gaze; the gaze that I'm having. And a lot of the time I want to be completely confrontational with that gaze...so there's those three different modes, and I use a lot of my family members, and loved ones as stand-ins...when you take a portrait of someone else it's almost a portrait of you as well. Or it's a portrait of your relationship with that person, if it's somebody who is close to you. So I photograph my husband a lot, and a lot of the photos of him are about that relationship. And it's not really about him; it's sort of the way I am reflecting how I feel about him. Or how something that's going on in our relationship...trying to get to some little bit of truth, there.
VT: So one of the modes of self-portraiture you discussed is the performative, gestural kind... so would you say that when you're making those images, the headspace that you're in at the time that you're performing those gestures...is kind of the most important element, or more important?
JJW: Like I said, I feel like those are still really unresolved for me. I've kind of gone away from them a little bit. But I had this realization, with the help of a tutorial professor last year, that staying in those moments longer helps get a message across. So it's complicated. The headspace that I'm in...like I'm trying to push and push to get into a certain headspace, to get a certain feeling across in the portrait, or in the photograph. And part of it is going out to...like a lot of these happen out in the landscape. Like part of it is going out into the landscape and doing these actions, just as a sort of like ritual...communing with the world.
VT: Seeking a message.
JJW: ...part of it is wanting to make a cool-looking photo (laughs) but I had a really cool experience last year, a friend of mine went out with me and I had her pose nude with a mirror on her head. And building up to that it was just such an interesting experience...because I work so much with myself, and I'm comfortable being nude or partially nude and taking pictures of myself, or having my husband take those pictures. But it was such an interesting experience. We were in Joshua Tree (National Park), and we were taking those photos. And then I got nude because I was trying to get bits of my reflection coming off in the mirror...it was such a bizarre experience, being out in this weird, alien landscape, having this really raw, intimate experience shooting.
VT: So in relation to an image of a performative gesture, I feel like a lot of people...there's pressure to do something "for the image."
JJW: Yeah, when I go out to do those pieces...sometimes I'll start with an image in my head that I'm trying to get. Like I'll have a flash of something like "oh, in a field...running!" but that's it...I don't really storyboard at all. I'll go out...I bring a few things and just interact with that space...it's organic but its also...it's hard, because I want to, and I'm working on spending more time in that space. Spending more time in that headspace - thinking of it more as a performance, and less like an action for a photograph. That's something I'm working on, actively.
VT: So where are you headed next?
JJW: So I actually like to work 2D and then 3D and then 2D and then 3D. That's sort of like a cycle I've been doing for a while, where I'll build something small or big, and then I'll take more pictures and print them. It kind of gives me a nice balance between working with my hands, versus working in a very mental headspace. So right now...I've been playing around with the idea of having a floor that sound comes through. And I'm building my third iteration of that installation idea right now. It's going to be an 8ft by 8ft platform when it's done. I'm building it in two parts. It's going to be sort of a sound experience installation.
V.
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Catching up with artist Kathy Sirico: textile traditions, breaking the canon and the disappearing Arctic.
by Valerie Thompson
Date Posted: November 3, 2015
Valerie Thompson: Now, I've seen your work before...but it sort of challenges the canon of painting...do you want to talk about that?
Kathy Sirico: That's something that is one of my sub-themes that I'm interested in. Mostly in the way that forms are structured, or paintings are structured...like thinking about what happens if you take the grid, which is such a masculine, minimalist ...sort of negation of what painting was before that. And what happens if you use something like fabric, and you use weaving, which is traditionally women's kind of work - well it is women's work - and weave it together in a box weave so it looks just like a grid. And then use that...what happens if the frame is exposed, when that is used to be something that is behind the painting and the painted surface is really just a skin that goes on top of that. So I've been thinking what if vinyl becomes skin... because it really does looks like it, the kind I'm using. Just thinking about movement off and on a painted surface, and what happens when roles are reversed.
VT: Yeah, so it's kind of sculptural, kind of painting...would you say its more sculptural or more painting, or do you not even like people using those terms?
KS: For a long time, I was so attached to painting that I was like "ok it's a painting." And then I started calling it sculptural painting. And I think more I want you to look at it like its painting. Or consider it like you would consider a painting. But I also am thinking of this as a mash-up of sculpture, painting and textiles. Although it is quite sculptural when you are looking at it in space, I still am seeing it as painting.
VT: ...and you present it in the form of painting...
KS: Right, yeah. On the wall where painting is supposed to be.
VT: So you talked a little bit about it in the last question, but what do you want your work to address - and that changes I'm sure.
KS: Yeah it does, and that's something that I've been sort of wafting between. There is definitely that aspect of playing with painting, historically. But that's not really what I am trying to do. It's just a method of doing that. So a lot of the things I think about is - yes, it has the feminist elements to it, but its also for me really about the arctic and capitalism and the environment, which is something that is not something that you see right away, and it is something that I am trying to show more. That's a big part of my life. And I'm very enraptured by these ice landscapes and they're just like...its so sad what's happening and nobody cares, you know global warming. "Oh the ice caps are melting!" but when you're in that environment it is so incredible and amazing and watching it fall apart is ...heartbreaking. And so I'm thinking about using these elements of challenging painting and there are elements of bodily things and its sort of my perspective of how I feel about it, and the whole body pull into this world that I love and that I want to be in but once its gone, it's like that's the end of nature, to me. And that's really sad. So its sort of a round-about way of doing it...its more about encounters in space, I would say.
VT: Encounters in space that cause you to think.
KS: Right. Cause you to think, cause you to feel. And it might not be obvious, it might be more about the other elements that I was talking about, you know about the female body and the grid and the painting history - it all kind of goes together in a very abstract way.
VT: I guess I never thought about how you use so much blue and white...
KS: Yeah, it is true, those are my two main colors… Blue, to me, is the best color because it’s the most mysterious; it’s the most emotional. It’s something that you can’t really grasp. It’s like the un-graspable, mysterious color that just leaves you down a rabbit hole…it’s like the “blue of distance” kind of idea. You chase it, and its not – its like the presence and absence kind of thing. And it is the echo of the blue landscape, and the arctic, and the ice –for me. And the white… white, to me, is a very violent color. I know we’re used to seeing it as “pure,” where in other parts of the world white can signify death, but for me its like a “whitewashing” effect. Like, covering up history, covering up…cycles of violence, and washing away culture. And so I use it as a form of “void-ness.”
VT: I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. When we want to cover something up, we cover it with white, or we cover it up with white before we cover it up with the other color.
KS: Yeah so for example, that piece over there, I’m dipping that in the white house paint, so it is immobilizing it, so it is not allowed to be what it was or what it wants to be. And the white is sort of like whitewashing…. entombment is the word that I think about. Immobilizing, yeah.
VT: So, a bit of a background question…what led you to your art-making practice?
KS: Lets see. I was always doing art; I think we were all always doing art. I was very interested in art history, and that’s what I studied mostly in undergrad; mostly French medieval architecture. So I was really into – and still am into – cathedral architecture and stained glass and sacred spaces – also not just in France, but in that world – and in Greece too. Places people go to worship and the buildings that they build…the sacred is something that I’m interested in, so I’ve always been sort of looking at that and I think the stained glass thing really hit. But my work with fabric…after college I spent 2 years working for this interior designer who sold window treatments, like curtains and things, so I spent a lot of time with fabric, and a lot of time watching things being draped. So I think that sort of crept up into my head without me even noticing. So I decided I wanted to do art after I did an internship…a curatorial internship…and I was like “I don’t want to study them, I want them to study me.”
VT: I’ve had a little bit of that, myself…in internship capacities, I’ve always been on the other side of it…
KS: I think it’s great to know both perspectives, to have the background.
VT: Well you definitely have a good grasp on what your influences are, and they’re always changing…but you can talk about your work, which probably has come from the other side of it.
KS: Probably, yeah I think the art historians tend to think of things as fixed, and we see them as changeable.
VT: Fluid, yeah definitely.
VT: So in terms of process, how do you go about starting a new individual piece?
KS: Umm… (Laughs.)
VT: Do you have like a set of steps you typically go through?
KS: Not really, I sort of see things in my mind a lot, and they always change in the way that they physically manifest later, but I’ll get an idea about a color or a form that I want to use – when I say color, its usually blue but its different kinds of blue. I spend a lot of time thinking – because now since I am doing more experimental work, it kind of just comes to me and then I do a little bit of everything. And a lot of times I get into this frenzy where I just throw it all together. So it’s more of a chaotic but very intense kind of moment.
VT: Productive…
KS: Yeah I think about it all the time, I’m a little too…I don’t know, overachieving.
VT: Do you ever have those moments where you’re not here and you have that idea and you have that itch to just do it but you can’t because you’re not here (in the studio)?
KS: Yeah. Oh my god, yeah. So I’ll write it down or I’ll just be like “oh god!” …I’ll make a plan of when I’m going to go to the fabric store or something, you know.
VT: On the other side of that, do you ever go through periods of…
KS: The “shit what am I going to do” kind of moment? Oh yeah. Well I’m in this furniture class this semester, and every project I’m like “oh my god what am I going to do?” but when I have that I just end up making little, stupid material studies. And then it will turn into something eventually. Like I have a ton of them around, just little things that I start and then I abandon…and then later I kind of use them in some way.
VT: That’s great, it sounds like you work from what’s in your head, but you don’t get stuck in your head.
KS: Yeah, no I try not to. Because a lot of times when I really want to work and I’m here, if I don’t have the materials, I’ll just find something in my studio and re-purpose it, and it might be a little different but it’s…I like the idea of recycling all this stuff that I have.
VT: That’s – again – very environmental thinking.
KS: Yeah, like a form of recycling. Obviously, I have to buy fabric and materials, but I do like re-using things in different ways. I feel like its messy here, but its sort of like a scavenger hunt… I have things that I could find that I could use.
VT: So. Kind of a broad question…where do you see yourself going in the next few years?
KS: I want to just make a ton of art. I want to do residencies. I mean like in my wildest dreams I’ll be in the MOMA (laughs.)
VT: Hey, never say never…
KS: Dream big, right? It’s one of those things I hear if you say it out loud, it makes you believe in it more. So I would always be like “oh, I’ll probably teach…” …I like that idea, that sounds cool to me, and residencies and all that stuff…I don’t mind working in museums either…but I’m trying to say it out loud so it might happen (laughs.)
VT: Ok so a bit of a cultural context question… what does it mean to you to be an artist living and working in San Francisco right now?
KS: …well I think I’m incredibly lucky. First of all, I think we all are. Just like damn. The ability to do this is just wild. But was does it mean? Well San Francisco is changing and a lot of people are talking about that. And it’s one of those things where I think ahead, but a lot of times forget the middle steps. So a lot of people are like “I’ll be in San Francisco, but then I’ll move” but I don’t know where I’ll be, but now I’m here. And its more just like this place is really inspiring. You know, the landscape is incredible…at 4:30 – well now it’s more like 6 – the golden light comes in, and everything is beautiful and I can look at the water every day, and I live near the ocean, and I think that’s an amazing thing to have. But more in a social context, I think San Francisco is… more on the eco trend than a lot of other places. Like Pennsylvania is not – that’s where I grew up. And yeah, everyone’s into recycling…it depends where you go, but I think just having the water here and thinking about the drought, and thinking about social implications of the drought it’s really…on my mind, a lot.
VT: The time and space that we live in, as artists, has a lot to do with our thinking.
KS: Yeah, definitely, and just being on the streets, walking to school or walking wherever…you get a sense of how people live in a city, in their space…and thinking about encounters in space, and water issues, and the bay and the ocean, and you can’t swim anywhere right now because the algae has taken over. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of it, but probably in San Francisco more people are than in other places…and the fog, I love the fog. San Francisco is most beautiful in the fog.
VT: So, does your work address questions of feminism, given that you’re a female artist working with what is “textile traditions?”
KS: For sure, I think a lot of my response to things is through my body, even though that might not be apparent in the way …you don’t see a body, but the folds, the bulges, the kind of slumpy-ness is bodily, to me. And, you know, the weaving, the textiles…I think a lot about abandoned women in Greek mythology…they cry and they have their textiles, and they just wait for their husbands to come home. …Yeah, I mean the weaving, it’s apparent; textiles, fabrics – its all there. Yeah, definitely.
VT: Do you draw from your personal life?
KS: Yeah, totally. My obsession with the arctic – I went to Alaska last year and it was the most amazing thing. My grandpa was an environmental scientist, and he was stationed in Antarctica. So …he came back with pictures and slides, and I recently found a whole bunch of slides of him the arctic, years ago – I think in the 50s. So that’s always been something that’s present in my family’s life. And I definitely have that gene – that I’m like I see the ice, I see the ocean, I see water and I want to just like throw myself into it, because I love it.
VT: Wow, that’s really cool.
KS: He actually fell down a crevasse…he had a cane…when I was little I was like “oh he’s old, he has a cane” but a couple of years ago they were like “oh its because he fell down that crevasse.”
VT: In the ice?
KS: Yeah… I guess his team was able to pull him out of it and he didn’t want to tell the government because he didn’t want to leave, so he just had a cane for the rest of his life. He had crazy knee problems.
VT: So what artists have had the most influence on you and your work?
KS: It’s tough. I think a lot of things. I have this art history brain, and I see so many things all at once. Obviously, like Eva Hesse, those kinds of women who are painting, and I love Ana Mendieta so much but I also love old Chinese landscapes and cathedral architecture. Like, it all is in there… there’s tons of people working now who are really great, and the kind of New York scene in the 60s, everyone re-using materials…there’s a lot. There’s a lot…
VT: Yeah? You’re like a sponge.
KS: I am a sponge. My sister always tells me to “be a filter, not a sponge.”
VT: So do you have anything new in the works? I mean I’m looking at something right now…
KS: New, yeah. These are all strung up (motioning toward piece)… they’re going to go on the sides and possibly inside that box that I made. There might be light, there might not be. I’ll see, once I get those up, what it needs next. But it’ll be hung on the wall, just like a painting.
VT: If you’ve got a good thing, then go with it.
KS: Yeah, I’m trying to make each one a little bit different from the last one. I’m trying not to repeat myself.
VT: I don’t think you are. There’s works of yours that talk to each other, certainly, but I think that no two are the same.
VT: So you’ve studied overseas…
KS: Yeah, I have.
VT: …did that shape your practice?
KS: I think it helps, you as a person, grow – a lot. Yeah, I spent a semester of my junior year in college abroad in Paris, and I was in this French immersion program, so we didn’t speak any English and I had a host family, and I studied…one of my classes, we just went to the Louvre. …I had this class at the Sorbonne that was about medieval French architecture… after class I’d be like “oh I’m going to go and see that,” and Notre Dame was right there. It was amazing just to see all that. The first time I was in Notre Dame I cried because I was so overwhelmed at how beautiful it was, and all my friends made fun of me.
VT: So you sort of got to go through all of those art museums in Paris with a fine-toothed comb…
KS: Oh yeah, all of them. I actually stumbled upon a Basquiat retrospective there, and it was like the luckiest thing that has ever happened. So, I tried to really throw myself into the city and see a lot of things.
VT: So how do you see the blending of mediums changing the art world…do you think people are taking more towards this (mixing multiple mediums)?
KS: I think it’s really cool that you can kind of do what you want, now. It could be a phase, but I hope it’s not. I do still appreciate really good paintings, or really good photographs – something that does one thing – but I like doing this kind of thing, I get more excited about it.
VT: I think people are starting to question the rigid frames…
KS: Yeah, I think they’re breaking down a lot. And then probably they’ll be put back up, you never know.
V.
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Valerie Thompson
