I recently sat down with June’s Work in Progress (WIP) resident, Andrea Myers, to learn about the evolving quality of her sculptural work. Myers is a self-named ‘maker’ based in Wooster, Ohio, and currently teaches at Kent State University at Stark. During her time at TAC, she’s been keeping busy producing paper printed pieces, sewn fabric collages, as well as an on-going 6-piece wall hanging commission to be completed this fall. Her process of hybridizing various materials and transforming the behavior of 2D form compels us into a ‘grey in-between space,’ by which she is fascinated.
What couldn’t you find in your 2D work that urged you on to explore 3D sculptures?
As a student, I studied painting a lot but was always really attracted to sculpture. Through love of fabric and paper, I looked to those as ways to make sculpture. One thing I’m attracted to about 3-dimensionality is that you have an immediate physical relationship with an object versus a painting. With a painting, there’s an illusion of going into that space – but with an object you have that intimacy. It becomes very connected to the body, especially when using soft materials; it becomes close to us because we’re so used to clothing and textiles.
Where do you get your inspiration for the shapes of your sculptures? Are the curves and crevices you make taken from landscapes or are your organic shapes taken from figures?
A combination of both. I pull observations from landscapes, but also try to create a sensation of it being a landscape in a body. Sometimes I’ll start with just a subtraction of a word or a sight. I like abstraction because the viewer has space to put their own experience into the work and it becomes personal to them. It’s really intimate and special when somebody comes up to me and says they’ve gotten sense of nostalgia that my works triggers in them.
The clash of solid form to liquid movement in your sculptures looks as though you’re trying to create a new medium, or material? Are you trying to show a transition from one state to another or give a sense of impermanence?
Absolutely, sculpture is normally quite static and in my work it’s trying to convince the viewer that it’s still evolving and shifting. I guess it goes back to that in-between space that I’m really interested in, of 2D to 3D, but also a solid to a fluid object and how I can evoke that transition.
Once you finish a piece do you feel a weight of relief or do you feel instantly spurred on to the next?
I’m always inundated with ideas once I’ve finished my pieces or just walking into an environment that’s not my own, like New York, hearing sounds, people, seeing some sort of scaffolding. I usually have this influx of ideas from the everyday observations that filter in.
Is there a constant concept or process you tend to revisit when exploring your surroundings?
I think the materials are always a constant because of my love of the malleability of fabric, but then also structural forms like wood giving that kind of contrast. My personal life or interactions with other people are going to also fold into what I want to make. I have a 6 year old so when I had her that changed my life and seeing how she perceives the world, it’s very playful. As artists we have this inner child that we feel compelled to nourish. I like to evoke Buddhist ideas and believe that resistance to change is suffering. As an artist you want your work to change. There will always be a constant thread to my work but I want it to change otherwise it becomes stunted. So when I finish a piece I feel relief but also discontent, never satisfied and continuously searching for something.
There seems to be a recurring center point in most of your 2D pieces. What’s this about?
It’s a radiating focal point – like an optimism/pessimism test – where you question if it’s pulling you in or pushing you out. I like creating a little agitation or movement so maybe that relates to the sculptures in the way that they feel like they’re moving. There is always a consideration of how much information I want the viewers to know because it takes the experience away from them.
Is it your aim to make people consider the unseen surfaces behind structural exteriors?
I think about it in terms of facades, going back to the body where we have this internal self and external self and I try to reconcile those facades. I think that’s a constant in my work, dualities of 2D-3D, internal-external. My advisor would point out I’m always battling with ‘x versus x’ and he would suggest marrying the two things instead of divorcing them of each other. I’m interested in that grey-area between two opposite subjects. I want my hand and my imperfection to be imbedded in my work and then that also becomes another universal quality to bring people in because it feels more human.
New York must be an inspiring place structurally as it’s such a built up, towering city…
Built up and then decaying; you see order but then chaos. You’ll see a solid construction and then a crumbling, torn down building. I’m really attracted to that push and pull polarity.
How much do you stick with your initial plan?
For example, my severed or opened cube sculptures were something I saw in my mind’s eye and I really wanted them to look a particular way, I didn’t stray too much. It’s just a matter of being kind and patient with yourself, part of your process should make you feel expansive not contracted or held in too tightly, ideally for me,it’s like a release outlet, a safe space where I’m not pressured.
Do you feel as you’re getting older you’re focusing your time more on one creative direction?
Yes, I guess my main goal is that I never want my art practice to go away and I look at artists like Louise Bourgeois, she was making work until she died. I don’t even think that that it’s a choice, I will make art regardless. As artists, we invite change and put ourselves in problem solving situations, it’s a feast- famine kind of thing. I don’t know whether it’s getting better in general with the feast-famine thing or i’m just getting better at managing it.
