Interview

Blogger Sandy said...
You've given us a “dirty laundry list” of things that inform you and your work. I wanted to respond to your laundry list, ask you the questions that occurred to me on first reading:
The thing that stands out for me right of is that many of the items on your list are paired. Either oppositionally; history: distortion vs accuracy, or inclusively;
indifference and greed.

January 17, 2008 5:14 PM
Blogger Shelby said...

i will slowly expand on all the items in the laundry list at other times but i'll try to stick with your questions.
well, to be honest, there were a few paired items that were just paired because i thought to add them at the same time. but most pairs make sense for me just in a quick note taking sense. i'm big on paradoxes so opposing ideas play into my work (it is a little annoying for me to say that because probably every artist in the history of the planet has said that.) recently the pairing of opposites has been on my mind mostly in regards to scale. the tank and the tiny whittlings are the prominent example. i like to look at the intimacy of things close in set next to feelings i get when i zoom out on google earth and find that everything i know of is really fucking tiny. i do like trying to imagine the polarized versions of any issue for sake of being unbiased and thorough. sometimes i think of things as being somewhere on a line between two extremes. then sometimes that line is a circle. everything is some shade of grey. i wish i could draw a picture.

I did the laundry list quickly so i don't know if the pairing is a metaphor for anything in my work. in brainstorming i just find two words more clarifying than one.

SS Which brings me to another thing, I understand what you mean about every artist talking about paradoxes. But maybe there is a reason why..? The paradox (this is a word I have to look up over and over again, because the definition itself is a paradox!-it either means a statement that appears to be absurd or contradictory,but really is true, or something that is in fact self contradictory!! So that means what? It is no wonder that artists love it!

None the less, I had the opportunity to see another students laundry list in the mail room. I don't know who's it was, but they didn't pair things the way you did, each "item" was more of a phrase
or a thought. So your list is "idiosyncratic" or not, it is not the same as everyone else.

SS Shelby, do you have any thoughts about what you want to see, how you want the conversation to go?

SH The questions them selves are quite helpful. I mean think of, I like just being helped by the discussions and the writing I do on the blog, I don't feel like I need to come to some amazing realization based on how you compose the final pieces, I mean I'm sure that will happen, but...

SS Is there though some kind of product that we could end up with that might be kind of portably helpful to you?

Maybe just like Laurel was talking about categorizing. Chapter headings that don't exist yet?

RS Do you want more of like a DVD that you can walk away with?

SH I don't need to walk away with anything.
SS, as long as you can walk away eh?

SH I'll walk away with having hung out with you guys, that's pretty okay.