Student Interviews with Exhibiting Artists

In Writing for Exhibitions, students at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design gain experience in the various kinds of writing involved in an art exhibition. Writing for a museum or gallery setting, students from all majors interview artists, prepare exhibition statements, compose wall texts, and draft features and reviews of shows for publication.

Each semester students focus on writing about current exhibitions in a collaborative and supportive workshop environment. While contributing to conversations around contemporary art, craft, and design, they share their perspective with firstyear students through Studio Foundation Brant Gallery programming.

Erik DeLuca

gem conway and Jasmine Eastman

Hai-Wen Lin

Larita Sok and Emma Walsh

Katherine Agard

Alan Rivers and Terron Thompson

Magda León

Jerman Montanez and Callie Ware

Stephanie Cardon

Valerie Diehl and Katy Price

veronique d’entremont

Ruby Gonzalez and Phoebe Petryk

Will Johnson

Kai Buffonge and Fallon Lavertue

Erik DeLuca

Erik DeLuca is an interdisciplinary artist and experimental musician. He is Associate Professor of Art Education and Contemporary Art Practice at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in Music Composition and Critical Studies. Erik was intentional and articulate, taking time to consider each of our questions. Learning is his passion, guiding his artistic practice.

gem conway What drives you to create?

Erik Deluca I was talking about this with a friend recently. This friend asked me what I’ve been inspired by lately, and I told them about this film called The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer. After seeing this film I was inspired to make make make make. Inspiration drives me.

Jasmine Eastman Do you feel like medium comes first or do you just get inspiration from somewhere, and then that informs your process?

Erik My work is driven by a desire to learn. This curiosity guides me toward specific materials and mediums.

Jasmine In your portfolio, there was a lot of sound art, installation work, and an overall variety of work. Is there a medium you are currently most drawn to?

Erik Our college organizes its departments around specific

materials—such as fiber, film, glass, and paint—enabling deep, focused exploration within each discipline. In art education, we see learning not just as an intellectual process but as something that can be shaped and transformed, much like clay or sound.

Jasmine What mediums do you feel most drawn to?

Erik Learning. Though, I went to music school where I studied composition. From a foundational perspective, I would say that sound is my main material of craft. I know sound intimately.

gem Do you ever use learning as a measure of completion as opposed to a medium?

Erik In the past, when my focus was on creating a final product, my desire to learn would often fade, leaving only the object. Ultimately, those projects felt less fulfilling.

Jasmine How do you think your music background informs your creative process?

Erik Music is temporal—you have to take the time to sit with it. I discovered that sound is both physical and invisible. It’s elusive, magical, and has always pushed me to think beyond.

Jasmine How did the artistic community in music school affect your process?

Erik In music school, I played in bands, and I still do. There’s something special about people coming together in a room to make art—it’s about the interpersonal relationships. This time was formative in shaping my understanding of what art can achieve as a collaborative act.

Jasmine So what led you to travel internationally for your art?

Erik I grew up in Florida and have always had a complicated relationship with it. My desire to travel stems from wanting to leave. I also enjoy collaborating with people in different places because it allows me to listen to other perspectives—there’s great value in being a self-reflective outsider.

Jasmine Do you have any future collaborations in the works?

Erik I have been visiting the occupied Palestinian West Bank, researching and working on several projects. One, in particular, is with Palestinian oral historian Atwa Jaber, exploring solidarities across time and space.

Jasmine Do you think your future projects will revolve around what’s happening in West Bank?

Erik Absolutely. My grandmother escaped Nazi Germany in 1935, arriving at Jaffa Port in Palestine— before Israel officially became a state. She stepped off the steamship Patria alone, a traumatized survivor of Nazi genocide, onto another land of dispossession. Without time to grieve, she quickly became involved in Zionism. I visit Israel and Palestine to explore this contradiction.

Hai-Wen is an artist whose journey through various art forms has led to a rich and diverse practice. Beginning with origami at the age of five, their artistic exploration evolved through graphic design, fashion, and now kite making. Their path defies traditional notions of sticking to a singular style, emphasizing instead the importance of openness to different media and experiences. Drawing inspiration from their background in design, their work intertwines elements of history, materiality, and personal narrative to create inspiring pieces that invite viewers to contemplate themes of ecology, identity, and human connection. With upcoming projects involving public installations and community engagement, their practice continues to evolve, challenging boundaries and fostering new experiences in art. Today, we’re thrilled to delve deeper into their artistic journey and learn more about the craft behind their captivating work.

Larita Sok Can you tell us about your journey as an artist and how you developed your unique style?

Hai-Wen Lin My first art form that started when I was five years old was origami. My dad taught me how to fold an origami frog, and from there, I started to build my own models, folding action figures out of candy wrappers. I did that for a really long time and thought I was going to become an origami artist. In college, I was publishing my own origami

Larita Sok and Emma Walsh

diagrams and teaching at origami conventions. But that fell away for a while since I was studying graphic design at UC Davis. I wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t know what that meant. At 18, I didn’t understand how you could make a job or a living out of art, and that was the reason why I chose design, because it felt realistic and would allow me to be employable. During my undergraduate years, I was really into book design, print design, and was also taking fashion electives. I understand that there is this idea of an artist finding or developing their style, and teaching recently, I can see how when you are an undergraduate, there is this desire to pursue having a style. But I would encourage artists to be open. I thought origami was my life or my style, and then when I started learning how to make books and how to make clothes, I allowed myself to do what I wanted to at that moment. I think that openness gives you more opportunities to learn. Having this openness will lead you to discovering more things.

Going back to your question: I became interested in clothing while questioning my gender identity, which led me to going to graduate school for fashion design and then making sculpture out of clothing. Now I’m into kite making, and a lot of people define me as the kite person, but I have only been doing it for about three years. So, when you compare that with fifteen years of origami, that’s a small period of time! It is so easy to be defined by what you do in the moment.

Hai-Wen Lin

Larita I see that you have been experimenting with many different art forms. And since you mentioned origami I can see aspects of that in some of your art. As someone who experiments with multimedia, can you elaborate on your choice of materials and how they contribute to the meaning of your pieces?

Hai-Wen Lin In some ways, I would say I am a research-based or conceptual artist. I like to joke that I am bad at making decisions. It’s easier to make decisions when you lean on a concept or, for me, I think, “what would my ancestors do?” Thinking historically about how people have approached objects has led me to specific material choices. Part of it is about building a world, thinking about how that world would guide the project. For instance, the solo show that I opened at Prairie in Chicago started with making this collar kite. And then looking into the history of the shape of that collar, which led me to these Chinese scepters called ruyi, which then led me to looking into how those were designed and how they were made. There was this myth that it was a back scratcher that a monk had used because scratching your back is like fulfilling a desire that you can’t reach by yourself. And I found that really beautiful because in the same way, a kite can reach things that you can’t reach yourself.

So then I was thinking about these two things in tandem. And suddenly, I have to learn how to carve backscratchers. This kind of research leads to a skill and form; it’s how the process typically goes. I say research and conceptual art loosely because I’m making intuitive,

tangential pairings between objects and themes because of my very particular experience and reading of materials. That leads to things like, “oh, I’m making this, and now I’m carving a back scratcher,” and then I’m learning how to inlay materials into wood. It’s a mix of being research-led, but also just my own personal interest in different parts of things, if that makes sense.

Larita In a presentation you gave, you mentioned that your dad is an ecologist and your mom is a science educator. And nature appears to be a recurring motif in your work. What draws you to depict the natural world and what message or emotions do you aim to convey through these representations?

Hai-Wen I feel like I don’t depict the natural world that much. Nature is certainly a theme and I think about ecology in the sense that if we wipe out an insect, that will destabilize the whole world, and the idea that there are these small, unseen things that kind of exist throughout our world, but are all tied to us. I think about the way that I’m tied to my friends and my family and my history. And I think about, maybe more poetically, being tied between my body and the wind. As far as nature, I guess the straightforward reading of the work is that climate change is terrible, and that the world is burning, and things are not looking so good, so we really need to take care of the world. But it’s also about the emotion of how you feel when you’re in nature, hopefully. Like that feeling when you look at a sunset and you’re just like, “Oh my God, this is such a beautiful profound

moment and I feel so moved.”

Meanwhile, I feel as if people in school would question depictions of that, like, “Why are you painting sunsets? What does the sunset signify?” To me, the work is also understanding that this is a moment that is beyond language. To me, the act of looking up, the act of seeing a kite, is hopefully producing a similar feeling or experience. The message there is just being attentive. A lot of my practice is a practice of attention, like seeing small things, tiny insects or the birds on my walk to the studio, the grass growing out of the sidewalk. Having this sense of the small ways the world is bridging into our lives and having a sense of care for that. I believe the more that people have this attentiveness and sense of care for these small things around us, the more we can begin to build a more beautiful world in a way. I don’t know if that’s too cheesy.

Larita Your time and performance work evoke a strong sense of emotion and energy. Can you talk about your process of creating these works and the feelings they elicit from viewers?

Hai-Wen It’s kind of interesting because, at the end of the day, what kind of art is not time based? Everything unfolds over time. I think about different scales of time as a medium. I think about the photograph or the photographic snapshot as what it means to exist within a sliver of time at that moment, where maybe the kite is just up in the air, and then the next half second, it comes crashing down. But I am also thinking about slow time, thinking about the ways that when you wear clothing for years, it begins

to wear out, you get armpit stains, and it conforms to your body in a sense. It’s picking up all your skin cells and dirtying over time because of how your body is shaped and the clothing is kind of becoming you. And the practice is encapsulating this idea of living in and through time and the time also moving in and through the work.

I think my performance work, the work about orientation, is more thinking about how our bodies are situated in the world. Thinking about the ecologies of the things that move and pull us. When I was documenting the direction in which I was breathing, I discovered through this data collection that I’m a south-facing person. It’s not really true that I’m a south-facing person so much as it is that, in that period of life, I was living in a world that was forcibly orienting me south, you know? Like when I was standing to wait for the train or the way that all the desks are spaced in classrooms, the way that you enter doors, the way that all of the architecture around us, whether or not we’re consciously aware of it, is orienting us. And I think that, in a more subtle way, wind is also this all encompassing, orienting force that people don’t really think too much about. But that’s literally why we have plants. It’s why we can cool down when it’s too hot. We can’t live without wind moving moisture and heat and seeds and all these things through our world. We’re just not thinking about it. So, the performance work is thinking, “How do you orient yourself to something that’s always changing?” It’s like that phrase, “change is the only constant,” right? Can we make something that is ever shifting our anchors?

Larita Collaboration and community engagement appear to be important aspects of your practice. Could you share any experiences of working with other artists or involving the community in your projects?

Hai-Wen It felt this was a lot more evident in my print works before I was going down this fashion and kite route. I think a lot of it was informed by the Fluxus movement. I think at the end of the day, my practice is a little bit like, “How do I live a beautiful life and be happy and be with my friends?” and if I can reframe those things as art, then that’s kind of as good as it gets. This meant cooking with friends, new friends, acquaintances, and turning that into an artist book. Or where it’s like, “Why don’t I let you design something and I’ll fly it in the sky for you?” and see how other people can speak through what I’m doing. The biggest one was when I had published a newspaper, The Ordinary Anthology. I’m really interested in the mundane and it’s what I was talking about with the ecology of these tiny things that kind of operate within our world where you and I and everyone have these entire full lives that we live and we all influence each other. I’m only talking to you because I did an artist’s talk in prep for a show Helen’s organizing. I only know Helen because my friend Sally, who lives in Washington, used to teach at MassArt, and I only met Sally because I went to this residency in Maine. I think this connection that we have across people is what the work is trying to do. It’s this idea that we’re all kind of living, the majority of the time, boring, ordinary lives, but that ordinariness builds the entire world in all our societies, right? So to make a

newspaper where that is the highlight was the aim of that project.

Larita How do you balance experimentation and consistency in your artistic practice? Are there any risks or challenges you’ve encountered while trying to push the boundaries of your work?

Hai-Wen The most obvious example is that not all the kites I make fly. I was just telling someone yesterday that the designer in me wants to have a very thorough, iterative process. I think this is how fashion design works too. You have an idea, you sketch it out, you draft a muslin, you do multiple fittings, so that you can adjust it and then you move to your final fabric and it’s out in the world. So when I’m making a kite, I’m also thinking through the design process. I’m thinking, “I’m going to make a muslin and I want it to fly very well before I move to these expensive silks and fabrics.” But then inevitably, this has happened every single time, “Oh, I have a show coming up in like two months.” And it would be one month in, and it’s still not flying that well. And I think I just have to go for it. I end up making it in expensive fabrics, and then sometimes it goes up, and sometimes it just doesn’t fly that well. I think embracing and understanding that pursuit of flight, but not necessarily always achieving it, is a huge part of the work. That is art in a lot of ways, right? You have this beautiful image or idea in your head, and the act of pursuing that is so much of the work. Whether or not it turns into what you wanted is always kind of different. It’s the mantra of, “If you fail faster, you’ll succeed sooner.” So keep failing, keep trying things. Maybe

you’ll get one thing that works, and that will be worth it.

Larita Looking ahead, what are your aspirations or goals as an artist? Are there any directions or projects you’re excited to explore in the future?

Hai-Wen Right now, I’m working towards more of a public facing, performative installation. Before this, kite making was a solitary act where I was measuring my body and making clothes for my body and the kites being born out of this act. So for this next project, I’m trying to build, essentially, a series of kites where a group of people can go out into a field or a park or beach together and all fly everything at once. I’m thinking of it as installation art, but happening in the sky where it’s multiple pieces all existing simultaneously and what it means for all these people to be together, to be tethered to the wind and to have that happen. It’s certainly proving to be challenging because it means I have to make 20 kites that fly very well. How does this become more of an experience, you know? Where it doesn’t just exist in the image or that sliver of a second in the photograph. How do I make it so that people can experience this thing together? How do I make it so that people can see it with their eyes? That’s always kind of been the end goal and that’s kind of what I’ve been moving towards. It is like producing a fashion show in a way. I do want this moment of these things flying in front of you. I think that’s what I’ve always wanted.

Larita Your work is to be featured in the upcoming show, Craft in the Real World. And in our current class,

Writing for Exhibitions, we discussed our definition of craft, and what it means within our own art making. So we want to hear your definition of craft and how you define craft within the context of your artistic practice.

Hai-Wen Most recently, I’ve defined it as a careful consideration of material and technique that leans upon a history of makers that have come before you that use those same materials. To me, there’s a history of a material and how it’s worked with, the consideration of that being a kind of craft. When we say “well crafted objects,” it means people give their attention to something. In the sense that contemporary craft would be someone who is borrowing these materials and techniques that have been built upon through years of history, and then doing something different or new to it. There’s many, many years of history of craftspeople who make kites. And I’m kind of coming in and trying to give careful consideration to those techniques and the history that has been built there, but I’m also turning it into a new thing. I’m playing with cyanotype as a dye and offering a new turn to expand the field of what we thought this material or form could do before.

Larita Now that you’ve mentioned history and tradition as part of craft, can you share some examples of traditional craft techniques or practices that you have incorporated in your work?

Hai-Wen One example that comes to mind of something I’ve done recently is that I’ll adorn my kites with feathers. I’ll glue feathers down, and then line

it with golden beads as a reference to a Chinese jewelry technique called Dian Cui. Historically, they used to cut Kingfisher feathers very small because they’re so blue and so iridescent. You can’t achieve that color, really, with pigment. They would glue those on jewelry, and it was a measure of status, like a nobility thing. I’m borrowing from that set of jewelry techniques and putting it onto clothing instead. I’m thinking about the feathers that are being borrowed and what it means to put that on an object. That’s one example. Another, is that recently, I’ve been organizing the kite line and learning the Japanese art of braiding cord, kumihimo. It’s typically used for parts of kimono or traditional dresses to tie around the waist, and because my kites also double as clothing, I’m thinking about that as a way to organize the tow line. I’m always thinking about different parts of the kite being able to then intersect with different kinds of traditional craft.

Larita What significance does the handmade aspect hold in your craft?

Hai-Wen I don’t know if I have a good answer! I’ve talked to people about if I just did the designing and the kites were mass produced by someone else. I think I’m still coming to terms with how important that is, that it’s made by hand at all, or whether it’s made by my hand. In a way, that’s also interacting with history and labor. When I buy the silk, I’m thinking, “Someone wove this, would I be able to do that myself?” Or if I buy this string instead of braiding the cord myself, knowing that this was done by a machine and if there’s a way that I can interface with it instead, and then offer my own touch to it, in a

way. That’s the craft part, this careful consideration being given to every small part and material. Currently, I am in control of how things are being shaped individually, and this is also learning how to live with an object slowly over time in the way that you might have a favorite sweater that you just wear forever until it has holes in it. It’s learning about where that comes from and if I can make my own. I make a lot of objects for the body, and there’s certainly something about having my hand present for that. It is important that it interfaces with me.

Hai-Wen Lin, Tuning; west wind; 2.1–2.6, 2022. Performance still

Shi Hui Ru Yi, 2023. Enamel on cast copper, hand-carved teak with mussel

cord, copper, artist’s hair, friendship bracelet

Katherine Agard

Katherine is known for her book of colour, which is an experimental essay based on her own experience coming to America and her encounters of colour lines and binaries. Along with writing she is a painter, sculptor, and performer. In our conversation we touched on personal experiences and challenges. Katherine shared passionate and down-to-earth ideas about what drives her to work from identity, history, and transition. Her diverse background influences her creativity on a daily basis, bringing about new problems and dialogues in an evolving understanding of craft.

Alan Rivers What does craft mean to you?

Katherine Agard Craft to me refers to something practiced and repeatable. Knowing how to do something so intimately that one can both repeat it (with variation) and also innovate upon it.

I think that as a person who works between genres, it has been difficult for me to define my craft. The things I’m most interested in feel like divination—I’m working right now with ash and charcoal, burnt pieces from my paintings, patterns of fallen objects, the I ching, cowrie shells, bones, etc. In order to read a divinatory system one needs to both listen and understand its logic. Staring into fire and smoke, into water, being quiet enough to listen has been important to me. Understanding the history of the pigments I use is important to me.

Alan Rivers and Terron Thompson

But the other side of that is expressing what I heard in ways that are legible to people who don’t understand the system.

I also have a question for you: What does craft mean to you?

Alan Craft for me is being fully enveloped in my ideas, being able to immerse myself in creativity. For me specifically it’s researching my own identity, then the planning of sketching over and over until I’m satisfied with a result that can be translated into a painting. Part of my craft is painting something over and over, ruining it, starting over, the trial and error pushes me to learn more than I would with painting it once, and again helps me feel satisfied with my work.

Terron Thompson What does craft mean to me? I’d say craft is a gift that one is born with and something that can be shared and passed down to other generations. I’d like to think of myself as a “jack of all trades.” I enjoy the use of mixing different media in art making, and bringing those elements together to create something beautiful, yet unique.

For people who haven’t seen or read your work, how would you describe it?

Katherine I like project based work. And so with of colour, when it came out, my mom described it as compost, as in layers of sediment that have come together. Layers of rock or matter. My

work is in some ways dense. It involves a lot of different forms, styles, threads, but they come together because they’re part of the same general material, if that makes sense.

My work in the past has been about an accretion of fragments or of pieces of things coming together to form something new. And I think that’s part of a way that I’ve worked to look at what the pieces or threads of things are, then putting them together in a book or in a form that I feel like I can handle, which has been a book. I also think in my writing itself, I learned a lot about how others think of my work by hearing their reactions, but in myself I value that I’m good at writing sensory detail. I’ve heard from people that my style brings up a feeling of bodily disturbance. I think my style, at least in the pros, is actually fairly minimalist, and quick. That’s also true of painting or image making. There’s a lot of, kind of, quick movement, but it comes together over time. Does that answer your question?

Terron Absolutely. Now, who is your biggest inspiration? What artists do you look up to? If you do have artists that you look up to.

Katherine An artist I really love is Adrian Piper. I saw her work when I was twenty. I saw Cornered. I saw that video and then I got to see the retrospective that she had. I admire so much about her practice. I know her work as a philosopher and as an artist. I also really admire her working methods. I also really admire Agnes Denes, do you know her?

Terron No, but all of these people I’m

I’m gonna look up and do my research.

Katherine In one of her most wellknown works, she planted a wheat field in New York. It’s really beautiful. She’s also very prolific. She wrote a book about dust, it’s a very thin book, but it took her 10 years of research.

Alan You were telling us about how right now your favorite medium to work with is your homemade charcoal. We also just want to ask, like, overall, what’s been your favorite medium to work with throughout your time as an artist?

Katherine I’m thinking about this slightly differently now. Books. I was gonna say frames or squares, or sequences, if that makes sense, like a storyboard or like a series of three. I think a frame and a limit is important. I think of books as a frame or limit. Especially if I’m talking about working with a bunch of related things and trying to show a relationship.

Alan What’s your favorite part of your process? There’s so many, but what’s one of your favorite ways to work?

Katherine This morning I was in a good group of people, and I remembered that I actually started with a lot of clarity about what I want to do. I can imagine the ending. What happens is I get really, really confused before that. I like beginnings, and I like endings. But I think at the end I’m also reminded that part of the process and part of craft is knowing what is handleable. What, as an individual, can you manage? What makes sense for your own workflow? Is this the furthest that I can take this by myself?

furthest that I can take this by myself? Then thinking about the next step— how to show this to someone, how to make it legible to another person. That’s the handleable part of the process. One of the things about writing is that it’s expensive, because it takes time, but it’s cheap, because it’s just you and your thoughts or your pen. I would say that other people, or remembering to be legible and articulate to other people, is a thing that makes it handleable.

Terron When it’s just you and your thoughts, how do you get your creative juices flowing? What are some of the things that you might do when you are trying to be creative?

Katherine When I can imagine that there’s someone who wants to hear something or wants to engage with me on something, even if it’s an imagination, even if it’s one person or even if it’s just a need, then there’s a kind of movement or flow. But I feel stagnant when the container isn’t one that matches up with this sense of need or spirit or something, if that makes sense. But I feel connected, I feel a lot.

Alan Is there any part of your process where other people are brought in to help create something or think about different ideas?

Katherine I think there are a number of people that I know who go to school or go to an MFA program because it’s hard to get that kind of help outside of the structure of an institution, a school. Especially when there are demands on everyone’s time, like your time is supposed to be productive,

productive, and producing is needed to survive. Outside of an institution or a school, there, yes, I do ask for help, because I need it. But it’s also a challenge to receive, and to have that kind of help when other people’s capacities really shift. Right now, there’s an interesting thing happening with me where I am asking for help, but it’s because I need help. It’s like, there’s more like a mirroring or partnering going on. I know someone who’s a friend who needs help, too, and I can help them, and it’s an organic exchange. It’s different than hiring a studio assistant or getting someone to do something, because that’s like, not where I am, financially. And that’s not where I am in my practice. I also think there are artists who I know, who are older, who have scaled up in a particular way. I think there’s also issues with thinking about scaling your work, when you don’t have the technical expertise to do it yourself, and have to produce at a level that kind of outstrips an individual.

Alan Were you self taught? Or did you always, like, have this gift of wanting to create art? Or was it more of an influence?

Katherine I think I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and I’ve always been really into a lot of things that I’m still into, like making things with mud, learning about plants and writing little poems to my friends. A lot of it is socialized about what art is and what craft is. I didn’t really have a conception of what “fine art” was until I came to the US and went to college. I understood more then what a writer was, and what it was to speak. Before that, as a child, I didn’t understand or

think about the arts as anything other than carnival or decorative.

Now, I think about poetry and communication, and that there are forms that allow you to express things and communicate things that go beyond speech. That is part of how I think and that is definitely socialized. Whatever I can see, though, is, like, inborn, more like a sensitivity to matter and people’s feelings. There’s something about wanting to give little gifts to people, which has always been the case with me.

I’ve also been having these conversations more often where I realize that what I am saying might be particular to me. I can recognize when I’ve been changed, if that makes any sense. We’re all changing on a daily basis, but a lot of what my practice seems to be, and a lot of what I reflect on with people is when we realize that we’ve changed. Trying to mark that, being aware of influence, on a moment to moment basis, and being able to talk about it or point it out is something for me, a personality thing.

Terron You’re putting us on a lot of new stuff. We definitely appreciate you taking the time to share and meet with us.

Alan Yeah it’s been wonderful to hear everything you have to say, it has such a beautiful flow to it, it feels so interconnected. It’s really interesting to hear your point of view.

Katherine It was a pleasure.

Magda León

As a Guatemalan immigrant with early memories in both the U.S. and her birthplace of Guatemala, Magda León finds healing through printmaking as she tells stories of her bicultural identity. The artist creates meticulous interdisciplinary portraits and installations that connect her memories of the past with her current realities. Magda graduated from the Community College of Rhode Island with an Associate’s degree in Social Work in 2002, earned her BA in Printmaking from Rhode Island College in 2021, and her MFA from MassArt, graduating in the spring of 2024, when this interview was conducted. Magda was generous to discuss her inspirations, cultural influences, and what brought her to create art that speaks of her access to “two worlds.”

Jerman Montanez Can you tell us about your background and how it led you to where you are now as an artist?

Magda Leon I am originally from Guatemala. I came to the United States when I was only one year old. We went back when I was three and lived in Guatemala again for about five years. I then came back to the United States when I was eight.

Ever since, I’ve been back and forth. There are periods of my life where I’ve lived fully in Guatemala and in Providence, so I’ve been able to have access to both worlds equally. In regards to my work… I mean, I think it is my work. My work is a reflection

Jerman Montanez and Callie Ware

of these two lives. I’ve always felt in between two worlds, going back and forth. I’ve always felt like I didn’t fit in either of them because I was either too Americanized, or I was, you know, a Guatemalan. Once people hear me talk they’re like, “Okay, she’s not from here, she’s got an accent.” Immediately you know I’m Guatemalan.

Naturally, a lot of my work is about that “in-betweenness,” especially as a child growing up. You know, you have to grow up a little bit quicker. I was my parents’ translator for everything, I filled out all of their paperwork. Once I learned English, I really had to start doing adult things.

I am also a mom of four kids. They’re between ten and nineteen, I think. There’s so many of them that I can’t remember their ages! But I’ve always been kind of like… a hustler, always. I don’t know how to do anything without hustling. I think it comes from my culture, we just get it done. We just work our little butts off and we don’t complain. We keep going.

Callie Ware You talk about being a hustler and this culture of always moving and never stopping. How does that manifest in your work? How does that lifestyle come alive in your pieces?

Magda It’s between me and my work. I mean that in the sense that nobody witnesses it. I get hurt and sore from printing. I’m always bleeding because I do a lot of woodcuts, but that part fulfills me, believe it or not. It’s not

Magda Léon, En Mis Sueños II, 2023. Collagraph on cardboard, intaglio on paper, 20 x 30 inches

that I like pain, but that’s when I feel like I’m really giving it my all. It feels so genuine. There’s no audience. It’s not performative.

I like to push myself. I really like challenges. It sounds like I’m a masochist! I’m not, but I do like challenges. I don’t like when things start becoming easy because I get distracted and bored. A challenge keeps me focused, it keeps me in it. That’s the hustle part, right? Where sometimes I get myself into things that I’ve never tried before. I’ll end up doing something, then become fulfilled from the learning process. It really feeds me. Lately, I’ve been working with dry leaves. I’m learning again; the kind of learning where I’m fighting. I’m wrestling with the leaves, in a way. They are giant plantain leaves, and I’m going against their natural lifespan, trying to manipulate them. I want to get the printing done before they crumble, but they’re going to eventually crumble. They’re just going to exist in memory, but the hustle and that force will at least be something that I will remember. It’s that part of giving it my all.

Jerman I’m a printmaking major, so I understand the things you’re saying about the process; the hustling, the bloody hands from the woodcuts. What is it specifically about printmaking that accomplishes your goals and gets your vision across more than other mediums?

Magda Printmaking is my language. What I love about it is that there’s always possibilities of doing more. You do this woodcut and you can print it in so many ways. Years from now, when

you think that you’ve printed it in every imaginable way, you’ll find a new way to print it.

I’m learning that lesson right now. I’m printing on chairs, curtains, and games. I find many ways of showing my work. It doesn’t live just in a piece of paper. Printmaking is not discriminatory.

There are other types of art, but I feel like printmaking is for the people. José Guadalupe Posada, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with his printmaking skills, but he was commissioned to do work for a newspaper company. He was able to inform people, who were illiterate, about what was going on politically through drawings. Printmaking has always been about resistance. It is always about making a statement, whether you print it in a newspaper, on a curtain, or a leaf, it’s always saying something.

Callie What statement do you feel you’re making through your use of printmaking?

Magda I belong. I belong because that’s been my thing. I talk about that “in-betweenness.” But I belong. I belong in that in-betweenness. That’s where my belonging lies. That’s my subculture. I belong in that subculture. I have so much in common with other people that are not even Guatemalan, people that just came here, people I grew up here with, you know, immigrant parents that didn’t speak the language.

They could be from the other side of the world and we could have that commonality, and that’s what I want,

for people to see themselves in my art. If they’re trying to find belonging, I want them to find that. Even though my work is about resistance and all that, it’s very tender too. And if I say fuck you, I say it tenderly, with love in me.

Callie I feel a very big connection with your work. Last semester during our screen printing class, we talked about our personal experiences with identity. I shared about how I’m an immigrant as well, but I have faced wildly different challenges than most immigrants. I really don’t feel that I fit in sometimes, yet I can connect with your work so easily with these feelings. I’m wondering what emotions telling these stories brings out for you?

Magda It depends, maybe it depends on the day. Sometimes I feel angry. It shouldn’t be this hard to find belonging, right? It shouldn’t be. This is so much work. But sometimes I feel really fortunate to be able to kind of blend in these spaces, right? Or have an insight, more like that… have an insight into these differences in these two spaces.

I talk about American culture and I talk about Guatemalan culture. I also have access, I mean, I have access to both cultures. But, I also have access to academic culture and working class culture. My mom was educated only up to the second grade, and my dad learned how to read and write on his own. I know that even though I didn’t live through that, and I wasn’t in their shoes, I have access to them. And I have a close understanding of what that is. Being in higher education getting my master’s degree, I have

access to this higher level academic culture, and I feel like I need to educate people on that end—the higher end. It’s not me going back and educating my parents.

They can educate us all. These people have stereotypes. They put some stigmas on these other people. But they can teach us too, and I have access to that…. So, on a good day, I feel very fortunate. And on a bad day, I feel angry.

And that’s how it is. That’s how it feels being in an in-between area, you know, being in that otherness. Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it sucks, or somebody says something really stupid and because you’re so aware, you feel like you can listen. You hear it, like maybe it would escape other people, but not me.

Having that awareness is also very heavy, and sometimes people will say stupid stuff. That’s when I say to myself, “What you’re saying is so dumb,” but nobody takes notice of it. But you do. You know what I mean? You’re so aware of your surroundings and especially of other people, because you’re always sensitive about how you feel.

So, when I go into a room, I’m always looking at who’s in the corner not talking to anyone. And I feel responsible for that person. With that being said, a lot of my work has been installation work and making spaces where it’s kind of welcoming. I just did, what I call a “Tamalala,” which is like a party where you just eat tamales. I did it in my studio, and I invited my cohort and my professors, and that

was my art. I decorated it with leaves and printed leaves. These tamales are made with plantain leaves. I want my installation to feel like you’re being wrapped in a nice cozy blanket. You just feel content and happy. It was really fulfilling to watch everybody just break down their walls, because I feel like food does that. When you share food with others, it breaks down walls. Everybody was having a good time and I loved it. It will only last a moment, but it existed. So, that’s where I’m going with my art for now. We’ll see what the future has in store.

Jerman Less of a question, more of a statement. But my art is also very much about an in-between area. More in the sense where I was raised very religious and came to terms with my homosexuality much later on in life. So, it’s about the in-between of being, like, both or neither at the same time. I’m also Hispanic, and being able to see you wield the power of being a narrator—you’re sharing these stories, your work is very narrative—but also holding the power of editor or informer. You’re taking the power and saying, “Yes, this is what I went through. This is what my family went through. Hundreds of thousands of people are going through this. We can all learn from this.” I think that’s a very powerful thing to be able to get across in your work.

Magda Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m taking a hold, and it’s taken me a while. I’m a late comer to the art world, but I have always been an artist. Always. Since I can remember I’ve been drawing. I’ve been doing things that maybe people wouldn’t think are art.

But for me, it is. I think art is just a way of seeing the world we’re living in. It took me 39 years. But the reason why I’m a late comer also is because, well, I did “life” first. I mean that in the sense that I got married and had children. I was a social worker before. I directed an orphanage in my midtwenties. I did all that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my dream, which was to become a full-time artist. It’s not that I was going to stop being this one person to start being this other person, no. But it always felt like art was something for the privileged. I was privileged to a certain extent. If you go and compare me to somebody that is still starving in Guatemala, of course, I’m privileged. But here in America, as an immigrant coming with parents that are not educated, have come for jobs and are working in factories, it’s different, right? And so, art felt very unreachable until I turned 39. I don’t know if it was because I was going to be 40 soon or what. Maybe a midlife crisis? I don’t know, but, why not? It’s now or never. I have a lot to say and this is bigger than me. I am just this little ant. But I want to be part of it. I want to be part of the story. So, I went back and got my Bachelor’s degree in printmaking.

Once I saw that there were not a lot of Latinos, it was really disappointing for me. I never saw myself in any of the professors because everybody was white, and usually male. I felt very responsible. After what I’m working on now, which is my Master’s degree, I would love to teach. Besides making my own work, I would love to teach— to be able to represent and inspire in some way, because I wish I would have had that.

Callie Going back a little, we were talking about how we’re both connected with your work and feel influenced by your story. Do you have any stories that influence you from any community?

Magda I would say my parents have influenced a lot of my work. They were always opening their homes to undocumented people that would come in and stay with us. People would come to our house in Guatemala and stay with us because we lived in the city. They would stay a couple of days before they would take the journey to go through Mexico and then to the United States, undocumented. I thought about it from that side. When we lived in the U.S. they always opened their humble third level attic apartment to family, friends, and strangers. People would come undocumented, without a shirt on their back, and they’d help them by providing a place to live while they would get on their feet.

I had access to this circle of people and hearing their stories really did something to me. I’m very fortunate to have had parents that brought those experiences to us.

Jerman I know you talked about the leaves a little bit and chairs. What kind of projects are you working on currently?

Magda So, right now I am printing these giant leaves and that’s actually my thesis work. It’s kind of an extension of that party that I threw, the Tamalala. It’s titled Tamalala as well. I’m taking these leaves and I’m printing all these patterns. In my

culture, especially in Guatemala, the indigenous Mayan culture is very rich. You will see women wear this clothing. It is native clothing with different patterns, distinguishing them. It tells the other person where they’re from and what dialect they speak. In regards to that in-betweenness, I decided to make my own pattern.

I used the banana leaves or plantain leaves, and printed my pattern on them. I wanted to make these while speaking also of that belonging, making these spaces where they’re welcoming and kind of warm. I wanted to print them, and these leaves for that, for that reason, kind of because they symbolize coming together. In making my own pattern, it’s kind of like claiming myself. This is mine. This is my pattern. This is the language I speak. I speak Spanglish, or I speak English with an accent, or I speak Spanish with an accent. I’m claiming my own throat through the pattern of the leaves, but also, as I print them. They are leaves. They’re very fragile. They fall apart. I’m sewing them back together. I’m trying to make leaves again, but they’re starting to break. I’m letting the work kind of be open, where they’re starting to take form as a quilt or some type of tapestry, and that’s what they’re becoming. They look like a mess of thread and in all these different patterns, all these different leaves, it’s about claiming, and coming together.

Yeah, that’s what my thesis is about, and I am thinking about taking these leaves, these pieces to supermarkets. And I’m displaying them there, bringing it back to the people and also bringing them to the place where they

first came when they migrated. I’m bringing them back to the market, the Latino market where I bought them. Having people either interact in the sense of giving the leaves attention or not, or finding them silly, that’s fine to me. I am also reclaiming the part where art can be anywhere. It doesn’t just need to be in museums. It’s not only for them to live in museums or the galleries, but also for the people. There are a lot of layers to the project in terms of process and concept.

Callie I know we touched on it a little bit, but we know you’re graduating with your Master’s this year. What are your goals and your plans for after graduation?

Magda I am hoping to find a job. I want to teach, like I said, so I’ll probably do some adjunct work. There might be a possibility that it wouldn’t be teaching, but it will be working at the MassArt print shop and helping out. I want to continue to make art on my own. Like I said, I want to give it time and be with the leaves. I want to do stuff that I haven’t been able to do while I’m in the MassArt program. I will definitely continue doing art. Definitely work with the leaves to make some new prints.

I also designed a restaurant in Providence, called Aguardente, and they are making an extension so I can do more art for them. And I am going to Guatemala this summer for two months. While I am there I am hoping to learn the craft of the Mayan people to make these vessels made of dried plants. Once I learn the process, I hope to make a “book” using them to further my pieces.

Callie That’s awesome. This has been great. You continue to inspire us and others and we’re really excited to see what you do next.

Magda Yeah! Keep going guys. You guys have a life ahead of you. And I would say to you to not be afraid. Do things even if you’re uncomfortable or if you’re unsure, do them because sometimes that’s the only way we learn. Even if you fail, you always learn. You always learn from failing. I love seeing young people invested in creating art. I feel like art is so important, right? It’s in history books. And we might not be in the history books, but you will impact someone else in your lifetime, so go for it. Even if it’s scary, even if your knees are shaking, go for it.

Magda Léon, La Lista, Maxan leaves, silkscreened images with hand painting (detail)

Stephanie Cardon, Night Sweat, 2024. Glazed stoneware, Black Cohosh, soil, 11 x 13 x 10 ½ inches

Stephanie Cardon

Stephanie Cardon is a Boston based sculptor whose work explores the grief and rage she feels in light of the climate crisis. Her pieces have been exhibited internationally and across Boston, earning her the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist award, among several others. She has completed residencies in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and Wyoming. Stephanie’s constant desire to learn and expand her practice has pushed her to explore new media throughout her career. She has worked with photography, recycled materials, clay, and more recently, bioplastics. Her body of work is diverse and impactful. Throughout our conversation with Stephanie, her passion for sustainability, community, and social action was evident.

Valerie Diehl The upcoming show Craft in the Real World at MassArt’s Brant Gallery is going to explore the ever changing role of craft and art. What does craft mean to you, and how does this manifest in your work?

Stephanie Cardon I suppose one way to think of craft is as a body of knowledge. It means being informed about the various possibilities and approaches within a discipline, but not just knowing them intellectually, it’s being able to apply them yourself. That feels really important: the hand aspect of it or the practical application feels important.

In many ways, I’m either self-taught in craft or very much a beginner

Valerie Diehl and Katy Price

at a lot of things. The closest I’ve come to being trained in a craft is in photography. There was a time when I was photographing a lot and I worked in the dark room, to the point where I actually had muscle memory. I would be in pitch darkness, and I would know exactly where everything was while I was working on the enlarger. I would know how far my arm had to extend into space to find a particular knob. To me, that’s a level of craft that you get to through practice.

Now I’m in this really fun place where I work with a bunch of different materials, and I’m always either learning a technique or a new material to make something come into being out of a weird space or a daydream. It involves a significant amount of material research. So in that definition of craft, I would say that it’s not about expertise. It’s about the time that you put into it.

I’m working with biomaterials right now and learning how to make materials out of plants. Part of this means experimenting with different binders like gelatin, agar agar, or methylcellulose. I’m learning that methylcellulose will curl up as it dries, and it turns into a hard bioplastic, but it’s very hard to control.

Katy Price Do you think the inability to control the material will lead to the work you create?

Stephanie Yeah, that’s a great question. Right now, conceptually,

my work has been circling around ideas of climate, justice, ecology and, increasingly, queerness. All of those things intersect in really interesting ways, and they’re all really multifaceted.

I think that the lack of control is almost something I seek out, I would say. You’re pointing to something that I don’t even know I’ve admitted to myself fully, but I really enjoy the state of beginner’s mind where you don’t really know what you’re doing. Anything is possible because you haven’t learned the rules. It seems like I keep putting myself in that situation in my life. I’m like, okay, I have a sense of stability here, so now I’m just going to walk in that direction and see how I can destabilize everything again. Making sense of that space of unknowing and confusion is exciting, and messy, but I think it makes sense to me that I work with things that remove my sense of control, because the topics I take on are systemic. They’re vast. They’re very complex.

Valerie This is kind of jumping ahead a little bit, but I think it pertains to what you’re talking about in terms of lack of control. When you’re working with a team of people on a huge piece like Unless (2018), you have to reckon with a loss of control, but you also need to be precise, and create something that’s gonna fit in the space, you know? So how do you manage that loss of control with precision?

Stephanie Unless was really hard. That whole project was something I had never done because I never worked with a big team of people. I think this control, or lack of control, conversation

is an interesting one because I usually work alone, and that gives me a significant amount of control. I don’t have to delegate, and I don’t have to explain myself to other people. I think that approach makes sense given this very hybrid and experimental way that I work, but in the case of Unless, that didn’t apply, so I had to have a very clear plan. There was a significant amount of logistical stuff to do just to manage the sheer scale of the project. And of course, I complicated matters by trying to use repurposed debris netting, and we chose to embroider it with text…. I took on, in many ways, much more of a manager role, which I didn’t love. You know, I had to be on top of timesheets and schedules, delegating work and deciding who was going to do what on what day. This is going to sound obvious, but I learned through that experience that other people know stuff! Hahaha. Sometimes with my control freak mind, I wouldn’t even see how to approach a problem, but then I would be working with these awesome students and they were like, no, no, no, you gotta do it this way. So I learned a lot about listening to others and getting their input on any given problem. After a certain point, when you’re working with passionate, talented young artists, they’re going to figure it out. It would not have been possible without them.

And then there were other aspects in which I lost complete control in that project, and that had to do with the space. Here’s a behind the scene view of public art! Originally the space the curator showed me was the atrium at the Prudential Center. I designed the entire project like a tapestry that

would hang above people’s heads, and you would walk underneath it. It had three different layers that were designed to create a pattern interference effect. But then, even though the project plans had been given a preliminary approval from the Fire Department, they later said the work posed a fire hazard and wouldn’t allow the installation to go ahead. I had chosen all my materials to be fire resistant—I had chosen an open mesh for that reason. There were so many things about the materials and the way that project was designed that was already determined by the fire department, so when they then came in and said, “no, you can’t install this,” it was devastating. I had to redesign the entire thing. In the end, the solution we found was to completely shift the location, make it a vertical piece on the entrance wall, and remove the other two layers so that it just became a single tapestry. The disappointment that I felt in navigating that was akin to depression. I was full on, really down about it because I spent six months making the thing with all these wonderful people, just to hear, “no, you can’t install it.” I thought the project was going to be a bust. So it took an enormous amount of flexibility and reimagining. Yeah. Public art is not a picnic. Any artist you speak to who’s done public art will tell you this. Public art is really, really challenging because there are so many things that impact the final product that you don’t have control over.

Valerie That is absolutely wild. I can’t imagine putting that much work into a piece, just to have it shut down.

Stephanie Yeah. It was like the night

night of install, and I was kneeling on the floor of the Pru with scissors just cutting right through my work. I just got to a point where I realized I just gotta let it go, because if it was going to hang, it had to get cut. So I sliced it. It was intense.

Honestly, I think that where it ended up on the entrance wall, it was a call to action in a way that the atrium one wouldn’t have been. If it had been in the atrium, I don’t think it would have had the visual impact. That’s the silver lining.

Katy Did this process of creating such a large piece with so many other people affect how you view your own relationship with craft?

Stephanie Well, I can tell you that after making that piece, I just wanted to be alone in the studio. But, the craft of that piece was interesting because a lot of the people at La Villa Victoria were better at sewing than I am, and a lot of them had experience with embroidery that I don’t have. So if we were to measure craft by that sheer skill level, they were far superior craftspeople than I was. However, the way that the project was done, I would say that the craft of it is not what you’d think when you first see it.

You know, I was using industrially manufactured materials like construction debris netting repurposed from building sites, so it was full of holes and we had to patch the holes. There was something about the urgency of the work that was important to me because climate collapse is a really urgent topic. Climate justice is an urgent topic.

And, you know, working with this community that had been displaced by hurricanes, there was a sense of urgency, of like, how do you respond and care for people when things around you collapse? So, to me, patching this netting had a sort of ritualized way of healing and moving on from things and caring for one another.

I guess the craft in that piece was about learning. Learning together. And it was about speed to some extent, and sort of building up repetitive craft knowledge where you could do it again and again and get stronger like that. So that’s this idea of the repetition of humble gestures, that I’ve worked with in my smaller sculptures as well, to acquire a new skill.

Valerie I think that fits into what you were saying earlier about learning, acquiring a new skill, and experimenting. Oftentimes people will see craft as something like sewing or crocheting, but I love the idea of the craft of experimentation and the craft of learning in and of itself. And I think that’s a common thread that I see in a lot of your work.

Which leads into another question. Unless as a whole was such a large piece and, like, this huge undertaking. With your work following that piece, how do you tackle such an overwhelming issue as climate change in smaller pieces, working alone?

Stephanie Well, I don’t know how the two of you think about it, but for me there are some big emotions that come up around climate. I would say grief is a big part of it. I have two kids,

twins. And when I’m grappling with the science of climate, sometimes that anger and grief can be really overwhelming. I think some of the smaller pieces I’ve made really are a response to that. They become a translation of emotion into form. It’s grief and it’s acceptance. It’s sadness and it’s reverence.

In the immediate aftermath of Unless, I was working with the same materials. So making smaller pieces using that same debris netting was really important to me. It has so much narrative in it. Debris netting to me is about construction, reconstruction, deconstruction. It’s the built environment. It’s carbon emissions, but it’s also an indicator of urgency. The neon orange netting has that warning feeling, the blue is much more peaceful to the eye. When you see the black on a building, it often makes me think of grief, or a shroud— something being in mourning. Those colors, to me, are very symbolic. And the materials themselves connote so much.

At the same time as Unless, and with the pieces I was making afterwards, I was using high visibility fabric, and that high vis stuff also, it’s like a warning. It’s a safety fabric. I started incorporating that into smaller sculptures as well. In general, I was working with plastics a great deal because they’re petrochemical, and I like that connection, you know, they’re part of the problem.

As we move away from fossil fuels, these energy companies are now transitioning into being petrochemical companies so they can keep pumping

oil, and just make it into plastics. So that’s really a mess. But then there’s the mesh aspect of it that I think is so interesting conceptually—that we are enmeshed in these systems that are poisoning us. And yes, it’s really hard to disentangle from them.

I don’t have an idealistic approach to any of this. I think enmeshment is inevitable now. You can’t just walk away from this, you know? So how do you weave it into our present? How do you work with it?

Katy That’s heavy.

VALERIE: How do you reckon with this grief and this need for action in your teaching? How do you navigate this with your students?

Stephanie I would say imperfectly is how I navigate it. They’re hard topics, and everybody approaches it through their own lens.

I think the key is building community, and I would say that I’ve brought a lot of that into my classes. I spend much more time now trying to build relationships in the classroom, listening to how students learn best, and trying to accommodate all of those approaches in the classroom, which is hard. It demands a level of attentiveness and listening and patience. And sometimes, trying not to do too much.

I’ve also focused on social action. In the Environmental Forum course I taught with CACP, we brought in speakers who are engaged in the community and who were doing the work on the ground with so many

different approaches. So my message to students was to find the thing you’re passionate about and put the climate lens on that. Whether it’s sustainable textiles and fashion, or community gardening, or biomaterials and 3D printing, or natural pigments in painting. There are so many different ways other than being a badass climate activist who’s disrupting government. That’s also a great way, but it’s not for everybody. I’m not banging on Governor Healey’s door. But I’ll make art to support the people who do that, you know, I’ll make the banners. I’ll go to the art builds. I guess that’s how I approached it with students.

Valerie Do you think this approach you take with your students reflects in the work you’ve been making recently?

Stephanie Well, there’s a big shift happening right now, partly because I’m on sabbatical. And for the first time in 13 years I have a full year to devote to my practice as an artist, whereas before that, I was very much squeezing it in around teaching as best as possible.

Right now I’m really thinking about nontraditional materials. Clay has emerged, honestly, as a form of therapy and recovery from the pandemic. It’s a material I worked with in my teenage years and then returned to. It’s been incredibly healing and it’s reconnected me to places, working with literal soil. I have a strong connection to place in general in my work. I’ve been working with both reclaimed clay, which is recycled clay, and wild clay that I gather in Maine and in the forest near my parents’ home. It slows everything down. So, you know, when you’re

processing your own materials, you’re not going to the shop and buying them. You need to go to a place, whether it’s a beach to gather shells, or whether it’s to the woods to gather clay. So there’s that embodied aspect of finding your materials, and then there’s the time that it takes to process them into something workable. Then there’s all the time of figuring out how they’re going to respond to what you’re trying to do, because they only want to be controlled in certain ways. And then there’s the actual visual language of them and trying to figure out, what do these things mean? What do they look like? What can they do?

A pretty big turn has happened in my studio practice. I would definitely say the pandemic played a large part in it. I would say that mothering, being a parent, has also had a huge impact on my practice.

Valerie How old are your kids?

Stephanie They’re nine.

Katy I was going to ask a selfish question. I have a nine year old as well, and I was just going to ask you, being a professor and having a professional practice, how does being a mother feed into your practice? And also, have you found the time to be a woman and a mother and a teacher, all in the world of being an artist?

Stephanie That’s a question I ask my friends and myself all the time. It’s really hard. It’s also incredibly beautiful, and enriching, and complex. What I’m working through is how to work at your own timescale. I think that’s part of it. I think the world is

very good, in so many ways, at making us feel like we have to follow certain timelines. I’m realizing that trying to follow those timelines causes a lot of pain, because you can’t. And when you can’t, you feel something’s wrong with you. Trying to follow those kinds of narratives is just not doable. So finding your own pace, that’s what I would say is most essential.

And it can feel hard because, you know, I am not a prolific maker. I make consistently, but sometimes I’ll compare myself to folks who don’t have kids, or have assistants, or galleries, or people who are doing the business side of things. And when I evaluate my output practice against that, it can make me feel really down.

I try to think long term, like right now I’m in a place in my life where my kids really need me. And I have students in my life and each one is on a journey that needs support and guidance in specific ways…. You know, in the classroom, in life, there’s all kinds of different ways to engage with people in really subtle, attuned ways, and that demands a lot of energy and attention. So, I guess self-compassion about not being able to ace everything all the time!

And community is huge, especially with other artists. We’re here to support one another because art is honestly one of the best things in the world. For me, it’s definitely one of the top reasons for being human. Otherwise, I’d rather be something else. I feel very privileged to have this path in life and to be around other people who’ve chosen this path in life. I think it’s awesome.

I want to ask how you’re doing with it all, but, you know, we can reconvene for coffee.

Katy I think that sounds great. It looks like you’ve done a very thorough job answering everything we’ve asked, so thank you so much for your time today.

Stephanie You’re so welcome.

Stephanie Cardon, Two Hold, 2024. Razor clams, mussels, gelatin, glycerin, oak, plated brass grommets, 4 x 15 x 14 inches each

veronique “nico” d’entremont is a Boston and Los Angeles based artist who has, through vigor and tenacity, turned harrowing life experiences into reliquary masterpieces. When viewing nico’s eviscerated chairs, bronze castings, or scorched Church facade rubbings, an overwhelming, undeniable grief stands guard. For those familiar with the cumbersome emotional weight that follows death, loss, or traumatic experiences, you will undoubtedly feel a kinship with nico’s craft. Working within the framework of “magical realism,” these pieces access a deep, intentional way with organic material to transform the casting of a deer carcass or a fragment of the artist’s mother’s skull. Intertwined with Ancient Sicilian roots and folklore, nico’s work awakens old world materials and injects them with contemporary understanding of inheritance.

Ruby Gonzalez What type of language would you use to describe your work? Can you share your overall intentions and goals?

veronique d’entremont Maybe starting in 2021, I started using the term “magical realism” to describe my sculpture. My work has always kind of dealt with trauma and death ‘cause, you know, that’s just life. In 2019 I shifted my approach in a concerted way, trying to transform trauma in a way that connects with the spiritual technology from my Sicilian lineage and Sicilian folk traditions. These often involve releasing curses and

protection magic. I was also thinking about intergenerational trauma as a curse.

How do you make work that doesn’t necessarily reiterate that trauma but asks what it looks like to transform that trauma? I started making work centered around a proposition that my mother was an unrecognized saint in the Catholic tradition who’s suicide was an act of martyrdom that produced a miracle in which my own life was spared. I started crafting a mythology or what’s called a hagiography in sainthood stories— every saint has a hagiography of their sainthood that explains why they are a saint and what miracles they did to achieve that title.

In 2019, I made a film that serves as my mother’s hagiography, and also examines the construction of mental illness as pathology. I was referring to the sculptures that I was creating around that time as devotional sculptures. The spirituality and spiritual practice components are entangled, and in terms of my studio practice, material processes are brought together to produce meaning through allegory. Another way to look at that process is that materials and processes are being brought together to produce effects through spellwork. Thinking of a sculpture as a spell with the power to transform our world.

Phoebe Petryk Your descriptions call forth imagery and symbolism, illuminating the depth of the work.

nico There’s a heavy research component. There’s research that you do in a book and embodied research; both of those are very present in my work. For Wildlife Report, I did a lot of what I would call embodied research, returning to my father’s house after his passing and encountering objects, creatures, and spirits. The bronze castings I made were from molds I took off of a deer carcass that I witnessed being consumed by a bald eagle at the center of a frozen pond outside my late father’s home, the first morning I woke there. I began the report as I was encountering different creatures and objects, the house being somewhat alive, objects having a sense of life, which is something that is taken as a given in lots of indigenous practices. Many artists feel that objects have memory. I understand it within the context of an animist spiritual tradition. Now I understand it that way, but I didn’t always understand it that way.

Even when I was a MassArt student I was just like, “I feel like objects have memory.” I didn’t have words to understand why I was so invested in that. I just knew I was really compelled by this idea of using different methods of reproduction like casting and rubbings, and things like that, which served as a sculptural version of a photograph. In graduate school I learned to use another language for this, which was about a semiotic index. The language at the graduate school that I attendedwas really invested in this particular branch of French literary tradition or critique; the semiotics and the understanding of signs and symbols. I went through a period of time where I understood

my interests in a very academic way. Now, after traveling back to Sicily to study the folk magic traditions and pre-Christian spiritual practices of my ancestors, I understand that interest in a particular piece of fabric, or a particular piece of furniture—the investment of that particular piece of furniture has memory and life and animacy.

Phoebe What tells you that a traumatic experience is ready to be explored, memorialized, or made tangible?

nico Feeling compelled toward it. I don’t choose it, it chooses me. In my mind I’m either starting with the story and thinking about what materials and processes can illustrate that story, not in a narrative way but in a relational way. There’s a piece on my website that looks like a bunch of different pieces of fabric with rubbings on them. That’s a piece I inherited from my grandmother, these tablecloths, these linens, which held the memory of my mother’s childhood and every conversation that happened over the dinner table, all the fights, all the prayers, all the everything. There was a Catholic Church right across the street from my studio that had a really ornate facade, really ornate windows, and was abandoned. I was like, oh, I want to do a rubbing on these linens of the Catholic Church, the way that the Church shaped the family dynamic in my mother’s house. That was institutional trauma reproduced on a family level and the act of reproducing that architecture on a domestic intimate object was material allegory. My grandfather would tell these stories about how in Old World Sicily, when

you get married, the family will hang the bedsheets from the wedding night on their closeline to advertise their daughter as a virgin. It’s an apocryphal story—who knows if it really happened—but the retelling of the story as a fact reinforces the cultural belief and reinscribes the “warning” among future generations of women. That’s why they’re hanging on a close line.

I was going to use grave rubbing crayons to make the rubbings, but they didn’t feel like the right material. Then literally the day they came in the mail, the church caught fire and my girlfriend called me and was like are you ok, the church across the street from your studio is on fire?! I was like fuck, I need to get over there. I ran to my studio and grabbed this neon orange work vest from a performance I had done and ran across the street and was like, “Hi, I work for the Department of Cultural Affairs,” cause I had just gotten a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs. I said, “I’m just going to do rubbings of these windows before you board them up because this is a historic building.” And the guys said, “Oh, okay, sure, do you need help with anything?” and I was like, “Usually I use these grave rubbing crayons for doing these rubbings but I was thinking if maybe I could use the charcoal from inside the building…. Could you collect some charcoal for me?” That’s what I mean about the story behind the story behind the story. A lot of my installations happen with public engagement, inviting other people into my process, skirting around the rules and institutions. Making my way through these spaces, that’s just the

reality of my work.

Ruby What role does teaching play in your practice?

NICO: I am definitely always trying to show students how to navigate bureaucracy, big B bureaucracy, at a state institution like MassArt, but also how to befriend people who are in a position to support your process, or how to connect to people. I learned how to do this from community organizing—how to let people know that we are doing this together. For the last solo exhibition I did called The Table is an Altar, where I was displaying one of the bronze deer legs on a pile of rock salt on the table at the center of the exhibition. In documentation of the backstory of this exhibition, there’s a video of me in a gigantic cavernous building, digging rock salt. It’s the City of Boston’s rock salt distribution center. It’s right in Jamaica Plain. I’ve been obsessed with that building for like 20 years, what am I gonna do with that rock salt, how do I get in there? And so I went there and was like hey, I’m an artist, I would like to borrow 250 pounds of rock salt for this installation, and it happened that I was wearing a shirt from the Fire Department, which is another story. I was hit by the E line train, they rescued me, and I have a couple t-shirts from the fire department. The guy was like, “Are you a Mission Hill hillbilly?” Which is what they called themselves. And I was like, “No, but I died and I came back to life, as the ones that rescued me, and he was like, “What?” I weirded him out and he said, “Uh, sure, talk to the foreman, see if he’ll give you some rock salt.” I talked to the foreman and he said no fuckin’

way. When I told the first guy that the foreman said “no,” he was like, “Come back tomorrow at 4pm, he won’t be here.” So I came back and I got my rock salt. Even though he didn’t come to the art show, I left him a flier for it, and his participation—allowing me to get the salt—feels like part of the work. It feels like there are so many more people working towards a piece that is more connected to the community.

Ruby As soon as you were saying that, I was like, and that’s on the community. That’s kind of like the neighborhood aspect of things. I also love that you peppered in: “I died and came back to life.”

nico Well, that’s a miracle. That’s the miracle that my mother performed. Okay, the thing with my mother is that I grew up with this story that, I grew up with my grandmother who would say that your mother died so you could live. Which landed in various ways. When I started pursuing this story of, okay, she died so I could live, she’s a martyr? Like, what does that mean? What would it take for her to be a saint? And it turns out—because I did all this research into how someone becomes a saint—if you are a martyr, you need one miracle to become a saint. But the miracle needs to have occurred more than 5 years after you die, for whatever reason, and, you need to prove that the miracle was a result of intercession by that particular person who you are trying to get sainted. Like, what if the virgin Mary performed the miracle? Or what if someone was praying to some other saint? You need to prove the miracle and prove who performed it. So 5 years and 5 days after my mother killed herself—she shot herself, and a

little piece of her skull was dislodged, my father found it and kept it, because that’s the type of family I had—5 years and 5 days later, I was hit by a train right in front of MassArt, and I died. The firefighters thought they were bringing me to the morgue, that’s what they told me. I fractured my skull in the exact same location that that piece of her skull came from. That is the relic and the proof, that’s why I’m interested in co-opting and troubling these aspects and these traditions in Catholicism with these corporeal relics. But then also like this deer carcass has this other symbolic meaning, because of the context in which I’m framing it. Even though it’s not directly related to this story of my mother, it’s in the context of my body of work.

Ruby I remember seeing images of the reliquary for your mother, and I did not realize, I guess I took for granted how literal it is as a venerated reliquary, in the sense that, yes, it is a part of the body.

nico I made a reliquary that literally holds her piece of bone, and then I also have sculptures that are called a reliquary but don’t actually have a place to hold her body. The casting of the deer’s skull, I call it a reliquary, even though it doesn’t actually hold her.

Ruby I know you’ve probably had to speak on this several times, and so that’s part of why the language comes a little easier.

nico Yeah. I mean, that’s one of those things where making art about it gave me the tools to talk about the

story in a way that felt possible to talk about it. The narrative framing of the work also kind of separated me from the story in a way that sometimes it feels a little abstract. It’s like, yeah, there’s a plus side and a minus side. Because if I do want to actually tap into the feelings around it, sometimes it feels a little bit like it’s been abstracted so much that it’s like a theoretical concern or material concern. I don’t have that experience with the more recent work that I’ve done, which is the grief shrine, like, I can’t talk about it without crying. When I did a presentation this week and spoke about it, I needed to read. I read a text from a description of that. Because I was like, “This is not gonna fly for me to start crying during my presentation.” I don’t know that I would want to stop crying in response to what’s going on in Gaza, you know? It’s fucking real and it’s really horrible. Yeah, so in what ways does art support us in talking about things in a coherent way? And then sometimes things get so coherent or so efficient that it’s working against our connecting with the actual feelings. Sometimes I think about that trade off. That harm can occur when you’re talking about emotionally charged things in a disconnected way.

Phoebe That makes a lot of sense. Art can be a method of coping and understanding but also distancing. You can tell that there’s been a lot of processing and exploring that allows you to talk about your experience in such a way.

nico Yeah, I forget sometimes—I’ve gotten better about this, but there was a period of time where I kind of

breezed through the story and people were like, “Wait, wait, what? Wait, you died?” So I think it’s also just acknowledging that it can be a lot for people to hear for the first time. I do programming with my solo exhibitions. There’s a lot of programming that is meant to act as a container for having deeper conversations about the issues that are being raised. So the show, The Table is the Altar, was framed as a five course meal and there were five different events that happened. One of them was an ancestral healing practice, and one of them was what’s called a transmission session, and they’re all collaborations with different people, a space for healing, or reflection, or processing.

Ruby I love that because it is kind, caring, on the level of taking responsibility for the impact of what you’re bringing into the room.

I would love to go a little bit more into the material aspect of things. What was the reason for casting the deer leg in bronze as opposed to another metal?

nico Yeah, it’s funny because I have such strong feelings about the different metals for casting.

Ruby Naturally.

NICO: I mean for me, bronze equals art object. Iron is… I’m not super invested in the industrial history of iron. I’m more invested in it for its visceral qualities and its connection to earth, earth based spiritual practices, and earth based traditions. And, early, early modes of prehistoric forms, like magma, volcanoes, and stuff.

I guess it didn’t even occur to me to cast it in anything except bronze because I wanted it to be something that would be, like, a devotional object, register in that way. So it just felt like bronze was the thing that I would be able to finish in a way that created that sense, that sensation. There’s a value, an implicit value in something that is cast in bronze, that the material causes viewers to value it in a different way.

Ruby Yeah, I definitely understand the association of preciousness with bronze. I almost didn’t want to ask this question, but I’m curious, was it also the fact that bronze has the association with memorializing something?

nico I mean, that wasn’t in my reasons for choosing it, but it is a reason that reinforces. When you say that, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s true, that it’s a way of, it’s a way of memorializing.” I mean, bronze… it has a history of memorializing problematic figures in history. Right? It’s a material that I feel like is about memorializing dead white guys that did shitty things on top of all the quote unquote good things they did. So, I feel that’s not something that I’m drawn toward engaging with but it’s not something that I’m going to make a decision not to use bronze because of.

Phoebe That’s fair. I feel that branches off into another question we have about materials. Looking at your work you can really see the emphasis on organic materials, and surfaces. I’m curious, in retelling and interpreting these experiences and stories, are there certain materials that you feel do a more effective job than others?

NICO: I mean, there’s maybe a type of material that I’m drawn to working with, which would be materials that have a connection to the earth. Obviously, bronze is composed of materials that, at one point, came from the earth. But that’s why the distinction between bronze and iron feels like, iron is more just directly from the earth, right? Clay feels like it’s directly from the earth. Salt is directly from the earth. So there’s certain materials that—especially materials for the tapestries that are part of the Table is the Altar —I mean, I call them grave rubbings because I used grave rubbing crayon to do rubbings of furniture in my father’s house. But then also, the fabric dyeing technique that I used is oak tannin and iron oxide. But the oak tannin is from acorns that I gathered from his land. And the iron oxide is from the cast iron pots and pans that I scoured to get the rust to create the iron oxide. So it’s often more about where the materials are specifically coming from. That’s what I mean when I talk about animacy or indexicality. It is that specific thing. It’s not like I went on Amazon and I ordered some oak gall powder.

Ruby Right.

nico It just feels like sometimes you have to do that. If I was commissioned—if I got into the Whitney Biennial and I wanted to make 10 of these—I probably wouldn’t be able to gather enough. It wouldn’t be maybe efficient to gather enough acorns to do whatever. That would change the work for me. So there’s actually a way in which my work needs to happen on a certain scale, and a

certain pace. That doesn’t mean scale like, tiny; I make a big work. But I’m not going to have five solo shows in one year. Which, maybe that sounds absurd. After spending 11 years building my art community in Los Angeles, those are my peers in LA that I graduated from grad school with and that I’m still very embedded with, that’s where they’re at. Some of them are showing in the Whitney Biennial right now. They’re at a point in their career pursuing a type of engagement with their art practice that is about being represented by a blue chip gallery, having multiple international exhibitions per year. I don’t want to say it’s not interesting to me. I feel that almost makes me sound like I’m being flippant. But it would create a really different relationship to the materials and I don’t think I could authentically do that. These sculptures truly feel like a spell, they truly feel like they are both doing the work of communicating the message and doing the healing work. If I am going to honor the fact that my work often feels like a transmission from something beyond me—I often say, a transmission from my ancestors—it is a collaboration, and I need to work at the pace of that transmission.

Ruby In terms of communication, I am curious how you decide which materials to name. We thought of this question when we saw that you mentioned fire scale as a material in the two chairs piece.

NICO: Yeah, I put a lot of time into thinking about how I can get the most information about the process into the little bit of space that you have with title and materials, right? I have

this series of burnout castings that are these objects based on a Sicilian folk magic practice, and are meant to release a curse. The title is Made Real By Process Of Annihilation. It’s a poetic way of describing a burnout casting. But it’s also building in the idea that the process is producing the meaning, through both the title, and then giving as much information as I can in the materials list.

So that piece you were talking about, the title of it is Been Through Fire, which is, like, you know, literally, and also figuratively. It’s talking about a psychological or emotional experience, right? So the fire… naming the fire scale… it’s naming something that’s the residue of having been through fire.

Sometimes I name different materials for different reasons. The burnout casts, Made Real By Process Of Annihilation, sometimes when I write the materials, I’ll name liver of sulfur, which is totally weird if you’re looking at it.

Ruby I always find it so funny when people name the patina.

NICO: For somebody who’s familiar with bronze casting, it’s like, why did you name your patina? But then for somebody who’s not familiar with bronze casting, they’re like, what kind of weird witchy eye of newt thing is that? Sometimes it’s flagging a really specific, practical process that also could be interpreted as something mystical and weird. And so you’re then giving room for asking, “Oh, what is liver of sulfur? Where did that name come from?” Like, maybe that is

and weird.

Ruby Oh, because it totally is!

nico Yeah. And then sometimes, with that church rubbing piece, for example, the materials that I’m naming are, like, inherited table linens—which actually were part of my grandmother’s dowry. Sometimes I say table linens inherited from the artist’s mother or artist’s grandmother. Naming the clothesline and the clothespins is a way of saying there is symbolic meaning in these clotheslines and clothespins. Whereas if they were just a way to hang the thing, I wouldn’t have named it.

Ruby Right. To acknowledge the fact that it is part of the piece. It is not just a piece of hanging equipment. Makes sense!

NICO: Yeah. “Architectural rubbing made with charcoal from a church fire” tells you much more about the process than “Charcoal.”

Ruby That totally makes sense, knowing how important the intention behind the material is to the actual works that you make. Also, again, this is just me being a metal nerd. The nails in Made Real By Process Of Annihilation, are they included?

NICO: Yeah. Those were cast the way that they were. In Sicilian Folk Magic or protection magic, this a practice for releasing a curse. I was thinking about the patterns that get repeated through intergenerational trauma—how these patterns have always existed, but what did we call it before we had the name “intergenerational trauma”? Maybe we called it a curse, and we had spiritual

technologies for addressing this. If you go to my website, you actually see photos of the original objects that are fruits that have the nails and religious medallions stuck into them. The idea was like, the way that you release a curse, if you find one of these objects in your home, it means somebody put a curse on you. And the way that you release it is that you incinerate it and you say a prayer over the object. I’m still making these. I brought in some of the more recent ones and passed them around during my artist presentation. Obviously they’re so heavy because it’s solid bronze. So there’s the haptic quality of this really intensely heavy, tiny thing that’s sort of potentially sharp. Yeah, it has an intensity to it. It is doing the thing of releasing the spell through this process of burnout casting, and then it is symbolically embodying that. But yeah, the bell and all the nails are inclusion cast in and there’s a staple. Yeah. But the curse or trauma —the fruit—has been transformed into bronze. It’s been made into an art object, or something “beautiful,” however you want to look at it.

veronique d’entremont, A Divine Omen, A Monstrous Gift, 2023. Bronze death mask

Will Johnson

Will Johnson is a Brooklyn born musician and multimedia artist. His work centers around blackness, historical records, and the material and immaterial conditions of space that shape sound. Will examines the malleability of time while simultaneously reflecting on its materiality. He uses sample based practices along with listening, archiving, editing, and experimenting to surface and play with the experience of time. Will is the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Sound Art/Composition and the McKnight Foundation’s Fellowship for Musicians. His commercial work includes licensed sound and original composition for Acura, GAP, Beats Electronics, HBO, and vocal contributions to Grammy-winning best electronic album Skin. Live performances by Will have been commissioned by Lincoln Center, the Kitchen, 92Y, and Mass MoCA. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Brown University.

Fallon Lavertue I guess I’ll just pop in with a fun question. I’m always really intrigued by responses to these: If you could share a meal and conversation with any person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Will Johnson Oh man, this is going to sound so narcissistic, but I feel like it would be some previous version of myself. I have an interest in encountering what I’ve concealed from myself at previous points. I’m curious about time travel and how

Kai Buffonge and Fallon Lavertue the confrontation between myself now and myself of an imaginary past point in time might result in a rupture of self. But also, frankly, whenever I get asked that, I’m also like, this is the conversation. This is the exact conversation that I would like to be having right now, whatever that conversation is. So it would be right now at 11:56 am on April 1st with y’all two talking about craft.

Fallon Well, thank you.

Kai Buffonge Perfect. You mentioned time travel and confrontation; from previous conversations, we know that you’ve been looking back to the 1950s and 60s. I feel like those times are idealized by segments of white American society and that that’s kind of the pinnacle of what they want to go back to. We’re curious about what lens you’re looking at these eras through.

Will I have been researching the years between 1964 and 1968 in relation to the “ghetto riots.” These years coincide with the passage of landmark legislation that, I would argue, the Ghetto Riots are partially responsible for. In response to the over 200 “riots” in cities like Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, president Lyndon B. Johnson created the Kerner Commission. The commission analyzed the news media that covered the ghetto riots, ultimately concluding that the coverage of black struggle during this period was often distorted and deeply problematic. News coverage

deeply problematic. News coverage of the ghetto riots, according to the commission, was being reported, produced, and edited in a way that eroded the Johnson administration’s messaging on America as “the Great Society.” In response to the commission’s findings, president Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This act made national funds available for the creation of PBS and NPR. Both outlets were designed with the hopes of providing national education through mass media. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 also made a mandate that black folks receive vocational training to become TV producers, filmmakers, and sound engineers. This historical fact often gets lost: the president of the United States responded to the ghetto riots, in part, by investing federal funds in the creation of black news content made by black new producers for a black public audience. As a result, in 1968, American audiences began to see more and more black-produced public television produced for a black public audience. These shows became known as “black public affairs television.”

I was specifically interested in the use of diegetic sound in these shows— places where music is being used in the background. I noticed it the most in shows like Black Journal and Say Brother that used sound and music to underscore video portraits of black people out and about on the street. These street portraits were used to weave together disparate news segments so that in between news segments, audiences of these shows are presented with black life as a series of portraits set to music. I was

initially thinking that I could isolate the portraits and their soundbeds and shape them into one shared multimedia document. In this way, the portraits from all of the various black public affairs shows from various black cities could constitute their own longer form audiovisual piece. But I was unclear how to arrive at this without directly addressing coverage of the ghetto riots that led up to the creation of black public affairs television in the first place. So then, I was interested to know what the ghetto riots looked and sounded like, as media.

Remarkably the diegetic music from news coverage of the Ghetto Riots is almost always some form of orchestral music. If you find a news segment between 1964 and 1968 and it’s about the riots, you will almost always hear an orchestra playing dramatic brass overtures and loud timpanis. There is a clear ideological message. The other thing I found was a lot of stock footage with no sound or mechanical audio artifacts like timecode test tones, tape hiss, and crackle. This became an interesting sonic language to consider alongside the orchestra. This places the black past into a strange relationship with both “noise” and the orchestra.

None of the orchestral composers from the ghetto riots coverage are credited or listed anywhere in any archives. All the music that’s underscoring this footage with no way to tell who composed it or where it even came from! Through research, I found that all of this orchestral music comes from sound libraries and stock orchestral recordings from the 1950s. They weren’t even composed in the 60s.

Nor were they specifically scored for coverage of these riots; they’re just stock orchestral pieces that could be licensed for TV and film productions. This then raises a whole other series of questions—being like, what other places were these songs used? In some cases they were used in scifi films, and there’s this whole other research area that shows a direct correlation between these stock orchestral songs and the orchestral music used in Nazi propaganda newsreels as well. More questions. I know, that’s a lot [laughs].

Fallon But I’m totally able to follow! Thank you for sharing all of that with us!

Kai In relation to analyzing these archives, or more generally, what does craft mean to you and has that changed over time?

Will Yeah, it’s so interesting, because craft is not a word I use very often at all. Part of the reason I was interested in doing this interview is because I think when it is called attention to, when we mention craft, it brings up so much. I guess for me, my sorta introduction to that term comes from understanding it in art environments. And specifically, how the term is used to make distinctions between functional objects, objects of commerce, objects that can be traded for capital (that have some kind of value and have utility), versus “fine art” that’s in this more nebulous category and supposedly has an inherent aesthetic value that transcends the economy. Obviously, that’s deeply troubling. That distinction is worth spending time

with. For me, I can forget the whole process that’s energizing the making. I was actually looking forward to thinking in real time about some of this stuff because I don’t think about craft much anymore. I’m 40 years old, and in the moments when there’s an invitation to think about craft, I’m like, oh yes, let’s do that. It’s almost like, a way to check in with myself. Right out of undergrad I got a job writing for a magazine and producing music. The assumption of it all—in the day to day—is that you’re making things in exchange for money. I think money can’t be avoided, you know, value and values and valuation can’t be avoided in the conversation around craft. Commerce can’t be avoided and capital can’t be avoided. Yeah, we could start there.

Kai You were saying that you no longer consider craft as much, and my question relates to your album Bad Études. I want to know if it was a conscious play with craft. My understanding of the word étude is that it’s a study and practice of an instrument. So would you say that album was a playful study of your own craft?

Will Yeah, absolutely, that’s really insightful. I think of the études in the classical music tradition where a composer might compose a song for a student so that they can learn a specific technique. In most cases, this is part of how composers earned a living; they took on wealthy students and wrote songs for these students to learn and accumulate cultural knowledge. So an étude is like, craft as craft can be. The economy around classical music is

wild. Like, the étude demonstrates that the composer is someone who teaches to earn a living. But études are also sometimes appreciated for the aesthetic experience of what happens in the listening environment; some audiences appreciate these works as “beautiful” without thinking about the economies that surround beauty in the first place. I’m sure there are tons of things like that, especially in modern art, like with color field paintings, things that give a real indication of a technical procedure and are received as kind of just—aesthetic gestures.

I made Bad Études outside of any kind of formal industry—like, it was a mixtape and it was free. It was not marketed by anyone aside from me. I think that practice, to be honest, it wasn’t really even mindful of its own telic intentions. It was one of those things that felt like I was driven to make it because it needed to be made and it was the attempt to answer a set of questions that I needed to ask in that moment. In that way, I just made the work. The reception to it, I feel like, for me, it was one of the rare moments where I’m like, this is the exact reception that I hoped for… which, you know, that doesn’t happen very much for me. I’ll be honest, like, most of the time, especially if I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the questions, what results is kind of my own pursuit of tending to unanswerable questions. But that mixtape was the result of me not having enough time to ask too many questions and instead being like, I need to make this mixtape and release it so that I can sell it on Bandcamp and make money back, you know? Yeah, super craft in that way.

Fallon Recently, when I read Kai’s artist statement—which is more a manifesto—it got me thinking about my intentions, and intended audience, in making a piece. Have you made other projects where it was, like, you’re creating it because you know you want to create it, but you don’t know why yet? Kai, I would love to hear from you as well.

Kai I’m on this path to be a freelance illustrator, or to directly work with clients, making a product for these people, and I wouldn’t say I’m against that overall. As Fallon was saying, in my artist statement, I very explicitly say the type of person that I do not want to be able to experience my art. This resistance to accommodate certain people partly fuels what I like to create. Some of my work that stems from that impulse almost acts as a barrier to keep that kind of person from being able to appreciate or even want to interact with my artwork.

Will I’m curious now… thinking about craft as a creation of a barrier, and about how to actually create that barrier, right? Like, is that a thing that you’re then intentionally creating…? I mean, is crafting personally, like, an identity? Part of what I’m interested in doing is this kind of dance between opacity—which I would say is creating something that keeps a barrier between myself and everyone—and explication and revelation. Navigating that, to me, actually really does feel like the work of improvisation. That’s the work of performance that I’m most interested in. It’s funny, I actually feel like I’m so immersed in that process that I actually forget that I’ve made an active decision to do that. Do you know

But I love that, I mean, I think that that’s something to talk about, craft in relation to a barrier or opacity—it’s not just the thing that we’re forming that becomes recognizable as the art object. We’re also forming what we don’t want people to see or don’t want them to engage with. I think that’s, like, you know, easy to forget that’s happening. Right? The craft that’s not on display, explicitly not for show. I forget that all the time, that I’m making both things at the same time.

Will Johnson, Newscycle, 2024. Video installation, 1920 x 1080

Contributors

Erik DeLuca

Hai-Wen Lin

Katherine Agard

Magda Léon

Stephanie Cardon

veronique d’entremont

Will Johnson

Alan Rivers Painting ’25

Callie Ware Illustration’ 26

Fallon Lavertue Painting ’24

gem conway, Fashion Design, Creative Writing ’26

Jasmine Eastman Illustration ’25

Jerman Montanez Printmaking ’25

Katy Price Painting, Sculpture, ’24

Luc Kai Buffonge Illustration ’26

Larita Sok Fashion Design ’25

Phoebe Petryk Fibers ’24

Ruby Gonzalez History of Art, Sculpture ’24

Terron Thompson Communication Design ’25

Valerie Diehl Illustration ’25

The Brant Gallery

Editorial

The Brant Gallery provides a forum for interdisciplinary, cross-cultural curriculum development through its exhibition program, lecture series, and artist residencies. The gallery expands the boundaries of the Studio Foundation department by introducing students to contemporary art, craft, and design from a local and global perspective.

Helen Miller, visiting professor and curator of the Brant Gallery, collaborated on editing with students and artists.

Design: Dandelion

Craft and its relationship with canon and tradition are undergoing a redefinition in the arts. The transformation is propelled by other paradigm shifts in art and education, most notably the turn to equitable and culturally responsive teaching and socially engaged art and design.

Craft in the Real World, a year-long series of events and dialogue across disciplines, contributes to MassArt’s understanding of these trends and opportunities, and their roots in the relationship between craft and world, culture, and identity.

Contributors

Erik DeLuca

Hai-Wen Lin

Katherine Agard

Magda Léon

Stephanie Cardon veronique d’entremont

Will Johnson

Alan Rivers Painting ’25

Callie Ware Illustration’ 26

Fallon Lavertue Painting ’24

gem conway, Fashion Design, Creative Writing ’26

Jasmine Eastman Illustration ’25

Jerman Montanez Printmaking ’25

Katy Price Painting, Sculpture, ’24

Luc Kai Buffonge Illustration ’26

Larita Sok Fashion Design ’25

Phoebe Petryk Fibers ’24

Ruby Gonzalez History of Art, Sculpture ’24

Terron Thompson Communication Design ’25

Valerie Diehl Illustration ’25

In Humanities classes, students learn the core skills of empathic listening and critical thinking.