P HOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD ACKER I NTERVIEW BY HARRYET CANDEE

Clark Art Institute Williamstown, MA

DEIRDRE FLYNN SULLIVAN ARTIST / TEACHER

Interview by Harryet Candee Photography by Edward Acker

What is it like to balance so many venues in the arts? Also, can you tell me about the meaning of your given name?

Deirdre Flynn Sullivan: It’s challenging, exciting, and always stimulating. I am named for the female hero of the Celtic legend Deirdre of the Sorrows. It’s part of the Irish tales out of the Ulster Cycle of legends.

20 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND

What are you working on now, and how has your life changed since the Corona Virus began?

Deirdre: Some of my work is currently included in a group show at the Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield, MA. but no one can view it due to the state of emergency. I play the part of the Faerie Queen for the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival but the festival has been postponed to June 19th, 2021. This would have been our fifth consecutive year. As a member of the steering committee for the festival I would have been very busy working with our team and directors, Gail and Phil Sellers, to create another glorious year. The only thing the Coronavirus has not affected is my daily practice of making art from photographs and writing either poetry or essays.

And you are a Renaissance girl? These days we all wear many hats.

Deirdre: The Renaissance mind and approach to living refers back to that 15th and 16th century world of exploration and discovery. Artists were not always limited to just one medium. The humanist philosophy embraced all things new and diverse in some ways reflecting later modernism and the 20th century concept that art should be the shock of the new. I am a visual artist, actor, writer, and teacher of writing so I identify with the Renaissance.

What do you visualize happening around the world in about a year from now?

I can only hope that around the world there is social improvement, a deeper sense of compassion, and a greater respect for the importance of the arts.

It’s mind boggling how many things we have scheduled are on hold. When things are back to normal, how will you decide what to do first with your art? I suppose teaching would be the easiest to resume?

Deirdre: I just found out that my summer class has been canceled but I am slated for two classes in the fall. I have been an adjunct faculty member at Berkshire Community College for the past 12 years. I was asked if I would like to teach there

Deirdre Flynn Sullivan Blue Shades Photograph

and so every semester since fall 2008 I have been hired to teach composition classes so I hope it continues. I share my art on Facebook every day so that involves the public. I have three pages Deirdre of the Arts; Define Your Terms: Americana Music from Roots to Punk; The Scene: From the Renaissance to Hollywood and I am a team member for the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival page. I also have two groups ARTSPEAK: Artists Networking in the Berkshires and Beyond and Children’s Literature and Young Adult Fiction: From Picture Books to Novels. All of my pages and groups have been up and running for ten years on Facebook. I share art from around the world, links, music, films, events, and more each day.

It’s so much of a Food for Thought era we are in. I think we will be frantically creative this time next year, sooner I hope! How are you preparing for your next project?

Deirdre: I am working on a book of essays and a fantasy novel that I am illustrating with my own art.

I am interested in knowing about your portraiture work. Tell us all about it. It’s dreamy, creative, fun, sensitive, theatrical, poetic! Is this a body of work you are obsessed with doing?

Deirdre: I stumbled into portraiture via the cell phone technology. I have been an artist, actor, and writer since childhood. My major at the University of Michigan was Comparative Literature and Art. I studied filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and art at the Chicago Art Institute. I have an open-minded approach to how technology can assist, enhance, and inspire the artist. My life is rather monastic. I have been a widow for 27 years, had one relationship which ended twelve years ago, and have been utterly alone ever since. There’s nobody here except me. I don’t wear make-up, I get dressed in the morning and don’t look in a mirror all day but I use myself, all the aspects of who I am as an artist to explore storytelling and poetry in my portraiture. Frida Kahlo Rivera, Cindy Sherman, and Francesca Woodman have inspired my work but mostly, it comes from being alone but not lonely.

What do you find to be most challenging for you working with this thematic venue in photography?

Deirdre: To not be redundant. To be fresh, innovative, and new in each work. Some are more successful than others. I don’t set out with a plan. I point, trust, look, and make.

Describe to us the techniques you use to achieve a self portrait?

Deirdre: It depends. I use my cell phone. I use photo techniques via PicMonkey and PhotoMania. I see the story in the image and seek to reveal it through the process of trying different filters, devices, colors, etc. to create variations from one photo. I want the self to become someone else, like an actor becoming a character.

What criteria do you give yourself in order to accept a piece into your portfolio of work? What do you strive for?

Deirdre: That I like it. Even though it might be a sad work in terms of content it makes me happy as an artist which is the highest praise I give anything in the world of art. It makes me happy.

Working with your face as the subject, have you discovered what you love and not love about the details and the face as a whole source for expressiveness?

Deirdre: I like to be surprised. I can do 50 variations from one photo. The theatre training, and by the way, I have taught theatre classes, too, has taught me to use all the tools in the arsenal of my life to create a viable character. Emotional, mental, physical, all of these are brought out to play in the creation of my images. If the eyes work I use them and I discover through the process of playing with the photograph the story it has to convey. Each one is unique.

Are you documenting time and age and history with your portraits?

Deirdre: Not purposefully. Certainly not my own life. An image can look like something out of the Middle Ages or 1940s Hollywood or contemporary or timeless. I am not officially aware of any documenting.

How do you then figure out how and what poetry to add onto an image?

Deirdre: I just feel it. The image compels my metaphors.

THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 21

How are the ways you found yourself supporting other artists and their work?

I have always been a collaborative artist. Actors work as part of a cast and team. Filmmakers do as well. Continued on next page...

Flames

Lions

Dawnlight

Dragon

ART Photography by Deirdre Flynn Sullivan

I have always admired both co-operative and supportive systems in the arts. Many of us are volunteers, grassroots, non-profit. In my experience, the best and most confident artists are generous. If someone wants to buy my art, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. But hey, wouldn’t it be great if they bought my friend’s work? Success in the arts means working with people. It’s natural for me to do this via my community, social media, and the art scene. Over the past 26 years I have been the director of a couple of galleries, worked with theatre groups such as the Town Players of Pittsfield, and the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival to name a few. Shoemaker’s Holiday at Loyola University in Chicago where they were both students. They raised six children to love the theatre, literature, and the arts. I am the oldest child and was dedicated to making pictures, being in plays, and writing stories since kindergarten days. I always knew that I was an artist.

I’m guessing you have a good visual memory as well. What can you remember from the earliest moments of consciousness? Can you put that into words?

Deirdre: The light on the platform of an elevated train in Chicago. I would say the effect light had on surfaces was something I was always conscious of everywhere. A wall, the ground, the waves of Lake Michigan lapping onto wet sand.

What are your dreams like?

Deirdre: Dreams are great pathways to storytelling. They speak in figurative language riddles.

As a teacher, you try to instill many things. Inspiration, skill, expressiveness, playfulness, eye and hand coordination, etc. What do you enjoy about teaching?

Deirdre: Being egoless. Being the vehicle through which important knowledge is shared. being the guide in a symposium of discussion. Seeing my students proud of their work. Hearing them laugh. Learning from them.

How did theatre enter your life?

Deirdre: I was raised doing theatre exercises such as pantomime, breathing, enunciation, scene work. I went to theatre classes from the age of

“Deirdre” Photograph by Edward Acker Williamstown, MA 2020

seven and acted in plays and films throughout my life.

Who was your mentors and for what principle in acting did you find works best for you?

Deirdre: Stanislavsky. My acting teacher at the University of Michigan turned me on to the work of Sandy Meisner. I love the teachings of Ute Hagen. Stella Adler, too.

Where do you get your inspiration from to keep going every day? I believe, we have endless energy because its in our spirit. Without much effort, we glide through the creative realm, like elves in dreamland, waiting for the next flower to jump upon. So, what would be your worst enemy?

Deirdre: Yes, I am fueled by uncanny energy. My worst enemy would be to give up, to get too tired, to listen to the naysayers and quit.

What do you find Berkshire County needs? It has so very much to offer, but what do you think it needs?

Deirdre: A real center for artists to share, show their work, and be supported. All ages, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all disciplines. My drawing instructor at SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute), the sculptor, Bill Geiss told his students that we weren’t there to learn to be artists, the institute already knew we were, we were there to gain use of equipment, space, and the support of fellow artists. Berkshire County needs an art school style center. Classes, equipment, space, and the support created and sustained by artists.

If you had five miles of Berkshire land, what would you do with it?

Deirdre: Build the Berkshire School and Center for the Arts.

If you were to relive a time in your life or a period in history, when would that be, and why?

Deirdre: I would want to be a time traveler and pop into every era. To savor and to disappear.

What is it you want people to know about you?

Deirdre: That I am an artist, a supporter of fellow artists, and an active participant in helping the arts thrive both locally and globally.

What is your favorite place in the Berkshires?

Deirdre: I never have favorites. But a friend wrote to me a few years back and he said, “Deirdre, you live in beauty.” I do live in a quiet, wooded, naturally beautiful place in South Williamstown and feel wildly blessed.

Do you have a favorite film?

Deirdre: I am terrible at playing favorites. However, to give you an idea of how thoroughly I love film as art I will tell you that sometimes to help me relax into sleep I will think of all of my favorite directors by country of origin. Fellini; Visconti; Pasolini; Bergman; Truffaut; Buñuel; Polanski, Malick; Ford, well, you get the idea.

What art material have you not worked with yet, but would love the chance to learn and explore?

Deirdre: Clay. Sculpture.

When do you have time to just take a hike and meet up with friends?

Deirdre: Normally, I work out daily at Planet Fitness and hike in the woods, teach my students in a classroom, dance at a dance studio once a week, and meet with team players for planning and or ganizing the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival. Now it’s just reduced to a daily walk; trying to help my students finish their coursework via technology; dancing when I feel inspired; and waiting for 2021 when the faeries will return to frolic and create magic in the ‘Shire once again.

What would you like to say to complete our interview, Deirdre?

Love the arts with all of your hearts!