Interview with and the work of Leona Christie

"eternity©", 2014, intaglio with spit bite aquatint, 18" x 12"

Sarah: Let’s start with a little bit about yourself, where you went to school, where you grew up, that sort of thing. Leona: Well, my family immigrated from Wales to suburban Detroit when I was five. I went to undergrad in the Midwest at the University of Wisconsin. I got my bachelors in Studio Art. I took a year off between undergrad and grad and went and got my MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle. And that was in printmaking and drawing. I graduated in 1994. Sarah: You talk about the depiction of the dream sequence in your work; how do you view the dream and its importance? Leona: That’s a good question. Well, I think of the dreams as a culturally manufactured dream that is transmitted through both fine art and popular culture. So when I say the dream sequence the one that I’m most particularly interested is the dream sequence from Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” where Salvador Dali collaborated with Hitchcock for the scene where Gregory Peck has a nightmare in which he’s running through this space in which gravity and orientation are confused.

Sarah: You use a handful of different mediums, how do you feel that ties into and influences your work stylistically? Leona: I’m interested in using media where marks build up with repetition but at the same time the marks can be read on the surface as a texture and a pattern. Close attention to the mark can lead to a breakdown to the representation and illusion; I like that tension to be flat and volumetric and abstract and representational it happens when the mark comes to foreground from one perception into the background in another. Or maybe not so much into the background but to establish the space. Sarah: Did you play around with any different mediums before you started using your key group, what is interesting for you as far as the tactile nature in the creation of work? What was it about printmaking and drawing that you prefer to other mediums? Leona: I was drawn to it for the history which includes narrative, storytelling, and the relationship of print to text; the relationship of print to history and the transition of ideas, and the print as a kind of document how it relates to the history of technology, and I guess history in general. How ideas have been transferred and disseminate western culture visually, and ideas about art as well as religion and everything, so because a lot of the imagery I’m interested in is also about technology and history and history of the future, and the future told through the lens of the past. That’s something I’ve been interested in for a number of years in varying degrees. Right now I’m a little more interested in memory and abstraction I would say. I’m moving a little away from figurative outlets.

"Subset of the Curvatures", 2012, ink, graphite, and goauche drawing, 9.25" x 12.5" Sarah: Your work has a whimsical quality to it, do you ever feel that because of the feminine connotations or the fact that you are female that you or your work is judged differently than your male counterparts? Leona: Well I suppose I probably feel more marginalized by its narrative qualities and its relationship to illustration than my status as a woman. I struggled with that, in fact in moving away from the narrative and being more illusive with forms frees me into a world more of materials, and more formal. The work I tend to be most drawn to in the art world is work that is more abstract. But that’s a good question, you know I think in a way, having work that is more whimsical or having work that is charming and readable and accessible, and sensual/sexual can also broaden your audience to an audience that maybe doesn’t understand abstraction. In terms of serious art world privileges, yes. Sarah: Taking that into consideration how do you see your role or your job as an artist? Leona: Like my responsibility? Sarah: Yes. Leona: Huh, that’s a hard one to do while scrubbing a table. Ha, let me think, me in particular or artists in general? Sarah: What is your job in particular? Leona: Authenticity, so to make the work that feels honest, uncensored, and open. I don’t see or think that it… well here’s the thing I work in a couple or ways right? So the body of work that comes more from a compulsive obsessive way of working is more psychologically expressive and personal, almost like a form of confession or revealing inner compulsions to different images and forms or anxieties. The work where I represent my brother’s writings as visual work, which is what I’ve done in the past five years has a very different set of priorities and responsibilities and ethics. Do you want to hear a little about that? Sarah: Sure! Leona: So I’ve always wanted to introduce my brother’s obsessions into the world in the way that I had released my own and he’s very prolific and I wanted to do it in a way that highlighted their artistic value. But it was really important to me that I did it in a way that didn’t exploit him, that didn’t emphasize the medical “freakishness” of his savant syndrome, and that he was an active participant in terms of approving that the work be in public. That he would see the work, that he would enjoy the process of sharing it with strangers and friends, and THAT has been really important to me. I feel like I’ve been successful about it and there have been times when he has said “okay that’s it Leona, I don’t want to have anymore art shows” so then I’ve paused and then he randomly said to me recently that he wants to have another art show in 2017 because that was x number if years since the last art show and then he wants to have them every three years because something else is every three years, because he thinks in these gridded systems of time and repetition. Just like he writes, so now he’s leading so he said I have to have a show for him in 2017 so I’ve started to think about how that is going to work. So that’s pretty interesting because our personalities are really the opposite; I am and my work is associative and narrative his work is mathematical and repetitive and there’s no associative-ness to it, there’s no metaphor, or illusive-ness or subtext it’s all literal, completely literal. So when we spend time together it’s based on his time frame. There’s this kind of extreme contrast between our natures, and this duality, which is interesting. My brother’s work has inspired, his hyper concern with his own memories, has informed a way that I’m digging into my own memories by archiving and representing earlier drawings and organizing them and thinking about them as raw materials. Sarah: That actually perfectly ties into my last question. How do you see or hope your work will evolve in the future?

Collaborative Project: "Dark Woods, Light Woods"2010-ongoingText & images on paper, silk, and plexiglass Leona: I think there are ways of pursuing this narrative impulse while still maintaining a little bit of conceptual objectivity that I really find refreshing and working with my brother’s material or my brother’s writing as raw material. When I work with my own archive as raw material it gives me a little bit of distance from the narrative. I know that’s very broad, at the same time I’m simultaneously working on etchings now, I’m doing this residency at the Women’s Studio Workshop this month where I’m mark making on copper and working with these science fiction dream like figures. I’m doing it with more attention to materiality so I’m going to print on silk and silk tissue in ways that I present them more sculpturally and less a focus on a pictorial space. So thinking of, in a way thinking of images as documents that can be manipulated. Sarah: That sounds really interesting, I can’t wait to see it. Thanks for meeting with me and doing this interview.

And Small Dark Trees #2, series of five panels, 32” x 24,” plexiglass and vinyl, 2014

For more on Leona view her website: http://leonachristie.com/