A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture
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A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture |
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PAINTER LISA ADAMS AND AN INTERVIEW |
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by Gordy Grundy
Critics often decry the lack of relevancy in art. I am not aware of an artist focused on homeless tents. Your painting may be the most relevant image of our modern times. Lisa Adams: Hundreds of tents and other makeshift shelters sprinkled throughout the city and surrounding areas have to be an indication of something, doesn’t it? It’s a decline of sorts, a shift for certain, but mostly I think of this condition as a reminder, a checkpoint between point A and point B, causing one to wake up and be grateful you’re not on the streets for now. GG: There is a great sense of humor in this work. LA: I wouldn’t say there is a sense of humor in this work. It’s more an embellishment of reality. Reality with a bit of aesthetic and contextual primping. The black circles in the background are like planets, dark moons or portals, a little like X-Files. I think there is a sense of otherworldliness, which is how I always feel when I see lots of tents lined up along a street.
LA: As more and more tents began to appear across the city, usually in small or large clusters, I could see various through lines of what could be thought of as organizing principles. There is always the main structure, some are freestanding, while others are lean-to. Most are made of industrial products (blue tarps, manufactured tents or car parts) and a few are made of natural elements like branches and palm fronds. In addition to the essential structure, many, but not all are decorated and that is the part that commands my attention the most - some inhabitants are Dodger fans, others are patriots, and some decor tends to be more visually complex like silk flowers, stuffed animals or pinwheels. It’s the personality and interests of the inhabitants I find engaging, but at the end of the day it’s the visual promise as an element in a painting that I find rewarding. I can’t make this stuff up, so I simply capture it, embellish perhaps, reorganize or recontextualize. I think of the paintings more as landscapes with a focus on particular subjects, in some cases the tents.
LA: When I moved back to Los Angeles from New York it was the end of the Go-Go 80s. I recall seeing my first homeless people. Mostly without tents. Tents were illegal on the streets in those days in downtown, which is where I lived. Living downtown in those days, I focused my attention mostly on the industrial aspects of the environment which greatly influenced my work at that time. My focus was not on the homeless nor their structures. Because of Regan and the de-warehousing of state mental institutions at that time, the population on the streets grew, however it took several decades to become the landscape we now see. GG: Where have you lived in LA? Tell us about these neighborhoods. LA: I have lived in four different locations in DTLA, as well as a decade in Mar Vista and three years in Santa Monica. I moved to the Westside in between the four studios downtown. The Westside provided a temporary break from the industrial/urban environment of downtown. Though the air and temperature are far gentler on the Westside, it was the general population and the suburban-ness that left me feeling a bit isolated and staid. I find downtown visually interesting in many ways and it’s definitely not for everyone. Sometimes I feel like I’m living on another planet.
LA: My early beginnings took me to Yee Mee Loo [in Chinatown] when I lived with [the painter] Craig Kauffman. No one ever ate at the restaurant, even when they were really loaded because the food was so bad. Craig told me he’d gotten food poisoning there. I remember going through a Vodka Gimlet phase and all I can recall is sitting at the bar and watching the clock tick backwards. The really great thing about Yee Mee Loo was that artists often met there. Los Angeles didn’t have many places where you could just go hang out and be assured you’d meet up with other artists. Even if you didn’t like who showed up, at least you were around other artists. Los Angeles was a very small and provincial art scene for the most part with a handful of international art star exceptions of course. Then there was Al’s Bar which was less civilized than Yee Mee Loo in my opinion, but again a place you could always meet artists and get drunk. It was an important place because DTLA had very few resources at that time, very few restaurants, no grocery stores, it was basically an abandoned place and only the very serious (tough or crazy) artists lived in downtown at that time. There was also Boyd Street which belonged to chef Tara Thomas. It was also a place for artists and was more sophisticated. Boyd Street had great food and a pretty bar and was a lot of fun, but cost more money then the other places. Of course my years in New York taught me what a real art bar was with a star-studded cast so anything I experienced in L.A. paled by comparison back then.
GG: Los Angeles has our Hollywood sign and iconic City Hall. The neon at Musso and Franks or the Santa Monica Pier are well-recognized. Has the symbol of L.A. been replaced with the homeless tent? LA: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more that the tents are amendments to these iconic locations. I’m sure for people outside of Los Angeles it’s shocking, but perhaps for the locals, there is something about it that seems expected, maybe not normal, but it’s not really surprising given the pandemic. GG: Looking over your large and steady body of work, the creations are centered in reality and presented with whimsy. Or mysticism. Fantastical elements. Heaven and earth. Unafraid of the ugly. There is an uneasiness. Are you a 'seeker'? LA: Both my mother and her father survived the Holocaust. I was raised on lots of camp stories so I come by the uneasiness part very naturally. If you’re not uneasy at this point in time you must be living on anti-depressants or any number of illegal substances. It’s not only a time of great uncertainty but one of the “new world order” to quote Elon Musk. I never think of myself as a seeker per se but I suppose I am, being curious by nature. I’m always looking for things that interest me visually and conceptually, unique things. Ugly is relative. Ugly is only a particular aesthetic and when regarded in that manner, its interchangeable with any other aesthetic. In fact, the realism I subscribe to is the synthesis of dichotomies to some measure.
LA: Thank you. They are more whimsical than the large oil paintings because they are tiny, only 9.5 x 7.5 inches. They are physically far less demanding then the oil paintings and the investment of a tiny piece of paper makes me feel freer then the substrates I use for my oil paintings. It’s a very different mind set and the gouaches take less planning. That is something I’m always looking at - how to combine deliberate or planned aspects with the unintended. GG: Your awards are impressive. A Fulbright Professional Scholar Award, a Brody Arts Fund Fellowship and a Durfee ARC Grant. Did any of them do you any good? LA: When you ask if these awards did me any good, I’m assuming you meant to ask if they advanced my career in some regard? GG: Yes. Or on a personal level. LA: I would have to say not in the sense you would at first imagine, but it’s alway hard to see oneself as others do. These awards offered me a look at myself as an accomplished artist and that is their true value to me. The Fulbright, being the most substantial and impressive, really did change my life, but not my career directly. Of course one could argue that changing my life, affected my work, which in turn changed my career, maybe. GG: You have been an artist-in-residence in 5 different countries. LA: Yes, I have participated in a number of foreign residences but have never been awarded a residency in the United States. I’m not sure how it worked out that way but I’m very happy it did. It’s my belief that I got far more from the foreign residencies because of the immersion in another culture as well as the residency itself. The collective experience of these five countries - Slovenia, Finland, Japan, Holland and Costa Rica - as an invited artist, affected my work and me personally more than almost anything in my life, second only to the loss of my partner Jayme Odgers in 2022.
LA: To be honest, I’m not sure how BMW of North American found me but they invited me to propose my vision for an art car. I was pretty naive and didn’t really understand what pitching to Corporate American was supposed to look like. Dressed in black cowboy boots, black jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, I showed up with an ancient, beat up copy of my undergraduate book, Janson’s History of Art. When I arrived, I was ushered into a formal board room with a giant table and standing room only. Executives from New Jersey had been flown in and there I was with my old text book in hand. They let me know they had familiarized themselves with my work and wanted to hear what my idea for the car was. I turned to a crappy, black and white, quarter-page image of Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase, held it up for all to see and told them I intended to paint the car to make it look like it was in motion while standing still, using the same visual staccato of Nude Descending the Staircase, while referencing Edward Muybridge’s Zoetrope as well. They said OK! GG: OK! Maybe that's a solid definition of an artist: 'Always in motion while standing still.'
MUST READ! EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT!
The Website of Lisa Adams, Click Here
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GG: Tell us about your different lives in this great, yet confused city. 
GG: Any memorable L.A. art hot spots in your past? 
GG: Your recent series of gouaches are beautiful. Magical.
GG: Good Gigs! You were commission by BMW of North America to paint an art car. How did they find you? What happened?
