InterviewSeattle
Jen Erickson's Topographies Of Lost Memory
Written by Andrew Katz Katz
Amanda Manitach: In your work you persistently build up these delicate, formless masses. How do you start a piece and how do these shapes develop as you're working on them? Jen Erickson: I start by building up and sanding off layers of oil paint on panel. Sometimes the graphite marks begin as a response to the paint, other times the marks move across the surface in a less co-dependent way. For me the act of drawing is always a reactionary process. Sometimes I think about the process as a problem to be solved, like a giant math equation. As the process continues, the drawing constantly evolves: one mark can change the entire composition and it is a constant struggle to find balance within a composition.
AM: You've cited the interconnection of technology and the subconscious/memory as something this work addresses. How did you become interested in relating memory to technology? JE: I'm interested in the visual aspects of technology and I draw a lot of inspiration from information systems and the visualization of those systems. Technology gives us unlimited access to information, but of course the more we’re bombarded by it the less time we have to form a complete understanding of anything. We know a little about everything but are expert at nothing. In some of my earlier work I directly referenced binary code: it's something that everyone recognizes but few can read. It is entirely inefficient. I like the idea of using an obsolete language as a metaphor for memory. Memories are there and are recognizable, but as time passes and the context deteriorates, is lost, and we can no longer read them.
AM: Do you have a background in the sciences or technology? JE: I studied biology for a while in college but after a few semesters realized that what interested me more than science was art. I wasn't a very good science student. I found myself mostly spending time looking into a microscope and drawing what I saw! Now I use scientific concepts as inspiration. They are worlds to which most people have limited access, including myself. I read about things like string theory, dark matter and white holes and try to visualize what I think those might look like, let my subconscious inform depictions of them. Interestingly, these theories are often more science fiction than science. Often when I’m researching I’ll read pages and pages of an article about a theory and at the end there will a note explaining that it’s entirely unproven; it’s a speculative concept in the mind of a scientist. I usually won’t immediately or consciously work these concepts into my paintings, but eventually I find them coming to the surface, subliminally reimagined.
AM: Also something you’ve mentioned about your work is a meditative aspect to the process. Can you talk about that? Jen Erickson: It's funny because when I began working this way I had an idea for a drawing in my head and the only way to achieve this vision was to force myself to sit down and make these repetitive marks. It was absolutely torturous but I liked the outcome so I forced myself to make another one. Eventually the process did become meditative and I began to crave the time spent applying marks in such a repetitive way.
AM: So you haven’t always worked this way? JE: No. When I started painting I did very large scale abstract expressionist oil paintings. They were quick and messy and light on concept. In the time between undergrad and grad school I worked a data entry job and sitting in front of a computer for hours on end had a lasting impact on my practice, especially developing stamina for repetitive processes. It was my job to archive everything from people's emails, personal memos, to employee handbooks and technical manuals. This ridiculous act of trying to preserve every detail of human existence got me thinking about my own mortality and the sense of loss that I sometimes feel when I realize that as we get older our thoughts and memories slip away and become replaced by new ones.
AM: What are you working on next? JE: I'm not sure. I'm just on the cusp of starting a new series and it remains to be seen. I sometimes think that I'm ready to make a drastic change and do something entirely different. This never seems to happen. Instead, my work tends to be a slow evolution, kind of like the work itself I guess. --- Jen Erickson received her MFA in painting at Central Washington University in 2005 and currently resides in Coeur d' Alene, ID. Erickson’s Transmit and Dissipate will be on view at PUNCH Gallery through June 3, 2012. Amanda Manitach is a writer and artist based in Seattle.
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Andrew Katz Katz
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