Lucia Wallace
Hopping the Fence Transcript – #14, Lucia Wallace
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RC: Hello, I’m Rebecca Casalino, and this is Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to talking to artists on the fringes of the Canadian art scene.
Lucia Wallace is a queer artist/writer from Toronto, Ontario and is a recent graduate of OCAD University’s CADN program. With a BFA in Drawing & Painting, her studio and research practices span textiles, contemporary ceramics, creative writing, and painting. Focusing on tactility and materiality, she strives to intertwine her making and writing processes.
Our conversation was recorded in Hamilton within Treaty 3 territory on the ancestral land of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations under the Dish With One Spoon wampum agreement.
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RC: Hey Lucia!
LW: Hi Rebecca!
RC: How's it going?
LW: Good, how are you?
RC: I'm good, just drinking my coffee trying to caffeinate myself for the evening.
LW: Very good. Yeah I have water but it is in a coffee cup, so...
RC: Where are you right now?
LW: I am currently in my basement apartment in the West End of Toronto.
RC: Nice.
LW: And I'm on my couch with a stuffed dog pillow that I've named Bean, [laughs].
RC: So, what have you been doing with your practice? I know we're both in grad school together, how have you been finding being in grad school? Have you maintained your artistic practice or have you had to put the brakes on a little bit?
LW: I think that the role that my studio practice plays in my life has shifted. It's really turned into this space of... I think it's always been a space of trying to think through ideas and process what's going on around me, but I would say that at this point, my studio practice has become somewhere to go. And like, I'll read something and then I'll go and try and make something and then sort through the ideas. And then sometimes it looks like, you know, watercolor painting in bed or something that's totally unrelated. And then other times a lot of my research has been dealing... my research for grad school I should say has been dealing with ideas around materiality and the immaterial and things that are intangible. So I have been looking at Rachel Whiteread's work -
RC: Oh yeah.
LW: - and the concrete castings of space. So I was trying to write about the void, so I got these vases from the thrift store and filled them with concrete and smashed them [laughs]. So some of it has become kind of a material research process and some of it has been more like I need some type of release to not think about stuff and do something else."
RC: Yeah. That's so funny that...I knew you were thinking about the void, but to go to Rachel Whiteread who uses monumental sized sculpture, like concrete, something that's so hard and very masculine and industrial it which is what makes her work great. But coming from you, you have such a textile based practice. How was that switching from going from crocheting and all the soft things to, you know, working with those vases and smashing things?
LW: I think I have a lot of violence inside me. [Both laugh]. Like when I played Dungeons and Dragons I was always a barbarian.
RC: Yes.
LW: I like this physicality of making things.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And while the knitting and sewing and all that is very... I find quite meditative and at times very technical, I miss being in a build shop and building a canvas strainer, or I miss making a 3D sculpture. And in part too, because one of the artists I've been focusing on in my research is Azza El Siddique, and her work is dealing with a lot of raw clay vessels that are rehydrated and decayed in these beautiful installations. And so I was thinking about the vessel form. And so between Azza's work and Rachel's work I'm like, "Okay I wanna try and make this... like what does an object made from empty space look like?" Or how do you make an object that's there by virtue of absence? Or these kinds of things. It was kind of in part from a practical standpoint almost. The concrete came to mind because of Rachel's work but also because the hardware store happened to be doing curbside pickup, like that kind of stuff. And so it's been nice to make this really weighty heavy object. And I have it on my desk and I'll hopefully include pictures of it in my research. But yeah, I'm really interested in that contrast between things that are quite light. And it's great to ship and package textile work because you'd fold it up and put it in an envelope, you know, it can be four by five feet and it's quite small.
RC: Mhm.
LW: So then to go from that and do something that's very... this is a ten pound chunk of concrete now or whatever...[both laugh].
RC: Yeah, do you want to talk a bit more about vessels? I feel like that's something that I've been struggling with myself and like, talking about the void, like vessels are meant to be filled with something and therefore you need that empty space. It makes a lot of sense with Rachel Whiteread's practice and how I've understood her work. I was wondering if you wanted to chat a bit about that like how you're approaching those thoughts?
LW: Yeah, for sure. I am deeply in love with vessels. I find them so fascinating. In part, where I think the interest stems from for me, is it's so quotidian. It's this thing that's part of our everyday lives. You know, whether it's in your kitchen or if it's something you're drinking from, pouring out of. You put flowers in vases, we put ashes of our loved ones in urns. All this stuff where... [laughs] I love going to the thrift store and going to the homeware section.
RC: Yes.
LW: And just seeing all these little bodies that have been kind of discarded and abandoned in some way. And part of that too I think is in my writing, I'm trying to capture this idea of... to me, whenever I see a table filled with dishware and vessels, it feels like a funeral in a way. Somebody is leaving or moving or someone's passed away or some things being changed and cleared out. And so for me the two significant memories I have of that is when my grandmother moved out of her home into retirement residence where she lived for the last three or four years of her life. And I remember she was, you know, “take whatever you want.” And all the aunts are divvying things up and some stuff’s being donated and some stuff being taken. And it was, "I know I want to have something from the space but I don't really know what." and I ended up with this little kind of palm sized, light blue pinch pot that one of my aunt's made when she was a kid.
RC: Aww, lovely.
LW: And I just have it and I can't get rid of it. It's like, Aunt Carol made this. [Both laugh]. And then the other time that that happened in a significant way was when a former partner and I, our relationship ended and he was moving out and so there's this process of taking all this dishware that he had contributed to our shared space.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And swaddling it all in newspaper and packaging it up and it was like, "Okay, this is the end, you are leaving," kind of feeling.
RC: Yeah.
LW: So I mean the vessel for me is, in a very personal way, that's how I relate to it.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And then what I found out basically is it has a very specific kind of exhibitionary history within the museum. And, you know, when you're putting an object which is associated with craft and associated with the domestic and also with archaeology... You know, we can talk about shards of ceramics.
RC: Yeah.
LW: What I found is ceramic shards and pottery have been used to kind of rebuild past civilizations, right? You can take this fragment of a thing and start to trace back what happened. And maybe it's a bit easier when you have the full form, when you have something that's intact, you can maybe get more information from that. But it's just so associated with human life for so long is this form. And then, to put that in the gallery space, it takes on all these connotations of art and contemporary art and all that, and it brings with it all this history and these personal stories that I think a lot of people have, just by virtue of, you know, if you drink water out of a glass, you interact with a vessel. Things like that. I'm really interested in this object which has so many different associations embedded into it. And I feel like it's such an emotional and, in a way, kind of melancholic object. Because as you're saying, it's like, there has to be this absence of material to make it.
RC: Mhm.
LW: So...yeah. [Both laugh]. I keep going on like blah blah blah blah blah, I hope that makes sense, [laughs].
RC: No, and I think...it's really interesting to me, but thinking about it in a museum... are vessels usually presented as empty museums or are they filled with things? I'm very much not an art historian in a formal sense like yourself. So I'm just curious.
LW: [Laughs]. I think... what I've started to research, and I'm very much at the surface of it, there’s kind of different ways that are presented or vessels are presented sometimes. I feel like I've seen them... they’ll be in vitrines, and they'll be sequestered away a bit. And you know, they're displayed as this object which is to be looked at, especially in the gallery. You're looking at this thing, even though it's so tactile.
RC: Mhm.
LW: But that being said, there's a lot of ceramic objects where their purpose is to be decorative.
RC: Mmm.
LW: So you might have a decorative vase or platter or something like that. My mother's wedding dishes are in the cupboard at home but we don't use them even though they have been and could be used, right?
RC: Yeah.
LW: What I'm thinking of... I'm thinking of the Gardiner museum for example. When I think of their more historical displays, I don't think there's anything in them. But then, you know, moving into more contemporary works, the RAW exhibition at the Gardiner is kind of what stemmed part of this research for me. And that's all about raw clay. So the vessel form itself has been used since the 19-, I mean, notably I guess, I think it's been used before that as well but, 1960s 1970s it's starting to be used as this kind of sculptural medium within art.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And then raw clay was being used at the time as well, and this kind of like...Dr. Sequoia Miller kind of talks about in the RAW broadsheet for the exhibition. That raw clay is associated with scatology, and there's this abject quality to the material.
RC: Mmm.
LW: And there's artists who are starting to use that material again in a different way. And the thing that I found particularly striking about Azza El Siddique's work is her installation called Measure of One for the RAW exhibition is made up of this really beautiful steel framework, this steel shelving. The tallest section is at the center, and there's all these rows of raw clay vessels, and there's more shelving that kind of goes down the side. It feels very... like an altar almost. I'm not really a super organized religion person, but I was like, "Wow, I feel like I'm in a church or a temple or something like that," when I was in front of it. It was very emotional actually.
RC: Wow.
LW: And there's this pool of water at the front, and it has this water... I'm not describing it properly but it has this water pump, right? On a cycle. I think it was maybe every 15 minutes or something. It spritzed the raw vessels. So they were being rehydrated in this time based way. And then as they started to fall apart, they were moved to these side shelves to be displayed. And again, so they had the space inside them, right? They were hollow. And then as I started to fall apart, all these new kind of entry points were being formed. But there's a really beautiful interview that Dr. Miller and Azza El Siddique did about raw and her process. And she speaks so eloquently and beautifully about her work...it's definitely worth a listen. That's just on the Gardiner YouTube page I believe.
RC: And how does this, like absorbing all this stuff and looking at other peoples’ practices and how vessels have been presented, how does that impact your own artistic practice? Do you find that you've been thinking about display differently? Obviously, you've been thinking about material differently. How much has this affected you?
LW: Oh my gosh, [laughs]. Well I think to maybe go back to pre grad school, I initially…the proposal I submitted in my application process for grad school, I initially wanted to write about textiles, and write about queer textile artists in Toronto and their practices and what they were doing. And at the time, my undergrad thesis, I did drawing and painting at OCAD, and my undergrad thesis was very much based around textiles and using textiles as a painting medium and displaying it like a painting and all this stuff. And as I started to go through grad school, I recognized that I'm engaging with craft, and I don't have the craft lexicon, I don't have the theory base or the knowledge base. And I'm very much coming from a fine art painting perspective.
RC: Yeah.
LW: I think that definitely still influences the way I write and think, but I recognize that I have a kind of gap in that knowledge. And as I started to work with Dori Millerson, who is amazing, and I think we were saying before, she is a professor at OCAD. And at the time I started working with her, she was the chair of the Material Art & Design program. I'm not sure if she still is at this point, I don't know how that works. [Both laugh]. And is a maker herself. And so we were working with her, and she was helping me get some of his theory base. And in that process, I was visiting the Gardiner Museum, visiting the Textile Museum. Starting to think more about display in these specific spaces. And I just more and more got really interested in ceramics and this three-dimensional form. And it slowly became more and more about this, I guess finding an object to think through ideas of memory and loss and nostalgia almost.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And textiles are very much... like that's a medium for me that's about that, because my grandmother taught me how to knit and how to sew and all that stuff. But I think it got to a point where because I'm still thinking about all that stuff in my studio practice. I was like, you know, I want to do some research and reading about a medium that I'm not as familiar with. And yeah, ceramics became the thing that I was super interested in. And so, it's definitely... if it actually answers the question, [both laugh], I think it's influenced me in that I am really curious to explore more three-dimensional forms in my studio following this. I really want to... you know, there's a few textile projects I have kind of burning in the back of my brain, I've been dying to do. Like, I love the signage near the MOCA, if you walk down Sterling road.
RC: Mhm.
LW: There's the signage on the chocolate factory that says KitKat or batter making or cream making. I want to make giant knit version of those.
RC: Oh my gosh, yes!
LW: I just love it so much and I love signage. I want to make all these knit pieces of signage and that kind of thing. But I also am really interested in... you know what? The one thing that I have been doing that I haven't mentioned yet, and I don't know if there are pictures on my website of this is… I'm really interested in the vessel form, and I'm very interested in showing presence and absence of this object. And so something I started to do was, I started to crochet around bottles -
RC: Mhm!
LW: - and then take them off like this kind of snakeskin.
RC: They're so phallic. Every time you make those I'm like, "This is so phallic." [Both laugh].
LW: I don't disagree with you, I think that's part of what I find really fun and exciting and kind of like, dirty about them.
RC: It's fully looks like you're making a crocheted foreskin for these vessels.
LW: Yeah! I really enjoy it. [Both laugh]. I guess the thing I want to do at this point now is I want to keep making those crocheted covers for objects or vessels, take them off, and then I want to cast the inside space out of that through plaster might be a better move for me going forward. But cast the inside of that space.
RC: Mmm.
LW: And then to get the casting out, you have to break the glass, right?
RC: Yeah.
LW: And so I love the idea of there being this kind of like... this tracing of the outside of the object in textile, and then the inside of that space being cast in a solid material. And then having the actual object itself being destroyed in that process. Ai Wei Wei is another artist I've been looking at in my research, in particular Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn from 1995, which is... you know -
RC: Iconic.
LW: - that's a whole conversation in and of itself.
RC: Yeah.
LW: I have feelings about that piece, as much as I am so interested in it and I find it really inspiring, it's also, again it's very difficult kind of sit with.
RC: Yeah.
LW: In Azza's work and in Ai Wei Wei's work, it's like, there's this need for destruction to create the piece.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And as exciting and as kind of engaging as that is, it's such a good feeling to break a vase, to break glass. And like, "Ooh, yes." It feels good! But then it's also like, “Oh my gosh, like we've lost something in the process of that as well.” And so it's like The duality of this excitement of chaos in this kind of sadness of loss that are all mixed together and I want to try and make myself feel that more in my art practice.
RC: I think that that duality of creation and destruction is very powerful and I see Ai Wei Wei coming at it from that. But also to destroy artwork or to destroy an artwork that you've spent so much time with like crocheting the outsides, has a lot of emotional catharsis to it.
LW: Yeah, and I think the distinction between destroying a found object versus destroying an object that I've made with my own hand is very different, has different implications and all that right?
RC: Yeah for sure.
LW: And I actually, what I did, and the process of research was... as I was saying, I'm not a ceramicist, you know, I did summer camp as a kid and I made some pinch pots here and there, like I love clay, I reall enjoy it, but it hasn't been a part of my studio practice or I guess my capital P practice.
RC: Yeah.
LW: I ended up getting a take home kit from this pottery studio near me and made these vessels and got them fired. And I lived with them in my apartment for a while. Cause I'm like, "Oh my god, I made this bowl, I made this little jug, this is so cool!" and then I had a meeting recently with Dori Millerson and we were talking about...she was explaining how...she heard from someone and then she told me kind of thing, but she expressed this idea of... from what she'd been told, when someone's learning to make ceramics, they're told to break their favourite pot.
RC: [Gasps], really?
LW: Yeah. And that's maybe not, I'm not quoting her perfectly. But this idea, she brought into my brain this idea of breaking your favourite pot as a way to get used to the ceramic process. And I was like, "Oh no, I know what I need to do now." And so, I gathered up my little, my beautiful little white lumpy vessels that I had made -
RC: Oh no.
LW: - and I took them to the courtyard at my studio space and I like documented them. It felt very, I was very emotional, I'm getting it emotional talking about it now. But I took them, and I laid out this white sheet, and I took pictures of them at all these different angles. And then I smashed them all, and I laid out all the shards together. And you know, you can't tell which shard is from which vessel at this point.
RC: Mhm.
LW: They’re laid out together and I documented them. And I was like, "Wow." It felt...maybe it's kind of lame, it felt very humbling. And it totally changed my perspective on my research I think too. From a first-person perspective, I experienced what I'd been trying to communicate as far as like, there is something both sad and beautiful in destroying an object. That's something I would love to touch on if we can too is there's very much this association with the body and the ceramic vessel. And Azza El Siddique brought up this beautiful quote of, "The God who made humans was a potter." Or this notion that humans are created from the same material as vessels. And in my kind of emo kid interpretation of it, I took it as like oh, we are from the earth the same way that clay is.
RC: Yeah.
LW: But I also kind of took it as, I think there is an emptiness at the core of what it means to be human as well, whether that’s like the stomach or whether that’s like an emotional way. I think, for me, so much of my life is about trying to fill some type of absence, whether it’s through making or whether it’s through loving people or through connecting. It’s like, yeah, I don’t know, I think that it takes a lot of work to be human [laughs].
RC: Yeah.
LW: And I think being alive is really beautiful and painful.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And death is this really difficult thing to talk about. And at the same time, it’s so integral to all of our experiences. I think as I've gotten older and having experienced more family members passing away or experiencing watching people I love experience loss has been very informative to my art practice, I think in ways that I'm not 100% sure I can articulate at this point. But yeah, [both laugh], it's so part of life and it's so indescribable. And I think that, in a way... I'm not somebody who, personally I don't really believe in an afterlife, maybe that will change over time. To me, I think when I die, I will no longer be conscious, and, you know, that kind of thing.
RC: Yeah, and like your vessel will return to the Earth kind of deal, and that cycle of energy. Is that...?
LW: Yeah, I think that's where I'm at. I find it very reassuring in a way, the thought of my body going back into the Earth, or whether...you know, going towards something else and becoming something else. And I think that that's what makes... loss it's what makes life so precious.
RC: Yeah.
LW: And I think through experiencing loss, it's made me appreciate the people in my life so much more. Because it's like, this is so finite. I have a really vivid memory of, there was someone that I was romantically involved with, and I remember we were like in his apartment, and it started to rain outside, and listening to music, I just started crying, bawling my eyes out. And he was like, "What's wrong?" And I felt so human in that moment. And I was so like, "Wow, I feel so fortunate that this moment is being captured." and I'm not with that person any longer, but that really stuck in my brain, it's really beautiful moment. Life is, to me, this collection of all these different stories. And I think that that's the art I'm most interested in engaging with and making is art that kind of looks at and deals with the messiness of being a human.
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This week’s podcast recommendation is “The Art of Craft” episode 13 - Sandkuhl Clayworks. Not many businesses can say they date back to 1912. Sandkuhl Clayworks is a family run business based in Ohio. On this episode, host Barkley Hunt speaks to Ann Engh, who brings decades of experience and knowledge to her craft as a custom clay maker, extruder and kiln technician. Ann is seen as a leader in her field and is the go-to person for clay block projects that involve custom molds or extrusion on a large scale.
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RC: Yeah, and I think nostalgia seems to play a large role, looking back and trying to use moments in the past to understand your present. Like, I think the shattering of the vases and understanding that beautiful moments can end and beautiful lives can end and that doesn’t mean that they weren’t beautiful but like, they’re gone forever now and that makes them even more special. I was wondering if you were intentionally engaging with a nostalgia to connect with your audience or if that's something you were doing to process your own work?
LW: Yeah, that's a really good question. I definitely connect to it, absolutely. I think it's something I definitely connect to but it's maybe not something I've explicitly written about in my studio practice or in my research. But I feel a very strong connection. I think that like, for me, nostalgia is very present in my day-to-day life in a really significant way. I was very fortunate growing up to have my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, grandma Joyce Wallace.
RC: Aww.
LW: But I never... I was born after both of my mother's parents and my dad's dad had passed away. So there are these people who I feel very intimately connected to but I've never met. And so I've only known my Grandma Ivy through photographs and through... I had like maybe her blue leather purse in my dress up box as a kid. Or stories from my mom. I have this collection of Polaroid photos from my paternal grandfather because he worked in construction. So I have like pictures of the mountain at Canada's Wonderland being built. Like the scaffolding of that structure. And it's like, I think so much of my life connected to my family is about trying to kind of feel connected and understand these people who I, I can only connect to through objects.
RC: Mhm.
LW: And that definitely informs my studio practice and my approach to making. And my paternal grandmother, so the grandmother I did meet, Grandma Joyce, I have objects... Like I have pin cushions that were hers, I have clothing that was hers. And it's like this really... this feeling of, I know these objects are not her, but I feel like I get to be a little bit close to her when I interact with them. And something that I’m trying to kind of sort through, I don't know if I'm doing it in a very succinct way and my grad research, but it's something I want to keep thinking about is, I really love the work of Erin Manning. And there's a book that was introduced to me called Politics of Touch. And in it, there's this really beautiful idea of our skin is something that's constantly shifting and changing. She talks about this idea of becoming, and if I'm reaching towards someone to touch them, the person that you touch is not a person that you reach towards because in that space of reaching they become something else and shifted. If that makes sense, I think that's an accurate summary [laughs]. But I'm trying to kind of work through this idea of what happens when you're reaching towards and object that was once held by somebody else. Are we reaching...for me, it feels as if I'm trying to reach into the past.
RC: Yeah.
LW: In this way that can't be reciprocated. And so it's this touch that can never be satisfied. And so trying to touch this surrogate skin of the object and connect with someone. But you can never relieve that because that person's physical body is gone. And so thinking about that in a personal way with my grandmother's objects but again, thinking about that with... if we're looking at an archeological piece or a shard of pottery, it's like, if it's a handmade vessel, this was made by somebody else who's hands probably didn't look too dissimilar from my own. And I'm holding this now, and that is so emotionally overwhelming to think about.
RC: Yeah.
LW: You know, I don't think a ceramicist from the Han dynasty anticipated their work being smashed in 1995 by an artist right?
RC: Yeah, yeah.
LW: Yeah, it's so... it's really complicated and I'm, I could talk about this stuff for hours, [laughs].
RC: Well I think for me, like I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it was not a job that you retired from and it was also not something that you were not... like, you're always an artist. Even if you're sleeping. But this idea of also putting object out into the world that are going to be... that exist past you. Like, artists’ work gets so much more expensive as soon as they die because they can no longer produce anything. And I just keep thinking about, especially in domestic spaces, if you move into your house and you inherit your mom's wedding china, are you gonna dine off of it? Like how does it change moving from like person-to-person as people keep shifting throughout the world, these objects stay. And that's really powerful.
LW: Mhm. I think more and more just ‘cause I've gotten a tiny bit older, I am interested in kind of maybe the art of living, if that's not too cliché. I'm really interested in the way I keep my space or organize and decorate. I love going for a walk in the evening and somebody has their blinds open and their living room light on.
RC: Yes!
LW: I don't stop, but I'll kind of slow down. You know, the odd time that I've been in high rises, I love looking out the window and seeing... everyone has all these glass walls. And it's like okay, where are the pet dogs?
RC: Mhm.
LW: Who's made their bed and who hasn't? Who's working at a desk? And you know, the odd time you see a little bum or something and it's "Oh my goodness! Sir!" [Both laugh].
RC: Sir, your bum is out!
LW: Your legs are open! [Both laugh]. Yeah, that happened to me at work one. I was leaving the office and there's an apartment building across the way. I was like, “oh my god.” I was very embarrassed. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think that... I think as an artist, we're both artists right? So maybe I’ll say “we” as in you and I. I think it's easy to... well for myself, I think it's easy to feel like maybe I'm not a good artist because I haven't made a tangible piece in x number of months. Or maybe I'm not an artist anymore because I haven't posted on Instagram or I haven't done this creative output. But I really think that being an artist in a lot of ways is a particular frame of mind.
RC: Yeah.
LW: And when you move through the world with that lens of like, searching for what could be artistic or what could be a metaphor then I think that that, you know, you can go for a walk and you can find piles of trash and be like, "that's a beautiful installation."
RC: Yeah, and that's why I love Claudia Slogar Rick's practice, and then her partner Jessica Price Eisner who runs that @meagerbeaver account. Jess just goes on walks and takes pictures of like, the incidental artworks or compositions that she finds. And I find that it's really captured... like @meagerbeaver the account has really captured how I walk through the world. And how those two artists take pictures has really informed - like my camera roll got so much thicker when I started being friends with them. I take pictures of everything now! And it's like finding beauty in the world is very much an artist’s job. Or not even beauty, just interesting things.
LW: Yeah. I love, I think it's like a TikTok trend or Instagram trend, where it's like anything can be an album cover. And people will take these kind of like silly photos and then they'll put the parental advisory filter.
RC: Oh my god.
LW: You know, it's all these kind of silly pictures of people on like, a tractor. Or you found an apple core on the ground. And I think it's kind of... I find it really entertaining because I think it's being facetious a little bit, but it's true! I’m like, anything can be an album cover.
RC: It's true.
LW: The way you contextualize something can totally change it. I remember, I love the idea... I'm sure folks have done this, but going around making little exhibition labels, just going around and putting them on stuff in public I think would be very fun.
RC: Yes! I think that art in the public sphere has been so important in this lockdown. And like you said, posting on Instagram is one thing, but to walk past, I don’t know, a piece of gum with an exhibition label beside it, like that’s hilarious, and you just find it in the real world.
LW: Yeah. I think part of it too, I mean, I grew up in a pretty small town. Not the smallest ever, but I didn’t grow up in Toronto basically. I think the thing I love about Toronto is you can go on all these different walks, or you could go on the same little route over and over again, you’ll see something different every time. I’m at the point where I do love my hometown despite having wanted to leave so badly as a teenager. I think the beauty of the place you grew up is you can go for a walk, and you might only see six people but five of those six people will say “hi” to you.
RC: Yeah.
LW: Which is a totally different space than to be… you know, I used to live downtown Toronto. And getting used to it it's like, oh people aren't going to smile at you on the street when you walk past.
RC: I know!
LW: And it's not necessarily a personal thing or a bad thing, but I think that makes finding pockets of sweetness in a city so much more precious, when you can make a connection with someone or... one of my favourite thrifting memories is that I found this really... I feel bad for saying it's kind of terrible but it's kind of terrible. Someone made this very large painting of The Birth of Venus.
RC: Amazing.
LW: And the faces are really gooey, and it's probably like a cumulative project for a high school student or a passion project, something like that. But I'm like, "This is so beautiful, it's great," and I found it for like 30 bucks at the thrift store and I carried it home. And this other really cool funky person stopped and was like, "Oh my gosh, where did you get that, did you make that?" And we had this like, really cute little convo on a street corner. Yeah, it's like my favourite part of my living room is this kind of amazing terrible painting.
RC: Yeah, I find moving to Hamilton - I need to remember to like nod and smile at people. But when I first moved to Toronto from Guelph, I had to remember not to thank the bus driver, otherwise people would look at me like I was a serial killer! [Both laugh]. It's definitely the attitude of living in different spaces but also the beauty of being in Toronto is that there are just so many people, so the chances are yes you are going to run into someone who is kind of amazing or like quirky. Like, I used to work in the distillery and there was this one homeless woman who was always reading. And we both ended up at the bus stop together, and someone had left a book there. And I initially picked it up, and then she came over and was talking to me about it 'cause I started reading and I was like, "Actually I just found it on this bench, do you want it?" And we like did a book exchange.
LW: Oh my gosh.
RC: Yeah, it's so fun. Like I saw her every day. And to have this conversation and to realize that we both read the same books and had the same taste. She read play more Stephen King than me but it's just so beautiful when you have those moments of connection.
LW: Oh my gosh. That reminds me, this is like a bit of a tangent but we were speaking earlier... I was really fortunate to do my third year of undergrad in Florence, Italy. And one of my very, very good friends now, Sarah Zanchetta, she's on Instagram, [both laugh], she does textiles too. But we went on this fall break trip where we took the train down does southern Italy. We were on the train to go to Bari, which is this beautiful seaside Italian town.
RC: That's where I'm from!
LW: Really?!
RC: Yeah, Bari, the heel of the boot.
LW: Yeah.
RC: My uncle made all the lamp posts that wrap around the bay.
LW: Really – oh my god!
RC: And there's a whole street, there's a street "Casalino." And all of my family live in old marble houses there. I love that, that you've been there.
LW: My friend Sarah and I we were like, "This is beautiful." Yeah, we want to go back there. But on this train trip, we were in the train, I think it's pods of four. So two sets of seats facing each other. And Sarah and I were across from each other. And then beside us was this older Italian woman, and she was working on a sewing project or a knitting project and I was working on this little embroidery project. And I had this pair of little travel scissors, right?
RC: Yeah.
LW: And so it became this thing where we couldn't really verbally communicate with each other, but she was kind of gestured to me like can I borrow your scissors? So we were sharing these scissors back and forth.
RC: So cute.
LW: I was like, Oh my gosh. It was really beautiful. Sarah and I still talk about it. I'd like to think it kind of speaks to like, the craft and… connections between different folks being so transcendent of language.
RC: Yeah. Like, the only people that notice, I have these two-tone pants. So like one leg of the pants is bleached and the other is just a dark denim. And the only people that comment on any of the clothes that I've made or mixed up myself has always been older women who are also invested in crafting practices. So it will be like people at the grocery store being like, “Did you make those yourself?” 'Cause they can recognize the hand-made of it. I feel such solidarity with older women his still craft. I'm like, "Yes, I want to grow up to be you." [Laughs].
LW: Yeah, I feel that. As I was saying earlier, I didn't meet three of my four grandparents, but I was so fortunate to have a lot of older women in my life, whether it be through aunts... my parents house, there's an apartment in the upstairs floor. And growing up, there was a woman who lived up there named Betty. That we also had a next-door neighbour that was Betty. So there was Betty upstairs and Betty next door.
RC: Amazing.
LW: And then there was a woman named Sharon who was part of my life who would take care of us sometimes. And so it’s like…I feel like my brother and I got all of these honorary grandmothers.
RC: Aww.
LW: Yeah and Betty next door is going to be 103 this summer.
RC: Damn.
LW: I think 103 or 104, but she's over 100. Like, oh my god. So yeah, really, really special beautiful person. Both of them, all of them.
RC: So your art practice is a really, really informed by your own personal journey and connection to different objects, and that's what you're thinking about intentionally as you're making and planning these projects?
LW: I think it in some ways informs it in a very direct way. I do a lot of journaling and writing. And so I really find it cathartic to reflect in that way. And then I think that will influence to some degree what I end up making -
RC: Yeah.
LW: - but not always. I think ultimately where that maybe circles back into things is... it's not necessarily exactly what I'm making in a material way, but I think the intention and the purpose of why I want to make art... I think on one level I want to make it for myself, it very much is like my way of processing the world.
RC: Yeah.
LW: But I also want to... there’s art that I make for myself that I keep private, and then there's work that I make with the intention of showing other people. Because ultimately, I want to connect with people.
RC: Yeah.
LW: And I think that when it's possible, being vulnerable and being open with others is such an asset. I did my mind it's like, "Okay, if I can try and imbue this object with sensitivity and love and vulnerability,” then I think people feel that when they see work. And I think that it makes it easier to talk with people. And I think that's ultimately what I want. Of course, it's great when people see my artwork or like it enough to purchase it, that's like the biggest compliment to me is having someone like something I've made enough to buy it and put it in their home.
RC: Mhm.
LW: That's so humbling and beautiful. As nice as that is, I think I want to facilitate conversations and connections with people, that's ultimately what I really really care about.
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Thanks for listening to Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to the fringes of the Canadian art scene.
If you have an artist that you would like to hear interviewed, would like to correct / fact check a past episode, or would like to chat, feel free to send me a message on Instagram @hoppingthefence, or by email at rebeccaecasalino@gmail.com. Thanks to the OCAD Student Union for your financial support. Thank you to all of our Patreons for your ongoing support. It truly does help me avoid burnout and keeps this podcast rolling. If you would like to support Hopping the Fence, please visit our Patreon to subscribe. Check out the show notes for more details. If you can’t donate, no worries. Thanks for taking the time to listen.
Audio editing for Hopping the Fence by Emily Reimer. Original artwork by Alex Gregory, and original music by Jessica Price Eisner.
Thank you so much, bye!
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