0:08:36
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
MySpace
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
Technorati
Icerocket
Contributor:
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Babble On. | Login
Babble On. | Login
Channels: Contemporary ArtEmily Kennerk
Emily Kennerk, grabs a seat in IMA's Nugget Factory to discuss her installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, her Indiana roots, living in Las Vegas, and getting stuck on a roof in a gallery. It's a good time.
Emily Kennerk and Suburban Nation.
The project Suburban Nation is a series that was inspired by the Midwest and it's a series of full-scale modular homes
and some back porches, and installation and then also an awning.
Well, lot of my artwork is inspired by the environment and so... this project, in particular, I think I had been doing a lot of work in Chicago
and driving a lot and the modular landscape is kind of everywhere out here, and across the nation, and I think that repeated
form became something that I started documenting, you know, like by photograph, and then drawing and sketching and I think trying to resolve that
modulated structure on the horizon, kind of brought that series about and I think the three installations at the museum
are kind of like the final of that series.
Since I use such familiar objects or imagery I think people... it's very dismissed in everyday life
and actually I think I kind of drawn to that, because you know you can take something and when you recontextualize it in a museum setting, that's like, part of, you know, the way I work
of how an environment can completely change in understanding and I think you know the mundane has always been really interesting. I think these objects are so mundane
that I was interested to see how people would respond and if I had an expectation, it was more maybe what they were going to think. Because I, I mean I have kind of
how I view them, but almost every person that came to it had a different understanding which is, you know, sometimes good, sometimes you know,
not so good.
Probably in the security archives here at the IMA, there is a video of me. We were in the final stages
and we were finishing the homes, you know it was all, you know, manufactured material and we were setting the lights, I couldn't figure out there was this shadow
on one of the roof lines and turned out it was a fine layer of dust had settled when we set the doors and so
no one was around and the cherry picker was gone. So, I thought, well, I can get on this ladder. So I climbed up and you know you are not supposed to be on the top rung, and I am on the top and I hop onto the roof
and I'm sitting there, you know, the ceiling is what? Twenty two or twenty four feet, and there's all these security cameras, which I was totally oblivious to. So I am up there,
vaccuming with this little nozzle, all the shingles on the roof, just meticulously, and I am probably this close to the security camera and I get stuck up there,
I can’t get back down and I am like panicking and then finally I realized the security camera's right there and I got really close and I'm like, "Can you get somebody down here?"
and right then, I hear the cherry picker zooming in and they are like, "Yeah, we've got an artist stuck on top of her project," and they rescued me.
It first starts with, I mean, since I tend to work in a series usually it's like an, I'll see something in the environment or something that just strikes me
and I usually do a lot of, like, documentation, start drawing or photographing or looking for that, I tend to call it, glitch
or something elsewhere and from there, I think, usually I find one that is like the perfect glitch and then I go back and document that
and for instance, this piece I found a perfect subdivision that the scale was completely wrong, the scale was completely off,
and then knowing the scale of the room and the museum everything just kind of started to fit together and so when the idea and the actual meet, that's when it's like okay! This is the project.
And so, from there, it just really gets into taking straight from the environment. So, like in this project, I mean I have an actual builder
helping me, who does this everyday. We used the siding from the siding company, you know the most common
and a lot of research goes into what is, if I go to say look at 4000 homes, what's the most common, what's that just everyday
and so it gets to that and that kind of informs really the materials on everything. So, I don’t really have like a set of group of materials I use, usually it's all kind of hinging on, kind of, what I found.
The materials are strictly informed by the idea, so I mean a lot of my work, I kind of jump around with a lot of different medium, I have clay series, metal series,
but it is all hinging on that idea, on that concept. So, sometimes I may want to do something in another material but it always goes back to the concept and
you know, I don’t know if vinyl siding is what I'd love to work with, but for this, it was essential.
Since I do work in series, I think that one kind of leads me to the next and this series I think I had
looked at object and places in a very separate way and this is really the horizon and like a big panoramic view.
So, I think as my series have grown, this has kind of been the largest one that I have done. But, I think if I break it down to it's underpinnings, it's very
common and very systematic of how I work.
Well, since I am dealing a lot with environment and things, I have just recently moved to Los Vegas, so that environment
has totally thrown me for a loop. You know, I have been talking a lot about taking the mundane and turning into a spectacle and here, you know, the spectacle is the mundane,
so I think that has really kind of influenced the way that I am like looking at space again. So that's been a very interesting shift.
I would say, overall, film that I really enjoy is David Lynch’s "The Straight Story". I think he hits on a lot of beautiful moments and scenes
and he has this great way of doing a long shot in a very simple way that you can gather a lot of information, and then you know, some of his sound,
he really, I think, is able to put a viewer in a very specific space and I think I try to do that with my work sometimes, to see it visually and you know, that, I would say, that...
And some of, you know, Tim Burton's, of course, his Edward Scissorhands, I talk a lot about that, the color,
Darjeeling Limited. I think some of those, the way he is able to put up a screen together and make it an image,
that almost could be a painting.
If I was not an artist, I think I would have something to do with land, maybe creative development.
I don't want to use the word "development" but I think that it's such a raw material and how, like, things can shift and change,
I mean, probably in just the landscape, I would probably do something with land.
My rear end was probably right in there, and those cameras were like, right, I mean like right underneath there....
Post new comment