Interview with Jennifer

I have a set of questions that I came up with that are a little bit Krista Tippett, a little bit Danielle Krysa, and a lot bit my own curiosity. I think talking about our creative stories is a way to bind us together and encourage us to keep going on our own creative path. I’m excited to be asking these questions and to be sharing these creatives’ answers with you. This month’s interview is Jennifer.

Tell my readers a little bit about you.

I’m a collage artist and painter, a gardener, a traveler, a poet who enjoys failing at being a poet, an ecstatic — and a threat at dominoes. I’m a North Carolinian by birth, and I studied sculpture while in school there. Now I live in Maryland with my partner and our enormous dog, and I’m fortunate to belong to a wonderful cooperative gallery here in town.

What is your first memory of creativity?

I really enjoyed thinking through this one.  My earliest memory of creativity would probably be drawing, usually illustrating stories I’d read— myths and fairytales for the most part.

I also spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid and was constantly collecting, arranging, and obsessing over bundles of natural materials I’d find— small and large rocks, milkweed pods and pine needles, cicada skins and empty nests of all kinds, leaves and flowers.  I loved the muted colors outside the growing season.

Misty: I was obsessed with rocks too! I had a bag of literal rocks that I carried around when I was a kid. I loved everything about the shapes and sizes and textures of them.

What did you love to make as a kid and are you still making some variation of that now?

When I came to collage as a medium, it struck me that it felt very natural, familiar— and it was.  As a kid I spent hours with every coffee table book and magazine I could get my hands on— art history, horoscopes, archaeology, plants, movies, architecture, you name it!  Sometimes I’d copy the illustrations by hand, but sometimes I’d very gently (and I thought, subtly) cut them out— then arrange them on a cork-board in a way that pleased me!  I was collaging.

I think collage is a very human, intuitive way of interacting with images.  It’s a language, at once individual and universal, a means of expression— it reflects the methods by which we construct narrative and make meaning.

Misty: I have no memories of before being able to cut things out and glue them down. I think maybe I was born with a pair of green lefty safety scissors in one hand and a bottle of Elmer’s glue in the other.

What is your favorite creative supply and why can’t you live without it?

Metallic foil, mostly gold.  I harvest all of my foil from candy wrappers! I love the inherently sustainable nature of collage, and obviously there’s a delicious bonus to harvesting this particular material — though I do accept donations. I love the warm, reflective surface the foil adds, and I love the small, almost sacred little spaces it makes within the image/narrative I’m constructing.

What is a creative question you ask regularly?

“What if I destroy half of this/tear this in half?” 

When I want to push a piece closer to my vision, I’ll often deliberately distress it, or even bisect the piece entirely.  I find this lets a lot of energy into the image and lets it breathe— sometimes the piece is so completely changed that it’s as if I’ve revealed it to myself.

What does your creative practice show you over and over?

To let intuition speak and lead, and to trust the directions in which it flows.

What gets you to start a new project?

Usually a memory or idea I’d like to explore.  Right now I’m working on a series based on ideas and images from the poet Basho’s work: The Narrow Road to the Interior.  It’s a poem/essay/travelogue about a literal and metaphorical journey into the wilderness undertaken with mortality in mind. My own mortality is a subject I return to often, with an eye to joy.

What is a book on creativity that you come back to often? Why?

I’m always returning to Lucy Lippard’s Overlay.  Always fascinated by the human drive to make art, to seek meaning through form and action, and the continuum of that expression from pre-history to the present day.

Misty: Book ordered! I can’t wait to dive into this!!

How did we meet?

We met because I’m obsessed with the ways you use color in your work, and your marvelous book practice!  You were an early follow for me a few years ago when I began to connect with other artists.  I appreciate your writing about your work and the aesthetic language you’ve developed.

Misty: Awww, thanks! I’ve enjoyed seeing your work across all of my feeds and getting to know you as well!

I am really fascinated by the juxtaposition in your work: the mix of old and new, what was and isn’t quite yet. Can you talk about why collage works for you as a medium to achieve this?

That’s really wonderful to hear, as it’s something that’s central to my work.

For me, memory and the narratives we create to understand it, to make meaning of it, are layers. Layers of time, of color and image and text.  They fall over each other, interleaving in ways we arrange both consciously and unconsciously.  I’m fascinated with the unconscious process, the employment of archetypes and symbols that are simultaneously universal and deeply individual.  

In my work I’m leading myself intuitively, exploring transformative and transitory states— layering and joining, finding and creating relationships, making meaning of disparate parts.

Collage is, I think, uniquely suited to showing the shifting nature of this process.

How can people find you?

Find my website and assorted social media at bio.link/jgorudjev

Jennifer, thank you for sharing your creative stories with us! I had so much fun reading your answers to my questions. And I know my readers will enjoy it too. (These photos belong to Jennifer. She graciously allowed me use them for this interview.)

What about you? Are you formulating your answers to these questions? I’d love to know your answers! If you want to know more about this series read the post What about these Interviews? Catch up with me on socials, email me, or go oldschool and leave a comment on this post to be immortalized for all of time.

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