Virgin Mary , wax ,cheesecloth and wood, 1993

 

INTERVIEW

April 21st, 2006

John LeKay: This question is in reference to the Virgin Mary piece that you made. You once said, "Skin is the surface or the boundary line of the body's limit. The skin is actually this very porous membrane so on a microscopic level you get into the questions of what's inside and what's outside. Things are going through you all the time. You really are very penetrable on the surface; you just have the illusion of a wall between your insides and your outside." Did you have this in mind when you made this piece?

Kiki Smith: It was one of the things that I was interested in at that time because I had just seen cadavers for the first time, where they separate the skin and the fat from the muscle; so people can view the dissection of bodies, for medical and training purposes. To see the fat and flesh skin separated from the muscle was sort of the inspiration for making the Virgin Mary piece. In a way, it was to make an anatomical 18th, 19th century eccochet, where you are building the muscles of the body; you're learning the muscles of the body in relationship to skin. Probably, I made other pieces that were like Japanese paper balloons, where it just had the form of skin but with no matter. Just very thin paper that made a big kind of envelope and then I made drawings, red drawings that represented the flesh part. Those two things sort of separated from one another.

JL: Where did you see the cadavers?

KS: A medical school for physical therapy. After they let the students work with the cadavers; often they let art students come in to study.

JL: What also came to mind was looking at drawings by Leonardo?

KS: Well it helps working from reality. It's very different imagining one's body or the insides of the body, than looking at the insides of a body. They are very different experiences. I'm happy not to be grave robbing and things like that. (both laugh) Just happy to go to a college.

JL: Another thing about that piece is that there is something much deeper than just skin and flesh. It's the way you have presented the Virgin Mary statue, it's been exposed, and it creates something other.

KS: Well I made it in one of the traditional positions of the Virgin Mary, with her arms standing with her arms open. When you do that it physically makes you open. The different gestures, the way you read sculpture through gestures. Figurative sculpture. Making those gestures also changes your relationship to your environment.

 

JL: You also looked at Grays anatomy?

 

KS: Yes, it was one of the first anatomy books I had.

 

 

JL: Much of your work has an earthy, magical, mystical, a kind of shamanistic sensibility to it. Do you have an interest in these things?

KS: I have a good friend of mine who is kind of in that world and living overtly in the spirit world and I think that she is an influence on me, but I think it's also just natural, more normal - to see yourself so connected to the rest of the planet. That's a more normal stand.  So I don't think it has to be in a kind of mystical realm particularly, rather than in the every day realm. Like you can exist in different realms at one time or something like that.

JL: Your Catholic upbringing also seems to crop up in a lot of your work. How do you think that has had an impact on some of the formal aspects of your work?

KS: Well, I think when you're Catholic, you grow up surrounded by statuary that is invoked with different properties. In a belief like Hinduism, the statue is the living representation of the God. In Catholicism, it's slightly some place in-between those points, but it's the representation of the God, or the spiritual, or something or other. It's believing in a kind of vivid world, where things are imbued with power. It has a relationship to making sculpture, where you are trying to reveal meaning, or construct meaning through inanimate objects. That would also probably relate to the question of shamanism. Catholicism is a spirited world. The world is active in an animistic way.

JL: What inspired the making of Pyre?

KS: I just got interested in thinking about witch representations; then I thought it would be nice to make a commemorative statute, for the witch burnings in Europe. I was trying to think about public art. Then I thought I would just make the public art that I would like to have. I thought to make these women on pyres. Probably also from just having a fireplace and looking at chopped wood.

JL: I read this the other day, "If you take a copy of the Christian bible and leave it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible is the wind and the rain". This is from a Native American medicine person.

 

KS: That's fantastic.

 

JL: Yes. Do you have an interest in other religions such as Taoism, Buddhism or Hinduism?

 

KS: Yes, in a kind of trickle down supermarket way. A little bit, you know, I mean just growing up from the 60s. Our whole culture has been enormously influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. I like reading about Taoism. I like reading about Judaism and reading the Old Testament sometimes. I find most religions interesting. I am most attracted to ones with images.

 

JL: There are a lot of images in Buddhism as well.

 

KS. Yes, and Shintoism, there's lots of nature beliefs. I think that all of those things are configuring us. We are sort of hybrid; people in New York and these big cites are hybrids of lots of different religions. We probably accept many things from different religions and belief systems. In a kind of ordinary, everyday way. In a kind of unconscious way. I say I'm Catholic because I was raised Catholic, but I wouldn't say I'm a particularly practicing religious person.

 

JL: A spiritual person?

 

KS: Yes, I think that's an important part of one's life.

 

JL: I get that from your work.

 

KS. Yes, it's something I care about. When you are making work it's also about listening, listening and sort of just doing what you are told. I went to a Buddhist lecture and they say knowledge arises. Like you just know things; things become apparent. To be attentive too. That's what you are given to be attentive to. You just try to pay attention.

 

JL: What about dreams, do you ever dream of work that you are going to make?

 

KS: I used to dream a lot more than I do. For years I just dreamt my work and made it. Sometimes when you travel you gets lots of information. During the process of making things, it becomes apparent too. Nor do I think that each piece has to contain everything you ever thought of in your whole life. If you can kind of keep moving in various directions.

 

JL: Like from one idea?

KS: Yes, it doesn't have to contain everything. So each piece you make can just have one little aspect of something, or a couple of little aspects.

 

JL: One piece evolves into the next.

 

KS. Sometimes they are totally disconnected. But it's more like your brain just tells you what to do. Ok that's a good idea. As good as the next and then you just do it. It leads you someplace or not. Sit around for a while until something else becomes apparent.

 

JL: Do you sit with pieces for a while?

 

KS: Sometimes, I don't have very much space, so mostly I like to get things put away. I put a lot of things under the furniture. I hide them. I don't want things to go into the world, but I don't want them in my house. I spend a great deal of time moving things around.

 

JL: Do you prefer to work spontaneously or do you prefer planning things out with photographs or drawings?

 

KS: I do both, depending on what I'm doing. A lot of times, I make drawings, large collage drawings, before I make sculptures of things. The drawings are just totally finished things themselves. It's not like a sketch. It's just how I like working. I like making it as a drawing first and sometimes I'll turn it into a sculpture. It depends on the situation. Sometimes I make a drawing and I'll put them into the computer. Then have them cut in metal. There's lots of different processes. I make drawings and film plates out of it. Then make low relief sculptures from that. It just depends on what the specific thing is.

 

JL: Growing up the daughter of sculptor Tony Smith, did that put pressure on you in terms of meeting expectations?

 

KS: No, being a girl, there were no expectations whatsoever. There were no expectations for us to do anything. So in that sense we were very free. We were just like wild weeds growing up. So in one sense, I was free of expectations to just become anything and I didn't have any desire to be anything particular either. I think people looked at me, when I first started showing, because I was Tony's daughter, but half the time people think I'm David Smith's daughter. So they are reading some totally other history. No, I just feel lucky to have been my father's daughter in a great many respects. Probably when I was younger, I was much more uncomfortable. As if I was usurping my father's space, but that's not so much an issue for me anymore.

 

JL: Blood pool; that's a very intense piece. The black and blue coloring, the woman crouched in the fetal position with her rib cage exposed. I remember seeing that at Fawbush in the early 90s. What did that come out of?

 

KS: My sister and I became emergency medical technicians. One of the technicians said when you die, you lose internal pressure and everything falls down. Your organs and everything. So, you can tell how long somebody has been dead by the pooling of blood in the body. Somehow, that was a very comforting thought to me. (laughs) Which I can't really explain why, so I just made a sculpture of it. The spine was just a total after thought. I had just gotten a modal of a spine from Carolina Biological Supply Company.

 

JL: Yes, I know the catalogue very well; I actually gave my copy of it to Damien Hirst many years ago.

 

KS: He got a lot of mileage out of it. So, I just made a mold of it and pulled the wax off of it and just stuck it on the back of it. The whole show was just about blundered people or something like that. More in a way of psychic bad things that had happened to people - that thwart people's existence.

Blood Pool,  Painted bronze 1993

JL: What about humor in your work?

KS: I think my work is funny. I'm not sure if other people do. Often my pieces are amusing to me.

JL: When you are in your studio, do you ever step back and laugh to yourself?

KS: Yes, I think lot's of it is funny. I realize I have a big personal stake in what I'm doing, but I also realize that my personal stake in it is funny. My attachments to the things are quite funny.

JL: You know what I really love, are the drawings of the dandelions.

KS: Thank you, me too. I had a young lamp worker Dave Willis make dandelion puffs out of glass for me. I'm trying to have a whole bunch of them made like all souls or something.

JL: Like an installation? 

KS: I want to make a spirit house or something like that. I like dandelions too. Everything is very special.

JL:  I notice that you also make a lot of prints and that you did something with MOMA.

KS: Yes, for a benefit I made for them.

JL: Is that something you have been involved in for a long time? I haven't seen too much of your prints.

KS: Probably, because when I have shows in galleries they really don't care so much about showing my prints. But I've been making prints, as much as I've been making shows. I like making large scale prints, large lithographs, cutting them up and making them like collages or something like that. I like that a lot.

JL: I see a strong relationship between your sculptures and drawings.

KS: Yes, they go very nicely together. I'm not very good at making sculptures so I have to work hard at it. I have to figure out some way that I'm not limited by my limitations. Sometimes I get really sick of it because I'm just so bad at it. But drawing I've gotten better at then sculpture. So I'm figuring out how to make low relief drawing sculptures. I want to make something that has a very ephemeral, three dimensionality to it that is mostly drawing. I like drawing these days more than sculpting. I just get sick of making it wrong. I have no comprehension of how to make an eye; no matter how many times I look at them. (Laughs) Studying the muscles. I just don't get it. How a face goes together. What's under one's skin.

JL: Do you work every day? Do you have a set schedule?

KS: Yes, I work from 10 to 6. Then usually I go out in the evening then come home and work another hour or two.

JL: What about weekends. Do you take the weekends off?

KS: Mostly I have a house. I have a lot of housework to do. I mostly take Saturdays and Sundays off. I used to get most of my work done on Saturdays and Sundays. I just work 5 days a week. Often I just do bullshit all day long and then at night is when I really get my work done.

JL: Really, at night, your energy changes? Does your inspiration happen mostly at night?

KS: No, it's because I'm just by myself. I get to be by myself and there are no emails and things like that and then I don't have any art career. (Laughs) When I don't have an art career. I can just be an artist and then you can just work.

JL: When you get to a place where you are at; do you feel like the career part can get in the way?

KS: Yes, I think it often does get in the way of my life. You know what it's like being an artist. I think it's a really difficult balance that sometimes I can figure out and sometimes I can't. You know, there are so many artists. So pay attention to a different artist too. (laughs) So in that sense you are always free. You can always just go home again. No, it's a weird balance to keep.

JL: It's important to keep it.

KS: Yes.

JL: What was it like in the 90s when you started receiving a tremendous amount of attention from the press and the art world?

KS. I think I had a life for a bit and then sometimes I think it went away. Then it got much more manageable. So it has perked up again this year, because I have this retrospective. As an artist you just want to be able to work essentially. It is very fulfilling to be interacting with other people outside your own house. That's also a very honored position to be in. It's something I'm very appreciative of and don't take for granted. Also, because it comes and goes in people's lives all the time. I have a pretty good run of it of being able to do my work and survive from that. I also teach.

JL: What do you teach?

KS: I teach printmaking.

JL: In the city?

KS. Yes. I think it’s a big privilege to have an art career and sometimes it's not for free. (laughs) Sometimes you just have to stay up a little later.

JL; Sounds like it could be fun.

KS: Yes, it's fun meeting other artists from different parts of the world. It' s fun having a reason knowing what to do every day. Otherwise I wouldn't know what to do everyday.

JL: How's the traveling; do you like it?

KS: No, I really don't like traveling very much. I mean I do travel a lot, but I always learn things when I go to other places. I meet interesting people so traveling does help my work a lot. Personally do I love it, not particularly. I love to just stay in my house all day long. You go to what's important to you. It's your job.

Photos © Kiki Smith Courtesy Pace Wildenstein    www.pacewildenstein.com