studio storage

(Before and After)
Either someone loves me or he just wants space to be utilized more efficiently 
either way, I take it

Art studio in the basement problems

Interview with Catapult Art Magazine

  Below is the photo spread and text taken from my interview in this months Catapult Art Magazine. Special thanks to Gracelee Lawrence who conducted the interview. I laid it out here because the text is a little hard to read and navigate through the pages from their website unless you are on a touch pad. If you want to see the full issue of the magazine and layout you can visit the link Catapult ArtMag Issue #21 to access the full pdf. My work is featured on pages 138-145.

Carlie Trosclair is an installation artist from New Orleans, Louisiana who presently lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Trosclair completed her BFA at Loyola University New Orleans, received her MFA from Washington University St. Louis, and graduated from the Community Arts Training Institute in 2012. Trosclair’s installations live regionally and nationally in galleries, vacant domestic spaces, and as temporary public art works. Trosclair recently completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Woodside Contemporary Artist Center in NY. She is currently a collaborative teaching artist in residence with Rebuild Foundation St. Louis, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans.

Gracelee Lawrence: How has your background affected your art practice?

Carlie Trosclair: My background is pretty straightforward I think. I was always drawn to making things as a kid and now reflecting back was interested in re-imagining spaces in some sense as well. I would hang upside down a lot, creating scenarios and pathways of how to travel across my house if the ceiling were the floor. I’d have to climb up and over chunks of wall that weren’t obstacles before, dodge wisping fans, and then what to do with that weird large space that was now underneath the doorway? And what about upside down stairs? Oddly enough, with my dad being an electrician I spent a lot of time in homes at different stages of construction. From pilings being set into the ground, to slab layout, ghostly wooden armatures of what would be a sunroom or the kitchen I remember walking through these ‘almost’ homes and daydreaming about their more complicated and colorful lives beyond their artificial Open Houses that were in their near future. In addition when I got older I spent a few years drawing house portraits for a building contractor my dad worked with. Sometimes I would have access to the architectural blueprints, which really helped me understand how to lay everything out spatially. I can only now speculate how much these experiences connected me to what my current interests are. More formally, during high school I spent two years at the New Orleans Center for Creative Art (NOCCA), an extra curricular arts program that I attended during the week after school.  That program was kind of it for me. It opened up my thinking and exposure to art making as a pursuable practice in a way that I was never exposed to before. My favorite times were late at night when I would disappear into my “studio” (a surrendered work office in the garage) until early hours in the morning, hardly getting any sleep or homework done before school, but diligently working on art assignments for weekly critiques. In a way it was like having a double major but in high school.  Breeze ahead a few years to a terminal degree in Fine Art. Since NOCCA I’ve never considered doing anything else. I can’t even imagine it. 

GL: How did you start doing installation work? Has it always been your medium of choice and if not, what has been your evolution?

CT: In undergrad I began experimenting with different materials as collage elements on my paintings: plastic, paint chips, tissue paper, gauze, fabric, etc. I was intrigued with the forms I could create out of the more malleable materials and began building them further and further off of the canvas. I then began reconstructing the actual wooden square of the frame into abstract three-dimensional forms that would then be wrapped with canvas and painted. After a few pieces I found the under armature inhibiting of the innate qualities in the material because it was always defined and determined by the structure underneath. What were the material’s limits? Could it be structural on its own? Pretend to exist as a different form? I removed the under armature in 2006 and have done without it since.

My fabric exploration then went a number of routes: dipped into latex and wax, frozen, burned, stretched, draped, contorted, etc.  Without a structure to define it, the allusion to the body became more apparent in the forms that evolved. I began thinking more about the scale of my work in relationship to the body and the viewer’s experience. As the work got larger it became more intimate and developed a bodily sensibility.  The more I explored how artwork could be experiential the more I thought about the architecture of our built environments and our everyday experience, or in many cases non-experience, as we travel throughout these spaces.  Installation opened up an interesting dialogue for me between materials, the physical body, and architecture by exploring ways to re-imagine and connect with our surrounding environment in a more present way.

GL: Your installations have a distinct architectural connection and sensitivity to patterns and materials. How do you begin an installation? Are they each completely site specific or do you have plans before you are onsite?

CT: It is hard for me to understand a space without physically being in it and walking through it. Once that happens many decisions are made up front and intuitively as to how the movement of the work will feel and exist within the outline of the space. From the onset of installation I am retracing my steps forward, backward, and through the work in order to best understand the experience I am engineering for the viewer. In addition I definitely have a style and aesthetic that gravitates me toward certain patterns, materials and forms. I love swooping gestural lines and dramatic lighting that casts dark shadows. I always approach a piece with my own arsenal of techniques and styles of working. Also, each architectural interior brings its own palette to build from: a column here, a protrusion there, a randomly adjacent wall, a hallway, etc. Multiple corners and right angles are where I get most excited. In these cases I have the opportunity to change the topography of the space by blanketing over their hard edges and in their place creating soft, fluid transitions that restructure the space architectonically. In the past year I have been gravitating toward working in vacant domestic spaces. They contribute a completely new realm of architectural exploration: a steep and narrow staircase, low ceilings, layers of old wallpaper, secret nooks and crannies. All of these are exciting elements that are not present in a more traditional (gallery) setting and add a further layer of psychological question as to how we come to understand our surroundings- especially within a familiar structure that we can all relate to: a home.

In cases where the architecture of the building, its detritus and patterns within are inspiring and unique to that space, I try to veer away from adding too many additional elements. In those cases too much intervention would overpower what already exists. It has been a challenge experimenting with different ways to highlight and draw attention to (in a new way) the elements of the space that I am attracted to without overshadowing what pulled me to the space initially. This has lead to recent experimentation with photo manipulation, collage, and stop motion videos.

GL: Imagine that you have the opportunity to invite 6 different well-known individuals to spend an evening with you around a campfire. Who would you choose? (Any artists from any time in history). Eva Hesse, Anselm Kiefer, Ann Hamilton, Bernini, Jean Claude- Christo, Ernesto Neto, Gordon Matta Clark. In actuality it isn’t even important that I’m physically there. I’d take being a fly on the wall.

GL: Where do you find inspiration or ideas for your work?

CT: My template stems from Baroque, Rococo, ruin, drapery, lava formations, caves, other artists, cracks in the sidewalk, layers of paint peeling off of a building, architecture itself. A lot of times it is in the detail of the mundane or everyday: honing in on a particular detail and imagining it blown up large enough to walk into. In many cases new ideas stem from previous work. Building from one idea to the next in a pretty linear fashion. In addition an important layer is the layout of the space itself. It’s a cluster of different elements, proximities, opportunities and constraints.

GL: How do you balance your community-based work and your solitary studio practice? Talk a little bit about the importance of both sides.

CT: The answer lies within continually reposing that very question, which I suppose is a non-answer. Throughout its exploration more questions arise and challenge what it means to navigate between a solitary studio practice and a collaborative practice with people in a particular place. Basically I do not have an answer, but I am finding solace in the unknown, the becoming, and the uncertainty of figuring out together what possibilities look like. My community-based practice is gathered around one particular neighborhood in a very special house whose door is always open that the kids refer to as the art house (or the pink house).  In every facet of my practice, I am interested in art as a connector in developing and opening up human relationships- between one another and within ones self.  Both practices are different in many ways, but what they have in common is that neither are formulaic nor based on a quantitative value system.

CT: In order to delineate some form of measure questions arise through self and collaborative exploration. Primarily within myself are: How can I inspire creativity? How can art be made accessible while still challenging a theoretical and conceptual platform? and most often: How much is enough?

I’m in the process of figuring out how I can use my studio practice, my passion, and what I’ve been formally trained to do as an artist and creative thinker and push its existence outside of myself. To use these tools to facilitate and support creative projects or happenings outside of the traditional format and structure of an institution (or personal artist studio) so that creativity becomes more accessible and exposure to art is not always about making a concrete thing but about approaching situations in a more open minded and creative way that makes you challenge what is fed to you, makes you ask why not, and what if. To support, inspire, and create a platform for creativity and self-expression beyond myself as the solitary creator or teacher of the thing but as a participant in a shared exploration of many things. Both complimentary to (and in some moments personally contrasting) I am still a maker. My solitary studio practice inspires and rejuvenates my ability to think and dream at all. My biggest challenge is trying not to feel selfish or like I’m not doing enough when I am making my own work. At the forefront is an ethical struggle between the two and searching for the balance that allows them to overlap and build off of one another. 

GL: What are you currently working on?

CT: I am working on a series of cutouts and collages that explore the interrelation between detritus and decoration (primarily within abandoned spaces). The intentional design in the ornate, contrasted and complimented with the natural design found in ruin reveals stark similarities between two seemingly disparate patterns By setting them up as equals, value systems of beauty and design are challenged and placed into question. More concretely I’m doing some ‘treacherous’ exploring and photographing within abandoned spaces in St. Louis. Those photographs are then printed, cut into with ornate patterns and then reassembled using additional layers of wallpaper and other patterns. I just finished installing some of these pieces in a solo exhibition in Bloomsburg, PA at the Haas Gallery of Art and have an upcoming exhibition at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans that will further push and investigate these ideas.

GL: Give a few words of advice to the emerging artists of the world.

CT: Be resourceful, accessible and open-minded. Trust your intuition. Persevere.