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.
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