Kiki Smith Interview: In a Wandering Way

well I was born in Nuremberg Germany West Germany at the time because my mother was had gone to Germany after the war because she wanted to be an opera singer and so I went there and then my father at some point came there and then I was born in 1954 and lived in Germany for a year and a half and then I came to United States back to the house where my father was born and then I was raised there in New Jersey and my father was a [Music] architect and painter and sculptor Tony Smith and you and I two younger sisters Seaton who is an artist and my sister Beatrice whose dad no sort of peculiar child I suppose but I had a lot of fun I grew up in a in a neighborhood with lots of girls you know so we're like I think we had about 48 girls in about five or six or seven houses so we all like you know ran around like crazy and you I grew up in the suburbs in the you know late 50s and early 60s and a tremendous amount of freedom to you know riding a bicycle around and disappear and you know we also we helped our father a great deal on his work and you know we did it really that was a very dominant part of my childhood is that we helped my father do things we lived in two houses so we move we would you like get up in the morning go to school and then come home and then my mother would bring us to her father's house we'd have dinner and then you know we'd come home again and so we live you know we had this fairy here which I have recreated in my own life living in two houses sort of fluidly and you know we were sort of peculiar but [Music] and I was you know probably melancholic a great deal at the time but I had a lot of fun on my own you know and I had fun with friends just by my nature I think just by my nature but no I remember being unbearably bored a lot when I was a kid that there wasn't enough stimulation I didn't read I couldn't really read as a child and I like but I like looking at things which drives other people and saying that live around me but you know cuz I'm was going oh look at that look at that look at that look at that that that can drive I try to curb that now my father was good friends with Jackson Pollock but he died by the time I was 2 when I was 2 he died but he was very good friends with Barnett Newman and Paul feely and different people and Barnett Newman and his wife were like for like grandparents to us they were I don't think they were much older than my parents but they they brought us presents was something like it was like having a grandparent or something but you know and I was very attached to them but you know man might lots of my father students came to see him and and sometimes would live with us and you know working with him or lots of people came because we lived outside of New York about it's really only about 12 miles away but it's you know we take people about an hour to get there so it was a trek for people to come but it was wonderful to be around artists and to listen to them talking and so figure I was young and I was like a child and I'm so like a child but then I was more like a trial heroes but I enjoyed very much listening to what people said alive know you know I have no memories of what they said I just I hearing them talk you know my father's friends were were primarily abstract painters you know so if like for me I didn't see I saw very little representational art practically till I went to college yeah I grew up with abstract paintings and you know probably in a way it's what I'm the most attracted to still like but but you know I think going to college are going to like I saw a van Gogh starry night I remember at the Museum as a child and that's something that Venice Borneo that's still something that's very compelling as an image to me or you know seeing certain paintings in the museum's we were very interesting and so yeah so for me in a certain way it made me attracted to representation because it was unfamiliar that you know my father's work I feel a great affinity to you know I feel you know like you know like something that's in your courses in your blood you know that it's not separate from you the way that one's parents genetics aren't separated from you they're there you know his while our work and everything is very different and he was very different than me there's something very familiar about her and my mother was a very spiritual person in some you know nod to find way or something like that she was very she had converted from maybe Episcopalian or something to Catholicism because of my father cuz they got married had me but at that time people did that but then she's heard of when more towards Hinduism or like was Catholic and Hindu and Buddhist so I think I was a little bit but that was torrid boardshorts when we were growing up but I was already like about probably about 16 17 I mean she took me to yoga classes and stuff when I was about 13 and stuff but so she was someone who was and she was also someone always very attracted to rocks and crystalline forms the way my father was you know but had done you know in her presence and those also to me or something um I wouldn't say they're talking to you but they're definitely engaging with you you know or you know making a vibration with you or something like that or a plant something you know like the natural world but they were also there on my father also was like I would say spirit some whatever that means to say someone's a spiritual person but he he was definitely a tune to something else both my parents don't taught us to trust our intuition and to follow it you know and that that's the strongest you know knowledge that you have you don't I thought in a way and you know I had the idea that your intuition is sort of knowledge and experience that you've incorporated and that then you have access to to make to use and make decisions within your life you know that it's not just like give me some things are being like beamed into you but you know most of it sort of that you're standing on you have a good base to stand on and then you can move very freely you know like like jazz musicians or something that can move very freely because they have some base that they're moving from I was very influenced I mean I like making things but I was more interested in sir craft things but I wasn't like I always want to be a Potter but I didn't have any he like to spin and things like that on a wheel like forget it I have not one centered enough er I can construct things but I couldn't do like centering pots and stuff don't forget it but but I really like making things and I was very influenced by Bread and Puppet Theatre I saw them you know in the I don't know late 60s or something and they were very socially engaged and making a theatre that was very essential and very moving to me and very symbolic and they had wonderful things about wounds and things like that pit but so that was very they were very moving to me and then I don't know I know at some point I said I'd go to college and I don't know my sister Seaton drew still lifes and so she made photography and she still does photography but she also drew still license so then I start I didn't know what to do really so I thought okay I'll just copy her and try still lifes to it you know I draw like packs of cigarettes or things like that to try to learn some relationship to how to think about perspective or how to think about objects and space and what's a way to think about objects in space and then I did that for a first couple years when I came to New York and then I had a boyfriend so I painted his guitar and his friends guitars and then that he gave me he worked at a good book store The Strand and he gave me a copy of Grey's Anatomy and then because of that I just started making bodies and then whatever happened happened and I think like as an artist I'm trying to make something that reflects some feeling back to me that I'm trying to imbue something with and it's very incredibly unspecific what it is you want from something and it's unspecific what you get from it you know but but there's still like some arrangement in between those things where you kind of go like okay now I've done now like I've put in my time I've paid attention to this thing and I'm happy you know every sometimes you can have some my div and intent of like not like that you want it to do something particularly that that you can find you can find yourself in it and to me lots of things you know sometimes I make things that are very hippie dippie looking and then sometimes they make things that are sort of cool and sometimes I make things that you know it seemed like too overtly expressionistic or something and now I'm in a little bit of phase of where there's a kind of a little bit of a distance or something but but it's not in me that any of those things are any different they all just resonate or hold meaning or rep or you know or maybe just represent something I want to look at or think about like like having you know in in those senses like having a talisman or something in front of you that remind you of something to be attentive to but it's also sometimes I just want something and then I think wow I can just make it you're making art or making things as a way to externalize or synthesize your experience or your consciousness or something into some physical three-dimensional or two-dimensional some physical something that's physical that has physical attributes and qualities to it to kind of be able to look at it like a model or a temporary model of mostly like is it like that or does it feel like that or is that an accurate assessment or or does that is that something that can hold you and you know sometimes those things last for a cup four minutes or a couple hours or you can be satisfied looking at them later but that it's constantly moving and changing you know at the same time like I'm interested you know in very sort of mundane formal ways about processes about what you can do with certain processes what the histories of those processes are you know I'm endlessly trying to teach myself about itching and all the different techniques you can like motion to one material and make something come out of it that you know engages you for the like hundreds of hours or you know two hours or hundreds more like hundreds of hours you're spending doing going cross-eyed scratching something and getting you know destroy getting arthritis and what comes out that it holds you you know that holds your attention or gives you some sorry some sense of satisfaction or something for some moments this is just like this this is the second layer and then there's then I'm making the third layer completely different I used to think about it like one version of a model of working over a period of time is like you're meandering around a garden like you're not trying to get anywhere as an artist you're just going to circumnavigating the landscape and you know you know in a wandering way that you might not arrive anywhere particular or you might get lost along the way like you know anything can happen kind of an and then you know the other way was that from where I start like once I started making body things and then I made organs and things about the orifices and all these different things in the nervous system and different cells and then then I made I went out into figuration and you know sort of wandered around in that for a while then I kind of dropped that for a while and went more into just making natural images and then I went back to figuration in relationship to nature and you know maybe back in just natural images more because I live upstate and that's more what I see but you know it so in a way like I can see that as some like I can make a linear narrative out of it but and I also can see that how different times of my work it it very much correlated with my life with my personal life somehow of why I was doing certain things at a given moment but I think you know and then at a certain point you know I like I always thought like the first part of my life was just like it was just churning and I had so much energy and things to do you know that I just needed to make expression of or get out you know and then I think after a while like like your interior isn't as important to you as like paying attention to where you actually are or what what is in your environment or what what one should celebrate in your environment or go towards attraction to in your environment okay when you're young you have to kind of grapple with yourself and your you know till you find some peace within yourself and you know it's just growing up and at a certain point you just don't care you just get over all that or you know I mean to a great deal of excite you sort of get over a lot of it it doesn't it doesn't hold the same significance I think I'll wait and work on another one no cuz those parts all fill in you know Matt so we'll see I can make an autobiography of my work like when I look at it like the different themes and stuff like that but I know interest to be a person in general like I'm not interested in like my personhood other than that you know it funk you know you have to have function or something like that but your eyes an artist like I'm not interested in people knowing personal things about me or that my work should express a kind of person or something like that you know like like in I don't mean it in a biographical way or in there or like or autobiographical way or to be you know mostly I'm just a person who gets up in the morning and works and sometimes goes to teach and sometimes takes the train a lot basically and but it's not I don't really have any need nor but I also don't like it yeah I don't I'm very I like being a private person I think I came to New York when I was 22 you know spend the New York Dolls were very popular and you know it was a very wonderful place to be because it was really a wreck you know there kind of suburban exodus of the middle classes and the infrastructure of the city was really falling apart and you know so it gave made for a tremendous amount of freedom and there was you didn't have to make very much money at all you know I lived in places where some places where I didn't pay rent for years because they were so in such bad condition and your other times I paid very low rent so you didn't have to work very hard I mean you know you could have served odd jobs from here to there and stuff and so so it was very free you know I was a lot of fun to be young in the city because you're like in this neighborhood if you look at pictures there were no buildings for four blocks you know I was just you know like a not like a ghost town but but one that had been abandoned by the proper economic support that a city needs but as the young person it was really fun it was very vital you know I mean I was still when the most of the galleries were in Soho you know you could go to Soho every Saturday or something or go to art openings and you'll be in the same room with artists that you admired or you know it was very exciting to be I mean it's probably exciting anytime once a young artist if you have a community but it seemed a very you know there were many heroes a time with many new parts of work entering that many new forms of work entering so it was into and people you know also like defining themselves as the artists and musicians and filmmakers you're like some of those boundaries people could traverse yeah I was I mean I mean I'm always I've been someone we were just making things for the most part it was the people I knew at that time were much more experimental in a way or much more out there than I was you know I'm sitting home like drawing my little packs of cigarettes trying to figure out like how are you supposed to get around the pack of cigarettes to some other thing there you know like how to move around in a drawing or something like that but and I was part of a group of artists called collaborative projects but I was a very marginal part of that it had gone it had been together for several years earlier and but we were like a gang you know make sure this together and make situations together and you don't had a lot of energy you know at that time I mean the world still has problems with bodies or or other people's bodies you know and the general scheme of things but that that yeah it was imperative to find some grounding or autonomy separate from you know what different belief systems that we inherit or governments that we inherit or your religions that we inherit that these things that all are in a way vying for control you know industries that are inherently trying to vie for control of your autonomy and it's you can't wash your brain out you know you have all of these things you personalize them and you're living them and you you know become vitamins and things like this you know and so it's like you know certain points you want to go like you know like to slough off the dead like get all these beliefs and all these things off of you so you can kind of stand and kind of think a little bit about how you to be in the world outside of what you know different things are buying for control in the society you know and I think that's also a part of growing up you have to kind of grapple with all of these things that you have just inherited generationally and then you know I take what you need and leave the rest you know kind of attitude do I think it's a good thing to do or people think about bodies because all of our problems for the most part come out of our problematic thinking about bodies you know about what it is to be in a body and you know it's a detrimental but most part it has tremendously detrimental ramifications in this world you know that are you know very sorrowful but you know I mean you know in like the European you know whatever it is hierarchical dualism where you have male and the mind separated from the body I mean that caused a lot of problems but but for everyone suffered because of those beliefs but I think for me I have a friend named a baron bruger who's a poet and she writes a lot about nature and spends really a lot of time out in the wilderness and she her like knowing her really changed me like of to go like to see that you know because I know like at one point the feminist movement people didn't want to be in this reductive version of being woman in nature and like the goddess mother you know like this some people said like you know they they didn't that that was a constrained so then my friend Mamie talks a lot about love and a lot about like you know not like the appropriateness but that to align oneself with with whatever one thinks of being as nature or something is a correct alignment you know because you can see that we're in you know we're stressing the earth in a you know very dramatic unnecessary ways and so it's it makes a lot more sense to say oh no I am nature also you know that that's in my interest nature and maybe we have the same interest you know in a way although not to like anthropomorphize nature but we all have a better chance coexisting if we're not so harmful to it so you know and that's a like a slippery slope for artists because like you know you're using all these materials and it's really cool it's not that complicated but it's very problematic thank you no but you know so then I sort of move towards nature of things because because I went to Harvard to people to museum to draw it that was in 94 and then this scientist there was telling me there is statistical modeling for the extinction and death of mammals you know and and how yeah what was like the 30-year plan the 50-year plan and you know how that has tremendously accelerated from from 1994 and you know then I thought like all the body stuff can take care of itself other people can take care of that it wasn't like I'm gonna go take care of nature but I'm gonna go pay attention like that's where I should put my focus you stop looking in you know in terior in an interior way as much as you did when you're younger and start you know kind of looking out in the world and seeing what's interesting to you and what engages you and then yeah in all different like your life changes it becomes less personal in a way like first I just drew pictures of animals or different things and then then I thought like oh fairy tales are this intersection between the like sure the old world like the old stories of how we intersect and interact with animals or with trees or with different things then so you know I kind of moved around in that for several years and then that stopped you know and then it went out to some other like who knows where you know like your work just you know has its own trajectory and it goes where it wants to go and if you're smart you just follow it where it wants to go and you know sometimes you like doing something a little too much or slap-happy and then it's like you know you're not sure whether the world needs as much of these things as you need to do them or something but you know then you just try to follow your work materials have physiological effects on your body as well as you know sort of social histories or attributes that we give them or you know things the other things that we obscure subscribe to them you know and then also they're you know doing who-knows-what on us you know because you know the plant world or the mineral world are as active as we are so who knows what's going on but you know but you know what for me I think it's more like you're going I always think I want to be a dabbler the other day I thought somebody said dabbler and I thought I want that on my grave dabbler like you know sister wife friend dabbler you're like tepee like somebody who sort of dabbles and that you know like that you have some experience like I you know I like having experiences with processes and I would say most of my work comes from printmaking and or some weird convoluted reiteration of taking something that is from a printed image and then making it into a three-dimensional image and then turning that back into a photograph or just like this thing I sort of churning and turning things over again and you know so it and it's more just about a desire to to experience and have and discover things that aren't hidden you know it's not like you're discovering and discovering what's in plain sight but that you don't know about till you engage with it in your own body you know and I think that for many artists that that's you know a very predominant riding force as to wanting to have the experience of something yeah objects have histories that forms have histories more than object objects can or not depending you know and it is like that sense of reliquary or me you know things that are moving and passing around but but but forms have histories and you know it's each one is so rich and deep and you know intersects our lives in so many complex ways that to you know just learn one little like shard of what that's like or what that's about is you know it's really fantastic to have the opportunity to do things you know to work in different methods of working or different processes or different kinds of workshops or with different artisans or different people technical people and stuff like that's a great joy as an artist to have the opportunity to work with other people you know I mean I'm just trying to learn about things and I mean you know as an artist I predominantly just interested in my one experience of making you know what it ends up there also test you're attached to it or not attached or whatever but in a certain way it's a byproduct of your energy you know and there's something very satisfying in a very elemental way of being able to manifest something physically you know that's it has a good feeling to her

Channel: Louisiana Channel

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Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Kiki Smith, Studio visit, New York, American artist, Making art, painting, painter, sculptor, advice to the young, Kiki Smith – 'I Make Things to Experience the Process' | TateShots, Kiki Smith: Printmaking | Art21 Extended Play

Id: RLeanMwWSs8

Length: 33min 44sec (2024 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020