Artists Interview Artists: Lisa Stephenson

Lisa Stephenson, an artist from Grand Rapids, Michigan, participates in the Artist Interview Artists Project. Below Lisa responds to another artist's five questions (Whitney Lynn from Richmond, VA). In order to participate, Lisa had to provide me with five questions for some other artist to answer. The assigning of questions to artists is completely random. If you're an artist and interested in participating, let me know.

1. Do you think that the notion of an artist's "style" is fabricated to boost sales and marketability? Are artists then forced to limit their body of work to specific content or media in an effort to facilitate easy recognization?

I have known a couple of artists who, once signed with a gallery, were stuck making the same type of art to satisfy their gallery/collectors. Some artists do kind-of sell their heart and souls for money this way. However, others simply like making a certain style of painting, sculpture, or whatever, or working in a certain media. In those cases, I'd say it's just a preference of the artist, and has nothing to do with money.

2. What do you think of political art?

I think it's cool. However, it can sometimes date itself by being too specific to a certain time period, event, or culture - making it irrelevant for future generations or other cultures. But even then, political art tells everyone about the histories of people. Another thing is that if political artists are too specific about their politics they could be making propoganda instead of art. Propoganda is more political than it is art.

3. Do you think that artists create over-the-top personas for themselves? Is this based on the 'myth of the artist', or the fact that assholes tend to congregate at places serving wine and cheese?

Some artists are strange or cocky and there is no act. Other times it's all a show for the cameras. Whether their personas are created in self-defence (as in Bob Dylan's manners in "Don't Look Back") or the artist just wants to play a movie star (as in Andy Warhol's dumb blonde routine for every press interview), they exist as a reaction to the way the media treats them as artists. So, too many "assholes" with wine and cheese would be a good assessment, but not all artists are assholes either.

4. What causes artistic blocks? What do you do to solve them?

For me, artistic blocks are caused by me not feeling my best. So, they're caused by sadness, sickness, depression, etc. It's natural to have them and sometimes it just takes time waiting them out. Mostly I just try to take care of myself physically and mentally when I have them. That usually works.

5. What do you think about ArtForum?

I have no thoughts on it. It's a magazine, right? (Sorry I don't have a better answer for this one. I think I missed the point.)

Previous Interviews:
Juno Doran (questions by James W. Bailey)
Josh Feldman (questions by Joseph Barbaccia)

Comments

[Sonal Panse]

Beautiful work, Lisa.

Terrific project, J.T - any chance you can include links to the artists websites too? - it'll be great to see more of their work.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Sonal,

Unfortunately I don't have a Web site for either of these artists. For the other interviews I do provide links to their sites. You can see the link embedded in the first paragraph.

Let me know if you have any more problems.

Thanks!