Mary Addison Hackett, a Culver City, CA based artist and blogger, participates in the Artists Interview Artists Project. Below Mary responds to another artist's five questions (Prescott Moore Lassman from Washington, D.C.). In order to participate, Mary 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 ever go through long periods when you don't make art?
No, but during grad school I stopped painting and made art about not painting. That led to a few years of making video art. Eventually I circled back to painting. If I'm not physically working in the studio, I'm either doing research or office stuff. Sometimes between bodies of work I make things that I don't consider part of my artwork, even though they involve similar skills. That period usually lasts a couple of days and then I'm back working.
2. Who is your favorite artist working in a different genre than you? Why do you like this person, and do you think their work relates to the genre you have chosen to work in?
I'm not really a favorites type person and I don't really differentiate on genres. I was doing a residency about a year ago and met another artist there, Severine Hubard, who was constructing things and places out of scrap wood. I related to her process of looking at something and transforming it in to something else.
3. What is your favorite color and why?
Still no favorites. I go through phases with color. I happened to be in Holland during a big soccer playoff and there was orange everywhere. I got hooked on orange for a few months. Another time I was really into the color combo on the packaging of some french dripless candles. I taped the box top on a wall and months later picked out a can of blue paint based just on the memory of the box top color. When i brought the can home, it was a dead-on color match. When I was a kid, my mom was always trying to convince me that beige or tan went with everything. This is more or less true of course, but she applied this theory to practically everything. Hence, my first car was brown, because it would "go with everything." To this day, every vehicle I've owned has been white, black or brown. I guess this is why I like color.
4. Do you have a day job? If so, would you chuck it completely if you could make the same living solely on your art? Why or why not?
Yes, I'm an adjunct professor at a couple of colleges. If I were in a position where there was a waiting list for my work, I'd still do visiting artist gigs. I like the interaction with students.
5. Do you think artists are fundamentally different than other people? Why or why not?
No. I don't think that being an artist is the dividing line. I think it's a matter of how people think and process things. Plus, it's a can of worms trying to define artist versus other people. Some artists think differently than other people, and some artists think differently than other artists, but a lot of artists probably think like a lot of other people. The reverse is probably true as well.
Previous Interviews:
Juno Doran (questions by James W. Bailey)
Josh Feldman (questions by Joseph Barbaccia)
Lisa Stephenson (questions by Whitney Lynn)
Joseph Barbaccia (questions by Josh Feldman)
James W. Bailey (questions by Matt Hollis)
Matt Hollis (questions by Juno Doran)
Carol Es (questions by James Leonard)
Alexandra Silverthorne (questions by Ami Lahoff)
Christine Buckton Tillman (questions by Carol Es)
Douglas Witmer (questions by Alexandra Silverthorne)
Sky Pape (questions by Douglas Witmer)
Whitney Lynn (questions by Lisa Stephenson)
Heather Levy (questions by Joanne Greenbaum)
Heather Lowe (questions by Samantha Wolov)
Samantha Wolov (questions by Heather Levy)
Timothy McClellan (questions by Heather Lowe)
James Leonard (questions by Sky Pape)
Joanne Greenbaum (questions by Timothy McClellan)
Richard Kooyman (questions by Robert Walton)
Candy Keegan (questions by Warren Craghead)
Robert Walton (questions by Candy Keegan)
John M. Adams (questions by Richard Kooyman)
Prescott Moore Lassman (questions by Mary Addison Hackett)
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