40 under 40: Craft Futures at the Renwick Gallery features forty artists working in contemporary craft. As the exhibition draws to a close, curatorial assistant Debrah Dunner interviewed one of the featured artists, Laurel Roth. See below for an excerpt or visit the blog for the full post.
The museum hopes to acquire works by every artist in the exhibition and is currently running a campaign to acquire Laurel's birds, Martha and Incas, from her series "Biodiversity Reclamation Suits." Help Martha and Incas stay at the museum after the exhibition closes by donating $10 or more to our campaign. Visit the website for more information.
40 under 40: 5 Questions with artist Laurel Roth
You have no formal art training, tell us how you came into the field.
Laurel Roth: Like many people, I've always had the need to make things with my hands and imagination, but growing up in a single-parent, lower working class rural home I felt that my creative urges and love of drawing and making were somewhat impractical indulgences. Practicality tends to be necessary for independence and survival, so I didn't really allow myself to imagine life as an artist until I was in my thirties and had been working a variety of mostly blue-collar jobs since I was 15.
I was a park ranger when I met my partner, Andy Diaz Hope, and moved to San Francisco. Being a bit of a country girl, I felt rather lost in my new urban environment. I started building little animals from urban detritus to inspire me to adapt myself to my new surroundings. I'd sculpt a tiny bird from a packing peanut, a cigarette butt, and burned out matches to act as a role model for me to learn to make use of the nutrients and systems of my new surroundings. It was playing, really, but it opened up a whole world of thinking and making for me that I just dove into. Sculpture quickly became a way for me to learn, think about, and make peace with the world. Andy is also an artist and has been supportive and encouraging, which helped me to find confidence along the way.
I used to be self conscious about not having a college education, but I think that, in the long run, it serves me just fine to have developed my own path and voice, and I feel very lucky to have the career that I do.
Where did your idea for the biodiversity reclamation suits come from?
With this series I wanted to address the feelings of helplessness and confused shame that come with learning about accelerated extinction rates caused by humans. It's such an overwhelming topic that I needed to tackle it with humor and hope, however blind or tongue-in-cheek. Visually recreating lost bio-diversity by using the rarely appreciated but highly adaptable pigeon serves both to highlight the loss that we have already sustained while drawing attention to the fact that we often revile the animals most capable of living in a human made environment. An extinct or endangered animal is precious to us due to its scarcity, and its scarcity is due to its inability to adapt to the way we change the world. Pigeons, on the other hand, adapt to us amazing well (along with rats, roaches, etc) and are often despised.
Do you think your objective is achieved through the suits?
I think so. Each person has their own reactions to any art, but the responses I've read and heard to the Biodiversity Suits lead me to feel that many people get the subtleties of what I want to communicate through them.
Visit the museum's blog, Eye Level, for the full post. 40 under 40: Craft Futures will be on view at the Renwick Gallery through February 3, 2013.
IMAGE: Laurel Roth, Biodiversity Reclamation Suit: Passenger Pigeon (2008) and Biodiversity Reclamation Suit: Carolina Parakeet (2009), Courtesy of the artist; Frey Norris Gallery, San Francisco; and Schroeder Romero and Shredder Gallery, New York.
