1/21/2023 #97

HERE & NOW

Because my work schedule will continue to dominate my life until the end of April, I’ve decided to make Eulipion Outpost monthly through April 2023. Beginning in February, each issue will appear on the first Saturday of each month. I will resume a more frequent schedule in May. I hope you’ll bear with me and stay tuned!

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ART

Sarah Lovett

Sarah Lovett and I go way back. I think we met in an artists’ life-drawing group in Santa Cruz. She was always creating beautiful handmade objects, and seems to work intuitively: sewing, carving, painting, constructing 3D art inspired by her dreams and visions. One day she carved a pair of castanets for me, which I still treasure (I was taking flamenco lessons). Nowadays she lives in Seattle, where she is active in her community creating art installations, giant luminous puppets, display art, and sculpture.

Wooden castanets carved by Sarah Lovett.

SIX QUESTIONS: SARAH LOVETT

1. Where did you grow up and how did that (or any other significant experience) influence your art?

Life circumstances certainly influence us, and my father’s family was all about craftsmanship and creative work. This is one of the factors that got me into working in 3-D. A builder, furniture makers, window designer, a stone mason—there is a value in 3-D thinking in that side of the family. The women in the family were sewers. Sewing is also a great way to discover how flat things become 3-D forms. I remember building doll furniture and making clothes. I recall that making was more interesting to me than playing with dolls.

2. What’s your creative process like?

Usually, I work from a vision. I want to create something for an event, or I have a dream—an idea pops into my consciousness. Then I research images and make drawings, although sometimes a drawing grows into a vision, or a piece is inspired by a material, or a way of constructing with a particular material. I like Tyvek as an ultralight, strong, and sewable way to create volume.

Sea Dragon - for the “Goodbye Viaduct” project. By Sarah Lovett.

3. What puts a damper on your creativity? What do you do—if anything—to remedy that?

Stress about money used to take a lot of my energy. I have rarely relied on my art as a primary income, and that is still true. During the past few years, things fell easily into place and I no longer have much stress around how I will survive. I did a lot of energy work—really out of necessity—and there was a point when things began to change. Where all the support factors, housing, space, and finances came together in an easier way. I have always needed to support the art with other creative work. I admire the way many artists live by doing many things. I am happy to be in that place too, where I look forward to variety in every day.

4. Does age [any age] factor into your creative process, and if yes, how?

The real truth is that art was a way for me to develop my consciousness. Starting with eye-hand coordination, color sense, value, all of these were part of my development. I learned something about brains in my 30s, specifically that mine was not really functioning in a normal way. I was diagnosed with a birth injury to the mid-brain. Using Developmental Movement Therapy, the mid-brain was rewired. But this also made me realize that when a part of the brain doesn't work, the body will morph other parts of the brain to compensate. Like a blind person's optical nerve learns to "hear" spatially. I think my emotional limits caused parts of my brain to heighten vision, so I was seeing more than shapes and colors. Maybe I was "seeing" emotionally, or how things are connected. I know that when we are challenged in some important part of life, we will use other skills or parts of the brain, like consciousness or intuition for day-to-day tasks. It also made me realize that life can change quickly and dramatically. Change can be destabilizing.

That brings in a whole energy factor. People are interesting and complex. That push to regain balance brought me to a place where the visual and the spiritual intersect. On another level this could easily have been a spiritual intention to develop consciousness. I've often been accused of making leaps from one area of interest to another, bridging, or maybe it's more of a Piscean lack of boundaries, where everything is connected.

Rainbow Serpent. Arts-a-glow Burien. Materials: reed, paper, Pellon, acrylics, lights, gels. By Sarah Lovett.

5. What are you working on, currently, and what impels or inspires it?

I really would like my art and my work with consciousness to be more integrated. Art tends to be about a whimsical form of craftsmanship. Making things work, engineering with ultralight materials so the pieces are fun and effortless to perform.

I'm currently working on a small commission for a heritage museum, a salmon installation, then another for a pop culture museum exhibition coming up next month. I have often worked with volunteers and puppet enthusiasts; this year I am an artist mentor for a project in the works for the Fremont Solstice Parade.

Butterfly, Fremont Solstice parade. Materials: reused silk flowers, reed, paper, tulle. By Sarah Lovett.

6. What’s your favorite imperfection?

I don't know if this is an imperfection, but I have a distraction of writing dream interpretations on Reddit. I'm interested in metaphor, the language of dreams.

I am enjoying the shift from managing life as a struggle or something to fix, to being in and recognizing the flow. Trusting the Universe is a game changer. I'm not sure if one simply decides, “this is what I'm going to do,” and then it happens. I certainly have as much invested in my psychic and energy work as I do in my art practice at this point in life. I teach psychic and energy healing classes. My imperfect intention for 2023 is divine magic—and what that may bring. So far it feels like a current of wonder is moving in.

LINKS

Hilma af Klint, “Painting the Unseen”:

The Woven History of Filipino American Artists (in Hyperallergic):
“Material as Identification.” Cambodian artist Soheap Pich on working with rattan and bamboo:

I recently watched “Get Back,” noticing Yoko Ono’s almost constant presence in the film, although hardly anyone in the film—neither the Beatles (excepting John), nor their numerous staff and producers—talked to her; she seemed almost invisible. Yet, she had her own life as an innovative artist, seemingly never afraid to just be herself despite the public’s often cruel scrutiny. Content warning: brief nudity; click on the screen below to watch it on YouTube:

SOUNDINGS

Some years ago, my friend Joan had a radio show on KUSP. On several occasions, I joined her. I would show up at around midnight, and we’d broadcast into the wee hours. It was kind of mysterious and fun to show up at a radio station during a time when most people are asleep. Laurie Anderson begins her Norton Lecture talking about doing a radio show in “River” (Part 1 of her Norton Lectures):

Michele Spanghero, Echea Aeolica (2015) Sound Sculpture:

Sam Maher plays solo hang drum in the subway:

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Thanks, as always, for checking in with Eulipion Outpost.