Activating Language In Media Communication

Author: Leah Constantine
OCTOBER 20, 2015

indsay Buchman is an interdisciplinary artist whose works of various media explore how language is activated through communication. Her work keeps her active in both LA and Philadelphia due to a fellowship, academia, and exhibitions between the two. Working primarily with paper with printmaking influences, Buchman examines disintegration captured by memory, experience, structure, and language. Using ephemeral media like paper allows for audiences to study the contrast between what is invisible and visible, present and absent.

Buchman is currently working towards her MFA from University of Pennsylvania and received her BFA in printmaking from School of Art, California State University Long Beach. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries from New York to Los Angeles. She is going to be exhibited in a four-person show titled Reliquary opening October 2015 at Keystone Gallery, and a solo exhibition titled Y(OURS) opening at Irvine Fine Arts Center in February 2016.

What is your background in art and how did you get started?
As a Southern California native, I began participating in the arts community of Los Angeles and Orange County in 2007. My work initially explored direct approaches to printmaking, subsequently leading me to join the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. Through LAPS, I participated in exhibitions and events featuring works on paper, followed by an array of group shows locally and nationally. I bounced between communities throughout OC/LA including: Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, Long Beach, DTLA, and Pasadena. A short spell abroad to Rome, Italy was also part of this formation. Meanwhile, taking an indirect path with academia and teaching, which are seemingly inseparable from how this all began.

Tell me about your educational experience in art – how did it develop or challenge your work while studying at university?
My academic experience in art has been a bit unorthodox, in that it compressed being a student, exhibiting, and teaching into a seven-year segment (2006-2013). When I reflect on how those years challenged my work, I regard several layers of learning/looking that affected my development. My initial training provided me with technical skills to make physical images and objects. I specialized in silversmithing, sculpture, drawing and printmaking during my A.A. degree (Saddleback College), and received my BFA (School of Art, California State University Long Beach) in printmaking thereafter. I briefly attended graduate school in Rome, post-undergraduate study, where I continued to expand my understanding for critical inquiry and experimentation. Being in dialogue with peers, faculty, and visiting artists was essential to establishing a language for discussing art, but the institution can also be quite insular. Nevertheless, I believe art historical context and critical thinking are imperative and regard my experience as invaluable. I learned to take risk endlessly, and embrace nonlinear approaches to making. After a brief hiatus, I returned to graduate school this fall as an MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Your work is interdisciplinary and involves various media. Why are these media important to you and the dissemination of your work?
I tend to oscillate between works on paper, installation, drawing and printmedia. The use of paper — an ephemeral material — is recurring in my practice, mirroring interests in temporality. I select media in relation to how materials lend themselves to ideas; this approach has led to experiments with polyurethane, wax, chiffon, tengucho [washi], graphite, ink, mica, quartz, silver leaf, and so on. Transparent and translucent elements allow for trapping and blurring of content, while reflective and luster-based alloys stand in as seductive yet illusory agents. The contrast between what is visible and left unseen measures as a conflation of perception and presence. I am particularity interested in engaging with these dualities.

How do you think all of these media interact with and inform each other? Is it important to you that they act together, or do they do best on their own?
The interaction of media sorts itself out in either a form of opposition or cohesion. Sometimes mediums support one another to further substantiate a system, and other times they push against to create a point of tension. Either way, there is a relationship with everything at play — a shared language. As to the importance of this dynamic, it is circumstantial. My intent is to move across disciplines rather than reside to a specific approach, but ultimately it’s contingent upon whatever the work is about.

What media do you identity with most and how?
Primarily, I identify with paper. It serves as the substrate for manipulation through graphite, ink wash, silver leaf, and print-based approaches, but also lends itself to dimensional or installation-based forms. Its contentious relationship with permanence activates my conceptual priorities and has kept my attention for nearly a decade. It is malleable, fragile, often unforgiving, yet enduring in an unpredictable way. It shows its imperfections quickly—blemished, stained, and dented with traces of its history.

How does working with these various media expand your creative process?
It’s complicated, truly. Working with various media has forced me to be flexible in the studio. I have an affinity for process, which began with traditional printmaking, evolved into installation, returned to two-dimensionality, recently translated into an artist book, and is now exploring mechanical reproduction, e.g., risograph publications. I build work around ideas that have incubated in a research stage, manifesting through multiple components. The learning curve of new processes is a symptom of wanting to be unlimited and having an unfettered desire for information. The expansion is never-ending, and being resourceful is a must. Moving image, neon text, and a return to casting three-dimensional forms are currently on queue.
What kind of research do you perform before reaching the creative process?
The research I’m engaged with is an ongoing part of my creative process. Whether it is historical, theoretical, literary, social or psychological, there is a constant pile of books on my desk related to the topic in mind. They are sifted through concurrently, notations made, information extracted, and text isolated. There is no pragmatic order to my approach, and notes are usually spilling onto material studies and pieces of paper in disarray. Writing is a huge part of how I attempt this so called research. So, my sketchbooks are filled with facts sourced from history, creative writing of interpersonal accounts, and drawings and collages of what is materializing in the studio. There is usually a page dedicated to future projects, as one closes another opens, and a new stack of books shows up accordingly.

How do you identify with your work?
I identify with my work through two modes: public and private. The majority of my work has a self-reflexive layer, often denoted by chaptered titles, but simultaneously interrogates social constructs. My interest in the humanities acts as catalyst for dissecting content, specifically in the areas of decadence, desire, discord, erasure, and memory. Through mapping dislocated environments, a cultural debris glimpses at recurrent history. Structures exist in a liminal space—vistas and constellations tethered to humanity.

Continue reading the interview on Adhoc