Struggles between Control & Mayhem: An Interview with Artist Loren Erdrich

​Hand To Mouth - raw organic pigments on paper - 11" x 14" - 2017



                     "I'm motivated more by feelings than I am by ideas," says Erdrich. "I ask myself, what does it feel like to inhabit this body in this climate." Here one finds art which starts from the heart before travelling to the head, rather than make feelings secondary, they are made primary. Loren's diverse work spans many techniques and mediums, the most recent of which are a series of paintings using raw organic pigments a friend brought back from Morocco. "The names of these colors intrigued me: lapis, turmeric, certain flowers, crushed snails, saffron, cobalt," says Erdrich. "They brought to mind a preciousness I, and perhaps my subjects too, felt lacking - both in substance and in material." The water destroying the rigidity of the paper, becomes a transcendent accident, a synchronous fate:  "Here again is that push and pull between control and mayhem. I can only corral it and find peace in what ultimately occurs. It is impossible to be perfect. It is a blessing." Play becomes a central and sacred aspect of Loren's approach: "a sense of freedom, trial and error, enjoyment, flexibility.  I love that the act of making can be momentarily separated from the multiple layers of history and meaning that embrace an artwork in it's analysis." From uncanny, sometimes gruesome ceramic, Bruegelesque dream-like figures, to the marriage of text and art on I Take Back the Sponge Cake, a choose-your-own-adventure book in collaboration with poet Sierra Nelson, we asked Loren about the motor at work beneath these wondrous, singular outpourings of artistic vision, between control and mayhem, that silent hour where anything at all is possible, and the work takes one completely by surprise.


AHC: What has your own personal evolution towards a life in art been like, are there a series of moments you can recall where this path, this calling, began to become the one clearly marked for you?

Loren: I'm grateful that art was incorporated into my studies from childhood onward to significant degrees. I remember watching my babysitter write my name in bubble letters and wanting to be able to do it like she did. Once I got to high school, teachers and mentors really let me do my own thing and I skipped over a lot of the basics and moved into solo projects. By the time I got to college I had a strong background in painting, drawing and printmaking but I had no concept of what it meant to be an artist. I still considered it to be more a skill I had, rather than something I could give the my whole focus to. And so when I graduated undergrad and was quite lost. I traveled overseas and in the States for few years until I made the decision to go for an MFA. That decision was a turning point for me as it was the first time I outwardly recognized my art practice not just as a 'skill' but as a 'calling'. This meant I needed to consider my art making practice as sacred. I went back to undergrad for a few years to do some extra portfolio work to prepare me for grad school, this time in Chicago, and later got my MFA overseas in Ireland.  ​
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                Exit Strategy - wood and steel - 2011

                    Unreasonable cover (and) Sometimes I am broken in two - wool and burlap - 2009


AHC: Could you explore and expand on some of the motivating ideas at work in both the images that you make and the process behind the making of them? How does the idea for you begin and what does its evolution look like during the stages of its development?

Loren: I'm motivated more by feelings than I am by ideas. I ask myself, what does it feel like to inhabit this body in this climate. Since my most recent body of work has used found imagery as source material, I often work from photos I find on the internet. I know many of these images now open for public consumption were once private material. I ask these subjects too what it feels like to inhabit their bodies - and I try to answer in a manner that is not didactic. I choose images to work from based on the effect they produce, rather than the actual thing/event shown. In each image I find a flicker of the struggle between control and mayhem, which is a condition I identify with. 

My choice of medium is also informative.  When a friend came back from Morocco this year with unmarked vials of raw organic pigments for me I was quickly enthralled. The names she remembered intrigued me: lapis, turmeric, certain flowers, crushed snails, saffron, cobalt. They brought to mind a preciousness I, and perhaps my subjects too, felt lacking - both in substance and in material.
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                       Firecracker - raw organic pigments on paper - 22"x30" - 2017


When brushing these pigments onto wet paper, the color shoots through the water and over the page. The water itself destroys the rigidity of the paper and destabalizes all boundaries. As it dries it does what it wants - chance is a large part of the process. Here again is that push and pull between control and mayhem. I can only corral it and find peace in what ultimately occurs. It is impossible to be perfect. It is a blessing.

                                         Sought Heavy Thick and Rough - raw organic pigments on paper - 14" x 11" - 2017


AHC: What was your collaborative experience with Sierra Nelson like, how did the two of you first come up with the idea for I Take Back The Sponge Cake, and because so much of the artistic experience usually takes place in solitude, I wonder what the marked differences are in collaboration aaas compared to creating solo?

Loren: Sierra and I met while we both spent a year as staff at the Vermont Studio Center. Our studios were next door to each other and we shared an apartment too. I was intrigued by Sierra as a poet with an incredibly strong visual sensibility and a background in collaborative performance - and I think likewise she found me intriguing as a visual artist who avidly consumed and found inspiration in fiction. At the time I was making a series of wearable sculptures that transformed the wearer into hybrid animal-like creatures, and hundreds of small 4x6" drawings. We began to speak about ways we could collaborate and Sierra took some of my drawings into her studio to write from.  Once I had the idea of us creating a choose-your-own-adventure book things moved quickly.  

Having since tried many times to collaborate on projects with other artists, I now realize how amazing this process was with Sierra.  In my other attempts at collaboration I have often felt a sense of dissatisfaction with the end result - as if the whole somehow did not properly represent all the pieces. With Sierra, our collaboration had the necessary element of magic to it - I trusted Sierra completely with visual matters and similarly she trusted my opinions on the text. This allowed our process to remain consistently fluid and balanced. Perhaps this was aided by the fact that our creative lives were so embedded and in such close proximity. In the years since I Take Back The Sponge Cake we have found collaborating from different coasts to be a very different animal.  

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                   In reaching for you I became something new - Wool and galvanized steel - 33" x 12" x 18" - 2009

                   Malleable Me - Ink and watercolor on paper - 22" x 30" - 2015


AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world who has had a huge impact on you and your work or who just generally inspire you on some level, writers, filmmakers, comedians, musicians etc?

Loren: Oh man. Marlene Dumas, of course. I love the way she writes about her own work - I am constantly like 'Yes! Me too!' Also Allison Schulnik, who's use of material and scale I admire. Goya's Los Caprichos. I also follow tons of artists on Instagram, and really use it as a tool for inspiration and discovery. I have a thing for untraditional ceramics but it is a medium I have yet to have the opportunity to really explore, so I follow artists who are using this material in ways that excite me (Maria Boij, Joakim Ojanen). And painters like Nicole Wittenberg. I am also hugely inspired by text - often in ways that can totally rival my need for visual inspiration. I read constantly, usually fiction with a bit of poetry, but some non fiction as well. Recent authors I have loved: Anthony Marra, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hanya Yanagihara, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joan Didion, Maggie Nelson, Anne Carson, Sierra Nelson - really I could go on and on. These lists are in no way exhaustive.

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                     There was never any turning back - Watercolor and acrylic on ceramic with mixed media - 2014


AHC: What do you consider, personally, to be the most sacred and enduring aspects of art? How does it enrich our world and our cultural memory? How has it enriched your own life? In your opinion, what does art, at its finest moments, bring into the world that would otherwise leave us more impoverished without it?

Loren: In it's finest moments I think an art work forces us to look beyond the surface - to weigh all that is seen with all that is unseen, to consider both the result and the process, the experience and the memory. Growing up I struggled with the incongruity between the physical world of surfaces and the unseen world of feelings I experienced. For years I tried to physically shape my exterior body and surroundings to match what I experienced within. Nowadays, art is a way to play with these feelings and give them a visual shape without inflicting those ideas on my physical body. In fact, I see 'play' as one of the most sacred aspects of art making. My art making practice is quite rigorous and yet in practice it shares many common characteristics with play: a sense of freedom, trial and error, enjoyment, flexibility. I love that the act of making can be momentarily separated from the multiple layers of history and meaning that embrace an artwork in it's analysis.

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                 Little Death #8 (Blue) - watercolor on paper - 15" x 20" - 2015


AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away?

Loren: I have a memory of being 9 or 10 and my parents taking me to an art fair that was held in a shopping mall near where I grew up.  I was wandering on my own and became enthralled with a display of paintings that were painted very thickly with oil paint. There was so much dimensionality and texture to these paintings and I had never been so close to anything like them. I remember staring and staring and then bringing my finger to a painting so I could touch it. Unfortunately the painting was still wet so when I touched the painting my finger actually slid creating an inch long smear. I ran away of course (no accountability) but I remember the whole experience with such heightened emotions. The artist, the material, the process, the ephemerality - it all became so clear to me in that moment.  I think that was the first time it all felt real.

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                  What does it mean when a party girl cries? - plant-dyed wool - variable - 2007


AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for young artists and other creatives who are experiencing self-doubt in their art, frustration or blocks? What are the types of things that have helped you to move past moments where you may have become stuck creatively?

Loren: Everyone experiences self-doubt and periods where it feels like nothing good is coming out of you. I mean, I experience this, so I assume it is in all of us. And I don't know if there is any way out of it except to just walk through it. Cry, get angry, tear things up, delete social media, even give up on art in general even - as long as you get back in there the next day.  If you need to incubate and stop applying to things or showing your work publicly, do it. Take that time to create just for yourself. To me all that matters is you keep working. Keep making. In my experience these times come and go and come and go again. This knowledge doesn't make the feelings much easier, but rationally I can expect that one day it will shift again. A friend of mine is always reminding me that the invisible work is just as important as the visual. The invisible work occurs when we might be just sitting in our studio reading, or cleaning up, or maybe when we are going gallery hopping, or watching an inspiring film, etc. My friend reminds me that all of it is necessary.  And the invisible work feeds the visible.  

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                                  Playing games - Watercolor and acrylic on ceramic with mixed media - 2014


AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

Loren: It's been a busy summer with shows in Philadelphia, Detroit and LA. Usually after a bunch of exhibiting I naturally enter a period of incubation. This is when new bodies of work are formed. Bushwick Open Studios is the next thing on my calendar (September 23-24 @ 59 Jefferson St #304 in Brooklyn, NY) which is an event I really look forward to each year. I love having people to my studio to view the work - it feels the most honest and authentic for people to see the pieces as they are in the studio: littering the floor or pinned on top of each other along with the source material. 


All images © Loren Erdrich (provided courtesy of the artist)
For More visit okloren.com/home.html