Artist: Emily Hermant of Montréal, Québec, Canada
Interview 122
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Interviews published and curated by Gareth Bate & Dawne Rudman.
Biography
Emily Hermant received her BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, in 2004 and her MFA as a Trustee Merit Scholar in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA, in 2010. She has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and festivals in Canada, the United States, South America and Europe, including solo exhibitions at CIRCA Art Contemporain, Montréal, Québec (2014); the Evanston Art Center, Evanston, Illinois (2013); Artspace, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (2012); The Durand Art Institute at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois (2012); Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, Delaware (2012); as well as group exhibitions at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (2011); The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Illinois (2010); Triennale di Milano Museum, Milan, Italy (2009); and the Museum of Arts & Design, New York City, NY, USA (2007-8).
Her work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including ArtSlant, Espace Sculpture, The Washington Post, TimeOut Chicago and American Craft Magazine. In 2011-12, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Craft & Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. From 2012-14, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Studio Arts Department / Fibres and Material Practices program at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Emily's website
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Artist: Emily Hermant.Photo credit: Lizz Sisson Photography. |
What do you think of us placing your work within the context of fibre art and how do fibre techniques and materials relate to your practice?
My background and training is in fibres and material practices, so fibres have influenced my ideas, my material choices, and the ways in which I work with those materials. I was initially drawn to textiles early in my training at Concordia, and later during my graduate work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, because of the sensibilities of handwork: the histories of women's labour, as well as the intimate relationship of cloth to the body, were and continue to be particularly compelling to me. I was also very much drawn to the processes of making in fibres, and I am still drawn to the ways in which textiles can speak to and critically examine human activities. My practice is materials-intensive, so in seeking out new materials to explore and work with, I am always looking for ways that fibre-based sensibilities and techniques can be translated to, or transformed into, different media. For instance, in my most recent body of work, Spatial Drawings, I bend and manipulate solid hardwood to create soft, undulating lines reminiscent of thread.
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Hesitations, Artspace Contemporary Art Projects, Peterborough, ON. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010/2012, 108" H x 396" W x 1 ½" D, thread construction. Photo: Fynn Leitch. |
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Detail: Hesitations, Artspace Contemporary Art Projects, Peterborough, ON. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010/2012, 36" H x 59 W x 1 ½" D, thread construction. Photo: Fynn Leitch. |
Your work is mainly installation based. Tell us about that:
Installation has long been the most appropriate format for my work because it involves paying particular attention to relationships among site, space, and materials, all of which carry and produce meaning, and all of which are fundamental to the realization and experience of my work. I've often worked site-specifically, which has taken different forms over the years. This means exploring the parameters and histories of a given site, whether physical or phenomenological. I'm interested in how those elements can inform and generate work in challenging and often surprising ways. This kind of approach is directly influenced by the histories and practices of Installation art and Site-specific art. Art historian Miwon Kwon, who has written extensively on site-specificity, has been an important reference for me.
I think of my practice as an installation or drawing practice, in which I draw in space and at a large-scale with unexpected materials, and in so doing, immerse the viewer in the work. I am especially interested in playing with expectations of materiality and form, the made and the process of making and through these processes, creating work that occupies, shapes, and responds to space. I utilize and transform a wide range of materials—thread, wood, nails, pins, plastic—to create environments that relate in one way or another to the body and the body's experience of space. I'm interested in how materials, taken out of their ordinary uses and translated sculpturally, perform in space, particularly how non-thread materials can express their materiality like thread.
I'm currently working on a new body of work, which again will be installation-based, that looks at the impact of technological mediation on communication, focusing on the relationship between the hand and the digital. My hope is that the large-scale sculptural works and drawings I'm developing will simultaneously address the tension between the proliferation of digital and virtual technologies and our desire for the intimacy and richness of tactile experiences. As with all of my works, materiality and process are employed as deliberate attempts to slow down the speed of contemporary communication.
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Hesitations, Artspace Contemporary Art Projects, Peterborough, ON. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010/2012, 108" H x 312" W x 1 ½" D, thread construction. Photo: Fynn Leitch. |
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Detail: Hesitations, Artspace Contemporary Art Projects, Peterborough, ON. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010/2012, 50" H x 60" W x 1 ½" D, thread construction. Photo: Fynn Leitch. |
When working on site with your installations, how much do you improvise?
There's always a certain amount of improvisation, depending on the nature of the project. Some projects, like Hesitations and Thumbpins, were conceptualized beforehand, designed in response to the parameters of the exhibition space and then built entirely on-site. Of course, when you move from conceptualization to actually working on-site, unpredictable things can happen that you have to adjust for, so for me it's important to be attuned to how a work fits or reacts to what a given space has to offer (and conversely what kind of space is created through installation of the work) and being able to distinguish moments when something works differently from the ordinary complications of installing work.
In work like Spatial Drawings, improvisation works in a few different ways. There's a level of improvisation in how I create the pieces in my studio, in terms of the conversation between the material and my body. And then there's a level of improvisation in how the works are configured. None of these pieces are permanently fixed or treated—they rely on a combination of tension, balance and gravity, and in certain pieces, on the existing architecture. When I install the works on-site, these elements shift each time, so there's yet another level of improvisation to factor in. Because wood is an organic material that is responsive to different conditions, the works kind of behave like bodies – they move, they breathe, they're not actually static. And there's the overall composition of an installation—a good part of which gets thought out ahead of time—but many of the decisions about spatial relationships happens once I'm on-site: how to carve out paths for how viewers will move through the space and interact with the works, how the pieces relate to one another, how a work unfolds in space and reveals itself from different vantage points, each of which shapes different sets of experiences for the viewer, etc.
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Hesitations, Articule, Montréal, QC. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010, 96"H x 375"W x 1"D, thread construction. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
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Hesitations, Articule, Montréal, QC. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010, 96"H x 816"W x 1"D, thread construction. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
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Detail: Hesitations, Articule, Montréal, QC. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010, 60"H x 375"W x 1"D, thread construction. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
What bridges the works that you have created in differing media?
Although my material choices vary, questions around gendered labour, communication, and on-going interests in line and movement drive much of my research and creative output. I think my use of scale to immerse the viewer in the work and the ways that I manipulate, transform and play with the languages and specificities of materials that reference the body (in terms of how it moves, what it emits, and what it emotes) and elicit bodily responses on the part of the viewer, is also a constant in my work.
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Hesitations, Articule, Montréal, QC. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010, 36"H x 24"W x 1"D, thread construction. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
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Detail: Hesitations (detail), Articule, Montréal, QC. Thread wound around painted nails on drywall; soundscape, 2010, 12"H x 8"W x 1"D, thread construction. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
What are your sources of inspiration?
All around me – I never know when an ordinary interaction or observation will spark an idea or generate a question for me to pursue in my studio. I tend to look closely at how things in my immediate environment are built. I like going to junkyards and off-the-beaten path antique stores—these are great places to encounter and contemplate the value, function and histories of different kinds of tools, objects, furniture, etc. I love tensile constructions — in architecture, weaving, instruments and communication networks. I'm fascinated with communication systems and in fact, much of my work has been about making visible some of these (largely invisible) networks. I'm interested in how matter physically accumulates in the landscape, so I look at different kinds of natural and artificial formations. I also spend a lot of time looking at, thinking about, reading and talking about art—visiting museums, galleries, artist-run centres, art in public places, going to lectures, performances, events, etc. And of course talking, walking…the usual day to day stuff. I also love playgrounds. Living in Québec (Canada) is interesting because language here is so musical. I'm constantly moving back and forth between speaking English and French, each of which has its own musicality. So living in, with, and between both these languages is part of everyday life.
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Thumbpins, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON. Approximately 70,000 dressmakers' pins pinned directly to the hotel room wall, 2007, 132"H x 96"W x 1 1/2"D, pinning. Photo: Lightleak Media. |
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Thumbpins (mid-range view), Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON. Dressmakers' pins pinned directly to the hotel room wall, 2007, 100"H x 96"W x 1 1/2"D, pinning. Photo: Lightleak Media. |
What specific historic artists have influenced your work?
I'm a big fan of the Art Fabric Movement, especially Magdalena Abakanowicz's monumental fibre sculptures, like her Abakans and rope installations. I love their rawness and energy, especially how they occupy space in such a strong, visceral way. Sisal is a rough fibre to work with; that roughness and the potential danger it generates permeates the work and I imagine, one's encounter with it.
I love Lenore Tawney's threaded structures, and Fred Sandback's yarn constructions. These were two artists whose works were contextualized differently, both of whom were making 3-dimensional forms out of line. I love how Sandback delineated and suggested space in a minimal yet tactile way. Much of the "post-minimalist" or "anti-form" work has been influential—artists working with process, chance and emphasizing the visceral qualities and possibilities of materiality.
Eva Hesse — her use of materials and loose, hanging structures and forms, that implicitly reference the body without literally trying to represent it, have been hugely important to me. Also Robert Morris – both minimal and post-minimal work – how he referred back to the process of making as part of the work. In his felt works – how soft, industrial materials encounter formal issues of gravity and volume. (Abakanowicz and Morris aren't necessarily "historic" artists, but they both were a part of and contributed to these really interesting moments in art history.)
I love Calder' mobiles and his use of balance, colour, and form to create moving, weightless sculptures. I also like Gordon Matta-Clark's architectural interventions and Robert Smithson's earthworks and writings. Then there are "movements" like Arte Povera, Constructivism, Fluxus … and the list goes on.
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Return, Bain St-Michel, Montréal, QC. Embroidered initials on collected towels, 2004, 120"H x 216"W x 72"D, embroidery. Photo: Arianne Shaffer. |
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Return, Bain St-Michel, Montréal, QC. Embroidered initials on collected towels, 2004, 59"H x 155"W x 4"D, embroidery. Photo: Arianne Shaffer. |
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Detail: Return, Bain St-Michel, Montréal, QC. Embroidered initials on collected towels, 2004, 10"H x 12"W x 4"D, embroidery. Photo: Arianne Shaffer. |
Tell us about your training, how it has influenced you and how you have applied what you have learnt.
I did my BFA at Concordia University, Montréal, Canada, in Studio Arts where I concentrated in Fibres. I also did a Major in Religion, where I pursued comparative religious studies. Shortly after, I did a digital arts residency at Studio XX, a feminist media arts center in Montréal that helped shape my thinking around the relationships between what we would consider old(er) technologies (like textiles) and new(er) technologies (digital and virtual realms), and in imagining the possibilities of material to virtual or digital and digital or virtual to material translations. After that, I went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, where I completed my MFA in Fibers and Material Studies. These programs and experiences have contributed to how I articulate and situate my work, and also in developing an expansive view of what fibre is and what it can be.
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Lies, lies, lies…, Triennale di Milano Museum, Milan, Italy. Collected and embroidered lies, pins, shadows, lying booth (fabric screen-printed with collected lies, hand-made oversized embroidery hoop, video), 2004/2009, 96"H x 355"W x 1½"D, embroidery, screenprint. Photo: Simon Hermant. |
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Lies, lies, lies…(mid-range view), Triennale di Milano Museum, Milan, Italy. Embroidery, dissolved cloth, pins, shadows, 2004/2009, 42" H x 300" W x 1½" D, embroidery. Photo: Simon Hermant. |
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Detail: Lies, lies, lies…, Museum of Arts and Design, NY. Embroidery, dissolved cloth, pins, shadows, 2004/2007, 6" H x 9 ½" W x 1 ½" D, embroidery. Photo: Andrea Rollefson. |
When & how did you realize that you had the confidence to proceed with your art?
Not being an artist or some kind of creative practitioner was never something I really considered, so like many artists, I've made my own way. As far as confidence, I don't think I can isolate a particular moment because developing confidence is an on-going process. And you know, there are ebbs and flows to every part of the creative process. For me, taking risks and abandoning what's comfortable in favour of what I don't know or what I haven't yet discovered are key to how I move forward with my work. And I've been fortunate to be surrounded by supportive and challenging friends, my partner, family, colleagues and peers.
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Lies, lies, lies…, Museum of Arts and Design, NY. Collected and embroidered lies, pins, shadows, lying booth (fabric screen-printed with collected lies, hand-made oversized embroidery hoop, interactive web project), 2004/2007, 96"H x 60" circumference, embroidery, screenprint. Photo: Andrea Rollefson. |
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Detail: Lies, lies, lies…, Museum of Arts and Design, NY. Collected and embroidered lies, pins, shadows, 2004/2007, 20"H x 14"W x 1½"D, embroidery. Photo: Andrea Rollefson. |
What specific contemporary artists have influenced your work?
Different artists have influenced me at different points (and to varying degrees) depending on the nature of my research. Trisha Brown's work has been inspiring, especially her "equipment works" in which she utilizes rope, harnesses and pulleys to put the body in extreme situations, and literally challenge gravity and the parameters of the exhibition space.
Yvonne Rainer's pared down movement pieces consisting of everyday gestures have also been important.
Senga Nengudi's early performance-sculptures made of stretched, tied and filled pantyhose that reference the flexibility and constraints of the body (I'm thinking of R.S.V.P), especially how they exist as sculptures that are both about the body and activated by the body, have been an influence.
Nick Cave's Soundsuits amaze me. California "light and space" artists like Robert Irwin and James Turrell and their work with perception. British artist and writer David Batchelor's work with/on colour. British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, particularly her use of monumental scale and industrial materials to reference construction and deconstruction of the built environment.
Early influences that I often come back to: Jenny Holzer's work with language, advertising, and public space; Colombian artist Doris Salcedo's work with memory and history embedded in formal sculptural works; Ann Hamilton's use of performance, textiles, and scale to, among other things, immerse the viewer inside language; and Felix Gonzales Torres' simple arrangements and accumulation of everyday materials to signify the growth, deterioration and relationships of and between bodies in poetic, non-literal ways.
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Lies, lies, lies…, Museum of Arts and Design, NY. Collected and embroidered lies, pins, shadows, lying booth (fabric screen-printed with collected lies, hand-made oversized embroidery hoop, interactive web project), 2004/2007, 96"H x 60" circumference, embroidery, screenprint. Photo: Andrea Rollefson. |
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The Lies Project (installed with Lies, lies, lies…at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY). Screenshot of interactive web project, produced at Studio XX, Montreal. 2005/2007. |
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The Lies Project (installed with Lies, lies, lies…at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY). Screenshot of interactive web project, produced at Studio XX, Montreal, 2005/2007. |
What do you consider to be the key factors to a successful career as an artist?
That depends on how you define or quantify success. Identifying what matters to you and then finding ways to pursue those things on your own terms is really important. Careers come in many forms and in the arts more than any other field you need to create your own opportunities, because there's no clear-cut way to do anything. Generally speaking, things don't happen in a vacuum – we all need the support of our peers. I don't know about "success," but in my own practice, maintaining a work ethic is really important. I'm reminded of John Cage's rules for students and teachers that I was introduced to as a student and have been important to me ever since (this is rule seven): "The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things." For me, it's important to carve out time and space for ideas to grow. If ideas simply fell out of the sky, then this whole business of making art wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
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Lies, lies, lies…, VAV Gallery, Montréal, QC. Collected and embroidered lies, pins, shadows, lying booth (fabric screen-printed with lies, hand-made embroidery hoop, lie collection box), 2004, 4"H x 972"W x 1½"D, embroidery, screenprint. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
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Detail: Lies, lies, lies…, VAV Gallery, Montréal, QC. Layered screenprint made of collected lies on silk organza, 2004, 12" H x 12" W, screenprint. Photo: Guy L'Heureux. |
How did you initially start showing your work in galleries and do you find it more difficult to show and sell your work than non-fibre artists?
I started showing work as a student in school galleries and festivals. After that, I was fortunate to be included in shows that were oriented towards fibres. Since I work spatially, I always paid attention to spaces that I wanted to work in or respond to, particularly art centres whose mandates and programming matched my own interests. Selling work doesn't really factor into what I make in the studio, but I'm sure selling unconventional work is not easy and certainly not easy for fibre-based works, which, depending on the materials used, can deteriorate at a faster rate and can be challenging to conserve, more so than say, some painting or sculpture.
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Transmission, site-specific installation for the Biennale Internationale du Lin, Portneuf, QC. Thread wound around acrylic rods on interconnected laser-cut acrylic panels, hardware, 2009, 106"H x 48"W x 1 1/2"D, threading. Photo: Idra Labrie. |
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Detail: Transmission, site-specific installation for the Biennale Internationale du Lin, Portneuf, QC. Thread wound around acrylic rods on interconnected laser-cut acrylic panels, hardware, stained glass windows, 2009, 7 1/2"H x 5"W x 1 1/2"D, threading. Photo: Idra Labrie. |
What other fibre artists are you interested in?
There's a lot of interesting work being made by artists and designers who may or may not refer to themselves as fibre artists, but all engage textiles in compelling ways.
Anne Wilson's intricate fibre and sculptural works have been really important to me, especially how many of her pieces hover between states of making and unmaking, repair and disrepair, and abstraction and representation.
Christine Tarkowski's architectural sculptures and printed textiles, especially her use of scale and ordinary materials to construct other worldly experiences that reference the failures of dominant belief systems.
Ellen Rothenberg's socially and politically infused work, and the ways in which materials and material histories play a central role in her work, particularly how we understand bodies in relation to systems of power.
Jérôme Havre's work is amazing – his fabric sculptures and installations are meticulously hand-laboured, bold, and layered in their references to race, hybridity, mythology and the histories and realities of colonialism.
Elana Herzog's site-based interventions in which she staples domestic textiles to the exhibition space only to then tear them away, leaving bits of fabric and staple marks as material traces, are powerful in how they reference memory and mark-making.
I love Polly Apfelbaum's vibrant fabric floor paintings that are sort of impermanent or moveable systems made up of accumulative drips and marks. I'm a fan of Los Angeles-based artist Lara Schnitger's textile sculptures – I love the humour with which she references sexuality.
Another Los Angeles-based artist I like is Pae White, especially her monumental tapestries of ordinary materials, like crumpled foil or smoke.
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Spatial Drawing I, CIRCA Art Contemporain, Montréal, QC. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), lumber, clamps, wall, 2012/2014, 108" H x 204" W x 72" D, wood-bending. Photo: Paul Litherland. |
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Spatial Drawing II, CIRCA Art Contemporain, Montréal, QC. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), lumber, clamps, 2012/2014, 96"H x 90" W x 36" D, wood-bending. Photo: Paul Litherland. |
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Spatial Drawing VI, CIRCA Art Contemporain, Montréal, QC. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), lumber, clamps, 2012/2014, 90" H x 12" W x 36" D, wood-bending. Photo: Paul Litherland. |
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Spatial Drawing I, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), lumber, clamps, free-standing wall, 2012, 108" H x 204" W x 72" D, wood-bending. Photo: Christian Kaye. |
What role do you think fibre art plays in contemporary art and what do you see as the biggest challenge facing fibre artists?
The boundaries that once upon a time separated fibre (or other craft media) from contemporary art don't exist to the same extent anymore. And to the extent that they do still exist, I think the question is how do those boundaries generate new critical conversations or modes of engagement? There's been renewed interest in hand-making processes in contemporary art in the last several years as a result of/in reaction to, among other things, globalization and increased digitization in all aspects of our daily lives. So now, more than ever, there's power to be gained from materiality (and its meanings) and in materials worked by hand. Artists who are working with fibre and fibre processes are well positioned to reflect on these current issues.
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Spatial Drawing I (detail), Artcite Inc. Centre for the Contemporary Arts, Windsor, ON. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), clamps, 2012, 58" H x 78" W x 72" D, wood-bending. Photo: Sandi Wheaton. |
Spatial Drawing I (detail), Artcite Inc. Centre for the Contemporary Arts, Windsor, ON. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak), lumber, clamps, 2012, 58"H x 60"W x 82"D, wood-bending. Photo: Sandi Wheaton. |
Tell us about your studio and how you work:
I recently moved into a studio in a large industrial building with many other artists, which is a really exciting place for me to be right now, after having worked in a home studio for the last few years. One of the most important zones in my studio is my research wall where I have collected images, objects, quotes, sketches, and material samples all pinned up…I like to see everything at once. It's kind of like a large, dimensional sketchbook. In terms of my working process – sometimes, my ideas require me to locate appropriate materials and techniques and other times, elements of my practice are generated through intensive, material play. All in all, ideas, techniques, and materials evolve together. I tend to do a lot of studies and build maquettes to think through problems, imagine forms, and possible relationships. I also make a lot of quick sketches on paper to try to capture the movement I'm after in a piece. I have a full-bodied approach to building my work – I need to challenge myself and engage the materials and the process physically. And that physical engagement is then evident in the work.
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Transmission (detail), site-specific installation for the Biennale Internationale du Lin, Portneuf, QC. Thread, collected linen table cloth, 2009, 18"H x 28" W, threading. Photo: Idra Labrie. |
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Studio Process, 2011. Photo: Emily Hermant. |
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Installing Transmission at the Biennale Internationale du Lin, Portneuf, QC, 2009. Photo: Suzanne Chan. |
What interests you about the World of Threads festival?
It's rare and wonderful that there's a festival such as World of Threads dedicated to the fibre arts, which has a clear commitment to giving visibility and credibility to a variety of approaches and practices that engage fibres. I'm interested to see what will be showcased in the next World of Threads Festival!
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What's Your Favorite Posish (No. 3)?, FAB Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak) on hand- constructed table, lumber, clamps, hardware, pastels, paint, 2011, 84" H x 90" W x 92" D, wood-bending and wood construction. Photo: David Stover. |
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What's Your Favorite Posish?, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL. Hand-bent hardwood (red oak) on hand- constructed table, collected lumber, clamps, hardware, pastels, paint, wire, 2010, 90"H x 120"W x 144"L, wood-bending and wood construction. Photo: Olivia Valentine. |
Do you have any upcoming shows?
Most recently I had a solo show at Centre d'exposition CIRCA in Montréal, Québec that came down a few weeks ago. Right now I'm working on a few different projects, including a large-scale project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, and limited edition prints that are being produced by Stinger Editions, Fine Art Press at Concordia University (available in early 2015). I'm doing a few residencies, and preparing for a solo show at Ace Art in Winnipeg in spring 2015.
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