This post is
part of an interview I did with the artist/illustrator Maira Kalman for Paulson
Bott Press in Berkeley. She is more comfortable with an assignment and a
deadline than the process that takes place at a fine art press like Paulson
Bott. But she used her skill of observation to gather a series of images that
work together in a kind of grand collage.
-By Kenneth Caldwell
What’s been the process of
determining what prints you are going forward with?
We took all
of these images and snippets and staticky things and put them together in one
sheet. And then we went from there to doing individual plates and then putting
them together and then separating. Back and forth.
How is printmaking different from
working at home? What does it feel like?
When you’re
alone in the studio, you have to make your decisions, for better or for worse.
Here, when there are people who can give you feedback, I find myself in a bit
of a fog, but not in a bad fog—in a very, very good fog.
So at home you don’t have
assistants?
No. I have
negative assistants. I have resistance. I’m just in my studio wandering around.
Does this have chin-collé on it
then? Is this a sheet of gampi?
Yes.
That’s a whole new thing then.
It’s a new effect, but it has luminosity.
Yes. I could
paint on this. And I tried drawing some. This paper drives me crazy with
happiness. I want like my whole life to be this.
Whose idea was it to print on
cloth?
I wanted to
print on cloth because I do a lot of embroidery stuff. And I thought, okay, it’s
cloth, and then we’ll draw, and maybe try some embroidery. But the embroidery
that I’ve tried feels unnecessary.
 |
| Mostly, 2012 A portfolio of 27 sugarlift aquatints and hardground etchings printed on linen. Edition of 15 |
I love the use of the fabric.
For me that’s
part of the process—that we went to a nearby fabric store and saw what they had—and
they had wonderful things.
Can you talk about some of these
images you brought with you to use for reference?
This is an
airplane. It’s like the early airplanes.
Like Kitty Hawk?
Exactly, but
it may be upside down. I’m not sure. And this was a dancer from New York. I cut
out a lot of photographs, so this is a woman that performed a few years ago.
Half the time I don’t know where I cut out the images from anymore, but she’s a
dancer, and this is also a dance troupe. So the movements of people making it
through the day, both intentionally as dancers, and then just how we move
around really fascinates me a lot. There’s a man behind her in the photo,
holding his hands on her shoulders. But she’s a little bit awkward.
There’s a stiffness, yes.
I’m always
watching how people are walking, and following them and photographing how
people walk and really struggle—a lot of yearning to be okay, and dignity, and
being brave. Basically I think everybody’s very brave for getting up in the
morning and continuing through the day. Sometimes people walking, people
sitting and eating, are just heartbreaking. I love Diane Arbus when she went to
visit the people in the home and the Halloween images of those people. That’s
also a Lartigue, but the photo is of a woman looking up at this ball, and then
it became something else. It became a woman holding a stick. And then there is
the rollercoaster after Hurricane Sandy.
With these images, are you
drawing into the copper plate?
I’m always
drawing into the plate, either the hard ground or the sugar lift. It only took
me four days to remember those four words—hard ground, sugar lift.
And now you’ve got chin-collé and
gampi too!
It’s like a
nice poem.
I was going to ask you, does it
feel a little bit like poetry—these scattered images or fragments that you’re
tying together?
Yes. I think
that the problem is, putting the word “poetry” on it—it depends what kind of
mood you’re in: poetry can be a wonderful thing to say about something, and
then, as a critic once said about me, “unnecessarily poetic.”
It’s a very different poem here
in this arrangement than it might be in that arrangement.
Yes. I don’t
want to forget the idea of a sense of humor along with the yearning and the
sadness. There’s a lightness balancing the heaviness. And so poetry would imply
one thing, and then just saying “I don’t know” would be the other.
Have you worked with poets?
No. But a
lot of the things that I write or things in the books are poems. The dog says,
okay, I’m going to write a poem now. I’m going to close my eyes and think of three
things and then make a poem out of that. So there’s a lot of poetry and there’s
a lot of songwriting in the children’s books. But I am collaborating with
Gertrude Stein [in the set designs for the Mark Morris Dance Group’s production
of Stein’s opera Four
Saints in Three Acts]. So yes, I’m collaborating with a poet whom I
never met.
She won’t get in the way.
I hope that
if she were alive she’d go, “Great,” as opposed to, “Don’t you dare.”
Where did your idea of illustrating
Elements of Style come from?
I found a
copy of the book one summer and thought, “Oh my God, this is a crazy great
book, and I need to illustrate it.” It’s the randomness of each sentence. The
continuity comes from [Strunk and
White’s] wit and the vivid cinematic images that they use. You don’t have to
worry about a plot.
Do you want to come back to
Paulson Bott Press and make more prints?
Of course I
want to come back some time in the future when it all makes sense. I’ll go home
and I’ll be able to moan and go, ugh, what was I thinking, or what was I not
thinking? Really, it’s the beginning of a conversation.
You’ve been to Berkeley before?
I’ve been to
Berkeley some other times, and I spent time in San Francisco installing the
show at SFMOMA [about her late husband Tibor Kalman]. And then I came here to
this gallery, and I said, “This is an amazing space. I love being here.”
Have you been able to explore a
bit?
Well, I walk
from my bed-and-breakfast in the morning. It’s over a mile. But that’s
also the graph of the day—that sometimes you’re just sitting there like a
stunned animal, not knowing what’s going on. We are animals that sort of
freeze, and then—well I guess it’s like a possum, but a possum plays dead for
something else. But I feel like sometimes I’m an animal that all of a sudden is
dead. And then all of a sudden I come back to life.
So much of your work depends on
observation. What do you see on your walks?
One of the
things I did in Rome was go watch people pray, because I was trying to say, “What
exactly are you doing? What are you doing on your knees? What do you think is
going to happen here?” The intensity of people publically displaying their
emotions and their grief and their hope, it’s incredible. Plus in Naples there
were a lot of places where people are in confession and the priest is just
sitting up, kneeling opposite them, not in a little contained cubicle, just
open.
I think the concept of prayer is
so interesting, because it’s one idea that can’t be defined, because each
individual completely changes it.
The thing is
that if you’re in the formal construct of a church or a synagogue and you’re
praying to a deity, as opposed to praying for the strength to deal with
whatever tragedy might befall you, and you are looking for a deity to save you,
that feels delusional. I say “Oh my god” a thousand times a day.
Then I say, “But I don’t believe in God.” And i am really not sure
which statement is true.
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