Some Serious Business is pleased to announce that artist Allison Evans has been awarded a three-week SSB AWAY Residency at Podere Malabiccia in Tuscany, Italy, this June.
Evans received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and an M.F.A. from Hunter College in New York City. Evans’s work has been exhibited at The Journal Gallery, 106 Green, and Atlanta Contemporary, among other venues. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, and Hyperallergic, and has been reviewed in The New York Times. She was a 2016 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant Nominee. Evans currently lives and works in Brooklyn.
SSB AWAY retreats provide crucial time and space for artists to germinate ideas that might otherwise be marginalized during the intensity of public life and artistic production. A network of retreats and workspaces offers artists the agency to take time away from their habitual surroundings, to rest and inhabit a nourishing space of creative sanctuary with solitude, access to nature, and multivalent privacy as options. SSB offers residencies in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and Podere Malabiccia, Tuscany, Italy.
Some Serious Business presents #FiftyQuestions to highlight folks who are creating, presenting, questioning and critiquing. Each featured artist picks a handful of questions to answer.
1- What event or factor in your life has been the most pivotal in your decision to become an artist?
I lost my mother to cancer at the end of my first year of college, just as I was beginning to shape my identity as an adult woman. In that moment of trauma, I glimpsed my life in stark relief. I saw what was important and what was not. I was forced to question my values and priorities. I can’t say that I wouldn’t give almost anything for my mother to have lived even a few days longer. However, I do feel fortunate that I was able to develop an awareness of myself at such a young age. Many things have shifted for me since 1999, but my commitment to a life of creative expression has not wavered.
25- Do your dark nights of the soul tend to be constructive or destructive to your self-expression?
My creative process is intrinsically linked to my path of self-discovery, and my self-awareness grows exponentially during moments of internal tumult. Whatever I have to work through in life finds its way into the studio, and any leap forward in life correlates to creative progress.
I find that I am most creatively prolific when I am emerging from a dark night. A shift occurs in those dusky, liminal moments. My brain starts turning. I am reading and watching. Ideas begin to flow, uninhibited.
Through the years, I have come to accept my changing moods and have learned to work with them. I think it’s important to create no matter how I feel. I make work when I’m angry, sad, depressed, or lonely—and I let myself share that work. It’s valuable to have a record of all these emotional states.
28. When does joy tend to visit you?
I think I find real joy when I am in the middle of painting and notice that I am completely absorbed in the moment of making, without concern for externalities. But that joy is often fleeting. As soon as I realize it’s there, as soon as I’ve concretized it in my mind, it is gone. Expanding my experience of joy is a work in progress. I am looking forward to my time in Tuscany as a opportunity to cut through some of the static and noise that keep me from regularly experiencing joy—both in the studio and in my daily life.
39- What is your relationship to criticism?
In responding to criticism, I have discovered what is most important to me as an artist—which aspects of my creative output are non-negotiable and which parts of my work can be stripped, altered, or improved. I think it’s important to hear how one’s work reads to an audience—especially an unfamiliar one. However, I also think it’s necessary to understand that any one person’s opinion is coming from his or her particular world view, shaped by their experiences, education, etc. Sometimes the best art isn’t universally well-received, so it’s essential to not lose one’s sense of self in listening to the opinions of others.
40- What is your relationship to praise?
I adore praise—who doesn’t?! However, I benefit from perceiving myself as somewhat of an underdog. It’s helpful to feel that I have something to prove to myself and others. A bit of an “I’ll show you!” attitude keeps me motivated.
46- Which would you prefer: to be a rogue artistic outsider or to fit within a community of similarly-minded creators?
My inner provocateur immediately tells me that it is preferable to be a rogue artistic outsider. However, in creating a life for myself as a professional artist, I have found that nothing is more important to me than my artistic community. I don’t want to be surrounded by a circle of sychophantic yes-men; however, I seek to be constructively challenged by thoughtful friends who, through their insights, push me to transgress my own self-prescribed limits.
48- Are you more interested in the universal or the individual? How important is it to you whether you express yourself as a unique person, or rather add your voice to a collective conversation?
What makes art interesting to me is the point of view offered by the artist. All artists—even those who comment on universal themes or who employ mechanical or digital processes involving a level of detachment—enter their work through the decisions they make. So, in some way, all art is filtered through the lens of the creator.
I express myself as a unique person with perspectives based on my own thoughts, emotions, and experiences. However, I hope my work taps into a collective conversation by touching on issues that extend beyond my psychic space. I aim to access the universal through the individual.
