Alexandra Grant recently exhibited some of her artwork and had a grantLOVE pop-up shop this past April at Marfa Invitational in Texas. During the fair, there was also a conversation/interview between her and Meghan Gord (director of OCHI gallery, which was representing her at the fair) where they discussed her Antigone based artwork, grantLOVE Project and X Artists' Books.
I felt it was important for me to listen to this interview as some of it would likely be relevant to this blog and would therefore need to be transcribed.
I admit, I find it to be quite difficult to fully grasp what she is saying when she speaks because she breaks off in tangents and her sentences are truncated. Processing what she is saying is challenging. There are a lot of key words and phrases that get repeated a lot which leave a positive impression on the listener, but there is no real profundity to her statements, no substance. They become mini catch phrases or comments that the listener graphs onto but there is no depth to back it up.
It is only when I started to write it all out, that I realized that a lot of what she says lacks logical continuity and is often contradictory to earlier statements. There is a lack of consistency. It's the same kind of contradictions and lack of consistency that are found in the grantLOVE Project website and their mission statement, which I've previously discussed in earlier posts like Mission Statement Fraud Analysis and List of Items and Profit Distribution to name a couple.
One example of a contradiction would be how she talks about wanting more representation for women and people of color in the art world; about finding a way to bring them to the table as well so that others can visit a museum and see art and artists that represent them. Yet, she gets indignant when Meghan Gord states that she thinks everyone is an artist, interrupts her and states that "I don’t think that
everyone is an artist and I, I, I, I hope not. Right? Please! Please, stop
using that word people! No! It’s… That is a career. Everyone is creative.
Everyone is creative." That statement is the opposite of being inclusive. It implies that you cannot call yourself an artist if you are not making a career out of your work. This statement would exclude the majority of the people she says she's trying to bring to the table. For someone to state this and then heavily try to propagate the message that both their solo practice and collaborative philanthropic practice are about LOVE is hypocrisy.
Another contradiction is when she states that "there’s nothing wrong with
politics and political art in my opinion, but, I would like, again, for people
to see work made by people who look like them that’s made from the position of
joy and life and not just reacting to...". Yet, by her own admission earlier in the conversation, her works based on the myth of Antigone, are relevant to the current political climate as Antigone was rebelling against the rule of law from her uncle, the King of Thebes, and was put to death for her conviction. If she believes there should be more art in the world coming from the point of joy and not political, why is she producing, time and time again, art that is political and certainly not coming from the "position of joy"? Again, this is not only contradictory, it's hypocritical. Practice what you preach.
Those are just a couple of the contradictions that I can see. There are more, but I don't want to fully delve into her hypocrisy within this interview here. I will leave that to others.
Knowing that I would be referencing this interview multiple times in my blog and given the challenge in processing what she is saying which I mentioned earlier, I realized it would be best if I transcribed the entire thing. This would make it easier for me to reference in the future and would also make it simpler for readers to verify that what I am saying is accurate.
You can find the transcription below.
I've included some time stamps here and there and they are marked in (blue).
Whenever you encounter this (???), it means that I am unsure of a word or there is a word missing that I could not make out. Please bear this in mind as you read it.
The full video is available to view below. Or you may choose to both read and listen to it at the same time.
I do my best to be thorough and accurate but acknowledge there may be some minor errors here and there. If you notice any errors or omissions on my part, I would greatly appreciate it if you would mention it in the comments section so that I may make the necessary correction/s.
Thank you.
Marfa Invitational 2021 – Alexandra Grant in conversation with OCHI Projects director Meghan Gord – April 24, 2021
Michael Phelan: Good morning. Thank you for joining us. I hope you all had a delicious Barbecue feast last night? Good, good, good. We have an incredible day planned for you all, beginning with this incredible… I’ll call it a… Judd side table chat with Alexandra Grant and Meghan Gordon the director of OCHI Projects. We are so grateful to Pauli Ochi, to Alexandra, to Meghan Gordon for joining us for this year’s edition. And we’re absolutely thrilled for these new paintings that Alexandra has made, produced and presented here for this edition. Her first series in oil painting, if I’m correct?
Alexandra Grant: In a little while.
Michael Phelan: In a little while, in a bit. So, and I will just tell you a brief synopsis of the schedule today. We are going to have the opening of JPW3 at the site of Marfa Invitational’s new foundation. So we’re very excited about that. He produced these outdoor works specifically for the site. And, um, it’s incredible with the way that they interact with the light, in the space, obviously historical context of Marfa, etc. etc. So, that’s from 4-6pm. We will have margaritas, um, most generously poured by LALA Tequila, our favorite tequila. And um, just a quick direction, if you head towards Alpine, the site is ¼ mile up the hill to depart Marfa. There’ll be a Marfa Invitational flag. And it’s highway 90 and Golf Course Rd. But you will absolutely find it and so we look forward to welcoming you…
Michael Phelan’s mother interjects something inaudible.
Michael Phelan: This was my mom chiming in. Thank you mom. Thank you mom. Thank you for being here… and still correcting me, which I appreciate. Little slap on the wrist and um… fortunately there are no coat hangers around. I love you. So, I think there’s a couple more people coming in, which we’re thrilled for them to join us. So come in and grab a seat. Um, So, without further ado, let me introduce one of my favorite artists, and certainly my favorite person, I adore, I absolutely adore. Um, we’ve, I’ve had the incredible opportunity of getting to know Alexandra over the past, um, two years now, because we were planning for this presentation for 2020, which we all know is now 2021. So, over that time I’ve gained a tremendous amount of respect, friendship, camaraderie and all those wonderful things. And I’m just so grateful for her friendship and for her being here today. I will let Meghan Gordon introduce her and thank you all for joining us.
Meghan Gordon (3:38): Thank you so much for having us. My name is Meghan Gordon. I’m the director of OCHI Projects. And I’m thrilled to introduce my good friend, Alexandra Grant. We met 8 years ago and since she came into my life it’s just… I feel like I’ve learned so much from you, working with you in every capacity that is possible as a human. And I am so exited to introduce you guys to this new body of work that Alexandra has been working on here. Um, not here, but we’re presenting them here for the first time. These paintings have never been seen before. They just left the studio. And, uh, Alexandra is an artist based in Los Angeles, and um… I’m going to let you do your bio. Is that ok?
Alexandra Grant: Can we skip the bio?
Meghan Gord: Oh, yeah. We can skip the bio. I don’t want to do mine either. Great.
Alexandra Grant (4:29): It’s Saturday morning. Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming and joining us. It really means a lot me that you are all here. Good morning all the way to the back row. We’re really thrilled you’re here. So, we can do a little bio, but I am going to do it in a little bit of an unusual way. So, one of the greatest things for me, about being an artist and being a woman in the art world and is getting to mentor and get to know other artists. And think a lot about the… this is, we’re already off script. This is great. We had a question we were going to start with but I’m not even letting that happen. But…
Meghan Gord: We’ll get there.
Alexandra Grant (5:07): We’ll get there. But it’s just so important to think about; it’s a cause that I really care about, the gender make-up of the art world. And so for me, I got to teach. I haven’t taught in a while. The last time I taught, Meghan was my student. And one of the extraordinary things about if you were at Cal Arts, it was really fun, you, I gave you permission to start a bar in your studio. Which, I don’t think the other faculty members were really pleased about that decision, but it’s so important and so remarkable is that we get to have different relationships with other artists over time, so they evolve. So never in my wildest dreams, even a few months ago, would I have imagined that Meghan and I would be sitting here in the capacity of her being the director of the gallery that is presenting my work at the fair. So it’s, it’s really important to me to discuss how our relationships evolve. And relationships is the segway to your first question.
Meghan Gord (6:02): Absolutely, because relationships are all about love, in my opinion. Even when you don’t feel like you love somebody, for whatever reason, like you’re always operating with love. Like how would you want to be treated? How would you want to be introduced? Just, you know, everything in the art world is about relationships, and therefore, is actually about love. And love is something that Alexandra and I have been discussing for many, many years. It’s one of our favorite topics and not necessarily in the way you would think. We talk about love as an ethics, a code of ethics that we operate by and we’re constantly kind of thinking about, you know, how do we make work that talk about this. Yes, of course, that’s a challenge. How do you make a painting about love? That’s a really big question that’s hard to answer. In fact, it’s kinda hard to communicate most things in paintings. So, you know, snaps for anyone that tries to communicate about love in paint. But, love is… love is the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual wellbeing. That’s my definition of love and I’ve stolen it directly from a book called “All About Love”. Actually, it’s a, it’s a quote that comes from a psychologist in the seventies, Erich Fromm. And um, yeah, I think that definition for me just really nails, you know, for me… it changed my life when I read it basically. And um, we talk about love in all these different ways. So maybe you can talk to me a little bit about why love is so important to you?
Alexandra Grant (7:45): You know, starting with a small question. First, I want to say thank you to Michael for giving me an opportunity to share the paintings and booth and also to have the grantLOVE pop-up shop. So, if you haven’t seen both, I just want to say that I’m fortunate to have received the gifts that are two presents of love that are different parts of the same practice for me as an artist. So for me love, the first part has to be about loving oneself, accepting oneself. I mean if you don’t know this about me I am a six foot one, very white haired individual, so the idea of that I could hide or that I.... Sometimes we all fantasize about what if we’d born (siren blaring) hello train… if we’d been born in a different package what our lives, how our lives, bodies circumscribes our existence where we’re born, the bodies we are born into, the health we’re in … The idea that I would be able to hide… It’s not possible. I stand out. It’s like “oh! There she is”. So self-love for me is about sort of accepting our packaging. You know and of course our packaging is in relationship to our context, right? And the first context we learn is our family. So the second pillar of love in my imagination is how we relate to our family and the people we know. But it’s really the third pillar for me which is how we relate to people we don’t know. And those, and that really brings in difference. Like how do we relate? Our families is often similar to us even though we don’t want to admit it. Um, but it’s really how do we love across difference. And how do we love people who are different than us, how doe we love people that we don’t know. And so, the way I structure my practice is in three parts as well. I really love the number three. But I have a studio practice where I get to be all by myself and express, sort of, my particular intellectual interests, which are philosophy and literature. The paintings we’re presenting here at Marfa are about the myth of Antigone. So a myth that’s over 2000 years old, yet that continues to resonate through generation after generation. And I think it’s because she’s a young woman. She’s a badass. She could be a Texan, for sure. She’s like a bandita (???) And she stands up to her uncle, who’s the king of Thebes, and says, basically, “no. What you’re doing, your rule of law, nuh-uh. There’s a higher law and it’s love.” And the reason she’s so mad, that she’s so full of rage, is that she, he won’t let her brother be buried because he’s a traitor to the state and he says, you know, “no”, or she says, “no”. I want to burry his body because God’s law or whatever higher law you believe in … he deserves to be treated equally. And for that she is put to death. Definitely not a comedy, um, the myth of Antigone. I think it’s been so important in the last few years, especially in the united states as the political climate has been all over the map, to think about what does love mean, you know. What does it mean for young girls to stand up to the rule of law and express something that she… you know… isn’t just legislated but like that, what her civil rights are? (10:57) Um, and so, that’s what’s going on in here, in the gallery…
But then I have this grantLOVE Project. And many of you are familiar with it and it’s also an artist’s project and it, to me, it… I just get asked all the time to support non-profits. Like I get asked probably once a week, “can you donate a work to this auction? Can you do this?” And I begin, like many artists do, to feel a little bit resentful that my studio practice is constantly… like the best works were being taken for auctions and it just felt like, well, “how I then stabilize prices?” and it’s a big issue. I want to be supportive. I want to be a civic-minded artist. I want to be someone who gives back and nurtures. So, I decided, what if I just create a “pret-a-porter” line? So, I have my, like, collection, but what if I have line… So I developed a LOVE symbol, trademarked it, and then I make my own LOVE works, but then I also license it to other artists so I can help them, you know, at making a living. And then we sell these editions and donate them to every, you know, unlimited amounts of editions to different non-profits. I’m very interested in fundraising, but more importantly friend-raising. And so friend-raising is a kind of love. So, what is that, you know…
Meghan Gord (12:13): Well just to point out that, you know, that this model, where you’re talking about, you know, yes, everyone wants to contribute to the greater good, to raise money for good causes, but, what you’re doing, essentially, is being inspired by Antigone, and the word love, and the concept of love, and redefining how the economy can support that better. Basically changing the metrics of the way money is being moved around. And, which also protects the artists, because they are not asked to… if you don’t know, when you’re asked to donate a work of art, the price goes out there, the price can fluctuate. If you’re at a fragile point with your career, it could really affect your career in a bad way, even when you’re donating to a great cause or a great institution. So this is like, this a very common topic of conversation amongst artists and so what Alexandra has been doing with the grantLOVE Project is incredibly radical and the fact that it’s inspired by love and Antigone is, I don’t think something that people quite make the connection to, because honestly there is so much to talk about with your work alone, and then to kind of step out into these other kinds of organizations that you are working with, but in my opinion it’s like all of these different parts are working together in concert, which is so beautiful and so rare for an artist practice.
Alexandra Grant (13:41): Well I appreciate that. I think the word economy comes from Greek “oikos” which means home. And so, the notion of having a domestic based artistic practice often, again, I just want to return the idea of gender. I really think about, I want to be an artist who is a woman and who works as a woman would work in the art world. And I want to… You know, when I first started the LOVE Project, I got a lot of… I mean they weren’t literal pats on the head, but people were like, “ that’s so cute” and then we started giving away one hundred thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars. The money became real and it became,” wait. This isn’t just cute anymore. You’re shifting what’s possible”, you know. Philanthropy is so important but it’s also important that it be horizontal as well as vertical. That we create in modes. And more than anything, I wanted to give permission. When I was teaching at Cal Arts (California Arts Institute). I would talk a lot about entrepreneurship. It was a very dirty word. Which is very funny because so many of the patrons of the arts are entrepreneurs. But there is this absolute hysteria about talking about entrepreneurship. And what I began to see was this real focus on Marxist philosophy and theory, which didn’t really serve the majority of students in my classroom, who are women and who are people of color. And what I felt that everyone can understand and read marks, but the skills that people really needed to understand is why it might be good to have an LLC as an artist. Or why it’s ok to sell your work and it’s not about selling out. Or can you please speak about what it means when so many artists are heirs and don’t have to think about money. And so for me it’s really important to talk about how dignity is tied to personal economy and to make it transparent as possible. So I try to live my life as someone who, um, is part of the community first. Right? That I take of my life, self-love, family love and part of the community of other artists. And I’m like, “this is how I’m going to do my career.” And I am going to have a painting practice that’s radically solo. I love to create my work by myself. I love to think. It’s where I get to be my inner, you know, inner, inner child… read books, but I protect that for me. And then I have the grantLOVE Project, which is absolutely about community building. And it’s about teaching that entrepreneurship is not an ugly thing for artists to pursue. And because, of course, I don’t like to sleep, I in 2017 founded, um, um, co-founded a publishing house because I was like you know, “we need more opportunities that aren’t just about receiving money, that are about getting language back into artistic practice. And then again, thinking through, we’re doing a new line of books, the company is called X Artists’ Books, and we’re doing X Projects. (16:41) It’s focused to curators who are women of color, curated three artists that are artists of color, and we realized that the artists can’t afford their own time to write their books. So suddenly had to rethink, not “oh, cool. You got a book deal”. If you can’t write the book, right, because you are struggling financially. So suddenly we’re like we’re going to have to triple, come up with a real salary for these artists. And again I think that’s what I mean by love. It’s not being embarrassed about your finances. It’s not being embarrassed about these things. It’s really talking about them. Maybe not publicly like we’re doing right now but talking about what will it take to… what kind of support do you need? Right? To be grounded and sane, to have dignity, and from that place, create your work. Right? And I think those are the kind of questions that I as a teacher, and your former teacher really, think about. That… you know, especially women I found, in the classroom, they’re done with the theory. They don’t even want philosophy. They need cheerleading, right? And it’s issues of confidence. And again, what does confidence mean. I’m sorry I’m a word buff. It means “with trust”. Like how do you give women the sense, or any artist really, the sense to trust themselves. That where they’re coming from and what their point of view is, it has value. And again value ties back unfortunately to financial worth as well. So, for me as an artist, I think… You know, we all say that when you become a teacher, you become the teacher you wish you had. Right? And so for me, what I try to do is, again self-nurturing, but I want to be that person for other people that I wish I’d had and to protect people. I’m a bit of a mother… It’s true.
Meghan Gord (18:37): That’s beautiful. I think I have a bit of one in me as well. I mean, that’s something we talk about a lot, this word permission. And, you know, I’ve begun to think about the word permission as kind of like an act of love, right? Which it absolutely is. So, you know, there’s so many people that we meet in our world that are very talented and are not reaching whatever level of visibility or success. And a lot of times, people are kind of defeating themselves. They’re preventing themselves from contacting or asking for help for putting their work out there. And, you know, I think when you, When we met, you were my teacher and I saw you give permission to so many people to pursue something that was a little bit scary. That they were scared to talk about, you know, whether it was because it was related to a personal trauma or something that they just cared so deeply about and they had never shared it with anyone before. You know, and, I really feel like that is the first step in terms of… in the art world, you know, art is a lot about education. I mean, you look at art and you learn about yourself. What you think about when you see something. And then a lot of artists are communicating about things that they love. You then learn about the things that the artist loves and is interested in speaking about. You know, we were talking about Sophocles today, (laughs) because Alexandra loves this play, you know, and… So art is constantly learning and most artists are autodidact, they’re always learning themselves, in different ways. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through literature. But the next step is to …? at all visible and so many women, artists especially, artists of color, are not encouraged and given that permission to make their voices louder and to show the world what they love and the things they think are important to communicate about. So that’s something I saw Alexandra do 8 years ago in a classroom. And then I myself started to do, very soon after that and, you know, now that I’m working with artists all the time through the gallery, through the various galleries that I worked at in LA, is something that I hold up as like “this is a pillar of who I am. Like, supporting people that have so much to say, so much value to add to the world and have not been given an opportunity. So, to bring it back around to love, like, there was a performance here yesterday with all these questions. People were answering these very vulnerable questions, and one of the questions was, like, “what are you the most proud of?” and in my head I always, immediately, like, the thing I am most proud of is the way that I love. You know, and, It’s just been so wonderful talking about these things with you because I have been expanding my idea of what love is for 8 years. Since we met and started talking about it. But I wanted to come back and talk about the paintings which all, almost all of them have the word love in them and I was wondering if you could actually just repeat the phrase Antigone says that is, has been recurring in all your work.
Alexandra Grant (22:01): So she says, “I was born to love, not to hate”. Which is very profound. And for me it’s not about, that phrase is not about putting love and hate as opposites, because I don’t actually think they are, but it’s about the choice we make. (22:16) And, um, maybe it’s because I read “The Secret”, I don’t know. That idea that um… What happens when we experience negative emotions in our bodies, right, experience envy or experience hate, for me they’re just the biggest teachers and that idea of choosing love, every time choosing to connect, choosing to refrain something because we either um… because we feel a negative emotion. For example, I’m not sure; I don’t like participating in competition. The idea, again, the language in “The Secret” is scarce, but the idea that the art world is scarce is part of what drives the market up. But I find it a very hostile environment to live and work in. So, I would rather say, there is no competition, resources are infinite, my creativity is infinite. And I want to reverse engineer from my creativity outward, a world that I feel happy to live in. (23:22) Now part of why language and home are important to me is that I grew up moving all the time. I had a Scottish father, an American mother, who fell in love in Nigeria. I was born in Ohio, which is very exotic (laughs), but moved to Mexico when I was one. So I grew up thinking I was Mexican until I was eleven. And, um, then my mom told me that if I really needed to commit to being Mexican I would have to join the Mexican army. And we went to an army base. And I was like “no. I’m cool. I’m cool”… My mom’s a really smart cat. I was getting quite an education, going to barracks, like, you know, woo. So, that idea though of having an experience, when I moved to the United States finally, that I had something inside my head that wasn’t seen. So I’m a native Spanish speaker, and very few people, I mean I scare the bleep out of people when I open my mouth and speak Spanish because they’re not expecting it from this European packaging, you know. And so it’s that, that we each have a hidden universe inside of us, and so I know it’s inside of me and so I know it’s inside of each one of you. And my sense of what art is, is a trace of that creativity that each one of us has. You know, I often tell my students, especially in art school, this does not go over well with parents, but don’t become an artist unless it suits your temperament, but please, find a way to express your creativity in your life. Whether it’s through cooking or whatever that is. That is your job. Not to become an artist. (24:58) I don’t want any more angry, unhappy artists in the world. What I want is for there to be more happy creative people in the world. So, what love is for me again, honoring my, what George Herms once told me as he was overwhelmed we were publishing his book, was that I was an idea volcano. Which I kind of love. Right? (24:17) But this idea of infinite creativity, I wanna reverse engineer a world from that. And then maybe, because I do it, a student of mine will do it for herself, and then she will have the ability to nurture the artists in her gallery. To think of a warmer space, one of non-competition, and one of “how can I help”. And it’s certainly, Michael (waves at Michael) hello, one of the things about this fair that’s been great is we’ve all rolled up our sleeves, you know. Ok, we need to get from point A to point B. We can do this, you know. What happens when we work together as a community with people we know and people we’ve never met before. And I think it really changes the environment. (25:56) I don’t want be in toxic relationships. I don’t want be talking about having my works stolen. I don’t wanna… You know, I want people to buy a painting of mine, take it home and feel that I have created through this dignity that excites them when I am not there. I don’t want to explain. I don’t want to preach. I want to be a spark. You know. And then, everyone can be a spark in this paradigm, right? I’m going…speaking of everyone being a spark; we can open up to questions. Is that right?
Michael Phelan: Perfect.
Alexandra Grant: So if you have a question or a comment and want to interject, we would be, we’d love to welcome that. (26:38)
Michael Phelan: And I’ll pass the mike to anyone. Anyone…
Alexandra Grant: Yeah. Anyone have any questions? Specific comments? Want to hear about something?
Michael Phelan: If you’re good just shout it out.
Questioner 1: I just want to say thank you. We are actually doing, we are catching the… (???) for the steak face-off competition and we have several young ladies that I know are really enjoying your speech. They said it’s very inspirational.
Alexandra Grant (27:06): Oh, that’s wonderful to hear. I mean this is how it works isn’t it. I mean, one of the projects I got to work on last year, it’s very sad, I had a museum show in Orange County Museum of Art and no one saw it. Which, it was a common experience for other artists with big museum shows in the last year, except for a dance troupe. Which was awesome, right? So the dancers got to go and interpret the work, and I have a beautiful dance video, which I’m happy to share with you. But in the museum we put a pop-up shop. Much like the one here at Marfa Invitational. The idea was, that we were going to raise money to buy artists of color, women artists of color and bring them in the permanent collection. So, even with the museum closed we were able to raise a significant chunk of change and what to me is exciting is that opportunity to say, “well look here I am at the table. Hm. Why isn’t so-and-so here? Why? Who else can we invite in?” And, I don’t think we talk often enough about how artists can be this force for questioning, “why, when I walk into a museum, do I not see art or artists who look like me?" And so many people, don’t see themselves and don’t see their communities, or see it only put in the museum because of politics, rather than joy. (28:22) And there’s nothing wrong with politics and political art in my opinion, but, I would like, again, for people to see work made by people who look like them that’s made from the position of joy and life and not just reacting to… Yes, we have social responsibilities. And I appreciate work that’s made from that position but I also think everyone should have the opportunity to make art from whatever emotional section, sector they want. So, I don’t know where that just came from? But the coffee hit.
Meghan Gord (28:59): Yeah, I mean, something that um most artists have in them is this kind of critical thinking/problem solving skills. They do it in their studios all day long. And they’re doing at all different levels. So, for a painter it might be like this blue next to this color creates a psychological effect that you can’t really, it’s like “it’s different from that blue”, you know, I’m trying to create an up… like… so they’re problem solving all day long, in their own studios, in their own heads. But when you put artists at the table they will problem solve anything for you. Like they think outside the box, they do not think how other people think because, you know, they’re doing it all day long, you know. They’re constantly learning for their practice. And even if it’s like this wood works better than that wood for this type of sculpture, you know, it’s… I really hope… There’s been a lot talk about this kind of interdisciplinary collaboration and in fact Cal Arts, where we met, California Institute of the Arts, was founded by Walt Disney who had a very specific idea of interdisciplinary collaborations where actually it was everyone is kind of just laboring to create one person’s vision. But I think what Alexandra has been doing and what she was basically trying to instruct in the class, very specific classes that she was teaching, was that all of these, all the politics, all the rules, all the laws that we’re living by, whether they’re like actual laws or just kind of like things that we’re all doing, societal codes, these are games and we can change the rules.
Alexandra Grant (30:45): Go right ahead.
Questioner 2: Will your exhibition, that was to be shown at Orange County, be moved to another museum, I hope?
Alexandra Grant: I hope. That would be wonderful.
Meghan Gord: We would love. We would love that.
Unknown lady chiming in: There’s a new director coming in.
Alexandra Grant: Heidi Zuckerman. She’s wonderful.
Unknown lady chiming in: She’s great. She’s great.
Alexandra Grant: yeah
Unknown lady chiming in: So, it’s sad that, I mean, I hope you get another exhibition.
Alexandra Grant: I hope so too.
Unknown lady chiming in: Okay
Alexandra Grant (31:10): But I also learned so much from, you know, again, six dancers saw my show. Right? How cool is that? At least I, you know… And then they interpreted it. So, again… (???) through. I think one of the things about being here with all of you is, we’re coming out of quarantine. Right? We’ve all had these traumatic experiences in isolation in different ways. So, when I look back, and look at this dance video, with the dancers not being able to touch and with masks, it will sum up the year for me.
Unknown lady chiming in: It was probably excellent.
Alexandra Grant: We’ll make sure and send the video out. It’s really… It’s very…
So surprising.
Unknown lady chiming in: Ok. I would love to see it.
Meghan Gord: It’s so moving.
Alexandra Grant: Yeah. Yeah. I see a hand.
Questioner 3: Hi. My question regarding art therapy versus art… professional form of expression for a living. (???) What’s the difference between those two?
Alexandra Grant (32:07): So, what I heard of the question is, “what’s the difference between art therapy and art for a living?” ok. So, to be totally honest, I have no idea what art therapy is. So I’m not sure how to answer that. What I do know is that, um… I’ve given myself permission to fully express all my interests as an artist. And those, that touches on psychology. It touches on caring for others. Um. But I’m not in the business of… I mean, I care deeply but I’m not a professional healer. So I would be very careful about that. I’m interested in healing for myself and I am someone who will suggest. I’m a brainstormer. Um. But, it’s, it’s, I think art therapy is something very specific. And what I can imagine, it’s to help people that have medical issues or traumatic issues. And so I think there’s a… At least, that’s my guess. Not helpful.
Meghan Gord (33:08): And I think many of the artists that we know, that we are in dialogue with regularly, um… Their art practices are very therapeutic for them, you know. And I, I think that art is healing. I think it’s healing just to look at it, and to interact with it as a viewer, as an audience. But I think it’s incredibly healing to just, you know, use your body to make things, in whatever way that looks. You can use your computer, or you’re writing or you’re painting. I would encourage everybody to make art because I think everybody is an artist, can be an artist and, you know… We talk about, we use the word artist about art world and that’s, you know, a very specific idea, but I honestly believe there’s, you know… It’s a different game that we’re playing with different rules, but like, you know, just make, you can make anything and it’s very healing. Because what will you make your work about? If you don’t have to answer that question, but like, you’re going to make work about something that matters to you. Even if it’s like flowers, you know. It’s, I think it’s…
Alexandra Grant (34:21): Well, I’m just going to stop you ‘cause I disagree. I don’t think that everyone is an artist and I, I, I, I hope not. Right? Please! Please, stop using that word people! No! It’s… That is a career. Everyone is creative. Everyone is creative.
Meaghan Gord: Everyone is creative.
Alexandra Grant: And I think that creativity can go into being whatever that looks like and so... Being an artist, there’s rules and parameters and a lot judgment. And what my goal, in pushing this talk this morning, is to think about who sets those rules? Who, keeping those rules in place, benefits? And then, why I strongly believe in that I like to break rules. Right? And the way I’m going to do it, the Revolution that I want to be part of isn’t one of, um… (long pause) You’re not listening to me thinking “wow! She’s so full of anger and rage” are you? No. But I’m gently trying to say, "why is that line there?" Why are there certain people not in the conversation, and how do we gently make more room, for ourselves and for others.” Yes, question. (35:30)
Question 3: For the writers you work with and artists for X Artists’ Books and also grantLOVE Project, how do you identify them?
Alexandra Grant (35:39): It is a very intuitive process. With grantLOVE, it’s looking to the community of artists I already know. But then it’s also… I was living in Berlin for 5 months (???)… last year and I found this wonderful screen printer and I said “look, I want to make a series of LOVE prints, are there artists that you love to work with?”. And so recommended these wonderful Spanish illustrators named CacheteJack. And so, that happened very organically. I didn’t set out to make those images. I found a person I really enjoyed working with, who was a master printer, and then she suggested the collaborators. And we had similar values, in terms of how we worked, and so the images came from a process that was an interpersonal process. And so that’s the sort of organic way that I like to work. Here at the pop-up shop we have three quilts by a quilt maker named Sara Zink. We wanted to feature a Texan artist and she’s from Forth Worth. And Sara, wrote me an email that said, “I love your LOVE Project Have you ever thought about making… Have you ever thought about making quilts?” and I was like, um, no. Never. And “sure, give it a go”. So again, it’s that I get an email from someone. Someone will make something and send it in the mail. Absolutely I… for me, the practice as a studio artist is very, it’s very isolated. It’s a, it’s not that I get bored, but I worry that I become too introspective. And so, what, what, I care a lot about is keeping my learning curve steep. And it’s in working and collaborating with others that I get to learn. So, it’s often an interest that will draw me to another artist, especially with X Artists’ Books, caring about a specific topic and wanting to know more. I mean, what I suffer from a bit of magpie-eye. Oh shiny and sparkly, oh, what…. So what collaboration is, is an ethics of getting shit done. Right? So your saying to an artist, ”we’re going to make a book about this, you know, topic” and you do. You have a beginning, middle and end. Again, that’s why I like having these projects is because it’s a commitment to finishing, bringing into the world, finding people with like interest who might want to buy a book, you know, …
Meghan Gord (38:12): Coming back to your pillars from before, you have to love yourself and be true to yourself. But when then you go out into the world, it’s just, it’s, when you are yourself operating on love, like-minded people will find you. You’ll find each other. It’s just how it works.
Question 4: Speaking of finding things, could you be sure and tell us where your pop-up shop is? In case we would like to visit it while we’re here.
Alexandra Grant: (laughs) First, Meghan and Pauli will be in the booth inside OCHI Projects here, for the rest of the day and tomorrow morning, I believe? And then the pop-up shop is at 217…
Meghan Gord: San Antonio
Alexandra Grant: San Antonio. And it is the Marfa Invitational HQ. Over here…
Michael Phelan: Yes. Indeed. The easiest instructions from here is a left, a right and a left. Left, right, left… You will have arrived.
Alexandra Grant (38:08): And please, you know, if we’re interacting for the rest of the day here in Marfa, you can get my email. If you have a vision of something that needs to be brought to the world, I would love to talk to you about it. We can, you know, I’ll give you my email for when we leave Marfa. But I just hope that, um, that you know how grateful I am that you are all here; Um, that this is, that this is a long-term exchange. Thank you.
Michael Phelan: Thank you. Thank you all so much for coming. I’ve learned from my dear, dear friend. So thank you.
I would love to invite you all to come to Pauli Ochi’s booth, to Alexandra, to view her work in the hall, now, following this most enlightening conversation. So, um, and take a look if you haven’t already, of these incredible works and, um, enjoy them and, perhaps take one home. And, at the very least view them and introduce yourself to Alexandra if you have not already. And, um, thank you all for joining us. We look forward to welcoming you, 4-6pm site of Marfa Invitational Foundation, where there will be an outdoor installation of JPW3. Between 4-6pm, and again that will be a left, a right, left. Just a little further up the hill, about an eight of a mile, just down the road. You will indeed find it and I will be looking forward to welcoming you all. Thank you. Enjoy this gorgeous great weather, amazing art and thank you all again.
Meghan Gord: Thank you so much.
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