WEBVTT 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:39.600 VIJA CELMINS: I ended up doing this extremely detailed work 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:46.200 that I detest but I somehow  worked myself into this space 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:49.560 and I’m hoping to work myself out. 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:55.000 But I hate to abandon a work  that I have cared for so long. 00:00:56.440 --> 00:01:01.560 I mean I’ve been working on this  little tiny piece for over a year. 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:04.760 So you know, these two images go together 00:01:04.760 --> 00:01:10.741 but I’m leaving out the comet because I  can’t stand an event that exciting in there. 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:15.779 I mean I had the comet in there  but now the comet is maybe, 00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:19.228 I don’t know, millimeters under here. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.853 I have redone the image many many  times one on top of each other 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:29.920 and I paint it and then I sand it off. 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:36.850 This little photograph which I found  someplace and which I’ve been dragging around. 00:01:38.240 --> 00:01:40.800 I don’t know, it’s a kind of inspiration. 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:48.680 And a kind of a place to put  your mind so that it allows me to 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:53.000 maybe focus more on the touch. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:58.114 You know, my touch on an  image that here is like found, 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:11.901 found by me and that’s, like, described in  a touch, which remains part of the work. 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:21.920 This may be the ninth time I’m painting it. 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:28.680 But each time I try to articulate  it however I’m able to at the time. 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:36.902 And if I lose it, which I often do,  then I paint it again on top of itself. 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:43.440 I mean somehow I think that  the image then begins to 00:02:43.440 --> 00:02:47.795 have a sort of memory in it  even if you can’t see it. 00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:54.920 It can build up a kind of a  dense feeling toward the end 00:02:54.920 --> 00:02:57.236 and then it makes me happier. 00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:04.640 I’m very suspicious of illusionism, 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:09.480 so the space is flat and I like that but, 00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:15.680 you know, I have an image that  what I’d like for it to do is to 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:23.560 like give a little so that it like  makes you want to go in a little bit. 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:26.480 So you’re looking like  maybe you can look in there. 00:03:27.120 --> 00:03:30.810 And then, you know, be kept out. 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:43.040 For me this part is interesting  cause this is the part 00:03:43.040 --> 00:03:45.320 where I’m like building, you know? 00:03:45.320 --> 00:03:48.384 I’m building the, the work from the beginning. 00:03:50.480 --> 00:03:54.854 I kind of like the idea of laying a field out. 00:03:55.560 --> 00:04:00.880 Then many times I begin like  working with an image already on it. 00:04:00.880 --> 00:04:09.400 This time I thought I would build  more of a feel thinking of a feel 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:14.414 that begins to fill up some of  the grain of the canvas itself. 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:17.840 This is all part of the work. 00:04:17.840 --> 00:04:23.520 In fact I often now talk about building  a painting instead of you know, 00:04:23.520 --> 00:04:24.720 painting a painting. 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:26.400 Like I’m building a painting, 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:33.714 I’m making a structure that’s a painting  cause it’s a two-dimensional object… 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:42.977 This painting has such an  illusionistic space in it. 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:50.600 I think I remembered kind of feeling  the joy of being able to paint anything. 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:58.880 At that time I painted a lot of uh  different objects, things that turned on, 00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:02.717 you know, like my hot plate and the lamps, 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:06.153 everything pretty much I had in the studio. 00:05:07.234 --> 00:05:11.940 Then I started painting images of little  clippings and this is one of them. 00:05:11.940 --> 00:05:14.000 So I sort of liked the painting. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.720 I’m trying to see whether it can sort  of hold up to my having had you know, 00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:22.918 maybe thirty five years of painting after it. 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:31.000 I think I painted this in the  middle of the Vietnam War. 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:32.760 I was remembering the planes, 00:05:32.760 --> 00:05:38.600 when I was in Europe myself  in 1944, just a small child, 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:40.360 I remembered the airplanes. 00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:48.137 They were, I’d never seen one  of course but I, I heard them… 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:54.680 This is an invented thing, you know? 00:05:54.680 --> 00:06:00.080 That it’s not like a copy of  nature, or a copy of photograph. 00:06:00.080 --> 00:06:04.935 It’s an invented thing that,  that you have in front of you. 00:06:10.680 --> 00:06:16.080 But see these. These are  these little nuts that I found 00:06:16.080 --> 00:06:20.922 that have this fantastic surface  that’s like this surface. 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:26.040 I mean I have to say that I’ve  always found it impossible 00:06:26.040 --> 00:06:28.080 to go straight from nature, 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:32.334 although I did do that series of stones didn’t I? 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:44.413 Most of the changes in the work  occur poking around my own life. 00:06:44.920 --> 00:06:48.773 Like when I picked up those  set of rocks in New Mexico, 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:52.840 never even occurred to me, I  had them in the back of the car, 00:06:52.840 --> 00:07:00.934 I put them out on the table and I just had  this instinctive desire to make them myself 00:07:01.640 --> 00:07:05.349 as if I was maybe a creator myself. 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:11.200 To make them myself to see how close I could get, 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:15.000 like a test or something like a discipline. 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:21.280 I had them cast in bronze and then I painted them. 00:07:21.280 --> 00:07:26.520 And I decided the piece should be the found stone 00:07:26.520 --> 00:07:32.050 and the one that is sort of translated by me. 00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:41.640 But I have been liking these chalky, surfaces 00:07:41.640 --> 00:07:47.100 and I’m attracted to these  eye dazzling little things. 00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:10.080 For a while I thought I would just  repeat the one image my whole life. 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:11.920 When I, when I started going down 00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:13.960 and taking a picture of the ocean I thought, 00:08:13.960 --> 00:08:16.200 well I’ll just do this over and over 00:08:16.200 --> 00:08:21.223 and maybe something will show up that is amazing. 00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:31.640 And then of course I got tired of it 00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:34.120 and then I moved on to some other things, 00:08:34.120 --> 00:08:35.189 but not too many. 00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:43.040 One of the things I did is I repeated  the image in different materials. 00:08:43.040 --> 00:08:46.400 Like first I started just with the pencil 00:08:46.400 --> 00:08:48.971 and then when I was asked to do these prints, 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:52.798 the first image I did was a lithograph. 00:08:56.403 --> 00:08:59.440 I have it like a dog with this bone. 00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:05.680 I come on to these things  and I maneuver a little bit 00:09:06.280 --> 00:09:09.104 and this a little bit that  way and a little bit this way. 00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:18.158 It’s like something unconsciously  seeps into the work. 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:26.880 Some subtlety that my brain  was not capable of figuring out 00:09:26.880 --> 00:09:30.901 by spending so much time with it. 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:52.560 I tell you these images just  float through from my life, 00:09:52.560 --> 00:09:55.720 they have no symbolic meaning. 00:09:55.720 --> 00:10:02.667 I mean generally I, I pick  images that are already surfaces. 00:10:07.520 --> 00:10:12.880 I did the spider image the first time about 1992 00:10:12.880 --> 00:10:19.320 and I think I like the image because  it sort of held on to the edges 00:10:19.920 --> 00:10:25.616 and made this flat plane  which I’m so in love with. 00:10:27.280 --> 00:10:32.920 This image has been drawn on  a piece of paper with charcoal 00:10:32.920 --> 00:10:35.040 and also with an eraser. 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:39.240 Just a plain eraser, Pink pearl, 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:42.880 then that was transferred onto the plate. 00:10:42.880 --> 00:10:47.510 And then I went back in and I scraped. 00:10:47.510 --> 00:10:55.445 I scraped the web once more, like  bringing it into more of a focus. 00:10:57.802 --> 00:11:05.640 And an image that is a corny  image, right up my alley I guess. 00:11:05.640 --> 00:11:10.040 An image that’s got a lot of associations with it, 00:11:10.040 --> 00:11:19.920 but an image which I of course put in this  very cold, scientific kind of dressing. 00:11:19.920 --> 00:11:21.640 Because most of my images.... 00:11:21.640 --> 00:11:27.000 Well I guess they are pretty  emotional images for some people. 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:33.000 It’s like one of the elements  that I kind of neutralize. 00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:39.760 Even though I’ve been sort of  obsessed with this image you know, 00:11:39.760 --> 00:11:44.068 that kind of describes a space, I’m not really, 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:47.686 I mean you know, I don’t really have a, 00:11:48.370 --> 00:11:52.086 an agenda here where I line  them up and do it one way. 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:56.663 Each one you know, develops  how it wants to develop. 00:11:58.649 --> 00:12:02.600 But I like being back in the studio, 00:12:04.280 --> 00:12:13.354 sort of back in the, you know, working  with this strange tedious surface.