[Bali, Indonesia]
Because the sun sets at the same time all year round in Bali,
there's a sense that time is standing still--
that it's just one long summer.
There's this feeling of peacefulness
and of not feeling rushed.
This routine that is really tied into the rhythm of the world around you.
[Sound of ducks quacking]
["Drawing from Life in Bali"]
New York is where I'm from, and it's where I grew up,
and it's still where I will always come back to.
But I also know that the most important thing to make good work
is time
and space.
Living in Bali,
that's where I was going to have the most of it.
I wake up around 6:30
because the sunrise is so bright.
By 8:30, I start setting things up in the studio.
The cat gets locked outside so that he doesn't run all over the drawings.
Nopi and Wiwik would arrive at 9:00,
--Draw from here to here?
--Yeah.
and Nyoman around 10:30 to do the offerings for the house.
It's this nonstop flow of ceremonies and rituals.
Everybody is tending to the energy of the island.
Everybody is feeding it.
In Bali, there are these temples built around naturally occurring springs.
You approach the water and have this feeling
of deep reverence and deep respect
for this place and this substance.
And then, that you get to go inside of it is really powerful--
this feeling of going down and going in.
The next day, I always felt that something had been let go of--
that something really had been washed off that I was carrying around.
I wanted to be able to draw something from that experience--
to try and make a visual memory.
Drawing is not something that flourishes in the tropics.
Paper will not last.
The air is extremely humid,
so many pages are going to warp in a few days.
I was able to have this very simple glass case made
so I could put a small dehumidifier in.
Anything that I wasn't currently working on would just stay in there.
Penestanan was a small village that was built by
the community of traditional Balinese artists.
Expats started moving there
and things started to develop further into the rice fields.
There was a big footprint that happened
from all of us tourists being there.
In just the three years that I've been there, I've seen it change a lot.
But life manages to go on somehow,
uninterrupted by it.
I had moved to this new country and I didn't have any friends there.
The scariest part was my relationship had ended,
and I wasn't sure how I could make the work not being in love,
because it always felt like love brought so much exuberance
and that was really the source for my drawings
for a very long time--
at least for what I considered to be my best work.
And I just thought,
"I don't know if I can draw if I'm sad."
"I don't know if I can draw if I'm depressed."
"I don't know if I can draw when I'm fearful."
And, actually, it was so nice to be able to have drawing,
because it was like the one part of my life that was still the same.
Me in the studio with paper
was there whether or not I was in a relationship.
It's definitely not as easy as when you're in love,
but it's possible,
and it's so nice to have a practice that sustains you.
[The Drawing Center, SoHo, Manhattan]
When I had the opportunity to do the show at The Drawing Center,
I wanted to imagine energy taking a form of a physical body.
I drew an embryo forming.
I looked at some scientific diagrams of how cells divide,
and then just sort of follow that through a life--
finishing at the disintegration of the body
and return to formlessness.
I knew I wanted to do this oval room that was one big drawing
and in the same air as you were.
That it was fragile but it held together.
Having the work unframed was this really nice aspect of vulnerability.
That was really how I'd felt that year back in Bali:
super vulnerable.
Aaron composed the music in the space for the drawings.
It was this sort of very sparse compositions
that felt like a slow breath.
And, really, I think it was
the sound of Aaron's gamelans that gave this very peaceful atmosphere
where people kind of felt this sanctuary that they had stepped into,
having come off the street.
I know, for myself,
even when I come across something that I love--
that maybe I've travelled far to go see--
sometimes you only spend thirty seconds in front of it.
I was really thinking about
how much time we spend in front of a work of art.
And I always wanted to make an atmosphere where someone would have long enough
to travel through the drawings in their mind.
I realized that that moment is actually more beautiful to me than any finished drawing,
because it's the potential of a drawing that I'm never actually able to make.
[Since filming, Louise met someone new and they had a child.]
[They still live in Bali.]