| ART:21: |
Describe the steps
of your process for these new pieces.
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| APPLEBROOG: |
The photographs actually start
off making art out of children’s modeling clay. When
I say art, I mean just doing some very primitive-feeling sculptures.
And that’s just the beginning. It’s like making
art out of art and continuing the process all the way through.
For the first time, technology is at my service when I go
from working with the material to the next step and the next.
These little pieces seem so ordinary and like nothing. If
I place them on my stage, these little mounds of clay become
monumental. You photograph them any way you like, zoom in
on any part of the body, and they become something totally
different. I take each one—and they’re very small.
I set them up as though I’m posing them the way a photographer
would. Whatever else goes on has to do with the camera, because
they have to be posed in such a way that they do something,
say something. They’re able to express the next few
steps, and I never know what they are. The best part is that
I really never know what these things are going to morph into.
The good part about working with the camera is that you have
no sense of what the camera’s going to give you until
you see your contact sheets.
Right now these are all proofs, I’m just working with
them and I haven’t really made any decisions as to which
ones I’m going to take all the way. This one is one
of those little figures. I decided to put some hair on her
and give her some features. And then of course there’s
always the change in hairstyle.
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| ART:21: |
Did you do that in the computer?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
You become a hairdresser, a stylist,
a photographer, it doesn’t matter. The art really makes
itself—art creating art with the use of technology as
I’ve never used technology before, except to turn on
a light or a radio or a TV.
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| ART:21: |
Do you do the photography yourself?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Rita and I do the photography.
And it’s wonderful because it’s this very simple
kind of modeling material, but this is what happens.
I’ll start with these little sculptures. The part that
is most important is that I have the single figure I will
pose and place in front of the black curtain. Everything else
has to happen with the camera at that point—in terms
of how many ways you can pose it, whether you’re putting
it at a slant, the lighting, or anything else that would make
it different. By the time I got my contact sheets back this
is the one that I ended up using, but I have an awful lot
to pick from.
This happens to be the face that I finally chose, putting
on hair. I have my own hair—I have lots and lots of
files of hair and mouths and eyes. I don’t use noses
at all. I also have lots of samples of hair that I use,
wigs
and different things so I can make my own hairdos. It’s
not so much the color of the hair, but what I want the hair
to
say. Every time you change something the significance changes,
and the kind of portrait that I’m doing changes.
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| ART:21: |
Where do you collect the images
from?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Fashion magazines, they give
the best images of all kinds of hair and hairdos. And then
for the most part it’s whatever. I’ve been an
image scavenger for so many years, there is no magazine that
I don’t go through and pick away. The doctor’s
office and the dentist’s office would be terrified of
me because I’d screw up all their magazines, I’m
always tearing out pages from them.
This is the one that’s been selected. This figure is
actually the only male figure I have. At one time I was making
clothes for them. This is a loincloth, and I just sort of
tried changing the color a bit. This is what came out and
it was kind of interesting, but I didn’t really want
the body.
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| ART:21: |
Why you didn’t want to
use the body?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
At that moment the head was much
more interesting. If I feel that something is more interesting,
I’ll go for that. It’s almost like the skeletal
structure of what will come about. When I start out with something
at the very beginning, I can just take that and just go with
it any way I like. I choose to eliminate the head or have
them pose differently—that takes place and makes it
an entirely different artwork.
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| ART:21: |
You’ve learned how to do
this kind of manipulation?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
When I first started this I knew
nothing about a computer, I didn’t know how to turn
it on. So I went to the Apple Workshop and I sat through their
workshops. And during that period I met Rita McDonald, who
works with me. Apple Workshop gave me this much knowledge,
Rita gave me this much knowledge. So I learned an awful lot.
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| ART:21: |
Have you decided to move on
from the computer part alone?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
I’ve started, yes. Right
now I’m trying to figure out what kind of paper to use.
For many years I’ve used Gampi and I treat the Gampi
in such a way that it looks like skin. I could put them on
traditional paper and do them a very traditional way with
little borders, but I don’t think I’m going to.
I have a very large printer, so I can do them large-scale
and they change drastically large-scale. I can work them in
the way I’ve always worked—fragmentations. The
parts will be able to be put together and make it one piece.
You know, putting pieces together which pull together the
narrative.
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| ART:21: |
How will the pieces be shown?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
I will be doing some editions,
some small editions. But for the most part they will be single
unique pieces. With the sculptures I will be doing editions,
but not in the traditional way. I’ve just started on
scaling up the sculptures and using some kind of material
that will be a bit more quirky than the usual expectation
of what sculptures look like. And they will be quite large.
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| ART:21: |
What part of the process are
at you at now?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Someone once said this, I don’t
remember who, “The nice part about making art is that
it has to be either too much or not enough.” And right
now I’m not at the not enough stage anymore. I’m
at the too much point, and it’s feeling very good.
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| ART:21: |
What about making this work feels
new?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
The only thing that’s new
is the computer—I shouldn’t say that. You know
the act of painting in the studio, by yourself?
I remember everyone would say, “Doesn’t it get
lonely being by yourself? Don’t you miss having people
around?” And I’d say, “I would die if I
had to have anybody in the studio while I was working.”
That’s changed drastically. I used to wonder how other
artists have an entire atelier of assistants and all kinds
of people coming in and out. That was something that was just
completely outside of anything that I could imagine. And here
I am with people in my studio while I work and I like it a
lot!
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| ART:21: |
Why is that?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Well it’s the people. If
I had anybody that was obnoxious or annoying I’d have
to hang myself.
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| ART:21: |
But your practice remains as
it was the past?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Well, I’m using technology,
if that’s any different. I don’t feel that’s
different from doing painting or sculpting or drawing or anything
else. It’s just another way of making art.
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| ART:21: |
Who are the artists who are important
to you?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
Well it’s a range of people
from Beckett to Käthe Kollwitz to Otto Dix. There is
a long, long list, including some old time actresses, which
as far as I’m concerned were as influential as anyone
else out there—Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino.
The idea of these very strong women, they were my first models
of what a woman could do, so they were very important for
me.
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| ART:21: |
Why are they so fascinating
to you?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
I would go to the movies every
Sunday afternoon, sit through four features until it was night
and they would drag me out. They were the women stars in those
days, and what did I know? Did I say while I was sitting in
the theater, “Oh what a great model, she’s a feminist!”
No, I just knew that was a really strong lady, she could really
do this and this, or she could holler at that person and get
away with it. It was only in later years that I put two and
two together and figured out, “Yeah, they were very
strong women and it probably served as a fantastic model.”
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| ART:21: |
Talk about the filmic quality
of these pieces.
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| APPLEBROOG: |
They’re very cinematic.
They always have been. When I’m doing these pieces
a lot of it has to do with creating my own characters,
creating
my own narratives. They never have a beginning, an end, a
middle. But they are people...they are characters that
have
a life and everyone can interpret that particular character
very differently. In this way I’ll never say, “This
is supposed to be a long skinny lady who’s been
unhappy.” And you know someone will look at it and
say,
“I can’t stand looking at that, it makes me very
uncomfortable.” Well, that’s good too.
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| ART:21: |
Where do these characters come
from?
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| APPLEBROOG: |
I’m just interested in
narratives. Everyone has a way of remembering storytelling
when they were very young and piecing it together in their
own way. And I guess mine started out in terms of the actual
sending out of books. Those images told a story without really
saying very much. And from there it was like a snowball that
gains momentum. You have this one idea and this one concept—it’s
what you do the first time. And even though it might feel
like a one-liner, how much can you push it and explore it
the next time?
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