“Art Does Something That Nothing Else Can”
An Interview with Phoenix Lindsey-Hall by Kate Cossolotto
Portraits by Lauren Renner
Phoenix Lindsey-Hall is a Brooklyn-based photographer and sculptor who earned her MFA in Photography from Parsons The New School of Design in 2012 and a BFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2004. Her most recent project, After Kempf, explores lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender hate crimes by using mixed media to transform everyday objects, such as bats, plungers, hammers, and tomato cans, that have been used as weapons in specific hate crime cases. I met Phoenix at her studio at Gallery Aferro in Newark, New Jersey where she’s been doing a residency program since Spring 2013. I was expecting the interview to be a somber one considering the nature of her art, but Phoenix possessed a jovial nature that was pleasantly surprising. Her faint Southern drawl became stronger at times as she talked to me about the recent wave of queer hate crimes in New York City, whether she considers herself a political artist or not, professional development for artists, and last but certainly not least, Neko Case and country music.
Kate: Tell me more about the residency program here [at Gallery Aferro]. Why were you interested in this space and how did you get involved?
Phoenix: The residency is here at Gallery Aferro and what I found with building my art career as an emerging artist is really finding those connections and links. It was just kind of happenstance. The way that I wound up getting to know about this residency program was that I was interviewing for a professional development course called Emerge, which is at Aljira, a contemporary art center here in Newark, so I was doing my interview and it was a super intense interview process—there were five of us and a panel of three people and we all did a group interview—and one of the women was talking about Matthew Shepard, and my work is about hate crimes, and we just had a really lovely conversation. I wrote a really nice thank you letter to her and she said “Thank you for writing me. Let’s stay in touch. Please apply for my residency program.” I applied and they asked me to stay and they had a cancellation in the Fall 2013 bunch so she asked me to stay on. So I’ll be here, having my studio in Newark, until February 2014.
K: You’re based in Brooklyn though.
P: (laughs) Yeah I’m based in Brooklyn.
K: What are the similarities and differences between working in Brooklyn and the Brooklyn arts scene and Newark?
P: Well Newark feels like a really accessible arts community. People are very excited to get to know each other and network and you know, [at] the openings here everyone is talking to everyone else and everyone knows everyone. I don’t want to say that it’s small town-y because Newark isn’t a small town, but it’s more accessible. It’s been really nice to build my résumé as an emerging artist and being able to use this as a support system to stand on. But other people that have done this program live in Brooklyn too so there’s also a kind of community in Brooklyn of folks to reach out to.
K: Can you talk a little about your process? Do you begin with a clear vision of what you want…
P: No (laughs)
K: Or does it unfold as you go along?
P: So most of my work is research-based to begin with. I’ll take an old project for example: In 2009, I was working, as my day job, at a non-profit that was an affordable housing advocacy organization so I have a lot of non-profit background. So it was 2009 and all this horrible stuff was going on with the housing bust, right? And I was working on affordable housing as my day job so I worked with a non-profit to get a list of all the homes that had been foreclosed within the last 6-month period and went to many of the homes—the ones that had been vacated—and broke into the houses, photographed what people had left behind, and then locked up after myself. So I didn’t know what that was going to look like or what that was going to be starting out, but I knew getting a data set to build off of was what I wanted to do. So with my most recent work, After Kempf, that was built out of me creating my own database of hate crimes that had happened. It was a very loose data set, because hate crimes are so difficult to research and find information about. You can get statistics from the FBI about where the crimes happened, but even that, the states don’t have to report in [the crime] so the data sets are pretty messed up. So I went online and decided to do as much internet research as I could, and going to the library and actually pulling out the microfilm and reading articles that hadn’t been digitized. And so from that loose data set I studied about 50 hate crime cases and I didn’t know what to do with it. So I looked at my spreadsheet, which is morbid, right? Like, “Victim” “Perpetrator” “Murder Weapon,” you know, all the details. So I was looking and it was like, all these weapons are household objects. They’re just random things. Just like a crime of passion where you pick up whatever is lying around and that’s what’s used as a murder weapon. All these objects were really pointing to the intimacy in the act of violence. You can’t be far away from someone if you’re using a bat, but it’s also about the urgency. But I had no idea what I was going to do. No idea. AND I had never done ceramics before…
K: Right. I wanted to ask you about that because you studied photography…
P: Yeah, both my MFA and BFA are in Photography.
K: So what made you decide to use a different medium?
P: These objects just really needed to be present. I didn’t want to just photograph a hammer because that’s a specific hammer.
K: You wanted it to be tangible.
P: Yeah. And I wanted it to be a quintessential hammer. A hammer that you have, that I have, so that when you conjure up an image of a hammer it’s an image of that hammer, for an example. So I used to do woodworking as a hobby, making bowls and things like that. I like using my hands and as a photographer, an early photographer, I loved the dark room and that’s a really hands-on process and I really missed that. So I went back and was using the woodshop in the same way I used a black-and-white analog dark room. I just wanted to get my hands in it. So I tried different materials and different things and decided that these things really have to be ceramic which I had never done before. I started teaching myself two-part molds. I went on Youtube. The process that I had settled on was that all the objects are hollow, so they’re slipcast, which is how you would make a figurine. So you have a two-part mold, you pour the slip in and whatever is touching the dry plaster of the mold hardens, and you let it sit for an hour and then pour it out so that’s how it’s hollow. So they’re super fragile. So I have the objects, what do I do about glazing? I tried all sorts of stuff. And they’re all about queer hate crimes, right? So I didn’t want to make them all pink (laughs) or rainbow (laughs) or like black, so after going around and around not knowing the color and messing with different skin tones I think they’re best just left raw. So they’re unglazed. They’re fired, so there’s that white, tangible…you can see the scratches from where I’ve sanded them and they look like bones, especially the bats. So they’re quiet and they act as a memorial. And I’ve added some elements of concrete, which can act as a tombstone or a coffin or something. The bisque white is the departure. And sometimes I’ll add to it. There’s a piece with a chair with a plunger on top.
K: When did you start working on this project?
P: I started working on this project in 2010.
K: And this is an on-going thing?
P: Yup.
K: How do you see it ending? Will it ever end?
P: Well that’s one thing that’s been so great about having this really wonderful studio space right now. The gallery itself has a ton of summer interns so I’ve been able to use one of their interns for this project so she’s helping me make tons and tons of bats, which is ironic because I’m from Louisville, Kentucky so I’m making like hundreds of Louisville slugger bats (laughs). But I dunno [how it will end].
K: Why did you decide to focus on the bats?
P: Well I just had to pick something so I thought it would be cool to do a ton of multiples, because they do look so much like bones.
K: Yeah, definitely.
P: So I see them being a multitude—a ton of them hanging, filling up the room—but simultaneously working on a bunch of different projects. Right now I have a proposal out in the very beginning stages of doing some work around all the hate crimes that just happened in May.
K: Yeah, that was actually going to be one of my talking points.
P: Oh good. Yeah, I have a proposal coming up and a couple different grants. I want to do some sort of memorial site to mark the 1-year anniversary for each one of those hate crimes. There were nine in a three-week period. And of course Mark Carson was the one murdered. But I’m still working on all the details. The proposal I did was for the Sculpture Center and I’ll apply to the Puffin Foundation, which focuses on politically motivated art, and a couple other foundations.
K: Would you consider yourself a political artist?
P: Well I guess so. I mean (hesitates) yeah, I think that I need to be. I mean, for me the aesthetics really do come first, which is maybe why I spent like a year trying to figure out if these things were going to be ceramic or wax or paper or whatever (laughs). For me the aesthetics really are important. A lot of the work I deal with is super politically charged, which is just how it is so I guess in some ways that makes me a political artist. I used to be a queer rights lobbyist in Kentucky for a couple years. Like a paid lobbyist for the gay rights group there and worked on various political and social rights campaigns. Like going door-to-door and telling people why gay marriage should be okay…in Kentucky (laughs). Going door-to-door and talking to people about Fairness ordinances—like why people shouldn’t be fired for being gay—so for me that’s political work. That’s calculated and measured, you’re on a team, and you’re changing hearts and minds. All that kind of stuff is very political. So what I’m doing here is political in nature but trying to talk about something that only art can talk about and you don’t necessarily know what the result is. But I think by working it out through materials you get much different and much more interesting results. So yes, it’s certainly political in nature, so I guess you can call me a political artist. But I’m not championing it, like “Oh look at this person who was murdered. This is terrible. This is horrible.” Certainly yes, that’s there but I’m trying to get to the underpinnings of the society that produces these perpetrators and victims over and over. It’s a cycle that I’m trying to talk about.
K: So what is it that you want your work to accomplish?
P: Yeah, I don’t know. I guess once it’s made it’s kind of out of my hands. Certainly to raise awareness, but that’s kind of silly, because if you wanted to raise awareness you could just make a webpage about hate crimes, start a nonprofit, or get a billboard or something. Working it out through materials does something else though. Art does something that nothing else can do. I think that’s true of visual arts, or dance, or writing. I think if my project ends up happening next year—doing the memorial sites for the nine hate crimes—that will have an online component. I’d love to develop an app where people can say where they’ve experienced hate crimes, like a mapping thing. So there’s a lot of different stuff that can raise awareness to accompany the work, but the work, I think, is the starting point and the other things can support it.
K: This work is similar to your installation Tell A Sad Story and also your photographs of foreclosed homes. What draws you to these tragic events? Tragedy seems to be a running thread…
P: Yeah, everything is kind of dark (laughs). I don’t know. I guess I feel like they’re all things that I’ve had access to and that have personally affected me. I mean, the reason I’m talking about hate crimes is because in high school I had an acquaintance who was murdered and it became a huge [debate]: is it a hate crime? Is it not? There were all these questions. The incident itself was very graphic and of course it affected me. And then later in college, I had a friend that was stabbed in the face with a broken beer bottle and has a scar on his face and I’ve experienced types of violence before. Personally nothing that dramatic, but I’ve certainly had people throw rocks at me and people say things under their breath. I’d get weird looks. It must be because of my political background and my confidence that I do feel very comfortable in my own skin and that I do feel able to talk about these themes that are hard to talk about, but I try to do it in a way that’s respectful not just to the victims—certain instances people have passed away—but also to the perpetrators because in my research I’ve found that the people that are the perpetrators have very similar characteristics. They’re all normal, white dudes in their 20s that have kind of snapped. So in this system where the perpetrators are all kind of similar and the victims, by the nature of the crime are the stand in for the group—like it could be any queer person who was at the wrong place at the right time—so in a system where both people are interchangeable—and it can be any object that’s laying around, so that’s interchangeable—it has to be pointing to a larger system failure and breakdown with society, which is what I’m trying to get at through material, through making visual art.
K: What influences you?
P: Like what artists?
K: Anything. It doesn’t just have to be artists.
P: I don’t know. I guess research and data. I geek out over that stuff. There’s a ton of artists obviously: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Doris Salcedo, Jannis Kounellis. There are a ton of people that I’m looking at. And I think pop culture too, especially since I’ve got all these every-day, household objects, but I do sort of look at that work more often that I had expected to. I guess I’d have to say that my biggest influence is culture. Being inspired by doing something about these hate crimes that had just happened a few months ago. Yeah, I’d say current events.
K: So we’re obviously listening to music now [Phoenix had put on Pandora as soon as I got to her studio], so what music do you listen to when you’re working?
P: (laughs) Oh my god, okay so I’m in so much trouble with my wife right now because the wireless doesn’t reach up here [in her studio] so my Pandora is always streaming and using up the data on our phones so I keep using our data plan to stream Pandora and she gets the push notifications and she’ll text me in the middle of working and be like “um, can you please switch it to your iTunes and not Pandora?” Busted. I kinda like country music.
K: I’m glad someone said that, because I feel like people always say “I like everything BUT country.”
P: Yeah, I love listening to country. So yeah, I listen to Mumford and Sons a lot. I listen to Neko Case, she’s…
K: Oh. My. God. I am obsessed with Neko Case [note: I got overly excited about this].
P: She’s my favorite.
K: I’m seeing her in September.
P: REALLY?! Where is she playing? Here?
K: Yeah, in New York City. At Radio City.
P: Shut up. You think tickets are still available?
K: They might be.
P: I want to go.
K: Yeah, I’m like 10th row, center.
P: That’s awesome. Did you see Patty Griffin in Brooklyn?
K: No, I didn’t! But Neko Case. The best. I’ve seen her perform…I don’t even know how many times. She’s just my favorite.
P: Oh cool. Yeah I really love her. So yeah, I listen to that. I made a Neko Case Pandora station. But Macklemore right now. I feel like he’s my best friend. He just hasn’t met me yet (laughs). We’re going to be friends (laughs). I just went camping this weekend in West Virginia for a bachelorette party for one of my old friends and we listened to like pop country music all weekend and it reminded me how much I love that too. Like, I don’t know. Just some like Garth Brooks (laughs), Shania Twain…
K: Oh yes. Shania Twain. What about Faith Hill?
P: (laughs) Yeah! Right! I mean, the stories are so good. So I’m here making work about queer hate crimes, listening to country music, to Garth Brooks (laughs). But yeah, I’m really into Macklemore. I’m trying to get everyone to know about him because his politics are so fantastic and he’s sober and he has this really positive message. He’s cool with queer rights stuff.
K: What’s the last exhibition you saw?
P: Oh god. DUN DUN DUN. Hmmm. What did I see? I don’t get out very much…
K: Yeah, do you go to a lot of galleries or museums?
P: I mean, I’d say that I really did the damn thing for Bushwick Open Studios, so I feel like I got my fix there. I don’t think I’ve seen one since that. I work very, very part-time at a gallery in Chelsea so sometimes I can see stuff down there. But Bushwick Open Studios was amazing which is how I found your card at Mazelle’s. So I picked it up and I saw “queer arts magazine” so I was like “okay, hello.” Since I was at Bushwick Open Studios I was gathering all my cards and I went online and looked at the website and saw that you guys did something with Katie Cercone, which I did the Emerge Program with at Aljira, and I called her and was like “Dude, what’s the deal?” and she was like “Dude, talk to Winter.” Done. So yeah, it was really cool. Bushwick Open Studios was really amazing. I live in that neighborhood and it was so amazing to see all this stuff, like stuff I see all the time. Like, I didn’t realize that huge warehouse was full of studios, so I’ve been able to make some connections through that and it’s been really great.
K: My last question is what you’re working on now.
P: Well I think I’m going have a solo show, I’ll let you guys know, here in Newark for the Newark Open Studios which is in November or something. So I think I’m going to do something with the various sites of violence itself. I think I’m going to start to do actual mold making of sidewalks where these crimes happen. Kind of like Rachel Whiteread but…sadder (laughs). But I also have a ton of imagery from the photographs from the articles that I’ve researched so I think I’m going start pulling out some of those old photographs that have been in my archive and doing a little bit of collage, which I’m playing with a little bit in the studio. So yeah, that’s it. OH. And making A THOUSAND bats (laughs).
K: (laughs) Yeah how many bats are you going to make?
P: I don’t know. At least 100. I have about a dozen now. So I’m trying to get my intern to help me.
K: How long does it take to make one bat?
P: Well it takes a long time to sand it to get it nice and smooth since I don’t finish them, like I don’t glaze them or whatever. So they need to be smooth to look like skin and work the bumps and folds so they start to look like folds of flesh. That’s really important. So that part takes a while since I have to take the seams out of the two-part mold. So I don’t know, to make one is like an hour or something and then to sand it is another couple hours. But then you break at least a third of the ones you make. I break them all the time. They’re super fragile because they’re hollow so you sand, sand, sand and then [makes a shattering sound]. Sometimes I use glue. Other times I just cut my losses. What else can I tell you? I guess a big part of me that gets me really amped up and excited is professional development for artists. It seems to me that there’s this conveyor belt of BFA and MFA programs and everyone is on this conveyor belt and then you just kind of fall of it (laughs) in a big dumpster or something with everyone else crawling on top of each other to get to the top. So I’ve been working with former professors and mentors to try to figure out how to make resources for artists so that’s some stuff [I’m working on]. For me, I not only see myself spending time in the studio as part of my art practice but I also see myself improving my websites, meeting lots of people, and trying to do social media stuff. I see all of that as part of my art practice because it is supporting my work but also because it’s about something that I want people to know about. A lot of people forget that or don’t know that hate crimes happen.
K: Yeah, I think that with those nine hate crimes in New York City, which is considered this bastion of “progress” and “freedom,” I mean Mark Carson was murdered right near Stonewall. So I think that made people realize that oh okay, no matter where you are or what the queer community gains in terms of political rights people still have to “catch up” and I think that made people realize that this still happens. If it happens in New York City…
P: …it can happen everywhere. Well the bat, the hate crime from which it originates from, I mean, a lot of hate crimes involve bats, and yes a few happen with guns too but most of them really are household, random objects. There were two brothers that were walking in Bushwick in 2010 and I can’t remember what ethnicity they were but it was culturally appropriate for them to walk down the street holding hands and they were going to the store to get some milk and someone perceived them to be gay and they were murdered for being gay even though they weren’t. Well, one brother was murdered and the other survived so for me, making these bats over and over it definitely becomes a methodical process but that’s the crime that I specifically think about when I’m making the bats.
(pause)
K: Well. On that note (laughs)
P: Ha, yeah, it’s a little depressing (laughs). I just feel bad at cocktail parties because people are like “Oh you’re an artist?” “Oh yeah, I make work about queer hate crimes.” And they’re like “Oh. Okay…” Well I really appreciate you guys coming out here. I know it’s a hike.
K: It was no problem. Thank you.
For more information please visit phoenixlindseyhall.com
