Alyson Provax and Serrah Russell, "But of course it’s hard to tell"
Introduction by Ashley Gifford
But of course it’s hard to tell; a collaborative exhibition by Alyson Provax and Serrah Russell is on view throughout September at Well Well Projects. Provax is a member of the gallery, which gives its members a month out of the year to have an exhibition. Provax and Russell created the work for the show earlier this year. That time consisted of some of the bleakest months of the pandemic. I found it incredibly inspiring that these two artists could come together throughout this time to create a body of work. Openly and vulnerably sharing, iterating on pieces of work sent back and forth through the United States Postal Service. The subsequent marks of these correspondences as they move through processing, travel, and arrival. The imprints of distance, touch, and being.
Their conversation starts just as both artists have finished creating work for the show and reflect on it together over Google chat, which they later share with me. They discuss themes, inspirations, and motivations. They also open up to each other about fears and worrisome thoughts they had about themselves, their work, the process of making and sending work, and their daily lives. Provax and Serrah then pick up the conversation after they’ve been able to reunite (safely) to install their work at Well Well Projects in North Portland for their exhibition.
We are currently in what I have begun to call the post-current COVID world. We are in a different stage of the pandemic, but we are certainly not through it. Both artist’s works resonate with sadness, loss, hope, and desires, felt throughout and still during this time. Since this body of work is so profoundly rooted in expression and a call and response to each other’s artwork, it seemed like an artist conversation between Provax and Russell would be the appropriate echo.
August 23, 2021
Alyson Provax
I've been wanting to ask about that piece that you mailed in March or so, with loose collage pieces in a square vellum envelope. I love that piece and I wanted to ask more about it - the process of making it in the studio and the mailing of it.
Serrah Russell
I think that was one of the first pieces that I mailed right?
I just found a photo of it before I sent it to you. It has little scrap of paper with yellow background and black text that reads " For the most beautiful"
We still retain so much of ourselves
Serrah
I don't remember much about what compelled me to create that. I was trying, and then, it really felt like trying, to make something loosely, not hold onto it all too tightly, to release it out into the mail, into the world, to you.
I had rolls and sheets of vellum on hand so that felt like it was a good way to see the work but also contain the work. An envelope that could reveal and conceal.
Alyson
Yes, it was one of the early ones. I remember it coming through my mail slot and finding this mark on the vellum envelope. It almost touched the image of the hand in the collage (which are all loose). The moment felt very special to me, in that the composition that had happened was exciting and I knew that there was some chance to it.
Serrah
There are only three fragments within the work: the text I mentioned, a rectangular shape with sky and trees, and another irregular shape with hands holding each other in a way. I know I was drawn here, and in future works in the course of making the work for this exhibition, to moments that revealed touch or the absence of it. Touch these days feels so important, so necessary but also anxiety-ridden, risky.
Alyson
The vellum felt so appropriate, too, and like it matched with the graphite transfer paper work I’d started. They’re very different materials but the way that both can conceal a bit, or show some unpredictable marks. The risk of touch is something that’s been on my mind again lately
Serrah
Absolutely. They feel like they invite touch themselves.
We've circled back to that, just as it felt we were returning to its safety.
I had to talk to my 2 year old son about not kissing other people.
That was pretty sobering.
Alyson
It feels harder to go back to that now, and heartbreaking but necessary to tell your son that. I remember in early 2020 thinking about how distance is now how we show we care, but that feels harder to me now.
Serrah
I think it's the going backwards. I'm struggling with that.
Alyson
Being able to hold these pieces you mailed felt like a strong connection, almost like a replacement for touch.
Serrah
There can be something encouraging about something new, a change. Like receiving pieces of art in the mail. It shifted those more monotonous redundant days for me.
There was a surprise element to it too. So yes, I think the mail was this stand in for us with touch and with unpredictability and surprise.
Alyson
In a time of few surprises, too.
August 24, 2021
Serrah
What surprised you in your own work through creating and preparing for this show?
Alyson
I was surprised by how intimate it all felt for me. I was often creating something in the studio and then putting it in the mail on the same day. I would have this feeling and make the work, but then when it was in transit I would worry that it was too much.
I was also so surprised by how the unintentional marks from the mail connected with the work that I've been making in the studio. I've been interested in redaction and legibility, and I wondered how that would come through with this new work, but then there it was. Even in the first transfer paper piece that I mailed to you with the small tree branch. This felt very fluid to me.
Serrah
Wow. I love hearing that. I didn't know you worried "that it was too much." I felt like I wasn't doing enough or sending enough.
Alyson
I never felt like it wasn’t enough from you, just those insecurities coming through. I’m used to keeping things and thinking about them and then deciding whether to share. Skipping that felt very vulnerable. I think since we’ve worked together before I was able to trust you, and that was key to me being able to explore and try new things without worrying that it all had to be “good.”
Serrah
Yes, absolutely. I agree. I felt free to send work and just know that there was an acceptance of the process, that you'd be looking at it all with kind and open eyes.
I think that makes such a difference, to know that I didn't have to explain everything or justify it.
Alyson
I love how you put that: “kind and open eyes.” It’s true. And part of the project turned into this response that we were having to each other’s work. There were our video conversations and the conversation that the work was having.
Serrah
I think we may have had our individual insecurities but I don't think either of us had doubts about each other making work that would be thoughtful and beautiful. I think we would have sensed that doubt in each other so it felt really nice to have that generous space to mail work into
Alyson
It’s true - and holding that space for each other became an important part of the project. I was always so excited to hear your response to the pieces I had mailed to you. Having this dialogue ended up allowing for more experimentation since I had the benefit of your readings of the works when they came in, which then could also inform future work. During this period when I often felt a bit awkward talking to people in person, too.
August 27, 2021
Serrah
Receiving work by you helped me to start again, try something new. I think one of the things that has been so hard in this pandemic, when we've been in isolation or lock down or just removed in some way, is that there is less to respond to, and for my work, I need something to go off of, to take in and then process and then put back out.
Alyson
Oh that’s so true. We need both the different perspectives and also that feedback about what it is that we’re working on to help make meaning of things. Reading and watching movies and tv has been more important to me during the pandemic. But missing from that is a dialogue like ours, the way I could show you how your work had changed in the mail and what it brought up for me, and then to hear what you were thinking about or curious about within that same work - the reminder that everything has multiple meanings.
We can’t ever know if our exact feelings are something felt by someone else, but having these close interactions was a reminder that a lot is shared. I can be forgetful of the fact that I’m not alone.
August 28, 2021
Serrah
Yeah I think the actual most painful part of most losses and traumas is thinking you are alone in them.
What have you been watching during the pandemic?
Alyson
I'm finding myself watching a lot of television that has low emotional stakes: house shows, travel shows, these narratives where nothing bad happens. Sometimes the use of language in those shows stands out to me - one of the pieces in this show comes from a scene in 'The World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals' - they are staying at a very expensive home in Hawai'i, and one of the hosts describes the luxury of that experience by telling the other two that they are the only people in that place and no one else. This stuck with me, as of course that is always true, for all of us: our experiences are our own, whatever they are. I wonder how it would change things to approach moments with that understanding that it is specific, and because it is specific it is precious.
The only person right here in this space, Alyson Provax
Serrah
That's so lovely. It is so exciting to me how you find language from all types of sources. You always have that radar on, like there could be something meaningful for your work and for your audience, anywhere really.
I totally connect with consuming content that is low emotional stakes. Sometimes you need something heavy to process your own heaviness but a lot of times we need something light to go up, to get out of whatever we're feeling. It's why I almost only watch comedies or cooking shows.
Alyson
Sometimes it's important to have that lightness as a reminder that other states of being exist.
Do you see media influencing your work? I wanted to specifically ask you because although you're using found and/or appropriated imagery, your work is always so very much your own, your hand is so evident in your work. It feels like you are using images that exist within the world as a medium without being directed by them, the way that you choose portions of an image, the shapes you cut, and the way that shapes relate to other shapes is very much you. But of course we all have personal relationships to media, and sometimes that comes into the work.
Serrah
I think the media does influence my work. But it’s more internal or thematic, harder to see on the surface.
I listen to podcasts and read, as much as I have time to. I am consuming language and other people's narratives and stories, and it weaves its way into the work, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking about.
It really happened a lot when I was making collages for my 100 Days series in late 2016/early 2017 during early days of the 45th presidency. I would take in the news and social media posts, and that influenced a lot of the emotions I was trying to contain and breathe back into the pieces.
Alyson
I can see that, in your work. And I love that way of working, too, where you look at filling yourself up with ideas and experiences and then seeing how you will integrate it into yourself and then how it will affect your work. For me at least I often don't see it at the time, it's more in retrospect that I see where something that I was thinking about merged with a piece or a project.
Your 100 Days project was so important to me in that time. I felt lost so much during that time. I felt like the ground was shifting under me and I didn't know what to do, and seeing the work that you were making in response, in real time, was very grounding.
Serrah
Absolutely. It takes me putting it out into the world and having a little bit of distance. I wonder if that's also what was so powerful for both of us to be receiving each other's work, that it was in real time.
Alyson
I think so. It's hard to come up with specifics, but at the time it felt very much like a piece of yours, or a conversation, or a text would spark something that would send me into the studio to make something else. The process felt like I was interweaving your work and perspective into the work in real time.
Serrah
We're writing this before we install, and I'm just feeling so excited to see the work in person, and together. So much of the work I haven't seen since I made it and mailed it to you. Only thinking of it as an experiment at the time, not knowing what it would become or what we would select for the show.
Alyson
I keep forgetting that there are pieces that you haven't seen in their final form. I'm so excited for you to see them. It's been a joy to have many of the pieces for this show in my studio as we prepare for install, and I know that there were many moments over the course of putting this together where I had almost lost the sense of what I had made or sent to you, it almost felt unreal. Usually when I'm putting together a show I keep the other work visible in the studio while I work, and of course for this one that wasn't possible. It felt strange and new. I was trusting so much in what your experience of my work was, and I loved that.
Serrah
We really did have to let go of control and trust each other. For instance when we selected works in the show, we both looked through each other's body of work and edited what was included and what wasn’t
Alyson
I remember distinctly when you suggested the idea of you choosing which of my pieces were in the show, and then the responsibility of choosing yours. - It felt like the right approach in consideration to how we made work for the show in the way that we did, a way that released control to the elements through shipping loosely through the USPS and then to each other as we created works that needed the others help, like how you continued development on my sunprint images, or how you would send me text works on paper and invite me to add collage to them .It was a little scary, a little raw. I love the result, although I think it was harder for me to choose your pieces than it would have been to choose my own, the editing was more sentimental for me.
Serrah
Oh wow, really? That's so fascinating
I feel like I was able to trust my gut on yours more easily. I think because I knew less of the details of it all, so I could just listen to my intuition and be like, yes, no, yes.
For editing my own work down, I'm always way too in my head. And just doubt all of it.
Alyson
Oh, that's interesting to me! I guess we didn't talk about what that was like on either end. I ended up knowing the ones I wanted to include because they were absolute "yes", there was a deep spark. But then thinking about many of the pieces that I didn't include, I was still very attached to them, or the memory of receiving them, or how they changed things for me in other ways, even if they weren't in the show.
I thought a bit about what we talked about with the 2017 show in Seattle, for the eclipse, about how the unshown works were just as important in their lack of visibility.
Serrah
Yes! Like it's a timeline, because each other's work was a source of our own, they all ended up threaded together
Alyson
That's a beautiful metaphor, I can see that in so many parts of my life in different ways.
Serrah
Yes, and of course we think that or are drawn to that idea because we're interested in these themes of presence and absence, in the eclipse show, and then now about what is obscured or kept hidden, and what is revealed
It all matters. And in some ways, that helps me to say "no" or "not right now" to works or situations because you're right, it's there in a way anyways.
Alyson
Absolutely. I'm so comfortable with that within my own work and it can feel so much more difficult for me when it comes to anything I feel any sort of nostalgia for.
Serrah
I'm guessing there will be a couple works that we don't end up fitting into the show once we get to install. I'm thinking about the works where I was tracing over my son's drawings or painstakingly trying to replicate the ease at which he makes these beautiful forms
Alyson
Like the nostalgia is a way of wanting to hold tight to something that will always be there, just not in the same way.
Oh, I love those works, too, and the way that you are incorporating him into your practice in many different ways.
Serrah
This conversation will help me at that install process if/when those get edited out of the show, to remember that they actually are within it, even if invisibly.
Image credit Rafael Soldi
Image credit Rafael Soldi
September 5, 2021
Alyson
Since we last chatted you've come down to Portland for the install and the opening, and now you're back in Seattle. It seems fitting to wrap this up after all of that, as we've now seen the works together in the gallery and also seen each other in person for the first time in years. Do you want to talk about the install and your piece "You just wanted something to change but didn't know how to feel when it did."?
Serrah
The install was easy (although long, because we had 38 pieces to install!) but it just felt like an extension of the process of collaborating. I think we've already spoken or shared with others how we selected each other's works for the show and then as we were seeing them framed and formalized, it took on a new life and meaning, an acceptance of what the works had become. f simply because one of us had decided to see them as capital A art and place them in the formalized setting of being framed and in a gallery.
We spent the first day of install simply opening the works and moving them around and I loved that, and seeing them all together. We shifted them around the gallery, and like a timeline, we started with one and then added to it. Very similar to how we created the work, call and response, and then respond again and again.
I loved how the works were not like one another at all in a sense. The tools and material we use is very different and yet there is so much overlap in form, color, sensibility. And it felt nice to just trust that, to install from the aesthetics of each.
You asked about the work "You just wanted something to change but didn't know how to feel when it did." - Well that work is a long rectangular work, with collage pieces inside a sheet of vellum that was mailed to you early on in our collaboration, when we were totally just experimenting and exploring. The work is very thin, just paper and an awkward size, so the Postal Service didn't want to mail it, they kept telling me it would be damaged, and I told them, that's what I wanted, that it was for an art project, that I wanted to record some experience or for it to catch some handling of the process, of the journey. And then when it arrived to you, it was not really damaged or torn, except for your Postal carrier had folded it in half to fit it in your mailbox, right? And so you sent me photos of the work and I didn't know how to feel about the fold. I had been seeing the collages within the vellum as a 2d work that might get a little 3d texture added, but with the fold, it became more of a 3d work that happened to have images in/on it.
So the title comes from my feelings about the piece but also relate to the time period of the pandemic, where I just was longing for something new, something to change, and at that time, just wanting the vaccine, for myself and my loved ones and everyone really, but then realizing that as things began opening up, that opened up new problems, new unknowns.
That piece was one of the ones that during install we decided to exhibit differently than we had first imagined, and to show it vertically rather than horizontally and to reveal the side of the piece that had the stickers from the USPS, the barcode and postage. What are your thoughts on that? On revealing that aspect of the process of the work very directly? And where do you see that being revealed or concealed in your work in the show?
Alyson
I completely agree - the install was very much connected to the process of making the work, and that experience both formalized what we have made while also connecting pieces and times.
I’m interested in what you said about the piece, and how the title came about. I love that. It reminds me that of course I didn’t see it until after it arrived folded, so that was simply how it exists to me. Maybe some metaphor in there for the pandemic era, too. I wanted to share in this interview that we changed how that piece would be displayed during install in part because I think it’s interesting that install is also a creative process and a way to learn more about the work, and in some ways to rethink it. I was so happy with that display of that piece, and it also feels very different from how I had been looking at it in my studio. And having that one direct nod to the post office felt right - the distance traveled was a big part of my experience of making the work and I’m glad that there are a couple of pieces that show that in a more obvious way. I’m thinking about the two postcard pieces of mine, “Untitled (might be / different by / then anyway)” and “Untitled (it wasn’t how i want to be)”. I’m glad to have the orange stamp at the bottom of those, again making visible the mailing. I was excited about installing “Untitled (might be / different by / then anyway)” in the shadow of a post, as well. The paper was a little worn by the mailing, and the texture of that along with the texture of the blind embossed letterpress feels like a reveal - like the paper is showing an underneath layer.
But of course, it’s hard to tell installation image by Mario Gallucci
But of course it’s hard to tell is on view at Well Well Projects from September 4 - 26, 2021.
Alyson Provax is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in loneliness, uncertainty and memory. She uses the tools of printmaking, and her work has been described as “printmaking disinterested in the perfection based traditions that exist as a form of exclusion.” She often uses repetition as a drawing tool rather than to make multiple originals, and calls into question the certainty of a text with its visual presentation.
Serrah Russell is a visual artist and independent curator living in Seattle, which she recognizes as unceded ancestral land of the Duwamish people. Through collage and appropriation, her practice addresses the relationship and tension between internal emotions and external surroundings. Using advertising and editorial images, she transforms what was intended to sell or influence, into space for meditation, compassion, and protest. Russell is co-director of Vignettes, a curatorial collective dedicated to providing opportunities for emerging and under-represented artists and writers.