{"id":7264,"date":"2011-06-23T11:57:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-23T11:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zatista.com\/blog\/?p=7264"},"modified":"2011-06-23T11:57:28","modified_gmt":"2011-06-23T11:57:28","slug":"maira-kalman-studio-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zatista.com.au\/blog\/2011\/06\/23\/maira-kalman-studio-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Maira Kalman: Studio Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article by Daisy Atterbury via the Paris Review Daily<\/a>.<\/span>_<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Maira Kalman \u2013 Photograph by Thessaly La Force<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Maira Kalman<\/a> lives surrounded by chairs both life-size and miniature. Her studio is two floors below her West Village apartment, and it’s filled with such objects as hair tufts from her beloved (and now late) dog Pete, puppets from the 1930s, and hats adorned with feathers from friends and admirers. I dropped in to chat about Maira\u2019s\u00a0first retrospective at the Jewish Museum<\/a> and heard, among other things, about her love for Thomas Jefferson<\/a>\u2014unlike Abraham Lincoln<\/a>, he\u2019s apparently \u201cnot boyfriend material\u201d\u2014and her studio moss collection.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I left college, I decided I wasn\u2019t going to write anymore. I started out writing fiction, and I thought I would be a writer\u2014it was something that I just always assumed when I was a little kid. I had a teacher who told me I was a good writer, and I loved writing. Then it became tormented, as it often does when you hit your teens. So I thought, I have to lighten up a little bit. And it was the age of New Wave<\/a> and punk<\/a>, and there was a whole new era of illustration going on. So, I started to draw.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kalman\u2019s desk, where she paints. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>I don\u2019t want to use my imagination anymore; I\u2019m tired of that. I have the pleasure of seeing things all around me. I don\u2019t have to make anything up. For the time being, that pleases me. I dreamed a few nights ago that I invented a candy to stop time, and it was a lemon-honey candy, translucent like a lollipop. I thought, Well, I made that up\u2014and I wasn\u2019t sure it was pleasing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kalman files images for reference. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>The subject of my work continues to be the normal, daily things that people fall in love with. I happen to fall truly in love with things many times during the day\u2014the bobby pin, the rubber band, the paper clip, the safety pin. Those fasteners intrigue me. On one level, you could say, What else is there? Alex Melaman and I decided that we would have a society for the love of rubber bands, which might have been an excuse for people to come and drink. I\u2019m not a drinker, so I was in it for the rubber bands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Miniature chairs by Vitra. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>My work is all narrative, and it\u2019s always word based, and speaks, really, to literature. This is my way of writing. I\u2019m very connected to the feeling that I get from reading books, and the information I get from reading books, and the hopefulness I get from reading books\u2014the text and handwriting, word becoming image. Now I\u2019m on a complete, hysterical, Beckett<\/a> phase. I\u2019m going to go to Dublin<\/a> to do a little Beckett research. I saw a play called\u00a0Watt<\/em>, a novel he wrote, but in the loosest word possible. It was experimenta, yet lyrical. Accessible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Moss that Kalman took from Monticello. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>I have a moss collection. From Monticello<\/a>, I brought back Thomas Jefferson\u2019s moss. He wasn\u2019t alive for this moss. I took it off the side of a building, because I\u2019m doing a children\u2019s book about Jefferson. It connects me to having been there, and it connects me to an experience. I mean, there are so many things that are inexplicable about the process of working. A talisman gives me a sense of an emotional reaction which may or may not affect the work. It gives me a narrative.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Thomas Jefferson\u2019s peas. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a>If you look at the final result, you can say the discussion about the difference between art and illustration is tedious, and you can say, Who cares? But I think the distinction has something to do with speed. Illustration is done on assignment\u2014you don\u2019t have months and years to develop a project. Maybe there\u2019s something superficial about illustration, or maybe there\u2019s something delightful about it. Maybe it\u2019s a mind-set.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Frank Gehry\u2019s Little Beaver chair. Photograph by Thessaly La Force.<\/p><\/div>\n

Maira Kalman\u2019s\u00a0retrospective<\/a> is at the Jewish Museum in New York City<\/a> through July 31, 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…So I thought, I have to lighten up a little bit. And it was the age of New Wave and punk, and there was a whole new era of illustration going on. 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