Isadora Stowe: Psychological Landscapes
Isadora Stowe’s all-encompassing installations envelop the viewer in a world of visual language, reflective light, and personal narratives. These complex, psychological landscapes invite each of us to explore themes of interconnectedness, separation, and the space in between.
Tell me about your background and where your creative journey began.
I come from a creative family, my father, a printmaker, art professor and single parent, had a strong influence on my childhood. I grew up making art and watching him in his studio and he was just always creating and encouraging art as a way to express yourself and interpret the world. While other children were given cars or dolls, we were given crayons and clay, when we went on vacation, we spent our days wandering art museums. Our family home was filled with visiting artists, and art professors. Because of this unique upbringing I find art to be the best way to express myself and interpret and experience the world. I feel like art chose me, and I am fascinated by those who, unique to their family’s values, find themselves living a life in art. I received a BFA (and BA in Cultural Anthropology) and an MFA in drawing, painting and printmaking and have consistently been exhibiting in Museums, Universities, Colleges and Art Galleries across the US and in Mexico since 2011.
As a multimedia artist, your portfolio is composed of art installations, along with 2D and 3D work. What kind of environments do you create through site specific installation art, and how does this work differ from your other series?
I am inspired by the physical and psychological environments in my home state of New Mexico, and my wide array of interests and experiences in different fields all culminate together in the creation of the site specific installations. I like to provide opportunities for art to converge with science, psychology and philosophy in these created environments that feel all-encompassing to its audience. I use 4-dimensional mediums like colored light, light reflective paint and projection video mapping to help expand and connect all of the physical space in the installations. The 3-dimensional aspects of the art, like that of the projection video mapped onto the mylar silhouettes forms, the cut-out wood or plexiglass silhouettes and the circular, triangular, oval and hexagon forms help to also place the work outside of the usual square or golden ratio rectangle- because I want to move out of the reliance on those traditional spaces for my art to live. My 2-dimensional work of the layered drawings, silkscreens, spray-paint stenciled and painted backgrounds- are my first love, that flatness is what I gravitate towards and am the most comfortable articulating. I think in part because I have synesthesia, I think of 2D as being very alive and using the 3D and 4D elements helps to hyper accentuate the work for me and hopefully the viewer.
Can you talk a bit about the visual narratives you create in your work, and how these narratives relate to memory?
I am ultimately interested in interconnectedness- the state of being connected with each other- and why we have this-I believe false sense of separation from one another. I like to think of my work as providing opportunities to question and engage with those ideas within the subject matter of identity of self, our constructed worlds and art. Because my work is about the duality of interconnectedness, separation and the expansive plastic space in-between, this is the focus most surveyed in the myriad of my pieces alternating in different mediums. Mining the depths of memory and life, I arrange and rearrange the shapes of the long forgotten and the longed for. The images suggest both the inevitability of metamorphosis and the strangeness of the commonplace, manifesting my experience of what is outwardly normal and what lies just beyond. They are a response to life’s changing dynamics as well as a means to step outside our skin, to allow ourselves to be part of a universal awareness. I utilize differing iconographies or symbolic syntax to levy a sense of creative tension. An edge of surrealism implies coded meanings. Themes of regeneration and voyages run like leitmotifs, knitted in candy-colored hues, leavened with dense black lines and softened with muted shadows. Though our world is a large and multidimensional experience, an ultimately unknowable place, in the journey of discovery lies possibility, and a shaking off of limits. Moving fluidly between the ephemeral and the prosaic, the earthbound takes flight and anchors tug at the drifting syntax in my work, asking the viewer to reflect on their own memory of the journey.
How has your work shifted and evolved over time?
There were times in my life I thought that art making wasn’t what I would spend the rest of my life centered on, and then in continuous big ways it reminded me I just couldn’t live without it. Accepting and making art an intentional integrated way of life gives me so much meaning to my existence. I think the evolution of my work has also come in part from my teaching career, through opportunities for mentorship, leadership and learning how to articulate processes and contextualize art history - and being around artists consistently has helped me in my own practice to holistically interpret why and what I am doing. I'm still excited and motivated every day when I'm in the studio, even if it's thinking about art or talking to my students about art. I've been waiting basically my whole life for that art centering and love for creativity to dissipate and instead it has continued to gain more momentum- and I continue to be very intrigued about that as a phenomena in my life. I think that is why my work constantly evolves and builds on itself and because I am forever fascinated with finding unexplored paths to create the connection with my work to myself and to the viewer.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has your art practice grown or changed?
Since March of 2020, COVID-19's arrival, my life outside of the home as an Assistant Art Professor, and my kiddo’s academic and social life have drastically changed. I’ve come to realize my previous life was over scheduled in many ways which included a different way of negotiating my studio practice. Being essentially home all the time provides more opportunities to steal away more time in my studio. Time I would have spent commuting to work or hosting events outside of the house or even errands have provided extra pockets of time each day. I have three studios in my house- one dedicated to silkscreen, one to spray-painting processes and one for everything else. I work in layers so being able to add a layer then go back to a meeting or office hours has been very helpful in moving my practice forward bit by bit- allowing things to sink in more, and reminding me more that my practice is a marathon and not a sprint. I try and keep the weekends for long stretches of concentrated studio work. Two solo exhibitions were placed on hold indefinitely that I had been preparing work for, so the pressure has somewhat subsided for those pieces and I am trying to take advantage of working differently. Meaning I am trying to be a lot more measured and take advantage of feedback from other artists and let thinking about the work and the research for the work permeate in a different way. In this chaos of the state of the world, I have been privileged during this time so far to get to find opportunities for introspection, community and connection about my work which has taken the tone of my previous more frenetic studio practices into more balance.
Which experiences have impacted your work as an artist?
Navigating parenthood- especially single parenthood has revealed a plane of intense awareness and possibility in my work. Being profoundly connected to the emotional and psychological being of my child is singularly a way to attune to life in its offerings and its anxieties to translate that into my art making. The needs of my art coupled with that of my growing child initiated a drastic change in the methods, processes and materials I use to create. Moving from my 2D large scale oil painting, I started incorporating 3D as a more dualistic way of articulating my visual language-they say artists tend to move into 3D after having a child- and that was definitely true of my experience. Moving into 4D seemed like the inevitable evolution of the work expanding form. Sharing an art studio with my child led to an integration of their images, to line drawings and free associations between home and the world beyond, self and relationships. Helping me address specifically my interest in the processes and negotiations of identity and interconnectedness. Being a parent also has changed my practice because it led to extremely fulfilling relationships with other artist mothers who have and continue to influence my work. I have a sisterhood of artists, many of them mothers, at all stages of their careers who instinctively understand the roles I occupy and have created a network of sustenance and support.
How has Instagram impacted your art career?
It’s a huge inspiration for me. I love seeing artists in their studios working and artist mothers making this artist parent, academic life work. Getting to see other artists believing in the growth of their practice and experimenting, working it all out in real time- it's such a great motivator. I just love that inside world that we get to see of other artists or creators. I feel like it is a generous, democratizing platform to share and create dialogue about art. Creating art in a rural New Mexican border town as a single mother working full time, can feel very isolating from the rest of the world and the connections and friends I have made in instagram have led to some incredible opportunities. Such as being one of the artist featured in the book "The Motherhood of Art" by Marissa Huber and Heather Kirkland of @carveouttimeforart, to being connected to a larger parent academic community @artist.parent.academic and by connecting with the Artist mother community @artistmotherpodcast, where I became a Crit Mentor for artists and now will be providing professional development courses for artist mothers starting Jan. 2021 with the founder @kaylanbuteyn. I also like to use Instagram as a visual diary for my own growth as an artist and observing my studio and professional practice timeline trajectory.
What are your future goals and aspirations?
My future goal is to continue getting to do what I love- making work, exhibiting work, teaching about art and empowering artists. Ultimately, I want my work to exist in a larger context, I want it to change consciousness. I am not sure how that will manifest itself but that is my future aspiration. It may be that I do that through my other work- through research and public presentations and publications about creativity and its relationship with resilience, visual literacy (objectification, male gaze) and its philosophical implications- or through teaching and empowering generations of marginalized artists and educators. I want to make lasting change in how our culture values and honors art in all its interconnected facets.
Website: https://isadorastowe.com/home.html
Follow Isadora on Instagram: @isadorastowe