In connection with my column on Gigi Janko's art installation in Wellsville, Ohio, I interviewed her by email. (My preferred method because I'm hearing-impaired. In this case it was also necessary because I didn't have time to go back there to interview her in person.) She was gracious enough to answer in detail and with great candor. I think we all could learn from her; to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and create art on a raw level. Here are her answers verbatim. No editing. No corrections.
Here are the questions sent to her in an email. Below are her responses.
Vision:
In order for me literally to work on anything, I have to have a complete vision for the thing, but that doesn't mean this vision remains the same throughout the process. This just to say that if you come up to me at almost any moment, I will give you at least a general idea of my vision—of what whatever I am working on will become, or at least that part of what I'm working on— but come back to me in a couple weeks, and that plan could have radically changed. Although in the moment they feel precarious, I welcome these change of direction. They are always for the better. Often times the early end posts exist only as placeholders to allow me to begin laboring when I would otherwise stall, waiting to make decisions.
All of this was very much the case for But I Misunderstood. I'll get into more detail here in a bit, but I went on quite a journey trying to pin down exactly what this piece would become. Ultimately, as it often does, it felt much simpler than I had anticipated.
For me, the most significant moment of transformation on But I Misunderstood was the first marks of spray paint. They were the first highly personal element to be added and that changed my vision entirely. Suddenly the concept was clearer, visual coordination was solved, the whole thing shifted from a strictly structural phenomena to a highly personal one. The spray paint reads, in very abstract writing "I don't know what to do." Which is exactly how I felt about the piece at the time that I installed it (and about a wider array of deeper things). It came after most of the internal rigging was structured, but before any of the signs in the yard were set. I would say 75% of the work was done, but it felt like less, because none of it had been tied together yet. Then I started spray painting, everywhere, for weeks (it felt like), and each time I turned around, things started to look different. It was becoming literally cohesive, but it was also feeling revealing. No matter illegible, I knew that what was written everywhere was, "I don't know what to do." That's a pretty vulnerable thing to plaster all over the place. Recognizing this, and the state of mind I was in that caused me to want to do this, helped me realize what the whole piece was really about. Once I saw that the entire structure was a physical manifestation of trauma and then saw the yard as the symptoms, I brought text, in the form of yard signs to send the message home. Ordinarily, I would find using signs like that a little crass, but I felt—given the response I was getting to the structure independently—that I couldn't rely on a purely conceptual interpretation of themes. If I wanted to engage with people, I was going to have to be literal, whether I liked it or not. I actually like the way things turned out, so that's good. : )
-"This is What i Want to do with This" moment:
There were way too many "this is what I want to do with this" moments, but that's how it is for me with many of my projects. My misconceptions about where this project would go were particularly dramatic in this case, because I also began with such a limited understanding of what my options were. One of the primary purposes of getting familiar with the materials, and the skills that will be needed for whatever it is i am making, is so that I understand what I will be capable of accomplishing. I moved to Wellsville with zero construction expertise.
Those first couple months in particular, the single question I was trying to get answered was not "how do I things," but "once I learn how, what exactly will I be able to do?" Not only was I dealing with my standard landscape dotted with myriad rabbit holes I was guaranteed to fall into, but I was also going to spend almost a year trying to get my sea legs practically. Every time my understanding of my abilities changed, my vision changed. Every time I got a better understanding of feasibility, my vision changed. I was changing my mind about what I wanted to do with the thing every day, until I was able to rely on my own two hands to accomplish absolutely everything I needed to do to complete the project.
-or Did it evolve in stages:
But I Misunderstood evolved in many stages. For quite a while, it was going to maintain a house-like consistency. This was during the time that I had the least confidence, the least skill, the most advice, and a rapidly decreasing amount of motivation. I was working my ass off, but not feeling quite right about it. The people around me were trying to repair things and I was destroying them. The only thing I knew for sure is that 99% of the material I saw covering the surface of things I found disgusting. I made my decisions based simply on that reaction alone. Those people who were trying to help me found my behavior frustrating, my lack of certainty about what I wanted frustrating, my disregard for practicality frustrating. Those people left. Those people also forgot why I bought these properties in the first place, to make art, to make big art. Worse yet, they had tried to get me to forget it too.
When this situation left me in a state of confusion, I stopped working in the rectory building. I stopped working in the rectory building for almost a year and a half. That was a terrifying decision. The investment I had made in this place was already so significant. Choosing to abandon it was nuts. I only did so, because I told myself over and over and over again that I wasn't abandoning it, "I just needed time to think." I avoided the place completely; the thought of it made me anxious, the knowledge that pigeons were roosting in the cupola made me anxious, everyone's incessant curiosity about the place made me anxious. I distracted myself with the work at the fire department (I joined almost immediately when I arrived in town), but the decision that would change everything was the one to tear down the house next door to the convent (it was located on the lot that is now the fenced garden). It was an action taken largely to pass the time, partly to build skill, party to stay in shape, partly to prove I could. I figured having some extra lumber would be useful too.
These tear downs, of which I would do many many more (5 1/2 more, to be precise), became a sort of non-official performance. People would drive by before work or after, checking in daily on my progress. It was a local phenomenon, a genuine specialty to see this small girl take a place apart bit by bit. From their point of view, it really would come down by magic. I worked from sunrise to sunset and often later, moving materials back to my property and what not, every day of the week, for about a month, often less, on each house. When I had a choice, I sought out places with fire damage, which increased my hero status, both because the buildings were blights, greater eye sores, and because they were more challenging tear downs, with whole sections of the structure being unstable due to scaling or rotting. I was consistent with the materials I collected through all the jobs (not all of which went into this project, but that's another story), making it easy to sort though what I was keeping and what I was tossing. Most of the houses I tore down for the owners; they only paid for the cost of the dumpsters. (I own the lot next door to my place and the lot on Ninth Street, both of which were purchased at Sheriff Sales.)
My second winter here is when I began brainstorming about the rectory building again. I stepped inside it in March after constructing a number of small paper and balsam wood models of the rectory as well as a replica gingerbread house completely to scale and everything. Needless to say, I knew the place my heart, even if I could not make up my mind what to do with it. It was studying the materials I had collected, and another project i was working on at the time, that gave me the idea to construct the interior in the literal manner that I did. I'll spare you the details of how I arrived there, but basically, I figured out that I could use the lengths of the lumber that I had harvested to determine the height of the floored segments. I made the least number of decisions myself, simply setting the rules in motion and seeing what happened. I love building projects that run themselves like this: You build them, but don't decide them. That's how the rectory structure gets built, then I reach the roof, decide I want to take it off, take it off from on top of it. Crazy. I even took off the cupola roof and topper from on top. When I saw how that stuff looked scattered across the yard, I thought it looked beautiful. I have a strange thing against grass. Like I don't mind it personally, but as something near my work, I can't stand it. So I knew I had to cover the grass. Construction materials seemed as good a material as any. I still find it beautiful. I have a unique sensibility.
See above for story about spray paint and signs…
-How do my life experiences fit in:
Clearly, the whole thing is about my life, but I really didn't see that until the last six months or so of working on it. I was really expecting it to be an abstract thing until it transformed into what it is today. But I Misunderstoodhas a snapshot perspective. It really shows a live moment in time. The signs that are displayed were printed in three separate batches. Each time I sent those lists out to be printed, those were the thoughts that were plaguing my mind. They were as raw and real as you can get. This piece reached the conclusion it did because I was having issues with my mental health for most of my time working on it, particularly at the end. I decided that the only way that I could deal with both situations at the same time was if they were in sync, if I made the art about what was going on in my life. Doing so was the best decision I ever made.
-How do the struggles that Wellsville faces/my experience there fit in:
The piece as a whole is really about how trauma infiltrates a system, whether that be an individual or a community. I have experienced firsthand what it's like to be blind to what's being done to me—and to be a witness: going in and out of houses as a firefighter and from a distance as a community member. I see what it's like for a whole community to be disturbed by a series of local, regional and global infrastructural changes in a short period of time. The effect was catastrophic. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but I really do see it as a mass trauma. They community is certainly responding as one that has experienced a trauma. The instability. The lack of identity. The struggle to hold down jobs/find the motivation to do so. The substance abuse. The mental health challenges.
For me, the walkway structure erected within the brick artifice represents this malignancy—the thing that slowly takes over the thing—largely without you seeing it coming. When I say this, I am taking into consideration the actual process of construction and the way in which the townsfolk didn't know that it was a piece of art until all the boards were sticking up out of the roof, and even then found it hard to believe. They still do. The effects of trauma are misunderstood in the exact same way. Your brain does absolutely everything it possibly can to justify what is happening to you, to make sense of things in any way that does not put blame on the actual culprit. The piece is titled "But I Misunderstood," for that reason. All of the signs that I printed are misunderstandings, are the problems I thought I was having.
That's how I see most of the struggles I've observed in Wellsville. Everything is rooted in the history of the people and the place, of the individual families and all of these factories that shut down, the history of the mothers and fathers whose livings got cut off, who became dependent on substances and neglected their loved ones. Every story is different and every chain of traumatic consequence is different, but I believe once it starts it doesn't stop without very deliberate conscious effort whether that be on an individual level or a communal one.
-How has the communities attitude changed:
I don't believe it has.
They have gotten used to it the way you get used to a big box store you don't approve of, except this doesn't have any of the conveniences.
I am probably lucky if it has become part of the landscape of this place, a natural inner grievance, but something they still identify with. Maybe this has happened to some, or is happening, but I think it will take time. I am young and excessively impatient; the scale of time in my head needs to translate when I think about how Wellsville might be feeling about me. Things run at a very slow pace around here. A thing, a place, a person is still new when they have arrived within the last ten or even twenty years.
-Acceptance:
The only acceptance I have any control over is mine. I have accepted, to the extent I can, how But I Misunderstood was received. I am unsure how others feel about it at this time. I don't know if living with something qualifies as accepting it.
-Where to go from here?
The next thing I have in motion for But I Misunderstood, is to establish a gallery-friendly viewing experience of the piece. I am planing on accomplishing this through the use of a VR headset. I have already taken the full array of 360 images in a grid of about 3 ft range, meaning that you can hop from photograph to photograph within the VR world every 3 ft. I have also taken photos from almost every possible position within the rectory structure. In my opinion, this will make the headset experience of the piece potentially a much more rewarding one, certainly more detailed. You will be able to enter into the yard, over all the section with nails and to the highest points in the building, all within a matter of minutes. It will be portable, convenient, all in all, much more easily consumable than But I Misunderstood is as it stands, in person. As far as I am concerned, I may have made the thing simply in order to make the digital rendition. (I know that's a bold statement, but long term, that's what will last.)
-Stabilize?
See above. Otherwise…
I don't know. I am hesitant to put more work into the piece at this point. Sometimes I wonder if I will wake up one day and decide to clear the land because I have another idea. If that happens I will likely reuse all the materials.
There is nothing I love more than materials that have history. I adore objects that have been used over and over again in role after role. In my work the background information for each is a large portion of the conceptual framework. Having a past becomes a provision for the future, something to literally consume or use as though it were physical substance like any other.
-Tourism?
When i first moved here, when I first finished But I Misunderstood, and when Steve's article first came out, I was optimistic about the potential for artistic tourism in this location—I now believe this to be naive. Theoretically, the location appears to have potential. Practically it is not difficult to access. We are about an hour from Pittsburgh, two from Cleveland, four from both Cincinnati and Detroit. But in all actuality, what I didn't understand (and still don't really understand) is ironic: regionally, what I have done appears far more exceptional to me (and others from further away) than it does to people locally. Now, that might be a bit dramatic, and it could simply be that people don't know about it, but it's certainly how I feel.
-Where do i go artistically?
Artistically, I am most affected by the decisions I made at the very end of installation, the decisions to design, print, and place the signs scattered about the yard area.
I am interested in working in an increasingly personal, expositional way, in dealing with questions of ethics and morals and personal boundaries. I want to choose projects based on feelings, subjects, and context rather than materials, possibilities, and skills. Don't get me wrong, I believe I will always have a highly tangible practice; I am deeply attached to a material way of working and expressing myself, but I want the point of initiation to come from something more emotionally necessary rather than physically objective.
Right now, actively, I am writing. I am 532 pages/ 348,771 words (as of today) into a document. I've been working on it since late fall and hope to have an edited draft of something by August. It's an account of my life up until this point. (I know, I know, what 22 year old goes around thinking she can write a memoir, but I swear, some intense and unusual things have happened to me…). This is something I'm looking to publish rather independently of the rest of my work.
Sculpture wise, I always have countless projects in motion, that's just how I do things. I like to start many balls rolling at once and go back and forth nudging them all as I feel inspired to do so. It's really important for me to give things room to breathe, give myself room to think, and give the process room to run its course.
In the fall I'm going to grad school. I have gotten into a couple of places RISD, UPenn and Cranbrook, and all acceptances aren't out yet. I have a really strong offer from RISD, so my inclination is to go there. All of the programs I'm looking at are 2 years.
-what about my role/goals with the town?
(This is really just a side note.)
I want to say that this still depends entirely on them, but I'm not sure that's still true. I think that at some point I will will choose to move on, energetically, even if I maintain a managerial relationship to this property. For a while I have had an "all in" attitude and was eager to give as much of myself as this area, as Wellsville particularly wanted to take, but the offer was never really accepted, largely to my benefit. At the moment, it's probably still on the table. I am qualified to teach to a basic skill level in most of the arts including performing, and to an advanced level in dance (what I studied in NYC and undergrad), in function and figurative ceramics (undergrad), and in sculpture (my MFA subject). I love to teach, always have, and I plan to become a professor in the future. When I arrived in Wellsville, I imagined that I would be teaching alongside the work I was doing here, but it just never happened. I've thought about one day setting up an artist-in-residency program, a bonafide art school, or gallery in the church, but I'm just not convinced that's the best use of my energy. For the moment, I am open minded and I will try to stay that way. I think being away for a while will be good for me.
-Am i still a volunteer Firefighter?
No, I'm not a volunteer firefighter at the moment. The two plus years that I spent most actively engaged with the department were the years most rigorously physical with the construction, the skill sets were a perfect match, complementing both my mindset and my body at the time.
As my mental health took a serious decline, I found it harder and harder to balance the place I had be in the recovery from an eating disorder and the person I was expected to become when the tones went off. That was my primary reason for leaving the department, first on leave, punctuated by a couple attempts to rejoin that felt forced and no longer sympathetic to the work I was doing or the person I was living, then finally fully resigning this past fall.
I leave space in my heart for the revival of my passion for the almost sport-like quality of the work (don't get me wrong, they take it plenty seriously, but there is a considerable element of fun), the adrenaline, the teamwork, the high stakes, high pressure, drop of the hat moments, the on-edge quality it washed over my entire life, but for now I know it's not right for me and I'm not right for it.
-What are the panels you affixed to the church made of?
The panels affixed to the church are pieces of roof slate collected from the houses torn down during the material gathering phase of But I Misunderstood.
The slate is spray painted with a white stencil reading "I believe" and black stencils representing censored segments. There are jars or stones sitting on the wall by the adjoining church steps. One of the banners on the slate wall reads "feel free to throw stones." I did mean that literally. I don't think very many people have dared to, that's probably a good thing. Lol.
They are affixed with spray foam adhesive. I installed it in layers, (you can watch a video on my website or my YouTube) so I could rest the following layer of slate on the rim of the previous. It was a slow but rewarding process.
I have not yet installed it, but within the next couple of weeks, the description next to A View From Afar will read "I made A View from Afar in response to the 2023 Columbiana County Pride Festival hosted in Wellsville. From the moment I arrived in this town, I kept my mouth shut about the things I believe. I was scared that if I took an unpopular position I would struggle to find a supportive community for my work. Although this may have worked for a while, I am not proud of my silence. I have sat back and nodded when I wanted to scream. I wrote on each slate "I believe" followed by censorship blocks, because of all the things I haven't stood up for, that I still struggle to stand up to. I often rest in a state of shame. This piece is an acknowledgment of all the things we feel we must keep hidden. This is my apology.
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