PICTURED: Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Now, Baby, 2019 life-sized oil painting by Alana Carlson
Interview by Debora Stanczak for On Meaning
(This WINTER INTERVIEW, conducted in January of 2021, was originally published in ARTHAUS:Detroit's subscriber newsletter, May 5, 2021 edition. Inquiries can be sent to Debora Grace Stanczak at arthaus.detroit@gmail.com)
ARTHAUS:Detroit (AD): So, Alana, I am new to your work. I discovered your painting at 333 Midland, at the Plus One Exhibit in October of 2020 (masked and socially distanced). There were so many pieces there that were simply amazing, and I've been to a number of 333 Midland shows before. I think this was one of the best.
Alana Carlson (AC): I would agree.
AD: But of all those amazing pieces, yours was one of the ones that held me the longest, and the strongest, and I would really love to hear you tell us about it. To begin, can you introduce yourself? Tell readers, and potential listeners, about your background.
AC: I was inspired to start drawing at a really young age. I think most artists are inspired to become artists at a really young age. I think, statistically, there's a dropoff around [the age of] 12 or 13, but I kept going, because I just really had an affinity for it, and I always loved to draw, and then, paint animals, as well as people. But I've always -- I think one of the first things that I ever saw that inspired me to try to draw well was some other child at my elementary school had one of those Draw Fifty Horses books. And they had one up and it looked so good, and I was like, "Oh man! A second-grader did that? You know maybe I could do that too. I'm in first grade." You know I got one of those books from the library and I kept trying my best to follow the instructions and work from that, and I had some great art teachers in elementary and in middle school and high school. And then I took some extra-curricular art classes at the Paint Creek Center for the Arts, which is in Rochester, just a little tiny repurposed house. It's a community arts center. Kids can take classes there still, I believe. Maybe not during COVID, unfortunately.
AD: There's a lot we can't do during COVID.
AC: But after I graduated high school, I took some classes at OCC (Oakland Community College), and moved on to Kendall College for Art and Design, which is in Grand Rapids, and learned a lot there with some really great professors and instructors there.
CREDDIT: Jeff Cancelosi
Artist Alana Carlson
AD: And how do we transition you from that point in time to where you are living and working right now?
AC: So, I graduated in 2003. I'm from this side of the state (of Michigan), so I moved back to be nearer to some friends on this side of the state, and family, and started living in Ferndale and Detroit and wound up working for a little independent family-owned market called Western Markets, in Ferndale, which is where I do some graphic design work, and some marketing stuff. So that's, you know, tangential to art-making. It allows me to make art. And have been continuing to try to pursue an art career, you know, as well as a professional career.
AD: So you're doing work commercially, as well as the fine art circuit.
AC: Yeah.
AD: I'm going to ask you a two-sided question. Where do you see yourself in five years, and where would you like to see yourself in five years ?
AC: That's a good question. And I honestly really don't know. I would like to...ideally...what I would like to see, I would like to be happily working on art, continuing to have my studio either in my home or in another location, if that works better. Maybe a little further success with showing paintings that I create (<https://alanacarlsonart.com/paintings-1>). I do spend a lot of my art time currently on commissions, which is great. And I love those, so maybe continuing with that as well. I do a lot of pet portraits and some people portraits. That's fun. I'm not sure where the actuality will take me, but...
AD: I love how you put that, "where the actuality will take me." I think that's coinable. I heard you say earlier -- and you lit up when you said it -- that you love people, you love painting people, so I'm going to guess that the portraits, the commissions and the pet portraits are the things that give you the most satisfaction.
AC: They do. It's kind of like, there's things to appreciate about making art for oneself and, like, expressing oneself, and then there's things to appreciate about working for a client and making their vision a reality, so to speak. So I like seeing other people's faces light up when I present them with a portrait of their pet or their family member. And it's like, "Okay, I don't have to spend hours and hours thinking about what this means. And layering my own meaning into it. Or parsing out what I would want to say about it, which I also love doing. But there's more of a process in making the work say something.
AD: When work has to say something, there's an evolution that takes place, and sometimes you're not entirely in control of it, but it takes more thought. And maybe it takes more trust? I dunno. It's almost like going on a blind date, sometimes, you know?
AC: Right, yeah.
AD: But that is a good jumping point, because next we need to get the scoop on your piece (pictured above) where, all I can think of when I look at it is meaning.
Alana, let's let readers savor the image you painted (above) and size up how it speaks to them. They can jump to On Meaning where we'll continue this conversation. It'll be fun [for them] to see if their thoughts line up with yours.
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INTERVIEW WITH DETROIT AREA ARTIST ALANA CARLSON: PART 2
(Part 1 of this interview, conducted in January of 2021, was originally published in the ARTHAUS:Detroit's subscriber newsletter, May 5, 2021 edition. Inquiries about Part 1 can be sent to Debora Grace Stanczak at arthaus.detroit@gmail.com)
ARTHAUS:Detroit (AD): I discovered your work at 333 Midland. 333 Midland is a mega space. Artist studios and gallery space. An industrial space that’s basically a refurbished stamping plant. I think it was the Lewis Stamping Plant, and it’s really worth a visit. But I saw your work in an exhibit that was called Plus One, where a resident artist invited another artists to show their work at the same time. In tandem. Can you tell me which artist invited you to show your work, with them, at 333 Midland.
Alana Carlson (AC): That would be my friend and wonderful artist Linden Godlove…She has a lot of work in encaustic.
AD: Tell us first of all what the title of this piece is.
AC: This piece is titled after a song that I kept listening to while I was working on it. It’s kind of a maybe ironic or sarcastic comment on the painting’s meaning. It’s called Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You, Baby. In the subject matter, if you can’t see it…there’s a woman on a bicycle, not in motion, standing to the left of a road, and down the road there’s a car coming. She doesn’t seem to see it. She’s wearing a deer mask, and there’s a crow or a raven in the road, and the crow is trying to crack a nut using the car, which is something that they do. I’m always fascinated by animals using tools, or otherwise, displays of intelligence that we don’t normally attribute to creatures other than ourselves. And then there’s two ghostly animal figures to the right of the painting. One is a stag and one is a bunny rabbit.
And the first thing I’m struck by is just the beauty of the realism. Your ability to render everything just so realistically and, the forms, so beautifully. Then the second, again, the colors. And…let’s assume this is…sunset?
AC: Yes. I'm a sunset kinda gal.
AD: Twilight is my favorite time of day. I think that’s another reason I was drawn to this. There are so many things that pull me in. It's life-sized and I feel invited to step into it, like a roadside bystander. The sun draws me in, then I look at the road. I’m intrigued and a little mesmerized by the work that the crow is doing. And then I look over to the bicyclist at the side of the road. I see the mask on her face. I see that it’s a deer mask. And I see the stag that’s across the road; it’s basically an apparition. And then I see the car that's coming. I see the car – she doesn’t see the car -- and I immediately think, “Uh oh.” But she’s in the middle of the road; she seems completely unaware. So many thoughts rush to mind. I’m not sure if I want to say what conclusion comes to mind.
AC: But I think, so far, you’re pretty spot on with the emotion or intent of what I was trying to create when I came up with the concept.
AD: When you’re doing layout, you know how to balance images in the field so that there’s harmony or so there’s a certain amount of tension. Well, my eyes [were] going from the sun to the crow, then bouncing to the car but ignoring it, and then moving to the girl, and then to the other creatures, and then back to the car. I realized as my eyes would do that, over and over, it was creating a little bit of anxiety for me, because I felt like, “She doesn’t know she’s about to get hit. Did she plan this? Or is she completely unaware?” So, I’m thinking…suicide not being a light topic…that your life can change in the blink of an eye, without your having any awareness that it’s going to, that’s where [the thoughts of] this piece rested with me. I would love for you to unpack this.
AC: So yeah, you’re definitely like…most of the people who encountered this piece and spoke to me at the show were really on the right track with what my intention was, which is beautiful and doesn’t always happen. So I really appreciate that. And I think that speaks to a measure of success in some way in communicating these ideas. So, with the figure, it wasn’t necessarily like a suicide attempt. It’s more like…when I created the painting in early 2019 I had this feeling about my personal situation plus the situation that the world was in. We’re on the edge of this election that was going to happen, and the climate was in crisis. I just felt like we’re all on edge, you know, like at the top of the roller coaster, and we don’t know what’s gonna come next, but it’s gonna be big, and it’s gonna be scary. And we weren’t paying attention to it. We weren’t ready for it. And so the figure is kind of a stand in for humanity, or a person in this state of impending “something.” And the mask is to make her more..less of a portrait of a specific person, or representative of a specific person and a little more universal, a reminder we’re all animals in a sense. We all live in this world. This is the [one] earth that we have. This is the [one] planet that we have. We can’t -- as much as people talk about going to live on Mars…where are we gonna get the stuff that we need to live on Mars? We need this planet, so we need to take care of it.
AD: I continue to be pulled into your eloquent way of making a visual statement about humanity and the position that we’re in. You are a talent to be celebrated. Would you mind telling folks where they can see more of your work?
AC: Sure. It’s: <alanacarlsonart.com>. And my Instagram account is at: <@alouysius>.
AD: Alana Carlson, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
BELOW: Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Now, Baby, 2019 life-sized oil painting by Alana Carlson
