Maddison Colvin: Typologies

February 25, 2016Garrick Infanger

Maddison Colvin is an innovative artist with degrees from Whitworth University and BYU. Her series Typologies looks at religious architecture. She was profiled previously on The Krakens for her series Swarms. Colvin lives in Oregon.

You said art is ‘an ideal medium in which to explore the relationship between personal (phenomenological) and scientific (empirical/ontological) learning’. How do you approach teaching your students at BYU? One of the challenges of BYU is the balancing act of fostering both an environment of active critical thinking and a space for the strengthening of faith. At least, it can often look like a balancing act. “Strengthening of faith” does not have to mean “never having your faith questioned”. If it did, we’d either have to avoid faith or avoid criticism in our classes. If you want to be both a faithful Mormon and a smart, critical artist, you have to work out the relationship between the two somewhere along the way. Nowhere’s going to be safer for that than BYU. Therefore, I take a fairly critical approach while still trying to stay sensitive to the personal faith of the students. I buy into their motivations (why are you making this? what drives the work?) and push them to form those motivations into the most honest, well-realized work they can make. The hope is that I never ask them to change who they are as artists, and my teaching only changes how effectively their work realizes that core identity. This, I think, is the key- faith is not dumb or safe. It can be expressed in challenging, critical forms, and I hope that more Mormon artists are and will continue to do that.

What are you working on next? Well, I’ve designed and 3D printed 24 utopian temples to kind of imitate or elaborate on the Plat of Zion, I’ve painted three stake centers designed on the same model and located in the same township on top of each other, and I’ve started those jungle paintings. I think both of those directions- utopianism and the wild overgrown spaces- will continue in my work for a while. I’m also moving to Oregon soon, which I think will definitely inform future projects.

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Design

Maddison Colvin: Let Us Rejoice

October 5, 2015Garrick Infanger

Maddison Colvin‘s Let Us Rejoice (video, 2015) contrasts two Mormon Tabernacle Choir performances occurring three years apart. Simultaneously. Colvin is currently an artist residing in Oregon. She holds degrees from Whitworth University and BYU.

From your view ‘on the inside’, what is the state of art in Mormon culture? Well, as far as I’ve experienced, there are different factions working indirectly alongside each other. One camp is the more traditional and/or narrative Mormon artists, who wear their faith on their sleeve and in the subject matter of their paintings. I’m thinking specifically of J. Kirk Richards, Brian Kershisnik, and Caitlin Connolly. They have huge followings in Mormondom and for good reason–they’re making narrative, religious/spiritual/personal work that isn’t just Liz Lemon Swindle smiling-Jesus stuff. That kind of Deseret-Book-Postcard-Art (Swindle et al) bores and even disgusts a lot of people, me included; they can’t identify it with their feelings about Christ or the gospel. When those people look for “religious art” (which is to say, art used specifically to reinforce or strengthen religious or spiritual ideas, often depicting religious or spiritual narratives), they turn to people like Minerva Teichert or the aforementioned people. It’s much more complex, satisfying, and visually interesting, while still directly related to LDS narratives, ideas, and culture. I think of this group as “Mormon Artists”, and they have large appeal within Mormondom, and often with closely culturally-aligned people outside of the church.

Then you have another camp, of “Artists who are Mormon”. They tend to be more critical, more academic, and/or more interested in the contemporary art world than in engaging with religious topics. A lot of BYU professors, students, and former students, are in this camp. Their work is often super interesting to other artists, and is a kind of opaque manifestation of faith in practice. Their Mormonism, often very important to them personally, is rarely visible in their work.

Then there’s “Art about Mormonism”. Most of these artists are ex-LDS, operating relatively successfully in the art world, and drawing from their personal or cultural heritage for their work. They are often interested in the more esoteric and weird aspects of Mormonism; the ones that are more conceptually glamorous. These artists make fully realized, critical/conceptual work, but their choice of subject matter is almost Oedipal. They’ve left the church but it’s still one of the most engaging personal experiences they can draw on and they will continue to return to it.

In other words, the art satellites orbiting around Mormonism’s gravity serve radically different purposes. “Mormon artists” service the community most directly with art that speaks directly to common narratives and faith principles. Its traditional, illustrative form, however, will likely not be taken terribly seriously by art-world viewers. [My grandparents would love this art.] “Artists who are Mormon” operate on the ‘by their works ye shall know them’ sort of principle of making sincere, rigorous, intelligent work primarily intended to exist in the art world. [My grandparents would be confused about this art.] “Art about Mormonism” is interested in narratives, symbolism, and principles of faith, is generally rigorous and intelligent, but comes from artists who no longer believe in those narratives, symbols, and principles. Their audience is primarily outside the church, as the work can expose or makes light of things we consider sacred. [My grandparents would be insulted or outraged by this art.] What I would like to see more of, and what are largely missing, are Artists who are Mormon making Art about Mormonism. The audience for their work (which would be faithful, directly related to LDS ideas/issues, and rigorous/critical) is so tiny as to be negligible, partly explaining the lack of visibility for this kind of work. [I don’t know how grandparents would react to this art, therefore.]

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Fine Art

Maddison Colvin: Swarms

July 16, 2015Garrick Infanger

Maddison Colvin is an innovative artist currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at BYU. She holds degrees from Whitworth University and BYU. Her collection Swarms is engaging and contemplative. She writes, “In Swarms I paint or film masses of organisms behaving as a single group, exhibiting behaviors outside the ability of the individual organism- effectively erasing the individual and placing it within a network of incommunicable collective knowledge.”

You have said Swarms examines ‘masses of organisms behaving as a single group’. What have you learned from this project? This was an unusual project for me. Usually, the work is a process of learning, and ends up as an artifact of that arc. The first swarm I made was very much in this vein- I painted birds onto vellum, cut them out carefully, and re-assembled them in a semi-sculptural form. Over the course of that piece, I became more and more interested in emergent behaviors, and did a lot of research about this particular kind of intelligence. However, because I kept making the swarms for over a year and a half, they ended up being more of a formal project- how do these bodies fit together, how do they form a unified whole, how do these unified wholes differ from each other visually/materially – rather than a conceptual one. In other words, the idea was finished at the beginning. I’ve really loved making these pieces but I don’t want to exhaust the concept any more than I have. Fortunately, the thinking of the project has branched off in a couple of directions.

First, a really valuable idea coming out of the swarms project is that of individual identity being subsumed or obliterated by communal behavior. I’m researching utopias a little, and specifically thinking about utopian communities being necessarily universal. The structure of a utopia usually diminishes the needs of the individual in favor of the needs of the whole, and requires the individual to behave as a functional unit in that whole. There’s something hugely appealing in that, and something very alarming. I see this conflict within a lot of people’s lived experience of the LDS church, and I’m going at it from that angle. What about faith requires the faithful to lose themselves somewhat to find a community? Does sameness produce unity and harmony or does sameness erase the self? I think a little of both and I kind of enjoy that tension. So I guess in retrospect, the swarm pieces taught me something about religious communities and how they function.

Secondly, I found the swarms to be sort of distant, like you can sit back and look at these obloid objects depicted on a surface. I wanted the organisms to feel more immediate, personal, and intimidating. One solution has been some oil paintings depicting thick vegetation. I wanted them to feel kind of consumptive, to fill the frame of the painting and feel a little more intrusive. I also made two video pieces of worms and roaches respectively, filmed from beneath through plexiglass so they fill the frame. I might be getting somewhere with this, but I need to beat it into the ground for a little longer first.

How did you get started in art? I was an army kid- both my parents were GMO’s – so I grew up moving around the country. Because we moved so frequently, my parents choose to homeschool all their kids. My time was largely my own after I got all my homework done, and I would often get up at 5 or 6 in the morning just so I could be done with everything by noon. Then I’d spend the rest of the day reading and drawing. Drawing was a huge challenge for me and I was into it in the way a lot of kids were, getting obsessed with horses, bugs, dinosaurs, whatever. I eventually did dual-enrollment high school at a community college (SFCC in Spokane) and they had a great art program that really sucked me in. I spent a lot of time exploring and experimenting in undergrad (Whitworth), which resulted in some seriously cringe-inducing art that my parents love to hang in prominent places in their house. It probably wasn’t until my second year of grad school (BYU) that I felt competent decisions were evident in my art making.

Visit Maddison Colvin’s website.

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