ART
AS BUSINESS INTERVIEW: GRACIA HABY
Interview for Alexandra Hedberg's Art as Business series featured on
her blog
Q:
How would you describe your art?
A: And so I plunged in, late one morning. Headfirst?
No, I will dip my toes in tentatively as I search for a way to describe
to you what it is I make, I do, I feel. Okay, let us start with the
physical: I make works on paper. I collage mainly, and I frequently
collaborate with Louise
Jennison too, a fellow aficionado of paper, together we play with
all the wonder paper affords. Folded, layered, cut into, printed upon,
glued together, bound in book form, of varying scale, few mediums are
to me as adaptable as paper. Yes, we are paper fiends. Artists'
books, limited edition prints, small publications
and zines to collage works, they all of them
stem from a love of the medium.
For my own collage work, I use small sharp scissors to cut, and sometimes
I use a mouse in my palm to click my way through an image digitally,
collaging digital layers much as I would paper. Both yield different
results, and though I prefer the feel and process of cutting
with scissors, I enjoy the diversity possible when layering with
digital collage. Often the two are married,
and in a single print you can find elements of both intertwined.
Upon the pages of my collaged artists'
books and throughout my ongoing series of postcard
collages, you will find the geography dotted with fragmented keepsakes,
and many animals and birds. My tailed or feathered protagonists appear
often out of place, oft too large for their present surrounds. They
scale rooftops, climb cathedral spires, or perch high in treetops of
a landscape I have not personally walked through. Sometimes they saunter
nonchalantly past a city square. Sometimes they
tiptoe or creep. All the time they afford me chance not just to
play with scale and humorous, I hope, foreign juxtapositions, but to
convey feelings of awkwardness and oddness. They are out of place, not
just in urban environment or strange land, but also in feeling. Being
of animal form, they are easier for one to relate to. Undistracted by
the dissimilarities simply because there are so many; I am not covered
in fur, with claws for fingertips and a tail to serve as rudder on mountain
climb. I am so different that I look only at what the animal is doing
in its new environment. It is on the sidelines, watching. It is looking
for a safe place to curl. It is passing undetected. It is slinking through
the city unseen. It, like me, feels the odd one out.
When working I am seduced by nostalgia and fiction. This has long been
the case.
Q:
Do you make a living out of your art and related practices — or
do you combine it with another job?
A: Any money made from the sale of artwork seems earmarked
for another piece or artists' book. The sale of works from a recent
show with Louise, A key to help make
your own world visible at Craft Victoria, will go towards paying
for the printing and making of our next body of work. The sale of my
collaged pieces will go towards the procuring of more raw imagery to
twist the narrative of, and to new story give. Part may go towards the
gas bill in reality, but in my mind, it goes towards the making of more
artwork, always.
This income source, naturally, is combined with several other jobs held,
all of which are largely freelance or done from home. I teach oil painting
to students who study through distance education (through RMIT university),
and have been doing so for ten or so years now.
I also build websites for others and take on commercial design work,
designing invitations and catalogues for galleries, and, as with the
majority of my artwork, Louise and I work collaboratively in this field.
I am more at home with html code and editing, and Louise with InDesign,
Photoshop and print management. Sometimes illustrative work is also
picked up, such as pieces created
especially for The World of Interiors.
From this somehow a livelihood is eked out and a balance between own
work and work for others found.
Q:
How long have you been working professionally as an artist?
A: For over ten years now, I would say, though such
things are hard to determine. I graduated from RMIT in 1997, and have
continued ever since.
Q:
Have you had a big break? If not; any turning point?
A: No big break, as such. It feels more like a series
of many small steps in a direction I like. Many things have occurred
that from the outside might appear to resemble luck and good fortune,
but it is quite a climb at steady pace. Stamina is required for the
setbacks and a level head to keep the ego in check when good things
arrive. Along the way we have worked, through our collaborative endeavors,
with many kind and talented souls whom, you could say, have given us
"a big break". Friends, family and peers to the galleries
we have shown with have all in own way made it possible to stick at
what can at times be a hard path.
Through a successful grant (Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship
for Emerging Artists), travel to Switzerland to study bookbinding in
early 2002 was a turning point, an awakening to possibilities.
Q:
What is your primary client base?
A: Friends, initially, beautiful and supportive friends
(of which naturally included blogging friends) and family. This has
since grown to include a handsome swell of private collectors. Lately,
through exhibitions held, many people purchase my work and the collaborative
pieces with Louise whom neither of us knows. All of which is thrilling.
Prints and artists’ books have been acquired by various
collections for state libraries and art galleries.
Q:
Describe your work environment. Do you work alone or with others? In
a studio or at home? Does this arrangement work for you, and if not,
what would your ideal work environment look like?
A: I work from home and it suits my reclusive nature.
It suits my temperament. I do not wear a watch at home, or any jewellery.
I work pretty much undisturbed, governed by own rules: coffee when needed,
something to eat when needed. It is sometimes wholly self-indulgent.
It is sometimes flexible; I can work for a long stretch of time. In
such periods, time of day or night does not come into play. Conversely,
it sometimes follows a pattern, and I find myself doing the same things
at the same time each day. The reality is it varies day-to-day and week-to-week
and that is why I love it so when it is going well and grumble when
it is not. Were it a sea it would be choppy for a period then calm,
choppy then calm. It is never, as expression goes, smooth sailing.
Q:
Do you have a typical workday? How much time do you spend creating and
how much on business related activities?
A: No typical day, as such and some days, I do not
make nor do anything remotely creative. Some days I do not read. Some
days I do work, such as design jobs for other people. Some days I do
not feel like doing anything other than napping at length and enjoying
a rich lunch. A good workday for me would be to rise in own time, with
an idea in my mind. I work best in the morning, lately, before I have
spoken or bothered my mind with things that have nothing to do with
making. It is spell-like, trancelike, this state. As soon as I engage
in email or dishes to wash, my mind lurches into the humdrumness of
day-to-day and I think silly thoughts. The neighbours converse loudly,
the floor needs to be mopped, things crash in and take over and I let
them.
Q:
Which marketing strategies have/have not been successful in advancing
your career?
A: I do not think I am very good at that side of things.
In addition, I am no good at pricing my own work. I can promote my doings
on my blog though, and having built our website, if that can be seen
as strategy. I meet deadlines set by galleries and the like in advance,
if I can, and I try to be thorough. Perhaps that, too, could be a strategy.
Q:
Can you share any tips on business organization or financial planning
that have worked well for you?
A: In 2000, Louise and I jointly received an Australia
Council for the Arts (New Work, Emerging Artist) grant. Our application
successful, with it we made our first six limited edition artists' books.
Without said grant, the artists' books in question would have looked
considerably different. It enabled us to have the books bound by a bookbinder
until we could polish our skill. It enabled us to imagine things possible.
In terms of financial planning, we try to be as economic with materials
as possible. Book sizes are governed by proportions of the paper, prints
by the cost of the plate. If there is any space remaining, one of us
will fill it with a small work. Resourceful is something we all need
to be in our practice. Sometimes things are printed in single-colour
as opposed to full in order to be done, to come to fruition. Other ways
are sought when there is a hole in the pocket. Zines made on the copier
machine are for this reason double the fun for they cost so little.
No financial planning required. Bliss.
Q:
Do you have any advice on how to rebound emotionally from rejection
or difficult client situations?
A: Lick the wounds and wallow before swiftly moving
on with your best "I didn’t need them anyway" swagger.
Take comfort in the fact that you are not alone, I guess.
Q:
Based on your experience, what suggestions or lessons learned would
you give to someone starting out as an artist?
A: Stick at it. Keep going. Make work because you like
it, enjoy it. Make work that is yours.
Q:
What would you like to accomplish in 2010?
A: I have no set idea in mind; I’ll have to see
what comes. That said I hope I will make the most of a group show Louise
and I have been invited to take part in later in the year (August through
September). I hope to not let A
skulk of foxes and a husk of hares languish. In addition, I hope
it is a good year full of promise. I hope it is full of ideas.
I would dearly love to see my postcard collages printed in glorious
colour and bound in a book. I could not fund such a thing so perhaps
I will take steps this year to bring it a little closer into being.
Q:
What are your long-term career goals as an artist?
A: To be making artwork for my own enjoyment, own sake,
when I am older. To be wiser, too, that wouldn't hurt.
Q:
Finally: Can you share something inspiring?
A: Having spent my January days largely devoted
to reading, I can recommend Herta Müller's The Land of
Green Plums. Its circular pattern, her use of repetition, looping
back and forth, with symbols reoccurring, this book has stayed long
in my mind’s eye.
I can also recommend Hermann Hesse's Der Steppenwolf and Orhan
Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence too. Of tremendous influence
and in my opinion, in similar vein, let's add Dostoevsky for a revisit
or new acquaintance formed, Svetlana Boym, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch,
Milan Kundera, Andreï Makine, Stevie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver,
Italo Calvino and end with Chekhov. Books purchased, books borrowed,
books read; there is something in their embrace that is comforting.
This is true, for me, of film also. Film festivals, if money permits,
I live for.
As a rule to be guided by, inspiration is best grabbed with both hands
when found for it can be elusive.
Alexandra Hedberg, 2010
Gothenburg, Sweden
Art
as Business interview: Gracia Haby
Gracia
Haby
One Tumble and fall (VIII)
2009
Collage
featured in Tumble & Fall zine
