Abby Blake

As an artist, I am closely connected to materials. I imagine where they come from and how they were extracted and processed before they arrive in my studio. I think of these procedures to be metaphorical of our relationships with one another and I feel empathy when I consider our relationships with the landscape in the same way I feel empathetic towards people. I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie near Cleveland, Ohio and I now live in the iron range of Northern Minnesota. Both locations have seen the coming and going of the steel industry and have parted ways with millions of tons of materials.

Steps away from my back door in Ely, Minnesota is a beautiful lake recovered from a retired mine that built much of the town. This mine also supplied steel industries of the Great Lakes region from the late 1800s until the mid 1960s. Inspired by its scale and by the rich red remnants, I’ve started creating work with Minnesota iron oxide through printmaking, ceramics and through weaving dyed fibers. This is a body of work that I have been creating since March, specifically throughout the stay at home order. Having time to sink into the place where I live through walking the four mile hike around the mine everyday, collecting, and dyeing materials in my front yard has given me a greater appreciation for creating in the domestic space and my immediate surroundings. I have been able to better recognize my transformed landscape. These works manifest my thoughts, sentiments and appreciation of this place.

You’re a new addition to the crayon box: which color are you?
The Crayon box... I would likely be a brown or gray one. I’m always definitely down with the neutrals.

What is your first memory of art?
My first memory of art was being handed a pencil. The universe then asked me to learn how to use it. I am still learning.

What has your path to art looked like?
I hadn’t really wanted to go to school for art or to any college at all after graduating high school. I had applied and was accepted to work with an educational program in the Amazon rainforest but my mom quickly talked me out of it since I had just returned from seven months in Paraguay where I had been foreign exchange student. She asked me to apply to college instead, so I did. Art was a passion throughout my whole life so I applied to the Cleveland Institute of Art. It was not only a fantastic experience, it was a privilege. I knew little beyond outsider art so experiencing art in an academic setting was shocking and very exciting to me as a young farm girl who grew up in a town of only 1500 people. After undergrad, I worked within the field for two years via a gallery, commercial print shop and American Greetings. After these two years, I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa- my dream school, where I fell in love with many new processes and became an art mutt.

Who are other artist that have influenced my work?
Artists who have influenced my work... there are a lot!! A few that stand out are Magdelena Abakonovich, Olafur Eliasson, Ai Wei Wei, Alicja Kwade, Guillermo Galindo and Sterling Ruby. I also look at a lot of pottery artists even though I don’t typically make pots.

Choose three words to describe your art:
Three words to describe my work... contemplative, investigative, intuitive.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
The best advice I’ve been given is to be honest in all things and that work makes more work.

What does a typical studio day look like for you?
A typical studio day may include a very distinct plan of action for casting, prepping files or weaving, but more likely, I stare into space, look at different materials and then start a making frenzy. I am not a person of routine and I am very intuitive and spontaneous when making art. I am a firm believer in making lots of snack art in order to get to the main meals.

What is your favorite accomplishment thus far?
As far as my accomplishments, I think of most of them as privileges. I think of what I have learned that I am most proud of is the power of creativity and to have had the ability to choose a life path that allows me to help others realize their creative potential.

Do you have a favorite part of the artistic process?
My favorite part of the artistic process is recognizing an experience or thought in a piece that I wasn’t expecting. I love the surprises.

What is your favorite tool to create with?
My favorite tool is my loom.

How has our practice changed over time?
My practice changes all of the time. An example of this would be that I used to make work that was almost entirely created digitally, but now my work is 100% process heavy and hands on.

Where do you find sources of inspiration?
I pull most of my inspiration from the landscapes where I live, visit or research.

If you could become one of your characters/works of art which one would you become, why?
In a lot of ways, I feel like I am the character that shows up in a lot of my pieces. Oftentimes, I am making work about how we take from and treat the landscape and how this is similar to how we treat others. This is a thought that is interconnected with ideas within eco-feminism and I often see my pieces as self portraits within this context.

Which superpower would you have, and why?
If I had a superpower, I would like to breathe underwater. Why? It would allow for more discovery and investigation.

Tell us a little more about your collection of works entitled softscapes; tell us how you came to the idea and meaning.
Softscapes and the naming of this range of work started happening when I began thinking of the landscape as both hard or monumental and also soft and susceptible to alteration or destruction. I play with motifs of hard and soft in a lot of my work- these are the most notable.

What is the most challenging aspect of your practice?
The most challenging part of my practice is writing alongside my work. It is not always easy or enjoyable, but I have found it critical to spend time writing to better understand my work.

You earned a BFA in printmaking with an emphasis in biomedical art. What exactly is biomedical art, and what drew you toward that medium?
Biomedical art is sort of the contemporary term for scientific illustration. Any image you have seen, that was not a photograph, in an anatomy or biology textbook is biomedical art. Natural history museum displays, medical animation videos and the visuals we see of the coronavirus- these are all examples of biomedical art. It is an artform that’s sole purpose is to help us better understand science- pretty cool. So in a way, I still feel close to this artform. I just now find myself abstractly thinking about what I find in the field instead of illustrating it. I was drawn to this field because it is a perfect example of where art and science intersect and I have always been passionate about art and the natural world.

Tell us about your series “Borders”: How many different pieces did you create for the series? How was the series received? Did its reception defy, or meet your expectations?
Borders was a project that I worked on during graduate school. I had been making work about and spending time thinking about mapping and land use. In conjunction with the 2016 election, thinking about the US borderlands in relationship with these current investigations became inevitable. I created a four part exhibition series about ‘experiencing’ the border. The first exhibition was about experiencing the border through the media as someone who grew up in the midwest. The second show was about my experience of driving 500 miles of the southern border with my husband. The third was about my experience driving part of the northern border with my mother. The final exhibition was a body work that combined new work and reconfigured objects from the previous shows. The final exhibition was in a community space that brought people together to chat about border politics and to participate in a collaborative art piece.

Texture appears to be a prominent feature linking across various collections of your artwork: What are some of your favorite textures to work with? How do you create a textured piece?
Texture has always been important to my work. Recently I have been interested in blurring the line between actual and visual texture via photography and sculpture. I print textures on flat fabric surfaces using a lithographic press which is then sewn into soft sculptures. I love the juxtaposition of ‘natural textures’ such as rocks, minerals, plaster, iron and clay alongside the imagery of which they could be composed of.

What is your ultimate professional goal?
My ultimate professional goal is to connect with others via art through teaching and through being involved and connected to a community.