Artist Feature: Kara Dunne
Pleased to present this q-and-a with artist Kara Dunne. All words and images (c) Kara Dunne...
A Trailer is a Castle on Its Side
Where are you from? How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?
I like to say I’m from Vermont because that’s where I was born and most likely will end up someday. Currently I live in Massachusetts.
My observation skills got me into creative work. I was always good at drawing from observation growing up, and in general observing things that were odd or quirky in the world. Once I tapped into these heightened skills of seeing things in a new way, I think the gift of creativity followed suit. Once you are super-honed into the world around you, you naturally start making unusual connections that you’d like to share (secretly in hopes that you may be the first one to make them of course).
As a practicing artist over the years, my work accumulates around me in boxes and flat file drawers. And since I mostly create multiples of things, sometimes I feel like an unintentional hoarder. But the thing is, unlike a hoarder, I don’t want to hold on to the stuff I make. I have increasingly felt the “what is the point of producing all this stuff?” question that is not unique to the artist’s experience. I can relate to the: “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, then it doesn’t make a sound” concept. If I make work that remains in my flat file, then it too, remains silent. So what is the point? I can only amuse myself for so long by producing for myself. One needs an audience. Coming from a performance background, audience interaction for me was always the most exciting part of the practice. I’ve recently made it my main goal as a printmaker to reach an audience with my work by finding new ways in which I can just give my prints away. I’ve never wanted to sit with my stuff at a table making puppy dog eyes in order for people to stop and buy something from me. No surprise that I was terrible at selling girl scout cookies.
Tell me about your latest project and why its important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?
Just before the world shut down, which for me was a year before the pandemic because my time was happily consumed as a new mom, I had just finished a long term research project that connected the agrarian and urban versions of what it meant to be a shepherd and gather something. It compared the idea of a shopping cart attendant at the grocery store to that of a traditional shepherd gathering and caring for a flock of sheep. The final result from my years of research into this concept was a limited edition artists’ book, titled, Shopping Cart Shepherds. Printed on a letterpress, it combined drawings, screen-prints and interviews from my conceptual journey that began in 2012 when I spent time in a small town in Ireland (and yes, around sheep and people who raised sheep). I met a local man in his eighties named Tom Tarpey, who had been raising sheep for about thirty years at that point. Strangely enough and quite a rarity in Catholic history, he was the retired priest of the town. He had left the church in order to marry the love of his life. Once a shepherd of the people, he became a shepherd of sheep. What a rare find! I thoroughly enjoy my work when I can interact with the world more directly; when my artistic research connects me to people in places I have never been and with whom I remain in contact with. I have all these great big ideas, and usually I will be hesitant at first (shy?) to make connections with the community in order to see those ideas come into fruition, but ultimately things pan out in one way or another. For example, when I came home from Ireland and was blabbing about sheep, a friend gave me a newspaper article about traditional Basque shepherds still working in this country- in the mountains in Idaho. For a long time, the article was taped to my wall as a reminder to contact some guy I read about named Henry Etcheverry. In 2014 I was awarded a residency at a fabulous spot called Surel’s Place (thank you so much Surel Mitchell), and it gave me the opportunity to the make necessary connections out there for this book. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience and the Etcheverry family embraced me like one of their own; and I learned a lot about sheep. I now consider them my extended west coast family.
110 copies of the book, Shopping Cart Shepherds, exist (that’s all I could afford to get printed) and inside the back cover it asks the reader to pass the book along to someone else once they finish it. It is my hope that the ideas in this book will travel and reach more than 110 people. (More trees falling in more forests?) I have given away most of the copies at this point, both to people I know and don’t know. The books serve as messages in bottles- it’s honestly difficult to not to have control over where they go, but I guess an artist never really knows where their artwork will end up after it is purchased anyway. Perhaps my books are mostly buried in the sand dunes of someone’s office book pile, or they have actually reached new beaches far far away. I will never know.
Since completing this major work, all of my ideas for making prints have the underlying purpose of getting out into the world and reaching an audience.
I find certain design elements of architecture to be amusing, and often make work about the structures around us, as they are extensions of our culture and can change with popularity just like anything else. Cupolas, ultimately a very useful and functional architectural ventilation add-on to barns and other large buildings, have been on the rise where I live. Decorative cupolas mainly, seem to show up on top of garages overnight, like cherries atop sundaes. (Makes the sundae and the house look better). I made an edition of screen-prints based on this idea- a vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce and sprinkles in a fancy glass serving dish…with a cupola on top. To get them out to cupola-adorning people, I made up a survey of questions about cupolas. I printed the survey onto paper door hangers and distributed them. The survey could be cut out from the door hanger as a postcard and mailed to my special P.O. box in town. If the survey was sent back, that household would receive an original artist print. I had the post box and distributed the door hangers for a few months before I had to stop the project because of the emergence of covid. I had received at least a dozen responses at that point, and mailed out a portion of the edition. I’d like to start it up again at some point.
My next print- based community outreach project idea is in process now and will involve restaurant placemats. I just need to make some local restaurant connections. (Another pre-pandemic idea forced to simmer on the back burner). Here’s the basic idea. A table at a restaurant is the perfect gallery space. It is especially ideal because it is the location where a group of people will sit and wait for a long period of time together with nothing else to do but sit and chit-chat in one place. Not even in a gallery do you have the same group of people staying near each other and talking for longer than fifteen minutes in front of a single artwork.
A paper placemat at a restaurant is viewed for a longer period of time than a work of art on a gallery wall. It is hard not to look at a placemat- it is one of the few places to look while waiting for food. I will use the format of the dining placemat as a way to bring fine art into the everyday world. I believe an etching is the perfect kind of print for this project. An etching is considered the finest of fine art printmaking, mainly because the process of making an etching plate is just as time consuming as printing the edition itself. Also, it would be perfectly ironic if a plate made a placemat. And the thought of such a sacred piece of paper so carefully processed as an art work that should end up underneath someone’s sweaty beer glass and dinner plate is simply…exciting to me. Equally, the thought that a restaurant guest may decide to not get it messy because they want to take it home is the kind of leave-it-to-chance scenario that I gravitate to as an artist; it forces me to relinquish my control and challenges the idea of art as an artifact. For the viewer, the idea plays with the preciousness of “art” and the context in which we view a work of art (in a gallery vs. the real world). For the restaurant owner, it may also bring more business and create a new kind of hype attracting more customers. Let’s say I print a series of five placemats, and if people collect all five placemats they get a free limited edition non-placemat print worth X amount of dollars. Or maybe they collect all five and get ten dollars off their next meal. Something like that.
This project connects directly with the public and gets the fine art print into the hands of the everyday person. The imagery within the frame of the placemat will vary- from beautiful local scenery and landmarks (as everyone enjoys a pretty picture), to several different designs that will engage the table with non-phone related activities- like a dining room scavenger hunt or a list of dinner conversation starters, as well as other designs that are more cerebral and open to interpretation, serving as conversation starters themselves (with digestion friendly, witty imagery). It is also my intention to make one of the placemats at each table have a QR code with a link to a video of how the placemat was produced, essentially educating the public about what an etching is, and moreover- what printmaking is.
Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference?
The climate is quite volatile right now, to say the least, and I think artists have a responsibility now more than ever to connect people from both sides of a political issue in order to start a meaningful conversation. I think the temperature for artists right now is great- get in the pool! Art always impacts at least one person looking at it, so that’s something. Art is mainly a non-confrontational way to interpret something about the world that needs to change for others who may not understand why change needs to happen. The best example I can think of within the visual arts is installation and involves statistic- based information. For example, a person may come across a beautiful sculpture of a sea monster made from plastic cups. Then they read about the work and how two million cups were used to make the work and that two million cups end up in the ocean every day; that person now has the physical representation in front of them of what two million actually means and it is forever burned into their mind. That person can stand next to the giant sculpture of cups and can better understand what the number means in relation to how it impacts the environment. A real life artwork that is forever burned in my mind like this is a video piece by the ceramic artist Ehren Tool called the ‘1.5 Second War Memorial’. In it, every 1.5 seconds a cup is shot and breaks. Each cup represents a human life. You would have to watch the video for eight minutes to get to the number of people who died in the Gulf War (Tool is a veteran of that war) and watch the video for two years to get to the number of total casualties in WWII.
Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work?
More often than not, feminism lies under the surface of my work. How can it not, as I am living as a woman in this world? Feminism is always going to be relevant. It does not end, it is forever in existence; Feminism should not be considered as waves of the past, but as the water itself. I hate that ‘feminism’ is still considered a ‘dirty’ word. Mostly I experience this as a high school teacher, when every so often I will have a male student who expresses their thoughts about what they think feminism is and after I cringe, mostly internally and sometimes externally, I sadly realize that this wrongly informed opinion comes from the belief system of the parents. I try my best to inform them of what is true and false without becoming pushy; it is my hope that these particular students gain more perspective in the world through life experiences once their bubble becomes bigger- and of course once their bubble of close-mindedness has popped.
Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of when to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.” What is your favorite advice you have received or given?
One of my first professors, Nick Tobier, had a five line mantra of sorts that he told us to write down during his first lecture.
“Public space is yours to take.
Reveal the things that are hidden.
What you see has been filtered for you.
Let private notions become public.
https://www.karadunne.com/
Les Femmes Folles was a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world. Editor Sally Brown retired from active blogging after 10 years in 2021, but still accepts submissions. [email protected] https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing
Check out the 10th anniversary LFF exhibit, Feminist Connect, here:
https://www.les-femmes-folles-feminist-connect.com/