Notes to Nonself at Hyde Park Art Center: The Interview

Detail, Notes to Nonself by Diane Christiansen and Shoshanna Utchenik

When I first met artists Diane Christiansen and Shoshanna Utchenik, it was quite by chance. I was initially at the Hyde Park Art Center to see another exhibition in order to write a review about it. But I smelled the bright and rife beauty of paint and went to investigate.  A woman came out of the gallery, sensing my allure to the space, and asked me to enter. This would be my first of two face-to-face meetings with the artists responsible for the heady and pleasing installation Notes to Nonself in the Catwalk Gallery of the Hyde Park Art Center. Our official in-person interview was after their very well-attended opening on Sunday, February 7, 2010. Then our discussion continued through emails, and the odd little irony here was that our subsequent written discussion was an extension of Notes to Nonself’s original medium — the written word.

Detail, Buddhist Prayer Flags, Notes to Nonself by Diane Christiansen and Shoshanna Utchenik

Carrie McGath: The exhibition, Notes to Nonself, on view at The Hyde Park Art Center through April 25, 2010, sprawls throughout the largest gallery. It is a beautiful exhibit that gives a viewer a feeling of exploration. Could either of you elaborate on the exhibit itself, its title, and its notions of self-exploration?

Diane Christiansen: I think of it as the octopus of relational attachment. Or maybe just a giant octopus with notes relating to the relationship attached to it. This show grew from Shosh and I making friends when a curator suggested that I hire her to help me make a giant 3-D cartoon character. We had an immediate connection as we built that thing. Anyhow, the idea for the exhibit grew after she had moved to Slovenia. She emailed me and asked me if we could Skype and have a long-distance friendship.

Shoshanna Utchenik: The exhibit is a metaphoric landscape for the activity of the mind. The show evolved out of the recurring themes of our notes to one another, especially this struggle against chaos and groundlessness we both experience as a call to courageous faith. The Buddhist notion of “no-self” speaks to this primal awareness of the interconnectedness of all beings and actions.

CM: Since Shoshanna was out of the country most of the time this project was coming to together, when the two of you as friends and artists were physically separated, how did this effect the work?

SU: I had moved to Slovenia with my one-and-a-half-year-old son and Slovenian husband after living in and loving Chicago for twelve years. Everything fell apart. Instead of just solving practical issues the move revealed the nature of some personal issues. I reached out to Diane as someone I didn’t know very well but felt a connection with, and we began Skyping and then note mailing. Through the course of the project we both had big stuff come up that got folded into the notes. In many ways pain was released through the notes.

DC: Since our friendship really developed through notes, we realized that to work on something this gigantic, we needed a lot more processing time. Think of all of the details of how those clouds were made, then transported, then hung! And the giant octopus and the clubhouse. All created with a minimum of us talking together in one room. And I got cancer last summer right before she was coming to work on this with me, so I was in the hospital and she was working with The School of the Art Insitute of Chicago interns she had never met! So in a way the distance kept us dreaming and thinking huge.

SU: The biggest struggle with the distance was that there were stretches of time when Diane had resources available to carry out construction that I would have been more comfortable and confident to do, but I wasn’t there so she had to just plow ahead. And I had to let go. But everything was collaborative in this process.

Installation View, Notes to Nonself by Diane Christiansen and Shoshanna Utchenik

CM: Diane, you are a practicing psychotherapist and Shoshanna, you have expressed having had profound experiences as an educator in the arts while also being an artist. Considering these aspects within each of you, can you both talk about the exhibit’s psychological elements such as The Ego Forest and The Relationship Bardo represented in the octopus?

DC: The octopus was my idea born out of this one drawing Shosh did regarding a relationship. I wanted to make a giant octopus covered with notes about attachment and when I got out of the hospital after having various girl parts removed. Talk about attachment! Shosh had built the damn thing as I think a kind of gift for me. I cried and laughed. This giant octopus in my studio for over a month and me almost unable to walk. Really the best funniest gift. In the show it is a kind of dragging notes all about attachment not only to relationships but also to my own girl parts, youth, and so forth.

SU: And this object is a humorous metaphor. Even attachment to the idea of Self gets kind of clingy and miserable. There is this simple and painful truth that we must let go if we are to really experience the fullness of anything or anyone. This gigantor octopus is a kind of non sequitor distraction, attraction, and obstacle in the middle of the space. As in life.

DC: Being a psychotherapist informs my work in pretty much every way. It infuses both my deep gratitude for my own relationship with my husband and friends and my knowledge of how rough it is to be human in a body trying to figure things out!

SU: Teaching forced me to essentialize my communication. I became better at recognizing and articulating my intentions and questions. I was satisfied to see kids running through the woods and tramping into the clubhouse alongside adults stooping to contemplate our notes. I hope that there’s beauty and a physical experience of opening and closing as viewers pass through, as well as the more specific content that’s available. I think that I value generosity in art even more since teaching.

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~ by anhedoniapoetry on March 5, 2010.