ANNA McNEARY interview with NINA RUELLE

 

NINA RUELLE: Anna, I first saw your window from across Olneyville Square when I was in town last month. It was such a gray day and your installation was just beaming. Even from a distance, the colors and shapes had a rhythm that felt so joyous and playful. The window can be a tricky space to work with, but you seem to have really embraced and engaged it to its fullest. How much of the installation was pre-planned? Or how much did you arrange and rearrange on the fly?

ANNA McNEARY: I was both grateful for the very specific spatial constraints and nervous about them. Having a confined space to work within made it easier to assess if installation was “done” or if it needed a bit more. I really like the idea of being a meticulous planner, but I am not one, so my ideas of making detailed installation plans to follow didn’t happen. I’m honestly glad I didn’t do that. I just threw sculptures on the wall and moved things around until color and composition looked right, kind of like how I would approach painting. Luckily each piece is very lightweight and pretty easy to move, and I had more space within the window to move around and see what was happening than I thought I would. I think working intuitively ultimately fits the spirit of this project, which is sort of about gently bending the conventions of craft in the name of making something fun, loud, spatial, and decidedly non-functional. 

NINA RUELLE: Constructing a quilt is often based on pattern and modularity. While the pieces in this window are a far cry from traditional quilts, are there aspects of those techniques that have carried over for you?

ANNA McNEARY:Yes, absolutely. I got the idea for this installation when thinking about the forms that household textiles take on when they’re actively in use. Rather than trying to literally replicate the lumpiness of a quilt thrown over a body or the curvatures of a slipcover on a chair, I went in a direction where form takes on simpler, clean lines and defined geometry, definitely owing a bit to op art and even minimalism. This soft-crispness is sort of what quilting, or designing a pattern in fabric, is all about. Generally, it can be very hard for me to let go of control, and I have made plenty of art that I now regard as overly-precious. So in that sense my interest in quilting has helped me a lot. It’s taught me to work more improvisationally and to make use of what’s on hand. Lately I don’t follow specific patterns with quilting projects. Instead I let color, shape and material act as loosely repeating motifs rather than elements of a strict pattern. 

NINA RUELLE: You recently showed “Common Set” at Overlap Gallery in Newport, RI. This piece is a collection of partial garments, meant to be assembled by the viewers into fully realized clothes of their own design. What is it like to witness interaction with this work? Has anyone ever assembled an outfit you found truly surprising?

ANNA McNEARY: I developed Common Set slowly over a couple of years, and I gave a lot of thought to the ways in which each piece of the installation could be specific enough to be functional, but ambiguous enough to have multiple uses and applications in the construction of experimental clothing. I’m trying to prompt my audience to think about personal preference and identity, existing within a sense of collectiveness and shared experience. Of course there are specific combinations of pieces that I like a lot, and that I think work well. But my favorite part of watching people interact with this work is when they come up with uses that I did not imagine for the installation’s different parts, made possible by the multi-use shapes that I’ve presented. I’ve witnessed some moments where my audience has built really culturally- or personally-specific garments that I simply would never have been aware of without observing them. I’m always a little skeptical of “neutrality” as a concept, but as intended, there is an open, unscripted quality in this project that enables that kind of engagement. At this point in time, when I fold interaction into my work, my highest goal is to get away from the prescriptive, and to design an interactive space that works more like a set of tools that my audience can use in response to the prompt that I’m offering. 

NINA RUELLE: You often use performers or invite participation in your work, where physical acts become stand-ins for social exchanges. In “Ravel” (2018), two performers knit and unknit blankets with each other. In “In Exchange” (2018), participants share removable parts of clothing as they navigate the exposure and protection of themselves. In your instagram post about this installation, you mention that the process of hanging the show felt like creating a set that you were performing in. What was this like? Did you get much attention from passers-by?

ANNA McNEARY: In Exchange was my thesis project at RISD. When I installed it at the final graduate show, I realized in retrospect that I was surrounded by people who were incredibly stressed out and absorbed by their own installations! We were paying attention to each other in a very fleeting, limited capacity, but I still had that vulnerable and self-conscious feeling that comes with showing a high-stakes project for the first time, which is akin to being on stage. In that sense the space did feel very set-like, not to mention that the work’s themes include the performance of social roles and costume as metaphor. This was the first fully-formed installation project I had executed. So piecing it together, and finally seeing all the components unified in completion, also felt very satisfying and empowering. 

NINA RUELLE: As a quilter, I often think about the ways that textiles can accrue meaning through use. A scrap of my mother’s old shirt, for instance, can remind me of my childhood. Or a piece of a curtain can signify a period of time in a certain home. How did you choose the fabrics you used in this installation?

ANNA McNEARY: For this installation I was really guided by color more than the source of materials I used. I try to make use of what I have on hand when starting a new project, so a few fabrics came from my fabric stash. I also frequent a fabric store in Massachusetts that sells a lot of funky deadstock stuff, and purchased the rest from there. They are very nice there and it’s never very crowded so I was able to awkwardly take over a corner where I laid a bunch of bolts out on the floor next to each other and tried to figure out the color scheme. I knew roughly what I was going for (I’m really into the earthy jewel tones of the Haribo gummy bears palette right now) but since you never know what you’re gonna get with the weird deadstock selection, there was some improv involved. I like this store not just because of the discounts and the chance to make use of what’s lying around in the fabric graveyard, but because the limitations that come with a random offering of material often jog new ideas for me. 

NINA RUELLE: I know that while you were in grad school at RISD, you studied printmaking. Is this where you started working in textiles and performance, too? Do you find your work still has ties to printmaking, or have you changed your focus entirely?

ANNA McNEARY: I came into RISD thinking that I wanted to learn weaving and incorporate fibers into my print work that way. But largely because of who my mentors were, and the fact that I was in a printmaking program, fabric printing and sewing became my areas of focus. I still combine the two very frequently, and I prefer to work with fabric over paper these days. In my opinion there are just more options as to how fabric can be used and transformed. It’s an inherently sculptural material. I actually didn’t know how to use a sewing machine until I went to RISD, and I never thought that I would try any kind of performance art, either. School did a lot for me in terms of exposing me to new ways of working and expanding my interests.

NINA RUELLE: In your professional life, you wear many hats: artist, teacher, curator. Do you find these different roles impact the way you approach your studio practice?

ANNA McNEARY: Since I was pretty young, my attitude about creative work has been that if I’m inevitably going to wear a lot of hats, they should compliment each other. Sometimes they can detract from each other (like, a busy semester probably means less time in the studio). But usually they are very intertwined. I think a lot about the advice I give my students and try to practice what I preach in terms of good habits– being curious about process, managing my time well, using writing as a tool to sort things out, drawing regularly, being accountable for eventually articulating purpose and meaning in my work, taking oneself seriously but not too seriously, etc. My students sometimes spark ideas and raise themes that end up informing my work. I think talking about art all day with students makes me a better curator, because good curators listen and unearth narrative connections based on what artists are telling them, combined with their own perspectives. 

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Nina Ruelle is an artist who lives and works in NYC. Previously, she's lived in Providence (including three years at the Dirt Palace) and Western Mass, and spent time at Art Farm (NE) and the Penland School of Craft (NC). She has worked as an art fabricator and installer at MASS MoCA, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Guggenheim, and currently works as a mount maker in the Objects Conservation department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.