Alyson Provax makes primarily text-based work exploring the way we talk about time. In 2009 she began The Time Wasting Experiment, a project of tracking and recording her wasted time. Currently she works within letterpress and silkscreen monotype media, producing work of words and phrases.
answered 10th May 2013
1- When did you decide to pursue art/illustration as a career? I have had an interest in visual media since I was a child, and I began painting and collaging at a young age. I focused on printmaking as an undergrad. I am particularly interested in the tactile nature of prints. A couple of years ago I bought a 100-year-old letterpress, making concrete my commitment to the medium.
2- What are your goals as an artist? My work has long focused on boiling down my own emotional life to it’s most basic components, and separating the specific-personal from the kind of personal that is a more common experience. Since beginning my projects about our experience of time, this process of has become more vital to my work. I am deeply interested in our perception of time and our experience of the passage of time, and am always interpreting my own feelings on this and comparing them to outside sources. I have seen studies that (on average) people today feel that they have about two hours less free time than they actually have. This fascinates me. It is not just that our experience of time slows down in the dentists chair and speeds up at dinner with friends (which of course it does) but also that the thinking required by contemporary habits speeds our perception of an hour by splintering our focus (such as my sometimes-habit of looking at tumblr while watching TV and eating dinner, or maybe the more common activity of reading on the internet while on public transit). My goal as an artist is not to critique this, but to reflect it. We discuss the way that an hour alone in the woods is not the same hour as a busy one spent at the office, and I see my work as looking towards that kind of language.
3- What's your favourite place to develop your ideas? My eyes and ears are always open to things that spark an interest. Taking walks and spending a period of time entirely in my own head is sometimes fruitful, or sometimes it is the spark of accidentally misspeaking, overhearing an interesting conversation or seeing an awkward sign or note. I think that a specific place is not nearly as important as awareness.
4- Where in the world is your favourite place to see art? I love seeing art outside of galleries and museums. Spending significant time with the work can really build appreciation for it, and seeing art in waiting rooms or airports can give you the time to really get to know it. More traditional venues are wonderful, too, especially ones that take into consideration the physical comfort of the viewer. I love to sit with the work for a while, if it’s something that moves me.
5- What exhibit, that you have seen within the last year, has most influenced you? Not an exhibit per-se, but this fall at the Portland Art Museum I saw a screening of Beauty Is Embarrassing, the documentary about Wayne White. The film gave me this great appreciation of his work and simultaneously it just made me want to run to my studio.
6- Do you collect anything? I collect books: art books and favorite novels, primarily, but also all sorts of other things that catch my interest. This tendency of mine has really been encouraged by living in Portland - we have Powells Books, the biggest book store in the US.
7- If you could choose anyone to see your work, who would he or she be? I always thought it would have been incredible to have been part of the Voyager project in the 1970s that sent into space a golden record with information for extraterrestrial life to understand humanity. (So I guess I’m saying that I would like my work to be seen by space aliens! Not that they would have any frame of reference for my work, which really requires cultural context.) I think that my desire to have been part of Voyager comes from the fact that this relic will outlive the earth, and even if no one ever sees it, it is still an object from our time that will last forever.
8- What is the greatest compliment anyone has ever paid to you regarding your artwork? Someone once told me that I had said something that she had felt, but had been unable to say.
9- In which walls would you like to see your work exposed in 10/20 years? It would be an absolute dream to show at DIA:Beacon. I love spaces that are quiet, open and allow the time and space for contemplation. The landscape there is so romantic, and all the artists shown there are such incredible thinkers.
10. Last one, Who would you love to see answering these same questions? A difficult question, for sure. I recently bought the book of Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books series, and it is funny and amazing, like all of her work.
About Alyson Provax (profile, Saatchi Gallery) Alyson Provax is an artist and printmaker living in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in mundane experiences of boredom and anxiety, the transcendent feeling of considering the size of the universe, and the sensual tactile. She enjoys picking up phrases from overhead conversations and private notes, drippy monotypes, and the feeling of paint on fingertips. She would love to hear the ways in which you wasted time today and about your feelings about necessary and repetitive tasks