Conscious Space - a conversation with Bethanie Jones

Bethanie Jones works in plaster, making her casts out of wood and found objects. Josh Frank, her partner in art, worked with her on this series which will be shown alongside solo work at Peter Miller Books in Pioneer Square through October. A reception will take place during First Thursday 5:30 to 8:30 PM.

Using suggestive abstract patterns and realistically rendered sculptures, Bethanie and Josh reconsider the lifestyle of objects. Artifacts of the human world—a slouching pillow in an iron stand, t-shirts life-like on hangers, patterns snaking across off white rugged surfaces, a drain pipe – form a romantic language for the unsung objects in our lives.

You work at an architecture firm, does that inform your art or do you see them as separate?

I’m an architectural designer at DLR Group and when we get down to it a lot of that revolves around thinking about space and how a user might experience it. I’m very interested in the psychology of space.

My art and work influence one another and because of that, I find myself in a lot of tension. I’m caught in the contrast between the rigidity of architecture while wanting to apply something that is much more conceptual and fluid. It can be difficult and there’s a lot of push back sometimes.

I’m constantly looking for sensation in extremely mundane moments. Perceiving beauty in objects, conversations and things unseeable.

In what way does your interest in the psychology of space play out in your work?

These objects are speaking about processes, patterns, things that are very simple but they say so much about a place and what makes up something or someone. I make through the lens of WORK and PLACE – not to be confused with workplace.

I think a new sensibility can extend into our surroundings and we can be much more watchful, more sensitive, even more bored, when we talk about leveraging innovation. I think we’ve lost that sense of boredom where we can form ideas that are very innovative.

One of the pieces consists of three 5-foot tall diagrams depicting meetings on a sidewalk.

I spent the last year documenting my interactions running into strangers on the street, creating logs of when and where it occurred, what the individual looked like, what they were wearing.

When I see in the distance that I’m about to run into a person, I think, “oh fuck this is annoying.” I either have to go this way, they that way, and there’s still a chance we’ll run into each other. That moment is so fascinating; if we had done one thing differently in our day, that moment never would have happened. Two people that don’t know each other can be so in sync.

How did you and Josh come to work together on this project?

 He and I work individually and sometimes together but we’re always conversing and our work is influenced through that conversation. 

Josh and I knew each other in school and we’ve been working side by side for quite some time but never actually collaborated on something together. Our interests are different but at the same time, reflective. When presented this opportunity with Peter Miller I knew I wanted a partner and I wanted it to be josh.

The pieces are all very different in how they are placed, hung, or arranged, can you talk about how you worked within the gallery to display everything?

I struggle with the definition of a “gallery” because these things are just things made because I find moments or situations interesting and I react to them. For me to put them in a gallery feels very out of place.

For me, the process is a part of the end product. It’s hard for me to say that and mean what I truly mean because everything has a process and it’s important but I really try to allow the objects to do whatever they want. None of these objects are precious- they’re constantly developing. If one gets a chip/crack/mold, it’s part of how it wants to develop.

You’ll notice at the show that I’m struggling with the concept of a gallery by how the work is arranged.

I’m excited to set up the space, in the same way that the process is constantly evolving, I know that once the pieces are in the space, that too will evolve and they will tell me where they want to live.

They’re there to live and hopefully stimulate someone in a new way.

Art & Community with an Installation Artist

            Diana Laurel Caramat, who works under several monikers including DslashN and D/N D/N (pronounced “dindin”), is a Philippines born community-driven interactive and installation artist.

            I say community-driven, because their life and work is dedicated to community engagement. They live at Apex, a cooperative housing apartment in Belltown, and work around the corner at common AREA maintenance, a studio collective. They create installations and public art works throughout Seattle. Check out Diana’s website.

            Lounging in their room, a purring kitten on my lap, I talked with Diana about their practice, which favors sensory-rich, interactive art centering accessibility.

            Diana received a contract from the Downtown Seattle Association and Seattle Parks and Recreation for four Saturdays through July and August for rotating installations at Bell Street Park and a grant from 4 Culture for a series of Sensory Socials focused on art for folx on the spectrum.

Can you tell me a little about your practice?

My practice centers bringing joy to people by meeting a need for certain audiences that I feel very close to and who need to be represented.

“Does your head tingle now when I do this?” is my favorite question to ask.

The fact is - it’s okay to have work that is softer, more fun, and simpler for folx who have sensory and social needs. It’s important to give them art that they will enjoy. My style is fun, playful, and tries to bring people together. Stress can be such a detriment to individuals and de-stressing as part of art is so beneficial. I am one of those audience members that benefit from the work.

I live in my neighborhood intentionally. I live in my co-op at Apex with 20 other members, all their housemates, and our cats. When I go around my neighborhood I think about where art would look good, keeping my ear open where events are happening or public events through the Office of Arts & Culture and where the local government is opening up pores for us to place our art.

My values often align with arts and culture programs in that we all want to use art for a greater good and bring benefits to people who won’t get them so readily. I know the goals for certain projects offer even more opportunities to connect with communities, so I never feel lonely in my practice. Honestly, that’s why I have it – being a human can be really lonely.

I secretly-not-so-secretly want to be some dorky teenager’s art role model. I got paid by an art museum to make slime? I got to install giant cat inflatable sculptures in the park? All these things are possible and it’s great to represent it.

It’s a stereotype that art can be intimidating; do you find that to be true with interactive work? How do you encourage people to engage?  

Queue up 20 people in my brain and I consider the possibilities of what they need to interact. There is something to exhibition design … in the way that people wander around a space, it’s very similar regardless of outdoors or indoors … you give people multiple avenues to move through the work. Sometimes they want to spectate, and that has to be fine, too.

The work has to be prepared for people who don’t know how to read obvious signs and people that would hesitate. So I make all the materials touchable and I put them at accessible heights. I’ll have facilitators on site playing with the objects so they don’t seem as precious. I build a little circle of energy and let them naturally wander around.

I also include objects that cross generations- when someone sees bubbles or hula hoops, there’s no way you can’t touch it, people know how it works and automatically play.

As an artist I know how to mess with parts of installations and sculpture to do certain things. In terms of scale - make it bigger and they won’t think it’s as serious, it becomes less intimidating. Make it shorter or smaller and people are less likely to think it’s official. If they have to crouch, or are in a chair, I try to make the work height variant for those different accessibility needs. As a set the objects still work in variable heights. There has to be something to do seated, standing up, and low to the ground. It gives people the ability to know what their body needs.

You’ve said that you are conscious of waste, which can be challenging for material-based artists, especially for installation-related work. How do you keep to that principle when dealing with materials? 

I try to be conscious of my impact on the earth – it’s part of my manifesto – including my footprint and the communities they touch. I think that also comes from my culture, that Filipinos like re-using, and I’ve seen a lot of work that is made from re-used things. I buy second-hand and if I introduce raw material I try to make as little waste as possible by designing a work that can utilize all dropped components. When I have things that end up with packaging or paper bags, we’ll make something out of it. All waste generates supplies for something else.

But I understand the limits to the type of work you’re making given the location and scope. I’m not going to use high-end steel for an installation in a park, I’m going to use simple materials that can be reshaped and re-used. I have a completely different practice when installing a large piece.

You are working on a series of sensory socials for neuro-divergent people, how did this idea come about and do you plan on focusing on particular groups in the future?

I want to do art for accessibility and I don’t see enough work geared specifically towards these populations. I realized I had my own sensory needs when I was in graduate school and I couldn’t figure out how it was linked to my art. I just kept doing a lot of actions similar to ASMR stimulation then I realized there are more people out there that had this similar experience and audience but a lot of is done solo in individual, single view video, one-on-one experiences. But what if you could create community moments out of the experience and break a sensory barrier? We need avenues to socialize and a facilitated, structured event that provides pre-established social boundaries is helpful. It can get hard to have to constantly interpret people’s social cues, to do it through art is extremely effective. People love it and I get really good responses from folx who find community out of it.

I did my first slime social at apex, we had a bunch of people and prepped a really great social – we found when our sensory needs were handled we could get close to people – touching the same batch of slime, our hands within an inch of each other. Here we were getting close to strangers that we normally wouldn’t and that was okay. Everyone gets something different from it.

You collaborate with a lot of artists in your work, what about forging that community is important to you?

 It’s the only way I socialize. I just feel that cooperative living and working is healthier. It’s healthier for your studio practice as far as getting different viewpoints on what’s effective. If I’m doing community art, I always work within a community to make sure I’m listening and that people are saying what they want. We’re engaging with art just as much as we’re playing with the next-door neighbor.

Answering the question of “this is what I could manifest, how would you like to experience it?” has only come with learning how to live and work in communities. Graduate school taught me how to work independently as an artist and understand I could do this as a business but I had to learn to work with communities and what they needed. To do so I had to confront my own inadvertent oppressive regiments. As an artist, you don’t have to make things a certain way. That takes time to realize. I learned from my mistakes trying to force myself into communities. I wasn’t in communities when I was trying to make communities work and now I am in ones that I really adore and I try to make work for us.

It’s “us”, not “me” and “them” and that’s the important part.