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Is an artist based in Montreal, where she focuses on making
objects and images, and obsessively pickling, preserving and fermenting food. Her
practice focuses around drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation. In
2011 she received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
University in Halifax, including a term at the Glasgow School of Art in
Scotland.
Casting will be showing at Monastiraki from 1
November to 1 December, 2013. You can find her website here.
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On 1 November 2013,
Monastiraki was warm with bodies and voices orbiting the front of the gallery,
interacting with Senft’s work. And it wasn’t the glance-hmmm-nod type of interaction
(that’s altogether too bourgy, and we all know that). The knit-like patterns evoke
a trance of sorts; eyes doing infinite loops while remaining grounded in the
soft, sinewy line work. The pieces are at once taxing and sedative, a quality
of art that creates a rare sense of breathing room for the viewer. Following
the patterns is a commitment, yet pausing is an acceptable and, perhaps,
essential facet. It’s quite clear that Senft won’t be a starving artist (she
pickles). As the night was coming to an end, Senft and I spoke about
untouchable art, pig noses, and people who don’t have secrets.
In your artist
statement, you mention taking your drawing ‘beyond the page.’ Can you talk a
bit more about that?
My dad was a sculptor, so
I grew up in a metal shop. When I did end up going to art school, I didn’t take
any sculpture classes. I still haven’t really acknowledged or found where that
resistance laid. So that led me into other venues – a lot of which was
printmaking. That’s where I really learned paper, surface, line, that kind of
thing. And when I left school, a lot of that translated to drawing, because
that was what was affordable and accessible .and easy Once I start to look
back, I realize that everything I make or have made is this obsession with
surface, materiality, form, line. And all that goes back to, really I think,
love of sculpture, and that being the initial education. So I think that’s
where my desire to take it [my work] ‘beyond drawing,’ comes from. It’s like,
“Yeah, I made this drawing,” and then I’m interested in it, but I want it to be
more. I want to make things that are 3-D or malleable or more physical. And
bigger or touchable.
Which seems to be
embodied by your installation in the window. The changing shadows throughout
the day was a great surprise.
That piece is about the
material but it’s also about the surface it hangs on. Because it casts
multiple-layered shadows, so it’s really about how it interacts with the
surface behind it. I’ve always hung it on a wall and made sure it was lit in an
interesting way. But now it’s hung on a surface that has two sides, so it’s
doubled in that sense where it has that extra layer, which is really exciting.
Tonight, we’ve seen
people touching the installation, adding a third element to the piece. What are
your feelings on viewer interaction; should people touch art?
This is really my dad – I
grew up [with the idea] that you touch art, that’s what you do. If there’s a
sign that says, ‘Don’t touch the art,’ that’s bullshit. Now when it’s a print
or a drawing, I don’t necessarily believe that. You know, if you have clean
hands and you’ve handled paper before and you know what you’re doing – great,
touch it. But it’s hard to let the general public touch a drawing because it’s
going to be destroyed. [The installation in the window is made out of] EPDM,
but it’s like sheet rubber, essentially. It’s pretty durable, and everybody
sees it and they have no idea what it is, and they’re so interested. So I’m
always telling people, “Touch it, here, just feel this, you know? Move it
around.” They’re like, “Really, are you sure?” “Yeah, please, this will give
you an understanding of what you’re looking at,” you know? This explains the
sculpture if you realize what the material is. I’m very for touching sculpture,
touching art.
Also in your artist statement, the word subtle
seems to be a driving force in your work. You express a need for patience when
dealing with your artwork, and enjoying pieces that ask the same of the viewer.
In that same vein, how do you feel about people who don’t have any secrets?
Does that make sense?
I work in service, [at a]
café, and something that I struggle with or come up against a lot is people
just asking questions about your life. As if it’s never occurred to them that
you don’t work in a café because you want to be a public icon, you work there
because it pays you. Right? And, I don’t want to tell this stranger what
neighborhood I live in. People who don’t have secrets is like the same thing to
me, I don’t relate. I like to be social, I like to talk and hang out and meet
people but I also really like to have that separation between private and
public life. [This translates into the art world when,] for some people
abstract work is problematic: “What am I supposed to be seeing here?” Versus
why I’m so drawn to making something that is abstract and that I want people to spend time [with]
and see whatever they want; I think that’s a parallel. What I go through in
making this work – because they’re kind of process-based drawings, they’re
meditative – that’s not necessarily what’s on display. What that drawing is
about for me is not what that drawing is about for that viewer.
When you were young,
was there something you found yourself habitually drawing?
The way that I drew noses
as a kid was pig noses – so the two dots and then a circle around. Any figure
that I drew human, alien, otherwise had a pig nose. Which is really nice. My
dad, being a metal sculptor, he would sometimes take a drawing and turn it into
a sculpture. So there’s this amazing drawing that I did age 3 or 4, and it’s my
cousin crying. It’s kind of like a sun head – it’s a blob. And then there’s
lines coming out of it – hair – and then these eyes that are crying and this
pig nose, and a wide open wailing mouth. And then just two legs, with lots of
toes. So this exists now in forged steel, and it’s amazing – the best
collaboration I’ve ever seen. It’s my cousin being a drama queen at age 5.
Family portraiture.
Is there anything
you’ve been reading or listening to that’s worth putting on record?
Something that I’m really
excited about that just started is Perish Publishing, out of Toronto. I think they’re making art books.
I read this book recently
that I really loved, and I’ve been recommending it to everybody since then but
I think, ultimately, I should just recommend it to young women I know. It’s
called How Should a Person Be? by Sheila
Heti – I think she’s from Toronto, she’s pretty young. I relate to it on this
level of what-the-fuck, and I’m a young artist trying to make it sort of thing.
But I don’t know why or how. But at some point in the book she buys a tape
recorder and approaches her best friend – she’s trying to write a play and
she’s really stuck. She wants to record all the conversations she has with her
best friend who’s a painter. And her best friend flips out, she’s like, “You
can’t put me into this concrete thing where everything I say is now archived
forever, that’s horrifying.” And that’s how I felt when Billy told me we were
going to have this interview, I was like, “Oh no!” So it’s good, I’ve overcome
a fear today.
Interview conducted by Tara Slaughter
