Karla Centeno questions to Brett Amory:

KC: We pass strangers every day (well, less now with COVID). What compelled/compels you to choose the subjects you photograph?

BA: Subject matter in my work is often the things and places I spend the most time with, my surroundings and daily routines. I use my practice as a way of shifting my attention towards the “overlooked” to better understand how I experience and interpret everyday life. I spent fifteen years on a body of work titled Waiting. I made over 400 paintings and installations before ending the series in 2016. Conveying the idea of “the transient temporarily”, the series consisted of abstracted depictions of anonymous, isolated figures caught in routine, passive activities directed by existing circumstances: waiting in line for a bus, riding the train, sitting in traffic, grocery shopping, making dinner, washing dishes—such feelings of confinement and the act of doing the same thing every day

KC: You once mentioned that you are a creature of habit. How do habits manifest themselves in your artistic practice?

BA: Like many of us, my day-to-day has been altered by the shelter-in-place order, though for me it is a “return to normal.” For the past two years, I have been commuting to Palo Alto and working out of an 800-square-foot studio as part of Stanford’s MFA program. Being in quarantine has allowed me to settle back into my pre-grad school routines where I  find myself reflecting and paying more attention to the ordinary, commonplace of everyday life. Finding solace in everyday routines provides insight into the cathartic experience of art-making during this period of lockdown. My daily painting series titled Self in Place, began the second week shelter-in-place was ordered in California. This body of work thematize the domestic act of inhabiting space and confinement to a particular place. Exploring the relationship between the home and the self, these paintings are a response to the often overlooked phenomena of daily life and how being in solitude acts as a reminder of the things we miss after spending time apart from social distancing. 

KC: The first experience I had with your work was at your studio. You had converted the space into an art installation. This work is very different. Are there any connections between these two-dimensional works and your immersive art installations?

BA: My hybrid digital/monotype prints are made from older, unused photographs. The original intent for the photos was to use them as reference for the Waiting series. Like the Waiting series my intent for this work is to capture and draw attention to overlooked, temporal moments that make up everydayness. My installation, titled Making Simple Sublime, also explores the mundane but is more experiential. The visual perception the installation offers is a very different experience from my two-dimensional work which are designed to be viewed from the outside. I use installations as a means to explore the role of sensory perception through spatial experience, whereas my paintings/monotypes  are more of a response to daily routines and the fleeting moments that make up everyday existence.

KC: What attracted you to the process of monoprinting for this body of work?

BA: While I was at Stanford we had access to the wide format printers as long as we provided the paper. I ended up buying a roll of paper that was incompatible with the printers. As a result, the printed ink took weeks to dry. Instead of wasting the paper I decided to use the faulty paper to my advantage. Greg Rick, another MFA student, showed me how to do monotypes a couple weeks before so I took the wet prints and ran them through the monotype press. Through a lot of trial and error, I eventually landed on something I liked. 

KC: How much of this work is composed vs. left to chance?

BA: In the beginning, I didn’t know what the outcome would be or if the transfer would even work so chance played a big part in the process. Having done it a few times I learned how the transfer behaves. For example, If the paper that's receiving the transfer is dry it only picks up some of the digital print but if I wet the paper, nearly the entire print gets transferred. The more I learn about monotype printing the more composed the image becomes.  .