Brianna Rigg

My work in sculpture and installation revolves around my drawing practice. For the past 20 years, I have made improvisational compositions with black ink on paper that combine imaginative drawing with drawing from observation and memory. These drawings follow the pattern of my thoughts, they echo my dreams and they are fueled by my desires. Gradually, I have developed a sculptural practice that does the same. My installations are drawings in real spaces that the viewer can inhabit.

                 My three-dimensional work has been focused on the use of appropriated objects. I have culled highly refined collections of items from thrift and discount stores and assemble these items into landscapes exploring capitalist culture's relationship to nature and place. A key tactic in my work is to transform consumer goods into natural landscapes that resemble the San Diego area; its sea, land, and sky. My installations are colorful, cheerful, and seductive, yet they allude to the destruction of the natural environment because they resemble scattered debris and ocean trash. While my work illuminates some of the dark sides of capitalism, I am seeking to create a healing and heart-opening experience for the viewer. I believe that by casting consumer goods into a set of relationships that resemble an ecology, I am animating these objects and infusing them with the spirit, the wonder, and the mystery of nature. I intend to subvert capitalism by using its products to inspire the viewer to recognize the natural world's inherent value.

 In the studio, I hold the viewer in my thoughts as an imagined collaborator. I always entertain the idea of building a landscape for the viewer to rearrange. This intention is inspired by the Situationist's concept of unitary urbanism, that we should individually and collectively participate in the reshaping of our environments. The Situationists argued that the reshaping of architecture and the city goes hand in hand with society's reshaping. I believe this too, and I hope that my installations disrupt passive consumerism by offering an example of active and creative interactions with the material world.

On one occasion, I made a participatory work. Waiting Places, 2017, was a collaboration with musician and composer Michiko Ogawa and was part of Springfest at Bread and Salt in San Diego. I filled a room with sculptures and objects for the viewer to manipulate and arrange; and Michiko played electronic music that responded to viewer engagement. This project was an extension of my work as an adjunct sculpture professor. Every semester I begin my instruction with a similar exercise, setting up objects for students to rearrange.

                 Composition and arrangement are my favorite aspects of art-making because they involve carving out spaces formed by the relationship between things. When I arrange objects, I regard them as playing social roles because they inform one another in ways that shift every time an object is moved. While I love this process, I want the viewer to experience it as well, which is why I intend to make more participatory work in the future.

                 When making installation out of found-objects, I am engaging with the viewer in an extroverted way. I am seeking to speak a language that the viewer can understand because it is built out of recognizable forms. But in my current work is more introverted. I am working heavily in ceramics and seeking to create original objects to arrange. This work is more personal, and it more closely resembles my drawings than my past work. My drawing practice is a filter of my experience. It is a method of taking in the world around me and processing it emotionally. Like my installations, my drawings are a way for me to process and rearrange the external world, but this processing is more closely linked to my emotions when I draw.

    I consider my work successful when new and unexpected forms are brought to life. With my drawing practice, these are creatures that gradually and synergistically

emerge through layers of line-work. And with my installations, this liveliness exists as the aura of the work, the overall feeling of a space. My main objective is that my work contains a vibrant living force. I hope that this force can be harvested by the viewer, giving them the energy needed to reshape the world around them.

JM: Where are you from originally and could any connections be made to your place of origin and your art? 

BR: I grew up in Ashland Oregon, from the age of 3 through 18. The first three years of my life were spent off the grid in Bonanza Oregon. My hippy parents had fled Los Angeles afraid that it was going to self-destruct. They spent 12 years living in the woods with no running water or electricity. My dad built our home little by little starting from a geodesic dome and adding to the structure when we could afford building materials. I grew up poor by American standards. We would do things like go on long road trips without enough gas money to get home. 

Class informs my work as much as my place does. The ingenuity of my parents inspires me. As a kid, I had a strong desire for material things. I would often steal things to give to my friends; I wanted to create an illusion that my family had more money than we did. My artwork embraces material indulgence, and in some ways, I believe I am compensating for the shame that I felt around class growing up.  

Five years after I moved to Ashland at the age of three, my dad lost our mountain home. He has never revealed how he lost it. I have spent most of my life since longing for a home. My work is an effort to bond with my surroundings and to manufacture a world where I belong. 

JM: How did you come about deciding to pursue art, specifically sculpture? Was it an expressed interest early on for you? 

BR: After high-school I was desperate to be an artist and terrified of telling people. I took a 4-month trip to Europe when I was 19 and constantly photographed while I was there. At The Evergreen State College, I studied film and video for my first two years, but I was also exposed to performance art and installation. Meanwhile, I had a hidden drawing practice. All my art is born of desire. My drawing practice flourished when I was in college because I tried to use it to cure loneliness. I used to draw characters on sticker paper called "Valentine Lonelies" and paste them around town on Valentines Day. Film and video didn't work for me; I don't understand time at all. Installation caught me though, I learned that I need to be physically engulfed in my work to understand it. When I chose to focus on installation in my senior year, I did so because I felt I could use it to speak clearly. Now, I am much more interested in confusion. 

JM: What are some of the first things you consider when making an installation?

BR: I am not able to work toward a concrete idea. My work has to grow organically. I am an adjunct professor, so I usually make art during the summer in my classroom. I start my work by playing with what is around me. Sometimes I work with student projects that have been left behind. I turn into a machine transforming what is available. But after a week or two of working the stuff lying around, I start to determine a design strategy to guide my material choices. I develop a color pallet. I decide what kind of textures I want to use, how heavy I want the work to be, and what methods I want to employ. As a young artist, I was conscious of using my work to navigate consumer choices. I needed to answer the question of what to buy, what to keep, what to get rid of. My work became a sort of object filter, and I learned to choose things because of their capacity to activate other things. Over the years, I have learned to waste a lot less of the materials I collect- I feel like this is an accomplishment.

JM: You use such a diversity of media in your works. I'm curious as to where you source your materials and how you decide what materials to incorporate in your installations? 

BR: A lot of what I do is about taking materials that have their origin in nature (all materials do), and returning them to nature as an artificial construction. I try to animate objects them by bringing them into relation with an environment. 

I grew up without a TV, so for me, culture has always been relayed most concretely through objects. Today we are living in an epoch where the virtual is more present. But I still respond to the physical. So when I shop, I believe I am experiencing culture. I used to be in love with the idea that by working with an object that was previously owned, I had a connection with the previous owner, and that my work was a way of exploring this connection. But one thing I have learned over the years is that I get bored with working with the same type of objects. So I have worked with objects from Walmart, sporting goods stores, free piles, swap meets, and of course thrift stores. Choosing where to shop determines how the work will manifest. My choice of where to shop also depends on how much money I have. 

This being said, my work is changing a lot. I am tired of shopping. My credit cards are maxed out and my storage unit is full. I have slowed down and started to make things by hand. My former practice demanded a kind of cognitive dissonance that I don't think I can step into again. I mean the type of thinking that is complicit with overconsumption. I thought I was making overconsumption better by making it more fulfilling. I love my past work, but I can't consume at that level anymore. So I have been slowly making a big change in the way I do things. I am concerned about the environment; the west coast is currently burning. We all need to shift and start doing things differently, to strengthen our commitment to the planet. I am grateful that my practice has helped me to internalize my environment. The forests of Oregon are inside me because I have developed a relationship with them by trying to simulate them with my work. Now I feel the forest fires inside me. I think we all should feel that. I believe that art can heighten of our empathetic abilities- and this is needed. 

JM: Once you put materials/objects together are you interested in their potential to assume new meaning and/or interpretations? If so, in what ways? 

BR: I am interested in potential in general; potential is the key to creativity. I try to teach my students to recognize the potential in things such as materials, ideas, problems, and situations. I am trying to suggest to the viewer that the material world is mutable. I hope that my work advocates for a DIY manipulation/customization of consumer goods. I hardly glue or weld things together, my work is a loose assembly of stacked and wedged together parts. I want those parts to be used differently in the future, whether by me in my next installation, or by the viewer, my students, or the object's next owner. 

JM: Can you explain how everything is held up? What role does gravity play in your process of assembling? 

BR: Gravity is a huge help, and I use it instead of glue. Things are held up as a result of a series of negotiations. I am always trying to balance objects in the studio so they stand up long enough for me step back and get a good look at them. When I display my work, I sometimes go back and reinforce points of joinery with tape or string to make sure the work doesn't collapse or hurt someone. My 2015 installation After the Victory Dance had a lot of things that hung from a few points in the ceiling; objects were strung together in a network like a spider's web. Negotiating structure in this way takes time. When making After the Victory Dance at Helmuth Projects in San Diego, Josh Pavlick, who ran the space, gave me 5 weeks to install. I believe that work would have never manifested without Josh’s extraordinarily generous support. He was the quiet collaborator of the San Diego art scene for about 10 years until Helmuth closed. 

JM: Is there something that acts as a recurring source of inspiration for you which could be observed in your work such as literature, music, nature, etc?

BR: Yes, nature definitely. For me, nature is the most important thing. I believe that we create culture to connect with nature. From my experience, I am not fully connected when I merely observe. I love to observe, but I need to be an active part of nature. I try to recreate nature with artifacts. Music is there also, and this has to do with why I make installations. I am seeking to build complex systems that harmonize. My effort towards harmony is about making a space that appears to have a natural balance. This has to do with composition also. I guess I fancy that my approach to composition is more musical than, say painterly.  

JM: How, if at all, are you having to adjust in your practice during the time of COVID?

BR: I began to adjust my practice before COVID-19 and it is starting to solidify as a new way of working. COVID has caused me to isolate quiet a bit. Thus it has been fitting of my new work, which is much more introverted. I am trying to keep my work closer to my heart and to think about the viewer or exhibition situation less. For a long time, I felt like I had something I wanted to share with the world. I wanted to create an experience for others. But I hit I point where I just felt drained, so I am making work that nurtures me more now, this has a lot to do with bringing my sculpture practice closer to my drawing practice. My drawing practice is where I feel most at home, but it has a limitation of being two dimensional, thus it will always feel removed from reality. What I really want to do is to create an environment out of my drawing world. I have always aimed for that in my past work, and working with found objects has allowed me to compose in the same way I do with my drawings. But now I want to build the forms and compose them. This is a much slower process, and I am taking my time. 

Brianna Rigg teaches Sculpture at the University of San Diego. She received her MFA from University of California San Diego in 2011, and her BA from the Evergreen State College in 2002. She has had solo shows at Best Practice, Helmuth Projects, and Space for Art in San Diego; and has shown at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Highways Performance Space in Los Angels, Sediment Arts in Richmond, and Fjord Gallery in Philadelphia, in addition to other exhibitions throughout Southern California.

www.briannarigg.org

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