Nearly four years after tearing onto the underground music scene with her 2006 EP “Pop The Glock,”  Uffie gets us into a groove with the mixed-beat, genre-bending tracks of her recently released album, Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans.

In the dressing room, just before performing at SOS Music Festival in Murcia, Spain, we managed to take a peek down her barrel and find out a little more about the up-and-coming artist.

Vanessa: Why the name Uffie?

Uffie: It’s what my dad has called me since I was born. He would always say, “enuff, enuff, enuff!” when speaking to me.

Vanessa: Where’d you grow up and why the move to France?

Uffie: I grew up between the States and Hong Kong. When I was fifteen, I visisted my dad in Paris and decided to stay… I really prefer European lifestyle and culture.

Vanessa: Do you play any instruments?

Uffie: Not yet.

Vanessa: Has music always been a part of your life or did you discover it when you grew up and started to play a part in the night scene?

Uffie: I have always loved music and my parents were always playing it in the house. I just never thought of being a musician until DJ Feadz got me into it.

Vanessa: What do you sing most about?

Uffie: My life. I think that these days I tend to write about things that confuse me. It’s as though, if I analyze them in the song, I will somehow figure them out. A night out… love… loneliness… Whatever it is that I’m feeling in the moment.

Vanessa: Are you more about lyrics or rhythm and beat?

Uffie: Depends on the song.

Vanessa: What artists are you working or planning on working with in the near future?

Uffie: That is a surprise that you will have to wait for!

Vanessa: Your music has been described as “anti-flow”. What does that mean? Where do you get your flow?

Uffie: I have no idea, actually (laughs). The flows just come naturally, through the rhythm, beat, and words. It just sort of comes out a certain way that fits.

Vanessa: It has been some time since “Pop the Glock,” and some of your earlier projects and collaborations got the underground scene’s attention. Tell us about the making of Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans.

Uffie: It was important for me to make something other than club tracks, to go deeper, and push myself more outside of my comfort zone, so the album criss-crosses a lot of moods and genres.

Vanessa: Do you have any plans to tour in the US?

Uffie: Oh yes! We should be on tour in late October and early November.

Vanessa: Name the top three artists on your mp3 player these days.

Uffie: The Flowers, The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem.

Vanessa: Any artists that not enough people know about but should?

Uffie: The Flowers are really great…

Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans was released June 14, 2010 in Europe and June 22, 2010 in the US by the French electronic music label Ed Banger Records.

Check out one of our favorite tracks off of the new album here.

Watching Jibz Cameron perform as her infamous alter-ego, Dynasty Handbag, feels like being invited to a private party in the mind of your artfully delusional great-aunt. Part clown, part id, part Real Housewife of Miami, Dynasty Handbag gracefully dashes between the lines of manic sub-conscious neurosis and external performativity, usually to reeling comedic effect.  Frequently employing pre-recorded text, Dynasty’s signature conversations-with-herself is taken to new levels in her current show, VERTititGO, wherein the elastic actress expands the character of Dynasty into six different personae (including a boxing flower and a profoundly gentle bear).

The play is part of Dixon Place’s annual LGBTQ HOT! Festival, though the only thing gay about this show is Jibz herself.  Either way, VERTititGO shouldn’t be missed. I recently got to talk up the affable Ms. Cameron, and— hoping to capitalize on her seemingly sub-conscious all-access-pass— I asked her to draw me a picture while we discussed process, anxiety, breasts, and bears.

Ivy: So tell me everything. How did Dynasty come to be?

Jibz: I had been writing these really simple little songs on my Casio. And I started talking to myself in between sets.

Ivy: And that whole thing of the two voices was born.

Jibz: And also I was married at the time, and I was having a really hard time in the marriage, ending, and I was sort of working out a lot of my shit with that. I think the looks, of Handbag, came out of that. The first show I did was called Miami Divorce Funeral Vacation, or something like that. It was sort of a retired divorce, bitter, that kind of thing… I was sort of making fun of myself because I was there, like 26, and divorced. It was a lot more tame [than now], and a lot more self-deprecating. She wasn’t quite as busted.

Ivy: Your performances really come out as all id.  Right?

Jibz: Well, yeah, people say that she’s pretty much all sub-consciousness. I would like to somehow access a part of my consciousness that isn’t filtered through what is going on right in front of me, in the world, or history, or my fear and anxiety—and I try to do that. But I don’t know that it’s really possible. But it is where I like to go. Because it’s the most interesting. And you can feel it too in your gut—whether it’s really true, or whether you’re creating something that’s meant to do something else besides tell the truth about something—it’s like nahhhh, I’m just doing that to tell a joke or whatever. She is less of a character and more of a vessel.

Ivy: It’s a person layered over another person or something. Or an under-layer. The cool thing—and this doesn’t feel super-conscious but is certainly there—is this idea of beauty—like you said, “she used to be less busted.” And it’s an amazing thing, the moment the lights come back up and you bow and up comes the gorgeous Jibz Cameron. And the whole show, you’ve been something else.

Jibz: Aw, thank you.

Ivy: The one fortuneteller character is pretty foxy.

Jibz: Well, that was the closest I’ve ever come to having someone be kind of beautiful—but in my mind, she doesn’t look that way. In my mind that lady has what we always called yam tits.

Ivy: Like, banana tits? Like super curly tits?

Jibz: No, like hippie lady—

Ivy: Oh, empty wallet tits.

Jibz: Yeah, empty wallet tits. Empty crystal sacks. There were a lot of ladies in my childhood like that woman. I’m not interested in looking… I’m not interested in representational ideas of beauty. I mean, for me.  Obviously, if I’m watching Meryl Streep or Isabella Rossellinni it’s not like, a problem.

Ivy: Well those women are also sort of most interesting in spite of their beauty. Or not just because of their beauty.

Jibz: Not beauty in the sense of like, really-skinny-big-tits-why-is-that-attractive, but rather, [I’m interested] with the things around us that are meant to mean beauty. Like with the outfits that Dynasty wears or whatever—like somebody thought that this would represent her in a certain way.

Ivy: Signifiers.

Jibz: Yeah, all the signifiers. I mean, everything is signifiers.

Ivy: Even in the name, isn’t it? I mean the name is the person, is the bag, is the vessel. So this show is part of a gay festival. But Dynasty Handbag is kind of sexless, right?

Jibz: Thank you.

Ivy: Did you ever study clowning? Because clowning, in the sort of Shakespearean sense, has that idea that clowns are pre-sexual, existing before sexuality. Pure. Not acting like children, exactly, but existing in a time before sexuality; innocent.

Jibz: Yes!  And also with clowning, there’s not a whole lot of ulterior motives. You just wanna get what you wanna get, which is what everything is about. Especially in theater—how are they gonna get what they want? That’s the story. And if there is sexuality, it’s like, really exaggerated. And then the joke becomes about how ridiculous it looks trying to be sexual.

Ivy: How long have you actually been doing Dynasty Handbag?

Jibz: It’s been a while. I think since 2001? I was in a band called Dynasty, and I had written these songs, and then the band fell apart.  And I still had all these songs and that’s how it became the handbag—portable, on the boom box—

Ivy: Ohhhhh.

Jibz: But then I ended up re-forming the band with other people. I was the singer and I played keyboards. Or I banged on them. And I was also an actor, and working in plays. Like, regular plays.

Ivy: You went to art school, but you also went to acting school?

Jibz: I did, I went to ACT, for two years. I had realized after I graduated from art school that I was in self-denial about my love of performing. It’s very hard on your ego, and I never really fit in with the theater people. When I was a teenager, I was so negative—such a hater—and like, getting up onstage and saying, “lalala I’m an actor!” There is a level of self-confidence required that I just didn’t have.

Ivy: And then a level of self-confidence that has to be broadcast, like, constantly. Self promoting– walking into every audition room with that attitude of just “I’m your guy!  I’m the greatest!” Has Dynasty ever had to audition for anything?

Jibz: No. I would never do that to her. But I have. [That is, Jibz Cameron has.] It doesn’t work. I just don’t come across well in that situation.

Ivy: You got some grants on this show, right?

Jibz: Well, I got a commission—they have one commission that they do for the festival. And so they asked me to do this show. And so I wrote it, and actually, the night before opening night I had to just re-do a lot of it. Because it just wasn’t working the way I had rehearsed it. And this was really new and really hard for me, this process. Usually I don’t open myself up to critique while I’m making something so much—I just bang something out and I’m like: “if you don’t like it? Bleh.” I don’t really go back into it that deeply. I make it, then move on. But here I had a lot of people telling me things, and of course had Kate Valk [of the Wooster Group, who was the Artistic Advisor on VERTititGO].

Ivy: How did that come about?

Jibz: Well, when I first came to New York, I interned at the Wooster Group. And then a million years later I was doing the Room For Cream [Live Lesbian Soap Opera @ LaMama], which was like, the most fun ever, and she came on and played my adoptive mother. Then she got me an audition for a Wooster Group show, which was so exciting I couldn’t even sleep or breathe. I ended up not being right for the part, but it went to Francis McDormand, so, you know, it was cool. And when I got this commission they told me I needed to work with someone, that I needed a director of some kind. And I was like, no way, I don’t know how to do that. And so I just asked her! And it was just a crazy progression of being an intern, like, sweeping the floor thinking: “Someday!”

Ivy: Dynasty is an inspiration to interns everywhere!

Jibz: Yeah! And now I even have interns!

Ivy: A little cabinet of mini-handbags. So what did Kate really do for you?

Jibz: Kate really helped me find the subtleties with the characters. And she really helped me find the shape the writing, and we worked a lot with the Detective’s voice—and that has changed a lot. It’s still changing.

Ivy: But that’s largely pre-recorded, right?

Jibz: Yes. And I’m still re-recording it, as I keep finding new things in the character.

Ivy: This is really a pretty big departure than anything you’ve ever done before, with Dynasty Handbag, right? I mean, did she ever represent other characters before?

Jibz: No! Yes, this has been all new; usually the other characters are the ones on the voice-overs.

Ivy: Right, so here we’re actually getting to see them.

Jibz: Exactly. That was what I wanted to do. Structuring it was the hard part.

Ivy: Well sure, like writing a proper play is a whole different bag. And that’s really what this is—a play, with characters and a story and an arc.

Jibz: Yes, tell me about it– I’ve never had to deal with that before—story. Before, it was just “whatever, this is just my weird thing and whatever blahhhh.” But now I’m like, really grappling with my ability to tell a story. Because I feel confident in my ability to play these characters. But structure, I struggle with.

Ivy: But it feels so right, now–where it begins and where it ends.

Jibz: Well it does, now. But I had to go through so many ideas that were not working.

Ivy: What is the story with the bear?

Jibz: The bear is… well, my girlfriend bought a house upstate. I was up there, working, all by myself, and I was looking out the window. And a bear just came walking through the yard. I knew they were up there, but the way that it was walking, it was just like—no big deal.  I mean the deer and the turkeys—they all have an awareness of where they are, they’re kind of freaked out. But with the bear, it was like: “What do I have to worry about—I’m a bear.” And I just started reading about bears, what they’re about, what they’re really doing. And they’re really, just all the time, they’re looking for food. And we’re all just looking for things to survive. And you know, they don’t sit around and have anxiety about, “how will I get my needs met?” Just very immediate. Put things in perspective for me. And the only time I feel like I’m in that moment, without anxiety, is when I’m doing this stuff, performing.

Dynasty Handbag performs her new work, VERTititGO, at Dixon Place, 161A Christie Street, NYC, tonight, Friday July 23rd and tomorrow, Saturday July 24th @ 7.30pm.

Photographs by Danielle Top, Drawing by Jibz Cameron

At the center of Luca Guadagnino’s rapturous I Am Love, opening June 18th, Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton burns white hot as a wife imprisoned in a world of wealth and custom. The character’s Princess is trapped in a castle turret, but the actress’s performance is a gem set in an elegant and timeless brooch. Guadagnino’s narrative is lean and unfolds effortlessly as if in accord with the natural order of Story itself. Nothing twists or gnarls the plot which ends up tending toward myth. The randy housewife may be one of the oldest stories in the book, but tethered to the febrile nerve that is Swinton it never lacks for vitality.

The craftsmanship of the film is as precise as a watchmaker’s and the materials employed in creating the world of a mighty Milanese family are among the finest on Earth. Unfolding in some fantasy world dreamt up in concert by Brunello Cucinelli, Raf Simons, Andrea Palladio and Luchino Visconti, I Am Love brims with luxury and beauty. Dossier caught up with the Sicilian maestro in March to talk about Flaubert, the sexuality of cinema and the mercurial Miss Swinton.

In I Am Love Tilda Swinton’s repressed housewife is named Emma. How much of this was inspired by Bovary and Flaubert?

To be honest, I think something like Madame Bovary is part of the genetics of many people and myself too. But if I say that I named the character Emma after that and that I really wanted to do another take on Emma Bovary and Flaubert I would lie. I think that is part of a more general genetic memory of art and literature that I have. What was a direct influence, in terms of the literal influence and literature influence, was Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, a novel I read when I was very young and I kept reading—I’m still reading it—because I found it extremely fascinating. It is the story of  20 years of a family in Germany in the 19^th century. It’s about the decadence of this family that represents the mercantile class of bourgeoisie Germany. In this book there is a character called Gerta Buddenbrook, the wife of the patriarch who in a way inspired me for Emma because in that book Gerta is a very secret woman with a mystery for herself and I see Emma as a very mysterious character who you don’t get to know completely because of what you don’t get to know and because also she is Russian.

Interesting that you mention Thomas Mann as that makes me think of Visconti who directed the great Death in Venice from Mann’s masterpiece and, in so many ways, both celebrated and eviscerated the baroque and decadent behavior of the aristocracy. Is Visconti at all an inspiration for you?

I believe that Visconti in the recent decade has been neglected as a sort of academic director. I am a total cinephile and I really see movies as a source of life for me. When I decided to go back to study Visconti to understand the secret of Visconti’s cinema I reviewed all of his movies and particularly Rocco and his Brothers and Senso and I discovered—I was astonished to learn—that this master of cinema is still an experimentalist who is playing with the form and language of cinema, trying to show a sort of visualization of class struggle, love, through the form of cinema, and it’s very daring. So, yes, we regarded Visconti as a sort of indication of a way of being entertaining and classical at the same time as being experimental and subversive.

How did you approach making a film that is so explicitly sensual, but only rendered in two dimensions, a visceral experience for the viewer?

I would say, by being truthful to my personal vision of things and life. It’s about not denying the strength of your ideas and trying to speak to it. I believe very much in the sensual element of life. I think that we all are informed by sensuality. I am an old fashioned Freudian. I think that he was right. I believe if you tell the story of some characters you should go for a very deep analysis of their behavior that comes along through their bodies.

In the Freudian sense, what does the food in the movie symbolize?

I mean, I think that food is the thing. The thing can be played in different ways—it can be tamed or untamed. Food is a way of controlling others: You can see this in all these dinner parties where you have this pitch-perfect expression of a class through its rites and mores and manners and rule, and you see these people eating all the time and not really facing the food, the thing that food represents, the organism alive, but to create a web of power. And then this young man comes along and puts food at the center stage, and he puts food—to quote Burroughs—as a naked lunch. He puts the food in a position that completely destroys the idea of controlling the other but becomes a way of communicating to the other, becomes a dialogue with the other. As the shrimps have a dialogue with Emma when she eats them. And of course it is also a nutritional element and sensual element, an erotic element—it goes inside of you. It titillated your palate. It is something that can be extremely subversive. I myself am a cook and I feel as if sometime there are people who can be disturbed by the relevance you give to food.

I had a feeling while watching that shrimp scene that there was definitely some Freudian stuff going on. It was no coincidence she was having that experience with such a phallic food.

It’s not.

You’re a cook, do you also work within the other elements so lovingly rendered in the film—architecture, sculpture, design, fashion?

I can answer by quoting Bernardo Bertolucci quoting the Dalai Lama, “Everything is form and the form is empty.” I believe in form and I think the most beautiful films I’ve seen recently is the last film of the great Sidney Pollack, the film of Frank O. Gehry. I believe that the shape of things is extremely fascinating.

It seems as though the way you use the camera is almost architectural. Is that something specific to this movie or is that your style, how you naturally move?

I don’t know that I would say I have a style; I hope I don’t. I think it’s more about really trying to figure out the language of cinema for the story and the milieu and the behavior of character and the story that you are telling. I’ve said that I am old fashioned because I am a Fredian, I would also add that I am old fashioned because I believe in the language of cinema instead of tele-visual shooting of scripts and people talking, talking, talking in close-up. That is something that doesn’t fascinate me. I am more interested in figuring out where to put the camera—what’s the right angle for the camera. All the directors I love, from Eric Rhomer to Alfred Hitchcock, even to the Farrelly brothers, they know where to put the camera.

Is the opulent world of the family in this movie at all what you experienced in your life?

No. I was raised in Ethiopia. My mother is Algerian. My father is Sicilian. It’s a very simple family. My father is a teacher, my mother works in telecom.

When did you first fall in love with film?

I remember sitting in my mother’s lap when I was 3 years old watching Lawrence of Arabia. It’s true. I remember all the sand.

When did you know this was what you were going to do?

I think I’ve always wanted to be a director. It is something very urgent—it is something you have to do. In fact it is very lucky to be doing a job and to get to meet a lot of great people and to get paid for it. It doesn’t feel like a job. It won’t ever feel like a job.

Speaking of great people, tell me about your working relationship with Miss Swinton with whom you have worked several times. How did it come about?

I believe that we are kind of partners in this crime that is movie-making and life. We became friends when I approached her when I was 22 asking her to do a short that we never ended up making but we started to understand we were attracted to each other like a kindred spirit. I think she is really one of the most incredible filmmakers in the history of the world. She is really fantastic. It’s not the intelligence of Tilda, it’s not the amazing cultural heritage of Tilda, but it’s her warm, passionate curiosity for all the aspects of life. She is eyes wide open and that is fantastic.

Last night our friend Scarlett Rouge presented her film Magic Trauma Sprinkles as part of drag diva Vaginal Davis’s ongoing residency at PS122, “Speaking from the Diaphragm.” Scarlett is the daughter of Rick Owens’s wife Michele Lamy and has known Vag’ since she was in diapers (Davis babysat her when she was a child). According to Scarlett last night’s proceedings “were a sexy/hot looney tune. And then there was an orgy.”

We caught up with the LA-born artist as she makes her way back to Cali from a 2-year stay in Paris to hear about the night, the motif of rebirth, and… well, the orgy.

I know you were expecting Vag’ to embarrass you with diaper stories. Did it get crazy?

Teasing was at a minimum. He was a bit drunk and seemed more in shock about how pretty I turned out. Which still made me feel embarassed and and red in the face.

I know the Rick-and-Michele questions are exhausting (and, I suppose this is one of them); did he ask you all about them?

The only mention of Rick and Michele was in his introduction, I remember as a teenager I would get really pissed about always being introduced as “Michele’s daughter.” It was almost my name.

It’s probably not fair to call you precocious but I’m gonna do it anyway: I remember when you were at CalArts you stopped me to explain that my use of the word revolution was incorrect, that “revolution, by definition returns you to the same exact place.” At the time you were studying… sacred geometry, I think, and we went on to have a long talk about regeneration. “Magic Trauma Sprinkles,” seems to be expressly about regeneration and rebirth. What is it about that passage that continues to inspire/fascinate you?

Good memory…

My friend Marco and I were talking about Ouroboros–a symbol of revolution/evolution–last night because he wants to get it tattooed… It represents self reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly recreating itself the etetrnal return. It can also represent primordial unity to something existing, with no beginnig or end, with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.

What fascinates me… Hm…

I think it represents so much about the nature of life or consciousness. The passage into the unknown, the moment we surrender and embrace change.  It gives life depth, but also reminds one that no matter is constant, so have fun don’t take the drama too seriously. Teaches us to live without fear but also to respect what is now, for no fist can grip tight enough to stop time.

It’s like that Dr. Parnassus film–the human drama loves to play the good vs. Bad game and part of the game is not thinking of it as a game. But really we live in a world of “married” opposite good and bad…birth and death…  I think I’m getting on a tangent…

What are you working on now? Wait, hold on, an orgy? Like, an orgy orgy?

Well, it wasn’t quite an orgy orgy–it didn’t get orgiastic.

Victoria Bergsman: I wanted a name that had some connection with nature- to describe how nature really moves me and always put me in in a balanced state of mind. The innocence of nature has always moved me, and I thought Taken By Trees was a nice phrase, to be taken by something so pure and innocent as trees.

Stephanie: You recorded East of Eden in Pakistan- was that an isolated experience, or are you planning on recording there in the future?

Victoria: Yes, and that is how I work. I see it as different projects and ideas. When it´s done I move on to the next idea. I constantly need new challenges.

Stephanie: What are you working on right now?

Victoria: I have been recording some vocals on a song for some friends. Also I have slowly started to get together ideas for my next album.

Stephanie: You recently moved to New York- has it done anything for your music- more exposure, inspiration, etc?

Victoria: Maybe, not sure yet. I think that is a question I could answer when I am no longer in New York, when I have some distance. I could see myself living in New York for some time, the city feels never ending, there is always a new little world around the next corner. It is very inspiring to live here but I feel it is hard to create, it is to busy and in constant motion. I can feel I have so much in me that I need to get out, in a song or in a film but I never find that peace of mind here. So I think I need to go away to somewhere boring for a couple of weeks and just create.

Stephanie: So where will you record your next album?

Victoria: Sorry, I can´t tell you.

Stephanie: There is a lot of great music coming from Sweden right now- do you still consider yourself a Swedish band, especially now that you are in NY?

Victoria: Of course, I am still Swedish. I will always be a Swede.

Stephanie: I read that you prefer to write in English as opposed to Swedish. Why is that? Is it an easier process even though it’s not your native language?

Victoria: I feel that English suits my melodies better, even though I have written a couple of songs in Swedish that I think worked for those particular songs. English flows better, Swedish goes up and down and can be very distracting.

Stephanie: I have a music blog with friends in which we post a song of the day each- your videos have been posted on a few occasions… If you were a contributor, what would your song of the day be, right now?

Victoria: Shadow Heart by Javelin, it is just an instant classic.

Stephanie: What other artists/bands are you listening to right now?

Victoria: Well, when I looked at my Ipod and on the most played artist it was a a hard competition between Cults and Javelin. I think Javelin has made this years best album so far, so playful and refreshing. Oh and Pure Ecstacy, I really look forward to their album. And the new Radio Dept album is not to miss!

Stephanie: What are the 5 top bands that have influenced your music?

Victoria: I would say bands and artists that have inspired my music have also inspired me in general, to be creative and create
If I have to choose only 5 then I would go for these, in no particular order:
The Supremes
Colin Blunstone
Orange Juice
Beach Boys
KLF

Stephanie: Who are your dream collaborators?

Victoria: My cat Chico, but I doubt it will ever happen. He is way too lazy.

Stephanie: Taken By Trees is a solo act, but tonight you are performing with a backing band. Who should we expect to see?

Victoria: It will be Mikael Karlsson (a swedish classical composer), Linton (multi-instrumentalist formerly in a San Fransisco band called The Aisler Set), Will McLaren (Willowz and Cults), Markus Görsch (Love Is All), and Elsa Chiao. A lovely little gang I must say.

Taken By Trees is performing tonight at Le Poisson Rouge, with a DJ set by Korallreven.
158 Bleecker Street (near Thompson)
10PM.

Waris New York, by Sandro Kopp

“A lot of people say I’m East-meets-West,” says Waris Ahluwalia, sitting at a hundred-year-old farm table in his glossy new studio space off Fashion Avenue. “But I am more like past-meets-future.” The weathered furniture, reclaimed from barns upstate and strewn about the poured-concrete and glass workspace, seem to echo this claim, but the artist behind the much-fetishized jewelry creations from House of Waris is talking about something deeper. He’s talking about tradition spurring on innovation. He’s talking about an artistic leap forward from a trip back to one’s roots.

Waris’s own roots wind back to the Punjab region of India where he was born and lived the first 5 years of his life before he and his parents emigrated to Brooklyn. “I come from a family of professionals,” he says. “Doctors, lawyers, engineers, CEOs; my uncle was, at one point, one of the top ten mathematicians in the country. So there was a different road for me. It has been a transition for someone who didn’t know they could make things. I had a natural interest in people who were creative. No one told me I could make things. I didn’t know better—I didn’t know I could create.”

Early on he was fascinated by the arts. “I was drawn to it by the music,” he says, “and by the nightlife. I was just taking it in, surrounded by creative people and then, I was like, wait, I can work with these people. I can produce or… still not realizing that I could do this, I could make stuff.” At this point Waris tried organizing an arts magazine, but it didn’t take flight. He dabbled in filmmaking, art show curation, even restaurants and other indirect endeavors to scratch his itch—but he was already arranging people, already with the idea of a collaborative community in his mind.

All the while he was making the scene, an endeavor which, these days, gets a bad rap. In fact, in a 2009 interview with Page 6, his then girlfriend, Chiara Clemente, felt compelled to defend Waris’s heavy presence on the scene, shouting down a silent but not so subtly implied label of ‘socialite.’ Waris himself is in a unique position to defend the party circuit, which he calls, “The golf course,” i.e. that place where people meet to casually discuss life, business and potential projects while blowing off a little steam. As part of his practice as a Sikh he doesn’t drink, so there are no sloppy side effects of his nightlife, A, and B, just look at the results.

“Every one of [the artists with whom I’ve collaborated] has just been a friend,” he says, and nods his head to indicate the convenient example of photographer Andrew Zuckerman who has stopped by the new studio space to leaf through stacks of framed pictures and dig the rough draft of the floor plan. “Andrew—we’re working together now, but he is my oldest friend in New York. I always loved his work and I just happened to be doing birds, the Omnia Vincit Amor collection, inspired by wallpaper in The Raphael hotel in Paris, and then Andrew was working on this book, Bird, so, I thought, this might be our chance!”  Zuckerman’s book is made up of stunning color portraits of exotic birds taken in their natural habitats all over the world. Seeing both strength and fragility in the creatures, Waris selected several of the images—some dynamic and almost mythic, others lyrical—and sent them to his enameller in India who then shaped and hand painted a collection of pendants. The resulting pieces, part figurine, part fresco, are something new unto themselves. Like a successful film adaptation of a novel or, more accurately, a painting from a familiar photograph, the new work compliments and amplifies on the original. It has intrinsic value—and, in the case of these porcelain danglers, substantial monetary worth to boot—but really sings in unison with its partner, like the collaborators themselves. Of this partnership Waris says, “Working with someone else is an incredible chance to go deeper into the relationship with them. I know Andrew on this level, now let’s get it to a new level as well, to create something together. That’s all I want to do: make something. I don’t care about the titles—jeweler, whatever—I don’t care what it is, as long as I am making something beautiful.”

Of those deeper levels of himself, the ones he shares with his friends and collaborators, but to us remain shrouded in mystery, Waris says, “I think it is a combination of I am still exploring it and it is easier for the world to take you in one step at a time. Everybody gets confused. In general, people like boxes. People are utterly confused by me.” Here the sometime actor mimics a baffled chorus, “‘You are actually acting? In real parts? With respected directors?’ It’s the boxing-in. I have no fear of the boxing-in, but, you’ve got to slowly introduce what you are going to do to the world,” he says.  So are we witnessing an unveiling? Is there a grand plan? “Yeah, yeah,” he says, but then quickly changes tack. “I ended up here not by a grand plan, but just by the universe bringing me here. When doors open you’ve got to walk through them and you’ve got to decide at what pace and in what direction, but it opens doors for everyone.”

Indeed, there is an apparent Tao to Waris’s career path—an acceptance, a going-with-the-flow, that kept him open to new and even foreign pursuits. As he states it, “I didn’t pick jewelry. I can’t tell you how little I thought of jewelry, how insignificant it was in my life. There’s no reference in my life to it, prior to my starting it.”

As with all tales of auspicious moments, after numerous reiterations the story of Waris’s ‘discovery’ feels well-handled, as if it has developed a patina of fairy dust, so we asked him to relate it for us as he remembers it. “It’s just so simple. It was the recession, so I thought, ‘oh, I should wear diamonds.’ It is my tendency, my flaw, to go the opposite way. So, I had these rings made and I was spending a lot of time in LA because New York gets cold. I’m in Maxfield’s, I’m wearing the rings and [the store clerk] comes up and says, ‘nice rings.’ I said, ‘thank you.’ There was no reason for me to even imagine that I would sell to Maxfield’s. The second question was, ‘are they yours?’ She meant, did you make them? What would she think that? How many times that someone is wearing something is it something they made? That store just really knows their clients. Third question was, ‘do you want to meet the buyer?’ So I met Sarah and they placed an order. And then I had to figure out how much they cost.”

Portrait by Sophie Caby

For someone who fell into his profession Waris is exceedingly enthusiastic and still committed to his craft full-tilt. “It’s thrilling,” he says. “It’s an adventure every second. It’s a platform to create—I make the boxes, I work with the printer of the book, I work with every aspect. There is not one aspect of my operation I am not directly involved in.” He considers his personal touch his calling card. So much so that when the esteemed boutique Browns of London wanted to preview a collection before they would sell his wares and asked to see a lookbook he refused. He insisted that he arrive personally, meet the owner and buyer and have them hold the pieces. “These things have weight,” he says, and he’s talking more than that which appears on scales. He believes in authenticity, in artisans, and the honor of craftsmanship. He beams with an almost filial pride when talking about the award his same enameller, the young son of an Indian family that has been making enamel for several generations, won for the future-forward technique hand painting he now uses on Waris’s birds.

Waris is to jewelry what a modern-day Brooklyn butcher is to culinaria. He is slow food, organic, atavistic, and obsessed with his ingredients and their sources. In a world of mass production he still makes each of his chains by hand. He is going direct to the source of his gold in Africa—to meet the people who mine it, to get to know them (and be known in return), to be involved. He feels deeply connected to each of his collaborators, be it Zuckerman, Jean Touitou of A.P.C., director Wes Anderson, in whose films Waris is a regular player, or the man who makes his suits. And, in this irony-sodden age, his earnest retro practices are once again cutting edge, proving that values are valuable any time. Summing up his guiding ethic, Waris sounds more like a throwback to a poetic era than a businessman in 2010. “It’s all about romance, “ he says. “The whole damn thing. Romance in every sense: the physical, the emotional, the spiritual. Whether you’re talking Sufi poetry or Rumi or the ladies, it’s all connected. And the first person who has to be romanced is me. If I’m not sold…  If it doesn’t feel authentic… I can’t do it. It has to come from some place real. It goes back to the same thing—all I want to do is create stuff. Forget designer, jeweler, whatever; I wish my title was just, ‘maker.’”

Walking through Sojourn, Kiki Smith’s new show at The Brooklyn Art Museum, you’re brought into contact with a cast of female characters and objects. Time and women’s space is a central theme through out the show. Prudence Pundreson’s small embroidery at the beginning of the show sets this tone. She depicts four different times in her life within her personal space. The women that Kiki brings forth are in different stages of life and transformation: whether middle age, seated and staring out a window, getting up from her chair, sitting pregnant, assembled together, young and tattooed earnestly looking out, or laying in her death bed–we are given a cycle of life. This is supported by images of flowers in multiple stages of life and light bulbs.

Kiki’s shows are magical. She approaches subjects that are earthly and makes them fantastical in their imaginative powers. We are greeted in different rooms by aluminum sculptures sitting or standing, commanding the space and becoming guides from one phase of life to the next. Three years ago when Kiki’s mother became sick and was hospitalized, she began to make drawings of her mother while visiting her. The show works up to this last stage of death in the last room with large prints of her mothers casket, a wooden casket sculpture with glass dandelions inside, prints of women in bed, and stark black woodblock prints of her mother on her deathbed. If it’s sounding intense at this point it’s because it is–but to make death something magical and beautiful is powerful.

Sojourn opens up with a needlepoint by Prudence Plunderson and in your gallery talk you explained that the scene depicted is an explanation of her life, do you see the show as such for you?
For me it was just a starting point for work that inspired me, to make a life narrative. I don’t think about things like that, it was a place that was enjoyable to think about.

I picked up on one of the themes in the show, which I see in the subject matter: it’s very circular, specifically the cycle of life. Like the flowers: at the beginning of the show they’re in a state of blossoming and at the end of the show they’re in a state of decay, very much like the life cycle of humans in the show. There are these amazing images of pregnant women, children, women in middle age, and the representation of death with your mother…
Originally, one of the real subjects of the show was to make a show about flowers at different stages of life and how they represent different stages of life. Like what’s a posse for children, a corsage, marriage bouquets. Like these different moments- like friendship or different moments about flowers. I just forget what I’m doing or get sidetracked. Your work takes its own course and then you remember. I travel a lot, so often I forget from one place to another and then I come back a year later and I’m like “oh it was suppose to be about this.” So that part was suppose to be much more prominently about flowers.

I think it’s definitely prominent in the idea of the cycle: mixing the flowers with this representation of the people. The other thing that I found so prominent in the show is the chair. It becomes its own character and signature, how did this become so central?
I think in Prudence Punderson’s piece the chair represents the beloved. She’s a young women looking at her life and the absences of the beloved and in a way it’s a projection on her part, in reality she ends up getting married and dying in childbirth. She’s a young teenager when she makes this. I really like the chair as a stand in for the lover but sometimes it stands in for the wake, you know you have these chairs and people sit in these rooms with chairs and the coffin. A chair represents a mantle that you sit in, a seat of power traditionally in culture, when people got off the floor, the throne. So there’s all these different connotations with the chair. I realized I’ve been making chairs in my work for a while. When I was young I would say, “all sculptures are just men in chairs” and now of course I’m completely fascinated with them, so they obviously held some fascination or power with me as a young artist.

I really liked seeing all the different iterations of the chair in the show: the empty chair sculptures, the crocheted flowers in the chair, all the different chairs in the lithographs. In the period rooms I was wondering why the sculptures became puppets? I ask because the sculptures in the main space are made of aluminum and they seem very solid and assured figures, so then it was striking to see these very malleable figures in the period rooms.
They were originally the model of the Annunciation piece, so they’re really her but they’re puppets. Originally where I started the exhibition there was a garden house. So you had my show and then I wanted to make something that was like a garden fowly or eating petit fours or something just like a light addendum, like in theatre you have these little vignettes that are entertainment, like cleaning your palette between a course. I just wanted to make something like that. I like puppets very much in general, it’s something I’m very attracted to and was very influenced by Bread and Puppet Theatre. It seems nice in the period room to not continue the exhibition.

It was an interesting transition from the main exhibition space. You go to the period rooms expecting to continue to see more of that and it was very striking.
It was fun for me to cause I got make a little film to go on top of them.

I was going to ask you about that piece, Mrs. and Mrs.; they’re doing an embroidery and it says “Rest In Peace,” and I was wondering who this was for?
It was from the Prudence Punderson–her whole piece was embroidery and I like to make some reference to that. She in her drawing is making a flower with just the stem. So that’s the other thing about the sexuality of the empty chair and she’s making the stem without flowering. I was drawing flowers and I put rest in peace cause I felt like it.

That totally legitimate.
It’s a joke. It had something to do with that and making shrouds, I guess that I’ve always made shrouds in my work.

This show has traveled before landing at BAM. How has it changed each time it’s traveled?
I think for me every time was an opportunity to make new work for it and that’s something that was important to keep adding, so it wasn’t static.

Which often isn’t the model for traveling shows.
Traveling shows can be really boring because you’ve already seen it and it’s not that interesting. And also you have to make it alive for yourself as an artist because otherwise it’s just a job. Each time really presents itself a different kind of arch. It was made really specifically for the Krefeld show in Hanover, which is the Haus Esters, it was a Mis Van Der Rohe house, so it was made for a house originally and because then it traveled- each space you have to change. This is the most it’s like an art show or the most reference to an art show or something like that and I like that teetering between those two forms, between making a theatrical base or narration to making an art show in a museum. To me it’s always like you make things for your own reasons and then you make an exhibition and an exhibition is always different then the individual things. But the individual things get to have this sort of temporary relationship to one another.

Well that links back to this idea for a lot of the show in thinking about women’s spaces and what were their interior spaces so it’s interesting that even inherently in the shows travel it has that.
It was originally called “Her Home”: the quite, the domestic space, and then about contemplation.

In switching off the topic of your show, you grew up in a house with artists. Your father who is the sculpture Tony Smith and your mother Jane Smith was an actress and opera singer, you talk openly about this experience. What I find interesting, in reading about your work- which your father is inherently brought up: that in the comparisons made between the art and practices that you two have I have found genderization of the art practice in some of the writing. Which kind of blows my mind, in context of the position you occupy in time, you were making work and exhibiting right after a period of radical feminism. In your gallery talk you brought up your use of paper and this is a material that is definitely given the attribute of fragile but you dispel that. I’m so interested in what you have to say about the genderization in the discourse about your work and art in general–can you talk about these two things?
How?

Well, when I’m reading about your materials people will write about how it’s very fragile and its ephemeral qualities and in your gallery talk you state the opposite, that paper is this very durable material.
I think that for me you’re playing with those notions as an artist, I often think that things that appear one way aren’t. That it’s deceptive- our histories and our short-term knowledge of material are certainly unattentive to material and they have very specific histories and very different histories. If you talk about paper in Asia its extremely different then how we think about paper in European society, it can be flat but a very actively sculptural medium. Where as in Europe you only have this with chinoiserie and paper mache furniture and things like that, very late. Often things have elusive property or illusion of one property but are very different. I grew up making paper models for my father, basically covering Alka Seltzer boxes with paper towels dipped in Elmer’s glue to make models of his sculptures. Or later had die cut things that we folded. It’s a material that I grew up with, with a lot of comfort. It wasn’t an obvious material to use. With making something larger then a small drawing or making a discreet object. I think as an artist you do play in all these different meanings.

What it was like for you to come up in the 80’s as a female artist?
A lot of fun.

Really?
Yeah. I was a part of a big gang of artists and then I got to know artists from different countries, it was very exciting period. It was the first wave of feminism, really active feminist artists. I think my generation had the opportunity to show because of their struggles. So it was an exciting time of many different parameters and paradigms changing in very short periods of time, there was an influx of subject matters and material use and different medias that were really changing very rapidly. I’m sure for young artist now it’s very exciting. To me it was a very particular exciting time, and maybe because I was young. I think it is a thing too that as a women artist, a lot of the women artists from my group, stopped making art because they found it too restrictive. I think I was relatively ambivalent about having an artist career anyway so it didn’t interfere in that.

So you didn’t have a specific agenda so you were free to do what you would do.
Yeah, I don’t know if it was being young or just that time, but one could live on very little money. I didn’t work very much, not more then 2 days a week or 3 days a week and rent was very cheap so there wasn’t a lot of economic pressure on people. There was lots of endless time for self-discovery and community discovery and enthusiasm about what other artists were doing. After 1980 some of the artists started having careers and that made one reconsider what one was doing. At a certain point I just went home and did my thing and that as an artist you have to rely on yourself and know that your work doesn’t come from external praise and situations. You have to develop a deep practice and for me that’s something that I had from my father- was I saw how devoted he was to his work. So that’s something that I had as a model growing up and that I could imagine it and I think a lot of people when their younger can’t really imagine to be an artist in a certain way. And I saw a practice that you have to do work, a lot of work to get from one place to another. I think I’m confident because I grew up around people that embraced the possibility of being artists for themselves.

It’s very self-generated.
Yeah, you really have to show up for it.

I heard you say this the other day and I have a friend who heard you talk in Seattle recently and you say this thing about “you just show up for the work and the work shows up for you.”
Yeah, I think you have to work. You don’t get from one place to another by not doing it physically. That the physical thing informs you, the physicality of making things informs you in incredibly interesting ways and I love to do it. You can’t make those jumps, it just doesn’t happen. I’m not saying that people don’t have blind insight or revelations about how to open up more space for themselves. But even then you have to see what happens.

In thinking about your practice, when your moving from one body of work or period to the next was aids you?
I think curiosity. That’s the main things: one is curious. And essentially trust and curiosity. That’s one thing that I got from parents that I could say, is to trust ones intuition and be really diligent in that. I know that every second I don’t do that I pay for it within 5 seconds. You’re always being told information and I lost a very good scarf the other day and my brain told me to put it away but I was like “oh I’ll do that afterwards” and so I know that the second you don’t listen it comes to bite you immediately. The same thing goes for my work, I try to really be attentive to where it wants to go and trust that it will take me some place that’s informative. Whether I’m comfortable in it or not, I think artist sometimes wish they had more insight but you just go with what you’re given.

It’s so amazing to hear you speak, I’m around a lot of young artists and I’m a young artist and I immediately picked up on this assuredness that you have in your practice and seemingly lack of anxiety and it’s a very needed voice for me and other young artists to hear. We’re given so much feedback all the time and to know how to process it in connection to what you’re actually doing, it’s a learning curve to know how to do that.
I think it can be really intimidating, like I think you have to rely on your friends and have safe dialogs where you have some sort of commonality. And at the same time I think the big thing is to have to learn that other people’s perceptions just are their perceptions, that it doesn’t go into your self worth or value as an artist. It’s just that peoples have different taste which is the worse thing that screws us up in art: tastefulness or that often it’s in a language that we recognize so that’s why we like it. But often people come and look at your work and they have very different historical experiences, cultural backgrounds. Its hard and intimidating to live through that but at the same time its really important to remember that one is limited, one isn’t given everything but that each person is given something special and if they’re willing to own it they can have a really unexpected journey. You don’t have to know what you’re doing, but you do have to be rigorous.

What are you working on right now?
I have a show coming up at Pace at the end of April which has a lot of the elements that I have in Brooklyn but more. It’s a stain glass installation and it’s one that I’ve been working on for 3 years. It’s the same as the other one, I can work on it for a lot longer and maybe I will. That essentially I’m waiting for the frames to be made and then I can install it. Often with my work I don’t really see it until it’s installed, cause I work in shops, or with the stain glass I work on it horizontally and its not until the exhibition that I see it vertically and then am like, “augh the necks to long” or something like that. So that’s very exciting to me cause I have no idea what it’s going to be like, so that’s an adventure.
Then I’m making a lot of jewelry cause that’s my hobby life.

I was going to ask you a little bit of that, do you take time off in the summers, what do you like to do or where do you like to go?
Oh, I like working. My vacation is having the opportunity to work. I like gardening to a point. I like doing construction work. I travel so much for work that staying home is important. Exercise. I try to have a disciplines life without suffering from it.

What are you reading right now?
I just started reading a book called March. I just finished a book called Brooklyn.

Are these fiction books?
Yeah, I basically buy books when I’m in the airports or train stations, that’s my life. I like reading history and about material culture.

You mentioned in your gallery talk that you love to read about material culture: who are the authors that you read in this subject?
I love Laura Thatcher Ulrich books. Then others I can’t tell you the names I just know the books. I like reading colonial books, that book about the Mayflower a couple years ago. I have always liked decorative arts history. I like the bareness of New England aesthetics. I tend to be more excessive.

It’s that simple notions of being attracted to the complete opposite.
Yeah, it’s really beautiful to me how rigorous it is.

So what three pieces of art would you love to have?
Three, I would love to have Christ Entering Brussels, it’s of my favorite things by Ensor that’s at the Getty. I would like the Isenhiem Alter. What else would I like? I like images of women; I would like to make a collection of images of women in art and objects. I like Viennese painting a lot. I like work where you feel there’s a belief system in it, and that can be abstract to. I would like a lot! Thank god I can’t have it, because it quickly becomes a big burden.

Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer in the second installment of the Iron Man franchise.

Ten years on from his show-stopping performance as a moonwalking maniac in the original Charlie’s Angels movie Sam Rockwell returns to his roots with two familiar roles–one evil and the other innocent–strikingly similar to those that made him a star. In next month’s Iron Man 2—playing what he calls “a cousin” to his Charlie’s hooligan—he again turns in a hot ember of stylized villainy in a blockbuster franchise, while presently he treads the Broadway boards as a simpleton hotel employee in Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane at The Schoenfeld Theatre. These are signature pieces, both of them, which fit snuggly into the Rockwell oeuvre if you will, and, according to him, make up the meat of his métier. “I think that I have made a reputation playing baddies,” he says. “But, also nymphs, you know, kinda innocents—characters that were really childlike.” He mentions a few of his movies that are in accord with this template, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Safe Men, to which we could also add Welcome to Collinwood (innocent), Galaxy Quest (innocent), and certainly The Assassination of Jesse James (innocent again). “But then there is The Green Mile,” he says, of the Stephen King-penned tale set in a death row prison, and his crazed convict character ‘Wild Bill’ Wharton, “he’s more of a rascal.”

Understatement notwithstanding, that brings us to the next tier of Rockwell’s career—the outlaw eccentric—something he first authored in The Green Mile, but which, in 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, as Chuck Barris’s (perhaps) fantasy self, rocketed him into a new echelon of film actor. Somewhere during the filming of that movie, under the direction of George Clooney on a highly touted Charlie Kaufman script, Sam Rockwell became a movie star. Witness the gritty, tough independent movies Choke and Moon he made subsequently. Even for all their heavy material and sensitive subject matter, they are patently star vehicles, albeit short of iron men or anything transforming. “I don’t really know what a movie star is any more,” he says, in casual protest. “I think a movie star is someone who is financially viable, so I guess I’m an independent film movie star, not a Tom Cruise movie star.” If by this he means not cartwheeling on sofas and mucking up the tabloids, we have to agree and confoundedly hand it to him. Yes, even though he dates a beautiful young actress (Leslie Bibb) the man keeps a low-ass profile. He’s not at the Laker games with Leo or even highballing with Clooney on page six and that goes a long way toward creating leeway for his on-screen mutability. But, if he means he’s not redlining it as hard as Maverick in every scene, we beg to differ. There is paint blistering in the background when he’s doing his thing and, clearly, when studio heads hire him now for a gig, they are buying in for the Rockwell brand. They want the searing Sam or the silly Sam. They want the baddie or the innocent and, let’s be honest, we do too. We wanna see Sammy dance.

But, he goes on, “I think of Phil Hoffman as a movie star—he’s amazing, he’s got an Oscar, you know?” Like Hoffman, Rockwell has that rare talent of so possessing a character you cannot even fathom another actor in the role. How does he do it? “I think there’s probably 30 actors who couldda played the part, you know, or maybe five, you never know. Everybody’s got some weird thing that they do—Chris Walken or Chris Cooper, or Phil. Everybody’s got some sorta stamp they put on it.” Whether it is an actor’s superstition or willful naiveté, Rockwell claims to have no grasp on his own ‘stamp,’ but offers to venture a guess. “I like to go for it, you know. I don’t like to pussyfoot around, don’t like to half-step, so to speak. Maybe that’s my MO.”

Actor/director Clark Gregg, when explaining why he chose Rockwell to play the sex addict with a god complex in his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, said that he had been so spellbound by a performance Rockwell gave in a play he couldn’t take his eyes off him—even though he too was in the show. Gregg cited Rockwell’s fearlessness and willingness to go all in and never repeat himself as reasons he cast him but Rockwell is quick to shirk the compliments. “I don’t know about that; I repeat myself a lot of the time,” he says, guiltily.

Rockwell’s fearlessness is displayed nowhere better than in Moon, a sci-fi mind-bender in which he is the only actor on screen the entire movie. What he describes as, “both a nightmare and a dream for an actor,” may be his most underappreciated performance to date. Rockwell plays several different manifestations of himself and, without giving anything away, breaks your heart, makes you laugh, and makes you shake your head in astonishment. “Yeah. Yeah, that was a blast,” he says, of the grassroots on-line Oscar campaign for his performance, which, though he doesn’t have a computer, he was made aware of.

So now, ten years in as a top-flight star, with at least one performance (Confessions) criminally neglected by Oscar behind him, what does Rockwell feel he’s missing? “There’s all kinds of stuff. I just did a reading of Streetcar Named Desire. That’s a part I’d love to play. I’d love to play Hamlet. I’d also like to play Darth Vader and Han Solo but those parts have already been taken.”

But in the meantime he’s keeping a cool head. “I’d just like to play some juicy parts. I bought an apartment for my mother last year. I have a mortgage on a beautiful loft. I’d like to buy an apartment for my Dad. I’d like to do more theatre, more often. The last play I did was seven years ago. Even if it’s in like Cleveland I’d like to do theatre more often in conjunction with films. But that’s really it. I don’t really have a goal—I just wanna keep working and changing and growing as an artist and trying to become a better actor and stuff like that.”

Wherever it takes him, we’ll be watching.

Rockwell with co-star Christopher Walken in A Behanding in Spokane at the Shoenfeld in New York.

Photos from Dog Days Bogotá

Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth is fast at work at becoming a modern master. Since his big splash at the 2004 Whitney Biennial and the appearance of his sensational debut book, Sleeping by the Mississippi (Steidl, 2004), Soth has been a steady contributor for numerous glossy magazines and his languorous landscapes and still-waters portraits much ballyhooed. With another four monographs and several major exhibitions under his belt since he continues to do much more than fulfill the promise of auspicious beginnings–40 year old Alec Soth is officially (because I say so) one of the greats.

As he prepares for an exhibition at his hometown’s Walker Art Center–amid a zillion other projects–we found a moment to talk with the photographer about his process, the creative community and his new work.

Chris Wallace: Dog Days is incredible. Tell me about that experience.

Alec Soth: Dog Days Bogotá is a book that holds a very special place for me. In 2002 my wife and I went to Colombia to adopt a baby girl. We ended up staying for a couple of months while the courts processed our paperwork. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started taking pictures. But I had no intention of doing a book-length photography project. Mostly I was just photographing as a way to understand this place where my daughter came from.

CW: How did that change you, your eye?

AS: I ended up loving the work, but I was nervous to publish it. I mean, I still feel like I know next to nothing about Bogota. This is just a personal little series. But I’ve come to realize that there is something powerful about working in this very loose and personal way. I think about how I often prefer looking at an artist’s sketchbook than at their finished paintings.

CW: I first came in contact with your work when I saw Sleeping by the Mississippi at a Chicago Art Show and just flipped for it. The mythos, the iconography, the mise-en-scene gave me such a charge. I felt like I’d seen the work of a contemporary Robert Frank or Walker Evans–names that are almost always thrown around in your bio–but where do you come from, aesthetically? How did you come to photography?

AS: As a kid, I was creative, but not in a traditional way. I built forts and had a rich imaginary world with pretend friends and so on. Years later, after discovering contemporary art, I fell in love with British earthworks artists like Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. I started doing very similar work to theirs. I’d do outdoor sculptures then document them photographically. This led me to photography as a medium. But this spirit of moving through the landscape and creating my own little story was the original impulse. And I think this is something you can also see in the American road photography tradition. So, yeah, I was really inspired by those iconic photographers. I’ve since been exposed to so many other photographic traditions that my horizons have really broadened.

CW: I’m intrigued by the structuring of the books Sleeping and Niagara–or, at least, their both having a wet geographical tether point. How did you conceive of these projects? Did you have an outline you were following or at outcome you were anticipating? I know you’ve called Niagara dark, and there is a really painful tone to both the books–do you think they have a common emotional thread? A Soth-ness?

AS: Soth-ness, yikes. Makes me think of the Sothness Monster. I guess I’m not comfortable making this kind of generalized analysis. I would say there is often a feeling of longing in the work, but then I’d say that is true for so a great deal of photography. There is something about the medium that is good about touching on feelings of voyeurism and yearning. I suppose that has a lot to do with my attraction to the medium.

Niagara is indeed a dark book. But I actually don’t think of Sleeping by the Mississippi that way. The making of that work was so liberating. And I think the book ends quite optimistically with a bunch of references to Spring and Easter. But I understand why other people might read the pictures a different way.

CW: It is obvious in reading your blog that you are a fan of the game and you can get as giddy and geeky as any wonk. As a fan what gets you really jazzed?

AS: For me, all of the energy comes from books. Along with loving to make them, I get a real thrill in collecting books. Lately I’ve been collecting photographically illustrated children’s books, most of which are 50+ years old. Most of these books are totally unknown and unappreciated. I’ve found some real treasures. More importantly, I’ve learned a lot about my bookmaking from these discoveries.

CW: Along those same lines, you have talked a bit about teaching photography, are you still teaching?  How does that feed you, your work?

AS: I don’t do much formal teaching. But I’m currently a mentor to two students, one from New York and the other from San Francisco. I really enjoy working one and one with people. It isn’t about grades and administrative bs. We’re really able to sink our teeth into a single project. I feel more like a doula than a teacher.

CW: I love that you’re not afraid to jump in the discussion and mix it up on controversial topics like Larry Clark’s Teenage Lust. What is that discourse like in your world? Do you get a lot of feedback from colleagues? Can you imagine Stieglitz and Frank talking shop on their blogs?

AS: Since I don’t work at institution, I don’t have much contact with colleagues. And, while we have an excellent community of photographers here in the Twin Cities, I don’t have much time to see anybody due to the demands of family and travel. So I guess blogs help fill that void a little bit. The critic Jerry Saltz calls Facebook his Cedar Bar. I sort of understand that.

CW: I know it’s difficult to talk about aesthetics but I’d really love to hear what you think about the dynamism of your work; are you constructing narratives with your subjects in Portraits, say, or is the work spontaneous…?  A combination?  I just did a feature on Jim Harrison and would love to hear about your process in shooting one of my heroes.  And the process of shooting one of your own in Eggleston.

AS: Most of my work is conceived and executed as a book. For me the Portraits functioned as a sort of vacation from that complicated way of working. The picture is meant to be the whole enchilada. These portraits came about in different ways. The Harrison picture was an assignment. I shot Eggleston while traveling on a personal project. Each one has a story. I remember having lunch at Harrison’s house. While we ate a magnificent lunch he received a huge FedEx delivery of wine and cheese. It really gave me a peek into the way the good life is lived. The peek into Eggleston’s world was something different. And I’m afraid it isn’t the kind of story I can share here.

CW: What’s running through your mind now?  What’s next?

AS: Most of this year is being consumed by the preparation for a big exhibition at the Walker Art Center. The show is going to focus on American pictures. Along with Mississippi and Niagara, there will be some much older work and about 30% new stuff. I’m waiting to talk about this new work until it is released.
 But while I’m preparing for that show, I’m still shooting. As we speak I’m preparing the first episode of a monthly slideshow I’m going to be doing for the The New York Times. These will be little first person stories about my various travels.
 On top of that I recently launched my DIY publishing venture: Little Brown Mushroom. This is a way for me to publish other people’s books and have some fun.

Photo by Fran Kiko

With Tulsa performing their soundcheck in the background we had the chance to catch up with musical artist Christina Rosenvinge. Blonde, graceful, and approachable. After exchanging a few pleasantries with her we became instant fans; not just of the music, but of Christina herself.

Vanessa Ceia: Tell us a little about yourself.
Christina Rosenvinge: I had my first band when I was fifteen.

VC: Here in Spain?
CR: Yeah, here in Spain. It was sort of a new wave band back in the eighties when the movida was happening, but I was too young and couldn’t go out at night until late, so I.. I had this band, Ella y los neumáticos, and that’s when everything started. Years later, I had a different band with another guy, called Alex and Christina. That was kind of a commercial pop band very inspired by French music from the eighties, and after that I started a song-writing career.

VC: You’re Spanish but you have family from—
CR: Uh, I’m Danish but I was born in Madrid.

VC: Do you speak Danish?
CR: I don’t, no, but…actually, it’s a strange family story because my father was a very conservative guy, so he came to Spain because he was such a big fan of Franco’s politics.

VC: Is this the first time that you’ve worked with Tulsa?
CR: Yeah. They’re opening for the show and we have a few musicians in common so that’s why we are going to travel together. We have about four or five more shows.

VC: Will you be doing any traveling outside of Spain as well?
CR: Mostly in Spain, but yeah I’m going to Chile, Buenos Aires and South America soon. That trip I’m going to be doing with my New York drummer, which is Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, he’s the one I make records with and he comes to play with me when he has the opportunity.

VC: Is that where you normally record? In New York?
CR: In Hoboken, yes (laughs); in the Sonic Youth space. I’ll be there in May recording with Steve Shelley and Jeremy Wilms, who’s a bass player from New York—well, really, he isn’t from New York, he’s from London, but he lives in New York now. And he’s like my partner too and we’ve been playing together for ten years or so.

VC: Is your this new album going to be a similar style to what you’ve been doing over the last while?
CR: Yeah, it’s the same style that I’ve done in the lat one. We kind of have an idea of doing a project in English where the three of us are going to write songs together, but that’s been delayed for months and years but I hope that we’ll start on it again.

VC: You started off with three records in English, and then your anglophone phase seemed to have ended. Do you have any intention of working in English again?
CR: Not now, you know I live here in Spain and naturally my songs come out in Spanish now. Actually, I’m trying to write a couple of songs in English for this one project that I have and it’s kind of difficult for me, it’s not all that natural.

VC: What’s your emotional state when you produce your best work?
CR: I’m not sure, you know. Work comes out when I have a really steady discipline, like when I work everyday for several hours and start getting results. I try to do that everyday and have been doing that for the past five months. Not that I come up with something good (laughs) but I try to.

VC: What kind of crowd turns up at your shows?
CR: I get a very diverse crowd. There are really young people and there are people that are around fifty. It depends… there are people that have been buying my records for years and those that just discovered the last record and are into that one. The records in English weren’t all that known here (in Spain). People didn’t listen to them..I guess they were too experimental or weird or whatever. It was a different style, I was living in New York back then and it was a little more adventurous (laughs).

VC: What do you think of the music scene back in New York?
CR: For me it was such a big….you know, it was like going to school again. Being around all those people, not only the guys from Sonic Youth, but all the musicians and creative people there. All those people that just put out a record and work as waiters or whatever and are incredibly talented and wonderful…and that sense of community that everyone’s a part of. I thought it was really brilliant and refreshing. I got to play with people that were really great and it was all just for the fun of it. At that time I did a couple of shows with Tim Foljahn, and he was in my band, on the guitar, and he put out records with our same label, and Steve Shelley was in that band too.. Then there was hanging out with Smokey Hormel and playing in a band that did covers of Brazilian music with Sean Lennon and… It was just a lot of fun.

VC: Is there anyone that you’d really like to collaborate and one day get to work with?
CR: Sooner or later you get to meet everybody and play with everybody. That’s what I’ve done for years and it’s easier than it looks.

VC: You’ve played at an ATP festival. How was that?
CR: It was a lot of fun, really great and I was playing in between Television and Eddie Vedder (laughs) and it was so amazing.

VC: If you were to define your style of music how would you do it?
CR: It’s a cross between European pop…sometimes I’m inspired by Italian pop, like one song that I just wrote that’s very inspired by Adriano Celentano from the seventies who I really like. French pop too, but particularly sound wise it’s very inspired by New York pop music. So when everything comes together for me it’s very organic, but every time I play with American musicians they always say, “oh, you’re so European or Spanish” or whatever. They say that I have a different mindset. The way that someone who has listened to a lot of latin music will write a song… they tend to be more into the rhythm thing, more into different and adventurous patterns and mixing… At least people from Spain get all these crazy mixes, a lot of flamenco and sevillanas, but also Brazilian music and south American folklore, and from descent I’ve got the Northern European roots… I’m such a bastard (laughs). There’s nothing pure in me. I can’t point to just one place. In a way I’m a foreigner everywhere. That’s why I felt at home in New York. It’s like you can only become a New Yorker when you don’t belong to any particular land.