"Interview With Louise Lawler" -Maya

Lois Lawler is someone i admire for her exploration of different mediums in creating and presenting her art. My favorite part of the interview was in the very beginning, when Lawler explains why she does not like to give interviews or talk about her work. "My reservations are about wanting to foreground the work and not the artist." This is very different than some artists, for example Sherrie Levine, who chose to foreground the artist, and make the person and background of the piece its essence. Lawler, on the other hand, wants her work to stand alone; "The work works in the process of its reception. I don't want the work to be accompanied by anything that doesn't accompany it in the real world." Basically, according to Lawler, what you see is what you see. There is nothing beyond the piece that is not actually there.
Another striking thing about the Lawler interview was her description of art as a process. "I'm not even comfortable taking photographs when i know what I'm taking. I feel as if approaching something with too much clarity i advance could eliminate possibilities...what actually produces a work is the activity of producing it, having to make adjustments as you proceed." This is exactly what one of my painting teachers is always talking about- that it is best to start something without too much of a preconceived idea, because painting, or any type of art, is about CREATING something and the process you go about to do this. Although i do like to plan before i paint, i defiantly see the merit in what Lawler is saying. I do not think that any art has been completed exactly the way the artist intended in the beginning, because it is impossible to do something without making changes and gaining new insights along the way. Similarly, Lawler also mentions the merit in working collaboratively. "Working collaboratively allows you to do things that you wold not otherwise do...you think about another person's thinking as well as your own, and this acts as an acknowledgment that no work is really produced by one person."