Emily Prince – There is More than One Way to Remember the Past | ArtSHIFTING
Emily Prince – There is More than One Way to Remember the Past
Emily Prince and Marge
Emily Prince is an artist who explores how we as humans represent and remember the passage of time. Her process oriented nature is elegantly present throughout her work. An good example of this is Around and Around Everyday, a piece in which she demonstrated the passage of time by drawing lines around the architectural planes of a room for six weeks. Her processes are also accompanied by an emphasis on spatial distribution and/or maps whenever possible. In 2007 her geospatial distribution of portraits of American servicemen who died in Iraq and Afghanistan was selected for the Venice Biennale. Her most recent exhibit, Romancing the Stone, was held at the Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City. We recently had the chance to chat about her career so far and get the scoop on future her work.
[ArtSHIFTING] Your work attempts to demonstrate how we record and/or stop the passage of time. What role has technology played in the process, delivery and development of your work?
[Emily] I’m glad you asked this because it brings up an important point. Lately through my work I’ve been exploring nostalgia, this specific psychological phenomena that acts like a past-magnet, encouraging us to remember our own stories, flawed as they may be. However, the work itself is not nostalgic. There was a time when I was superficially drawn to the philosophy of Luddites but at present I’m appreciative of living in these very times with all the tools I get to utilize. I like to use whatever works. Such as my cheap and dying three-in-one HP scanner. It’s provided much mileage for my purposes. Also, PhotoShop comes in handy. Incorporating these media in my process has developed, organically, a stratigraphy that I find slightly provocative and have therefore embraced. In my last body of work, for instance, I made these super labor-intensive pencil drawings of rocks. So far: old-fashioned medium paired with ancient subject matter. At first I tried drawing the rocks from sight but it was almost prohibitively difficult to flatten out the three-dimensions on such a tiny scale. In frustration I decided to make a bridge for myself: take a photograph of the rocks and then draw from the photo, which would have done the flattening for me. And then, only because it was easier and I am at heart lazy, I put the rocks directly onto the scanner to get my images. No set-up involved! Then an unexpected and wonderful thing happened: because I used a scanner instead of a regular camera the images contained a combination of sharp areas where the rocks had been flush with the screen and blurred parts where the dimensions of the rocks went their separate ways and the scanner couldn’t pick up those details. I ended up loving that kind of implicit, subtle artifact and I tried to draw those very details. In the drawings then, you can see that there was a layer of mediation, that this image came from photography and thus there were multiple levels of distance from the subject. Ultimately a pairing of the ancient and the technologically recent came together and this was more stimulating to me, more reflective of the world we live in, than if I was strictly committed to using, say, daguerreotype photography and nothing else. I am more interested in where these different things pile on top of each other, like geology.
Emily Prince - Around Around Everyday Backroom Gallery, San Francisco, CA. 2004
[ArtSHIFTING] Around around everyday, The Birthday Project, Familiar and It Will Live Forever placed emphasis on the surrounding physical environment in which you work. How often does this play a role in pieces not intended as such?
[Emily] Yes, when I started out I was inclined to make my projects site-specific. But as I continued to work my area of inquiry became more and more specific and I aspired to go deeper and sharper rather than spread out horizontally. So some trimming naturally had to happen. But the interest in the environment didn’t exactly go away… through working on it will live forever the study of space collapsed into the investigation of time in the following way: While working on that project I was volunteering for a native plant nursery that rehabilitated local marshlands and coastal prairies. I was thinking about that as I made the work, asking questions like:
Emily Prince - American servicemen and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not including the wounded, nor the Iraqis, nor the Afghans. Venice Biennale, 2007
[ArtSHIFTING] The Egyptian Murals for Martyrs project is a street art project that memorializes those who died in the revolution. What parallels do you see between your American soldiers and Bury my heart portraits.
[Emily] There is a parallel here for sure. In common to them all is the labor of memory, the desire to feel a physicality for those memories, to replace what’s gone with a tangible remembrance. To my mind they all speak to the way in which we deliberately live with ghosts, building ghost-houses, due to the terror of forgetting. I’m glad you brought this project Murals for Martyrs to my attention!
[ArtSHIFTING] What role does the artist have in society?
[Emily] I guess there are as many different roles as there are artists. I hope my own is something besides self-indulgence.
[ArtSHIFTING] What has been a seminal experience for you as an artist?
[Emily] I used to work in such a way that the process was everything, and as a consequence, every single part of that process ended up being the final “product.” But while making the wall drawings of it will live forever, which took months, I realized the most practical thing: as much as I loved working site-specifically, it wasn’t totally realistic for every future project (imagine needing to spend months anywhere on an installation – it just isn’t really possible), and so I made a conscious decision to learn how to work on mobile objects, like on paper rather than directly on the wall. Once I began to work like this it freed me up tremendously. Suddenly I had this new capacity to edit. And then I ended up editing A TON, like a writer who just chips and chips away until only the essentials are left (hopefully). As well, and maybe more significantly, I was allowed the space for trial and error and this opened up countless cracks for accidents to occur. My job has turned into being a sentinel, on watch – with my best peripheral vision – for good accidents. Almost everything in my work now is the result of one. It’s a looser way to work, inviting chance. It’s like in science when a profound discovery is made by route of an experiment that was intended to study something else.
[ArtSHIFTING] How has your practice changed over time?
Emily Prince - Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces, Embroidery, 2009
[Emily] I used to be more diligent – I could work for eight hours straight, twelve hours of solid work in a day. But when I went to grad school my schedule was fractured into all these hour or two-hour long time-slots and my attention span has never recovered. Only recently, though, have I stopped whipping myself for this. Like with Minister Dimmesdale of The Scarlet Letter, except with me it’s on the inside. I’m trying to make peace with it, call it pacing. Because perhaps it’s just my body talking to me and trying to prevent blindness, since my drawings of the last two years have required turning my eyes into microscopes. I guess the answer to your question is that I’ve become all loosey-goosey.
[ArtSHIFTING] What’s your strongest memory of your childhood?
[Emily] Hmmm… Nothing in life for me really classifies as strongest or bests. I’ve got endless strong memories of my childhood, but here’s the earliest one:
Emily Prince - the way it used to be Kent Gallery, New York, NY. 2009
[ArtSHIFTING] Describe a real-life situation that inspired you?
[Emily] I was always interested in how we navigate the passage of time and relate to the past but when my Grandmother, to whom I was close as can be, died, the subject of memory and coping with loss all became totally real and personal rather than merely abstract.
[ArtSHIFTING] What memorable responses have you had to your work?
[Emily] I’m shy to the point of being handicapped and so I can’t go around announcing my work like I ought to. (Almost everything’s happened in one long chain of good luck.) However, over time my project American Servicemen and Women… has become known to a few people, having been shown in a few different cities, and I’ve now been approached by some family members and friends of people whose portraits I’ve drawn. Those emails often make me cry. They turn the abstract into the concrete and are immensely humbling.
[ArtSHIFTING] What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Emily Prince - "Romancing the Stone" Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY. 2011
[Emily] In my MFA program I had an advisor (who happened to study martial arts on the side) who gave me a high-five so sharp it almost hurt, while saying, “Yeah – Nostalgia’s where your money’s at!” It was he who crystallized this idea for me, calling out the heart of my inquiry, and for that I’m grateful.
[ArtSHIFTING] Professionally, what’s your goal?
[Emily] To make art like Randy Newman made music between 1970 and ’77.
[ArtSHIFTING] What are you working on now?
[Emily] Roses have been a draw lately. It seems I’m interested in classic American luxury (living) objects, like horses and roses. These things seem to touch on our own special sense of roots, in that they’re a little English too. The idea they both bring up for me is longing/desire. Always entwined in my curiosities over time is a fascination with the longing that comes with having a memory, being tethered to a past that’s now gone. Horses and roses share this poignancy of longing, to my mind. I was never a “horse-girl” because we were on the poor side, but we lived in this rural area where our nearest neighbor was a ranch and the horses lived closer to us than the people. Everyday my mom would indulge me by walking me to see the horses. And sometimes they’d get loose and come straight to our house where they could eat the fresh grass in the lawn… once one reached its big horse mouth over my dad’s shoulder and took a bite out of his sandwich. Anyway, for me it was never about riding horses but rather about longing to ride horses. And I think that roses are similar. I remember in To Kill a Mockingbird there’s a trope running through the book having to do with flowers. The working-class lady has geraniums planted in old toilets or something, and the rich person down the street has roses. Roses are another object of desire to which we might aspire, to long for.
I’ve been looking at old catalogs for roses and I’m planning to make drawings based on the black and white photos in them. I’m thinking of the experience of just pouring over theses pictures of roses, imagining them, anticipating them, maybe never even being able to afford having them but longing after them through the pictures. To me the mail-order catalog brings up a spatial separation that is akin to the divisions between the present and the past. In both there is something on the other side that we desire.
25 Responses to Emily Prince – There is More than One Way to Remember the Past
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Kellie F says:
This specific piece by Emily Prince was the first one to catch my attention. The background of the work almost looks imaginary while the colors are blurred. It looks like a dream while the woman holding the dog looks real. The mix gives the art a good technique and allows the viewer to focus on every part of the piece without getting distracted. The green, purple, and blue colors from the background reflect off one another nicely. Other paintings dones my Emily are all very neat and spacious. She uses many contouring lines and hues which make her artwork one of my favorite to view.
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I really like how Emily Prince includes herself in her work. Like how she says that she has cried from the emails that came in for the portraits of soldiers she painted for her collecton of portraits of American soldiers project. Another example is when she describes her grandmother dieing and how it made her art that much more real. I think that when someone trully puts themselves, heart and soul into something it means that they love what they do and the end result is always amazing.
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Cinthia Q says:
Emily Prince has a very interesting way to show the different moments of life which she describes as the different ways to look at the past. When I first saw the title it made me thought about the way I remember past memories. I think that it is really true how you can remember a moment, person or place by colors, textures, smell, figures etc. The representation of her art is very unique because of the way she illustrate the different forms of looking at the past. For example, the piece call “Around and Around Everyday” representing the time going by during a period of six weeks, which was demonstrated by her drawing lines in a room. I think is amazing how she draw the same lines over and over again without making the lines curve or disproportionate. All the lines where following the same patter. It was really creative and fantastic how she didn’t got bored making those lines and stop doing it. Also, she gives a 3-Dimentional view. If you pay attention of how the different lines look like if they were doors. There were not just lines, every line was making a shape and I have the vision that you can go through this “doors” in and out.
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Jackie M says:
I think art depicting the passage of time would be extremely interesting. The colors in the first picture seem to be blended and abstract, but after looking at the picture longer you see a faint portrait of the mountains and trees in the background. I found the Iraq and Afghanistan piece of art very upsetting and I think it brings a ton of emotion to the audience with such simple detail.
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Emily Prince, you should be a philosopher! Haha, well that might be a little over-exagarated, but I agree with many of your points. From my experience, I’ve noticed that everyone recalls from their memories differently. Your art has a very tranquil and soothing mood to it, but I also noticed that it can play mindgames. Even though each section of your pictures are similar, they have slight differences, and trying to remember what each section looks like can be tricky. Keep it up!
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heather black says:
Emily Prince is one of my favorite artist. I can relate very much so with her experiences. All her different works of art are amazing. From the portrait of herself with her puppy and the background being blurred as if to not be extremely relevant as her and her puppy are the focal points. I can relate very much to Prince on the view point of her grandmother I was very close to my grandmother and when she passed away it was the hardest thing for me to deal with. I feel people use art to connect to the things that mean the most to them in life. Just as Prince depicts in all of her works of art.
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As a first semester Art student I found my self-spending more time than I though I would on my art homework. It took me a while to study the vocabulary and learn the other terms. I found Emily’s way of showing the different steps in life and moment’s very intriguing and I never would have thought of it in this way. I have begun to take art in, in a way that I never would before. As I student I was just trying to memorize the material and get an understanding of what would be on the test.
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Emily Prince – There is More than One Way to Remember the Past
Emily Prince has such a unique way of showing the passage of time. It is quite abstract and different from what one would expect. I really like how she is playing with they idea of nostalgia. I usually experience that when reading novels but it is really interesting that she is putting it into her artwork. Her map and the American Soldiers piece is quite touching, to see how many and where the soldiers are from, is quite emotional for some. It is a beautiful piece. I definitely made a connection with Emily when she was recalling a childhood memory, I have had those as well. It is quite interesting what our minds can remember. After reading her story, and what she has to say about her artwork it makes more sense. She is different from others, but good and interesting. -
I think it was a good idea that Emily Prince include her emotion and herself in painting, which makes her collection more touching and amazing for the viewers.I love the way how Emily Price created her pieces because every piece has a memory of her life.And, that what makes her collection so unique. Not only that, also i like the techniques that she involves in her depiction. for instance, the combination of color, which was well done.However, what I love most in her painting is the curve lines and the patterns that whenever you look at, you understand more.
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Lynette says:
Emily Prince being an artist who explores how we as humans represent and remember the passage of time is very interesting. I like how she has a connection to her art and how she has her own way of showing different times represented and remembered. I found Emily’s response to the question about a childhood memory interesting. Her memory “I’m baby enough to be in a playpen. Somebody in the family picks me up and takes me into a room where the people are and glowing on a screen (I interpret it now as a slide-show) I recall only the colorful shapes. Lots of tourquoisey-green and orange-ish red.” makes me wonder if this was a reason she became an artist? She was a baby and already see the world through an artist eyes.
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Alex X says:
The passage of time is something we humans can see, but through our memories. To have that become something tangible through art is quite phenomenal indeed. The blurring effect that Emily Prince uses also gives the effect of how we see our dreams and memories; some of them may be blurry and clouded, yet others are clear. Another work that I found interesting was the American Servicemen and Women piece. I did not realize what I was looking at until I read the title and took a closer look at it. The perspective is extraordinary, and the message that it sends is significant and meaningful. I have never seen such a piece, and I appreciate Ms. Prince for making such a work. It really puts into perspective how lives are counted. As a society, we hear reports mostly on how many men and women were killed in the Middle East. What we don’t hear are the many people who are wounded or hurt due to starvation.
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Elias says:
Hello Emily, first I have to say that I know a lot of people that appreciate the work you are doing. I’m from a small town in California and I have to say small contributions like this I know do make a difference in people who have family and friends overseas. These days there is never enough talk on the war, and people behave as if people are not dying. Something that really opened my eyes on the nonexistence support of soldiers was when I heard a fact that said everyday a soldier commits suicide. Rarely do the people ever here of soldier’s deaths and give enough talk on the subject. The piece of art with the different shades of brown on where the soldiers were from, I believe symbolized the real life essence of the soldiers. You’re giving a real characteristic of a person, letting friends now that you care about their sacrifices. The art does away with the exhausted connotation of a soldier as a robot that fights blindly for their country. The strategy of giving a location for the soldier helps people understand that that soldier also has a home and family to come back to. Your passion for preserving the past is a great endeavor, and picking the homes of the soldiers does a great way of cementing that message, because even if the soldier leaves, the home is still there. Thanks again for your compassionate project, and may many more people indulge in the spirit your project expresses.
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Reina Melgar says:
Emily Prince and Marge got my attention in this picture because she had compassion for marge. It is made me remember when I had my funny Poppie who was a girl dog. This landscape I got to remember my past that had good and bad experiences with poppie. Also, This passage made me feel nostalgic to see the green trees and rock mountain behind Emily and marge where they enjoy the time together.
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Nicole A says:
After carefully reading through the interview Art Shifting had with the artist Emily Prince, I came to really respect Emily as both an artist and a person. The way she describes her feelings towards art, herself as an artist, and the way in which she approaches each and every new project is commendable and much more thought out then I would have ever imagined it to be. I chose to read her interview because of the title –”There is More Then One Way to Remember the Past”. This drew me in because I am constantly looking for new ways to think about life in philosophical ways. To me this is how she views her art. I really enjoyed the way she answered all the questions honestly, admitting to faults she had in the past as an artist, and the ways in which she recognized and improved them. My favorite explanation she gave was when asked about the physical environment she composes her pieces in. She explained that she was inclined to make her projects “site-specific” and that this helped her come to realize she was more intrigued by the relationship we as humans have with our physical environment, as opposed to the environment itself, as she had originally thought. What I enjoyed most about the interview is that all her responses resonated with me and really got me thinking about how I perceive things. I can definitely relate to her feelings and opinions about how we remember the past.
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Verenise says:
I honestly expected this article to head in a whole different direction but I really enjoyed it. Its neat how art comes from childhood for some artist like Emily Prince like her inspiration. Her artwork is amazing but my favorite artwork would be Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces because its real. In my opinion those are beautiful because they are so detailed and actually look real. overall the experience of being able to read and understand Emily Prince was great.
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Nick L says:
I find time to be a very interesting subject matter in art. How can we capture the idea of time in timeless mediums like paper, walls or sculpture? Of course, time itself takes a toll on everything, whether it’s the aging of a fine wine or the battering and chipping of an ancient monument. Perhaps the damage time itself does can serve as an ample inspiration to depict it in our art? These are all beautiful pieces, by the way. Around Around every day is a jarring piece, yet strangely uniform and serene at the same time. Well done.
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i think its interesting that emily includes herself in her work. i like how she shows the different moments of life from the past and future. i think having such inspiration from her grand mother dying really helped her when it came to her paintings. as she said they became more real. a lot of the time people use there own life experiences in there art work, and you can tell emily does this. her picture of the map of who the soldiers that have passed is so simple but still has so much emotion behind it. it really puts into reality a lot of people have died that our serving our country. this shows some pieces can be simple and plain but still have so much meaning to them.
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Christian M says:
I really like how Emily Prince includes herself in her work also.The colors in the first picture seem to be blended and abstract, but after looking at the picture longer you see a faint portrait of the mountains and trees in the background is a very good point to make I wouldnt have noticed with out reading this page. I like how she uses such contrast in colors as well if makes her images pop. It very interesting to look at because it catches your eye so quickly yet you can not make out entirely what she means with out taking more closer looks at her work. Her portrait is very striking and well done.
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Megan Schneider says:
Emily Prince’s style of art work is very interesting. She really knows how to captivate her viewer and draw them into her work. Some of her pieces are very abstract, while others are majestic and poetic. You can really tell how much effort and soul she puts into her work, which makes the piece even more enjoyable. I also think it is amazing how she explaions how she is a more shy artist, but she truely does express herself within the content of her art work. I love her concept of time and memory, and how we all do have a way of recovering what we have lived before.
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Megan Stroud says:
I am really drawn to the colors in the backround of this art piece. The back round of this painting is very abstract and then it brings you back with the center piece. This art piece seems very simple and it is very relaxing just too look at and enjoy. I really like how the artist made this painting as simple as possible. Emily Prince has a vision for this painting and she did very well at capturing that moment.
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Breann says:
I think the way Emily Prince thinks about art is great. Says that you can remember think and moments that happened in your life through touch smell and colors is great because I find myself doing the same thing all the time. Her way of art is very fresh and something i really havent seen before. It would be great to have a piece of her artwork for my house or room, because they are so colorful and full of life. I really enjoyed her art!
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Helen says:
Emily really made think about the different ways I remember things. Whether it’s reminiscing with some friends, or day dreaming, or seeing something or even hearing something takes you back to the past, and really brings a lot memory. It just made me realize how much we use different techniques on everyday bases mindlessness. She really made realize this and its brilliant how she uses this in art. I see the beauty in her piece.
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I admire an artist who has her own process with walking through the past, to create. Rather than simply drawing her subjects, Emily Prince familiarizes herself to her subject, whether faces, architecture or ancient rocks. She uses processes, such as; nostalgia to familiarize herself. The ways she uses her mixed media, to get something new from it, is fascinating. Emily is quite creative, getting inspiration from one media and then seeing something new that was not originally there to create from that. Reading her piece: American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghanis), and reading about how much respect she has for all people and how she gets to know her subjects, in order to create her art, was beautiful. There is so much emotion in her work. I can feel her passion for her work. I have great respect for that.
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johnathan says:
her work is full of energy the different colors and really feeds off each other. she is very talented her work is unique. looking at some of her work is like looking into a little kids dream with all of the colors.it is great how she puts the different types of things together and they mesh.
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Laura C says:
I believe that their is a such thing about how we humans represent and remember the passage of time. I have to Agree with Emily i have this strong feeling that their will and is a right time for everything. Emily seems to try to put that in each of her art work pieces. I like the fact that emily tries to include herself to mostly of her art works. Her art seems to be a never ending line, something that apparently she is good at. Emily seems to put her everything to in her work and in her heart in never ending work is just amazingly stunning and overwhelming. I hope to be able to see one of these in display! Good luck emily! Keep up the great work!
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