Ava Lonergan

This is an extract of a mutual interview between Ava Lonergan and I during her residency in September 2018. Ava is an artist and writer from Richmond VA. She spent a week here developing ideas. She is a co-founder of Corner Office, which started as an arts organisation in her hometown, and more recently launched as a publication.

Odette: Tell me what you’ve been working on. If it’s easier you can just tell me about today, because sometimes the question is just too big.

Ava: Well, I can definitely tell you what I’ve been doing this week. I came here without any specific ideas in mind, but it’s also coincided with this book I started reading, Women Who Run With The Wolves, which has brought up a lot of questions for me. I decided to start with questions, just answering questions in writing. The questions that I chose were kind of pertinent to themes I’ve been interested in lately, which are memory and intuition. I feel like the past however many years I’ve been existing with my mind feeling like it’s ten feet above my body at all times and not feeling very in my body. So, I’ve been thinking about returning to the body, and I think that has to do with memory and intuition; feeling those things more so through the body. And I answered questions about other themes, like technology, which I’m always struggling with, and social media. I was answering these questions, and coming up with more questions, and I developed all this writing. I’ve been sorting through that and trying to make sense of it and trying to find connections and put it together into a cohesive thing. I’ve narrowed it down this week into working mostly with memory and intuition and how those things have been so influenced by smartphones. That’s mostly what I’ve been thinking about. I could see it taking a final form as a publication. I don’t know, I can’t really imagine having just text to talk about these ideas, or just visuals, so I want to have the two together. So, yeah. That’s the answer.

Odette: It seems like the relationship between being a creative person and doing art and writing things is much more freeform than what the world gives people credit for. How do you feel about the pigeonholing?

Ava: It’s definitely something I struggle with, and writing is something I’ve only seriously introduced into my practice in the past year. It’s always something I’ve done but I’ve never really thought of it in connection with other parts of what I do. I even just have a hard time if someone asks me what I do. I have the hardest time just saying ‘yes, I am an artist.’ So I even struggle getting to that point. And then the follow-up question is always like, oh, what kind of art do you make? Or worse: oh, what do you paint?! It’s hard, because I feel like I’m constantly introducing new media and new elements into my practice, and it’s hard to make it all feel cohesive. I think it’s easier to explain to other artists because I feel like we’re all dealing with it in some way or another. But I’ve just found that my different ideas just take different forms, so I have to let that happen the way that it wants to happen. I have a hard time with follow through, coming up with final outcomes, final work. I guess I had a very small exhibition of paintings about a year ago or so, but I really haven’t had a formal exhibition since my thesis show for undergraduate work. I’m not super concerned about exhibiting constantly, but I don’t know—I don’t really like looking at my CV.

Odette: I feel that the pressure is external. You probably take it on from outside. And really, the pressure is from people who don’t understand and want to have a nice easy answer that they can understand. You shouldn’t really need to give them one.

Ava: Yeah, the world likes to categorise and label things. That leaves me wanting to fit things into categories and labels. And then I don’t even end up finishing anything, because I start thinking about that too much, and I get confused about where and how to present the work.

Odette: What does finished look like to you?

Ava: When I think about finished, unfortunately, I think about an exhibition. Or, for writing, it would be being published, somewhere that’s not self-publishing, because that’s pretty easy to do these days. But those are all very conventional ways of thinking about being finished. For me, it would more so be just knowing that I’ve worked through what feels like all the possible options, multiple drafts, putting more time into it. I don’t think I put enough time into things. I’m always trying to rush things or I want to finish things but I’m not putting the time in to make it feel like it has that kind of depth and polish of a finished thing. That would be my own personal finished criteria. Even in this one week, I keep trying to get to a certain point. It’s like, oh, I want to have a first draft, or oh, I want to have a piece of writing finished, but it’s just one week! I can’t expect to get anything to any kind of—maybe not even a first draft. And that’s ok, is what I keep telling myself. Or reminding myself.

Odette: One thing that has really struck me talking to people at Cel del Nord is the difference between how different people gauge success.

Ava: I definitely feel that this week—which is not quite over yet!—has been successful. I don’t know that I’ve ever spent this much time intensely focused and dedicated just to my work. I’ve done a couple of two week workshops before, but they were classes, so I was in the studio a lot and working a lot but there were also demos and discussions and critiques and stuff. So this is the first time it’s been more like, eight or however many hours a day of just working through it.

Odette: I think you’ve done more, actually. I think you’ve done, nine to ten hours. Kudos to you.

Ava: Yes! That’s what I was hoping for, more like ten hours a day. I mean, some of it was reading… but that’s all part of it.

Odette: I’m so happy for you. I honestly am.

Ava: Yeah, it’s been such a success. I was coming into it hesitant about maintaining focus, like, if I hit the first wall am I going to lose momentum or lose enthusiasm? Just to know that I can push through that is good.

Odette: Now know that you’ve got the focus and momentum, what are you going to do next?

Ava: I have been thinking a lot about that. I’m partially really excited thinking about it but partially feel like I’m jumping ahead in thinking about it because I haven’t finished what I’m working on now. Yeah, I have a few things in mind I want to apply for. Now that I know what kind of focus I can maintain, the kind of work I can do in a week, I’m just grateful I’m about to go to Sevilla and I’ll have eight solid months where I’m pretty much only working like, 12-16 hours a week?

Odette: That’s very European.

Ava: So, I won’t have quite as much time, but there’ll still be lots and lots of time, so I pretty much want to keep running with this momentum, working out a schedule, a routine, just to keep pushing it. And I have a few residencies that I want to apply to for next year. I think most of the deadlines are January, February, March so that still leaves me a lot of time to get everything together. I don’t want to be—going back to what I was talking about earlier—I don’t want to be pushing this work to some finished stage prematurely or just for the sake of these applications. I want it to organically come to a close. So, that’s one thing I’m trying to prioritize.

Odette: Do you think it’s possible to apply for one of those types of things to move something forward and not finish it? Or do you think that they would expect you to finish?

Ava: It seems like most of them don’t expect you to finish. It seems like most of them are similar to coming here, where it’s like, there’s an understanding that the creative process is this big giant mystery and I don’t think there’s really expectation of finishing a project or doing anything super specific. So, yeah, there’s the possibility I could say, this is what I’ve been working on and this is what I’m going to keep working on.

Odette: Yeah. I really hope that works.

Ava: Yeah. I have no plans for after the school year, which is fine. I still have a lot of time. It would be really great to do one or two residencies next year. If not next year—I’ll just keep applying and keep working!