Genevra Daley

BIO

I was born and raised in an unusual small town in Iowa where the majority of the population practices Transcendental Meditation. I currently reside in California where I am working towards my MFA in Studio Art at the University of California Davis.

STATEMENT

My work revolves around my tacit understanding of the material and the tactile memories that daily interactions with fabric and clay evoke. I have punched, squeezed, torn, and coaxed materials again and again until my body understood them until patterns emerged that meant something until the work mirrored my relationship to my body and at times engulfed my frame. These uncovered experiences then act as an entry point into formal and conceptual decisions moving forward. Forms that confuse the limits of the body, internal as external, feelings made physical, and the privacy of what Jaques Lacan refers to as the erotogenic or apertures of the body, such as slits, cuts, and holes, are exposed as each piece emerges from my studio.

Interview with Genevra Daley

Written by Andreana Donahue

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? What were some early influences?

I grew up in a small unusual town in Iowa where a large population of the town practices Transcendental Meditation twice a day. My parents moved from Canada to teach at the affiliated school Maharishi International University.

My mother is a painter and my father used to do a fair amount of photography, so I was very lucky to grow up around artists. I think my initial impulse to make art was a desire to draw like my mother. I was completely enchanted by her sketchbooks.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this community? Are there any aspects of this specific place that have surfaced in your work?

At this very moment, I’m living in California because I was working on my MFA at the University of California Davis. However, I’ll be moving back to my hometown of Fairfield, Iowa in a few weeks since I just graduated last night. Although I’ll be moving back to a small town there are a pretty incredible artist community thanks to the University. I’m admittedly biased because I grew up in a small town, but I think being an artist in more rural settings is great. I have space to make work, and the cost of living is low enough that I can save money to travel to see shows and go to museums all over the country and overseas as well. My husband is British and we lived in Northern England when we were younger. Although I consider it a second home, the place we moved to lacked a creative community, had a high cost of living, and very little space for a studio. Now I consider those things priorities in any place I live.

Can you tell us about your studio space? What are some of the most crucial aspects of a studio that make it workable for you?

I can make a 4x3ft chunk of my bedroom work as a studio if need be, and I have, but my work tends to scale with my space. Like many artists, I’m constantly hunting for bigger spaces. I’m also very affected by my environment. In my grad school studio, I had gorgeous industrial windows that cast wonderful shadows. I became very interested in the way the fabric I was using absorbed and reflected light, and the way the surfaces looked as the light changed throughout the day. I started making conscious decisions to use combinations of fabrics that played with what I was observing.

What is a typical day like?

I’m a morning person. Which I’m usually nervous to admit because people seem to be pretty suspicious of morning people. Unfortunately my energy bottoms out at around 5 pm so I try to get into the studio in the morning so I can work when I’m more awake and present.

What gets you in a creative groove? What puts a damper on your groove?

The first 5 minutes of my studio day are almost ritualistic. I get to my studio, put on my work overalls and studio shoes, put away my street clothes, fill up my water bottle and turn on my studio playlist. I’ve noticed that if I don’t put my overalls on it usually means I’m not that serious about my workday. It’s kind of silly, but the pattern gets my mind settled and primed to work.

My studio playlists act as little mental time capsules for my studio. I make a new playlist every 6 months or so and I constantly add to them. When I listen to an old set of songs I am transported to the work I was making at the time. Right now I’m listening to a lot of Tennis, Sugar Candy Mountain and I’m also in a weird 90’s dance music phase. Listening to the same thing every day helps me get into a creative groove faster.

What criteria do you follow for selecting materials? Do you prefer to maintain a narrow focus or work across diverse media? How do you navigate the limitations and possibilities that result from this path? (added the following question to this one as well which was Can you walk us through your overall process? How would you describe your approach to manipulating materials? What about decision-making and editing?)

I’m admittedly a bit of a material hoarder. In the last year, I’ve incorporated elements of ceramics, sewing, painting, welding, basketry, weaving, and more, so I’m terrible about throwing things out. I’ve had small pieces of material find their way into pieces many years after I brought them into my studio.

Because of the wide scope of the materials I use, I’ve developed a way of making sculptures out of modular elements that can be combined and recombined until the piece comes together. The process is a perpetual building up and editing back of material until meaning starts to get teased out and patterns emerge that become significant.

My work is perpetually spinning around the idea of the body and my relationship to my body and my environment, so tactility is a big factor in what I bring into my studio. I’m usually picking materials that I want to hold and touch and manipulate by hand.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work overtime? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I trust my hands more than my mind, I trust that they remember for longer and more accurately. For example, I can tell you the material content of a piece of clothing by touch, but I can’t recall the dates of WWI. Trying to understand the way I learn and remember things led me to be interested in the ideas of material intelligence and tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is what is gained through the body, it is intuitive, implicit, and difficult to explain in language. For example, tacit knowledge is how a baker knows if their dough needs more water just from touch.

I found the idea of tacit knowledge through Glenn Adamson’s book “Fewer Better Things” which describes our societies loss of material intelligence in an age of increasing digital presence. The concept of material intelligence coupled with the idea of tacit knowledge allowed me to validate the way I learn and interact with my work.

The imagery in my work is pulled from all over. Forms come from a range of places, like maybe a cell phone snap I took on a walk of a marked hole in the ground, old cartoons, ancient fertility sculptures, or even degrading carpet samples. When I bring a new visual element into the studio I remake the form in different materials, change up its scale, and recontextualize it until the thing loses its initial meaning and takes on new meaning. Over time I’ve built up a visual vocabulary through this process that I use as a kind of abstracted private language.

Most recently I’ve been working with used clothing to make my sculptures. I’m excited to see where the work leads me, the clothing is loaded with potential reads which feels both exciting and scary to tackle.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

I collaborated with a poet named Jake Rose last year. I created a set of images in response to a poem he wrote. The injection of someone else's words into my studio was really exciting and led to work I wouldn’t otherwise have thought to make. I would love to continue collaborating with writers, especially poets.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

Going through grad school during the main chunk of the pandemic has been wild. I only had in-person studio visits for 2 of my 6 quarters because of strict restrictions at UC Davis. I’m incredibly thankful that our faculty advocated for us and we were able to keep our studios. In some ways, it was a privilege to be in school during the pandemic because I had health insurance and we were getting covid tests weekly. With that said, it may be a while before I know the full impact of the pandemic on my work.

In a time that seems to be marked by uncertainty, collective anxiety, and increasing social unrest, why do you think the perspectives and contributions of artists remain meaningful? Do you feel a natural relationship exists between your work (or the role artists play more broadly) and confronting established systems—of power, cultural institutions, or otherwise?

Going through grad school during all the incredible events or 2019-2021 has made these questions even more pressing. There were days when I was working in my studio making work that I knew may never be seen in person, and many times it felt like an incredibly futile and selfish act. Honestly, I can’t sit here and say that making my work is anything but a selfish act. I work to better understand myself, to excavate what makes me, to try on new perspectives and feelings, and to process through everything that has been stored in my body. I think conversations surrounding the importance of art often land on the end product of the final piece. People will ask questions of the piece itself, like “is this political work”, “what is this saying about our society” etc, but rarely do we talk about the process of making as being arguably the most transformational and transgressive thing art can do. If adults learned the power of play and failure, the ability to think introspectively, to unpack their crap, to examine what makes them, and to explore every wonderful weird corner of themselves, wouldn’t that be a phenomenal tool in our society? I think my interest in the process is what has led me to research surrounding the pedagogical structures of art, and I’ve been looking to powerful teachers like Audrey Lorde, Cornel West, and Paulo Freire for guidance.

I’m incredibly grateful to all the people doing amazing social justice work in the world right now. The issues of systemic racism, gender inequality, LGBTQIA+ issues, healthcare, and climate change have always been here and we need to amplify the voices of the people that have been suffering at the forefront. If art can play a part in that amplification, and act as a transformational power on a personal level, then perhaps there is a place for it.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

My pandemic binge show was Ru Paul’s Drag Race and I am 200% hooked. I ended up watching every episode of Drag Race (plus a great portion of all the affiliated shows) since March of last year, and I am starting to see its impact on my work. Although I identify as female, I don’t always feel comfortable with things that are traditionally associated with the more superficial aspects of womanhood. Drag, especially in more recent years, thanks to queens like Gottmik, are stretching and bending gender and fashion in really exciting ways. My most recent work is starting to incorporate fashion and clothing, something I previously didn’t feel comfortable working with explicitly. Thinking about the performative aspects of clothing and gender through the lens of drag has freed me up to push the work into new territory. I’m getting more into the theory surrounding these topics, so I’ve been reading Judith Butler’s book “Gender Trouble” and I have Jose Esteban Munoz’s book “Disidentification” ready to go next.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory?

I was able to see Huma Bhabha’s work in person at David Kordansky Gallery in LA right before the pandemic hit. I love Bhabha’s ability to combine seemingly disparate materials in a single piece in a way that feels immediate and alive.

I also recently got a book of Amir Fallah’s paintings which I have been really enjoying since galleries and museums have been closed.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

One of my mentors, artist Jim Shrosbree, would often give the advice to be in the studio as much as possible, and if on a particular day you don’t know what to do, or get stuck, then to clean up. It’s incredibly simple advice, but it’s amazing what a good clean-up can do. He may have been quoting someone else, so apologies to them if that is the case.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I just finished my MFA thesis installation titled “Entryway”. The work is currently on view at the Manetti Shrem Museum’s website for the next few weeks as part of our digital MFA show.

I am also looking forward to, and very grateful for, a new full-time teaching job that starts this August. I will be joining the faculty at Maharishi International University’s studio art program.

To find out more about Genevra Daley check out their Instagram and website.