Prompt: How would you describe the relationship between literature and art?
MMP: Well first, I would say that literature in itself is a form of art. In my own personal definition of art, I consider art to be anything that can shape and change how we think about, interact with, and view the world. There is a lot of overlap between literature and art in their movements and influence on our ideologies. For example, I think about works discussed in Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, and his argument about the themes in literature representing the interruption of pastoral scenery with the introduction of industrialization during the nineteenth and twentieth century. We can see some of these same themes pop up in art from this time period. A good example of this is Claude Monet’s Sunrise, which features a serene sunset over a body of water where a few people are paddling boats. The forefront of the image is interrupted by dark, looming structures on the horizon representing machinery and industry.
A big part of my own practice is reading. I find that I make the strongest work when I am doing a lot of research and connecting my ideas to some of the themes already being discussed in literature and philosophy.
MKA: Yes, I agree! I think writing and visual art (of any kind) are inextricably linked. I have been teaching a class on art writing and tracing the ways that works of art (real and imaginary) appear in literature and the ways in which writing about art is in itself a way of seeing the work, a kind of knowing. Once interpretive or contextualizing language is put to a work of art, I think it becomes part of it—that how we see work is bound up in what we have read.
MMP: Absolutely! And I think this is true in writing about work as well. Even as a primarily visual artist, I spend a lot of time writing about my work, which I think influences how I see it as I make new connections in writing about it that I don’t always see during the making process. It’s really interesting, the back and forth that occurs between writing and making and how they inform each other. Is this something you also experience in your practice?
MKA: Very much so. I find that when I get stuck in one form, moving to the other for a while really helps. A lot of the textile work is repetitive (hand-stitching, cutting) and it allows for a kind of meditative space where new associations can form. And I can listen to music while sewing—which is something I can’t do while writing—and so the whole experience of sound, voice, lyrics, the formal movements, transitions, and refrains in song—all that can be part of the making, too.
Because my formal education has been in writing and literature, I find that having ideas about what an essay or a poem can or should be can sometimes get in the way of experimentation and play. Part of what is so pleasurable to me about making things with my hands—sewing, collage work—is that I have fewer expectations about where something will go. It’s sometimes enough just to have something to hold in my hands, to allow the language for it to recede in my own mind. I wonder whether you have any such relationship in your own practice to methods that feel free for play and approaches that feel less so?
MMP: Yes, for sure. It actually took me a while to allow myself the space for play in my work. I would have an idea and being a visual thinker, I can see the finished work in my head before I make it, which can sometimes get in the way of play and experimentation. I had to really create new structures of making with a level of unpredictability to give myself the gift of play in my work. It has been really helpful for me, but it took me a long time to get there as it took a lot of restructuring how I thought about work. I know you work with textiles frequently, is there a process associated with that material that allows you to play and experiment more easily than other materials?
MKA: One thing that strikes me is that with the textile work that I have been doing, the materials—literally, the fabric, the paper—already exist. I have, in various ways, inherited a great deal of fabric, paper, trim, and threads. I’ve been deconstructing worn clothing, and repurposing domestic linens—and so there are already certain parameters—size, texture, malleability, color—that I have to work with. This isn’t really the same in writing, where I would basically be making my own raw materials (sentences, paragraphs, images). So, in some ways, I guess it’s like entering whatever project with a draft already in place. So, the part that can feel more playful—manipulating materials, recombining—can start sooner. That, to me, feels more freeing certainly than starting with the blank page.
You mentioned that you often can see the finished work before beginning. Where do those images and ideas tend to come from? How do you know you have something new in mind and how do you begin?
MMP: From the world around me, typically. For example, I recently made a series of paintings that are made up entirely of hand-painted pixels. I had the idea for these paintings while I was on a flight over the Midwest. Looking down onto the landscape from above, I could see how the land was sectioned into a grid-like structure, resembling pixels. That led me to think about pixel camouflage, leading me to want to create these paintings of pixel camouflage.
Once I had palettes chosen, I had a pretty clear visualization of what I generally wanted the works to look like. The way I saw these in my mind informed the rules I put in place for making these pieces. I made each piece the same way so that I could create something close to what I imagine. In a weird way, this rigidness allows some freedom, because even though I have an idea of what the finished piece will look like, there are things the material does that I don’t predict in my mind, like the way removing tape results in an edge, or the visibility of my brushstrokes brings warmth to the subject.
Does your writing have an impact on your visual works and vice versa? Do you feel you explore similar themes and concepts?
MKA: At the moment, I think I do. I have been working for the last decade or so with a lot of work that I consider related, in terms of subject matter, and I think with related formal ideas as well. I’ve been working with the documentation of my adoption, and my various attempts at searching for my birth family. I discovered quickly that I couldn’t really think about transnational, transracial adoption without understanding some of the political, social, and cultural conditions of the US involvement in the Korean War, and how all that intersects with gender. Moving back and forth between the very personal, intimate, family concerns to the global—the ways in which my story is both unique and part of a much larger, more complex story of imperialism, militarism, misogyny, racism. So, there’s plenty of material to work with! But to offer a specific example, while I was writing what would become my first book, I was also sewing these dresses. I came across the estimate that in the decades since the Korean War, about 200,000 Korean children had been adopted—primarily to the US, and Europe. And that number seemed so unimaginable, that I wondered what it would be like to try to represent it, try to get a feel for what that scale was. Of course, I couldn’t really come close to 200,000, so I decided on 200—and as I made each of these, I tried to think about all the implications of these little garments, and the lives I was trying to have some way to represent.
The result was an installation that didn’t necessarily immediately “read” as a meditation on transnational adoption—but the concerns were part of its structure. I am very interested in how and to what extent the scaffolding or infrastructure of a text can inform it, and in manipulating how visible those structures can be.
At the moment, I’m working with my collaborator, the experimental musician and performer Bonnie Jones, who is also a Korean adoptee. We are exploring ways to approach these same themes through sound, movement, and performance together. It’s been a really amazing experience to have insight into other modes of expression and to take ideas and images that I have been holding and working with on my own, and to try to cocreate something new with an artist I respect and admire so deeply.
Mary-Kim Arnold
Mary-Kim Arnold is a writer, artist, and teacher. She is the author of The Fish & The Dove (Noemi Press) and Litany for the Long Moment (Essay Press).
Adopted from Korea and raised in New York, Mary-Kim lives in Rhode Island with her husband and children.
