We were lucky to catch up with Autumn Blaylock recently and have shared our conversation below.
Autumn , appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
When I first began pursuing a creative career and a career as a professional artist, I was very concerned with my work in terms of production. I cared little about each individual piece and its unique meaning in comparison to how many works of art I could produce in a month’s or week’s, time. I just wanted to be seen, and it took me a very long time to unlearn this behavior. For a while this competitive mindset greatly decimated my artistic work ethic and I felt no sense of inspiration to create. Projects more closely related to craft: crochet, sewing, embroidery etc. are what brought me joy. At this point when I considered my studio practice it’s what felt like going to a regular job would be, like something I had to do. For a while I even became intensely interested and occupied with fiction and creative writing, which is something I still deeply cherish, but it never really occurred to me— at least for a time— that all of these facets of making could exist within the same realm. I don’t have to create for anyone but myself, and in times when I was working a “regular job” (particularly in the food service industry as a cake decorator) did I realize this and began to find inspiration in the work of others. I think the work we do every day in a “regular job,” in the work of caring for yourself and others, in the labor of considering life every morning is an art within itself and holds value; it’s something I seek to document within my studio practice.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Autumn Blaylock; I am a multi-disciplinary artist and writer working in the American Ozarks. I’m primarily interested in notions of storytelling, specifically its many processes and histories, as well as its unique relationship to memory. Having grown up in the Ozarks, my work is greatly influenced by the region’s extraordinary legends and folklore that foster an illustrious culture of craft and creativity.
My first exposure to art came through methods of craft-based and textile work by the hands of both of my grandmothers, my maternal primarily working with embroidery and my paternal with crochet. Due to this upbringing, I am extremely passionate about bridging the gap between traditional fine art spaces and those of craft and rural communities.
I am currently exhibiting with the 2025 Women of the Ozarks Cohort as well as the 2025-2027 Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Juried Artist Registry. Outside of my studio practice, I am pursuing my Community Scholars Certification with the University of Arkansas, to continue to uphold my interests in oral history traditions and investigations.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I wouldn’t say there is a particular goal or mission driving my creative journey. My creative journey and studio practice operates more so as a restorative outlet. The biggest factor that began to drive my practice into an evolution from an apathetic task on a to do list to a near obsession, was the process of dealing with my grief after the loss of my paternal grandmother and her struggle with Alzheimer’s. I think what had really affected me was the way her personality, speech, and storytelling deteriorated. It was here that I really began to document my familial histories and became absolutely fixated on both regional and cultural histories. Folklore provided a great outlet for this. I was fascinated by the processes of folklore and its tradition of operating in a sort of word-of-mouth heirloom space.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is both the joy that the final product brings to others and the reflective, ruminative process that it brings to me. When I’m in my working stages, I don’t really have to think about what I’m doing; layering color and drafting compositions feel instinctive to me. It’s when I stop to write about my work and what I am doing that that the tug of war really begins, but by this point I’ve done most of the heavy lifting. As my work revolves intensely on folklore, regional history, and the Ozarks as a culture, I am additionally focused on the Ozarks as a land and what it means to occupy this land. What does it mean for a story to be derived from the land? What does it mean to be an Ozarkan? I don’t think there’s an exact explanation for these questions, but if my work even remotely generates this sort of discourse, I feel rewarded.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://musseyartinquiries.wixsite.com/mysite-1
- Instagram: musseyart
- Linkedin: Autumn Blaylock
