Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ann Haley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Ann, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on thus far was my most recent exhibition; a two person show titled “HEAVY METAL; heartburn” with another artist, Chloe Harrison-Ach which opened at The Front Gallery in New Orleans, LA this past August.
My contribution to the show was “HEAVY METAL,” which was a series of 7 paintings and two installations, that mirror what is left after peeling back the layers of healing physical and emotional trauma. Like an onion, the closer to the core one gets, the more raw and pungent pain feels. With that comes uncontrollable tears and unavoidable discomfort. I spent 7 years trying to manipulate my healing by pulling off the first few layers of a whole batch of onions but pausing when tears welled up.
It was 7:57 AM on April 24, 2015; I saw a flash of the heavy metal bumper of an 18-wheeler headed straight at my driver’s side window. It looked like death, enormous, terrifying, yet somehow still glistening in the morning sun. Sometimes I feel like I died that day, or the me who survived isn’t the me who got T-boned on the way to work. I chose to swerve. Whip lashed. It was loud. I felt the weight, I still feel that weight. That weight feels even more ominous when I consider what would’ve happened had I not swerved, even more so when I wished I hadn’t. I chose life that day, unaware that it wouldn’t be easy.
In “Parable of the Sower,” Octavia Butler says, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is Change.” If the only truth is change, to survive, one has to adapt with change. On April 24, 2022, a heaviness came over me when I acknowledged that I had spent 7 years adapting with change. And adapting to what hasn’t changed because of that day.
Having a metal plate in my cervical spine makes me feel heavy. Not heavy in the sense of weight, but heavy in the sense of not feeling light and free. Heavy in the sense that this metal plate holds my neck upright. Heavy in the sense that this metal plate reflects being unable to heal myself fully on my own. Heavy in the sense that even though it supports my head, I am still in pain. Heavy in the sense that it took having my throat slit open to utter the words “I’m gay.” Heavy in the sense that I had no control over the accident. Heavy in the sense that I am forever adapting to this change. Heavy in the sense that this is a lot to carry.
My body gives, I take. My wise mind knows I owe her, but my wrong mind wants to punish her for it not being easy. 7 years of taking extra care of myself. 7 years of pain, at a level 7 out of 10, 10beingtheworstpainyoueverfelt. I am exhausted. I am angry. I am grappling with the chilling truth that this is my life. I have spent the most recent of those years trying to figure out how to feed a body that is starving for so much more than food, face to face with a choice again. Unaware again, that it will not be easy. In these works, I am (finally) peeling to the core; to the poignant moments that changed my life, chopping them up, allowing myself to become consumed by their harsh aroma before throwing them into a hot pot of oil.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
I grew up in Midtown Atlanta. GA in the 90’s-early 2000’s. I’ve been painting and drawing since I was a child. As an art educator, I can say that all children are artists, but there is a moment in adolescence where insecurity and shame kick in, and if there isn’t an adult or mentor providing artistic encouragement, that initial pure curiosity and confidence can diminish. I was lucky that, even though during those middle school years I did not have that sort of mentorship, prior to that my nanny did art projects with me almost every day, and once I got to high school I was fortunate to have some really amazing art teachers, who really helped reignite the artist within myself.
I did my first semester of college at Loyola University in New Orleans in 2010. Being in New Orleans, another Southern city, felt familiar but also felt more like an environment for Southern Misfits than Atlanta felt. As an artist and closeted queer, I felt I could really be myself here. But Loyola honestly didn’t feel like New Orleans at all, so I decided to gear my focus toward art, and transferred to Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA, graduating with a BFA in Painting in 2014.
Upon graduating, I moved back to New Orleans in 2014 and began teaching art in 2015. I have been a member of The Front Collective, an artist-run gallery space, since 2020, which has allowed me to explore my curatorial potential as well as providing opportunity to show my own work. I have also shown work at The Contemporary Arts Center, Antenna Gallery, Carroll Gallery, and SHED gallery in New Orleans, as well as the annual Louisiana Fine Arts Showcase at Southeastern University in Hammond, LA.
As an adult artist, creating has been crucial in communicating to others and myself the cyclical process of healing from the physical and emotional trauma I have experienced. As an art educator, primarily working with middle school aged students who have experienced trauma, I strive to be the art teacher that I needed while I was in middle school and didn’t have the mentorship I desperately needed. I always teach the basics; the elements of art, how to draw the face, and art history, but I do so in a trauma-informed manner, encouraging my students to tap into their feelings and how to portray and move through them visually.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Investment! We as a society benefit so much from art, yet our society puts practically no money toward it, both within our education system, as well as in art communities.
The education system puts money toward so many things that are unnecessary, but art always remains at the bottom of the barrel. The time and effort put into curating an art curriculum to meet the students needs often goes unappreciated. And there is an expectation to beautify the school or do specific projects with students to meet the needs of the PTA, yet at the same time the school doesn’t think restocking art supplies over the years is cost-worthy. I’ve seen first hand the ways in which creation benefits adolescents, in their ability to communicate, work with others, build confidence, and open their minds, yet art class still isn’t treated as valuable as the football team or standardized test scores.
We also live in a society where artists are struggling to make a living, while putting blood, sweat, and tears into their work, yet being expected to work for free, or expected to appreciate minimal compensation for their ideas and labor. Most artists I know also have to work one, or often multiple jobs to support their work and still struggle to make ends meet. Meanwhile, well known wealthy artists who treat art as a business and have factory-like studios make millions, while artists whose work has real meaning and humanity behind it gets little to no recognition. It felt like the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic shed light on how much we benefit from the labor of creatives in our society, but ultimately capitalism couldn’t get us back to work soon enough, and we didn’t get to a stage of not only benefitting from art, but actually putting value on it.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Studying the words of Audre Lorde got me through a time in my life where I was both coming to terms with my sexual identity as well as being 3 years post car accident and coming to terms with needing surgery on my cervical spine. Her poetry as well as her book “Zami: A New Spelling of my Name” made me feel seen and valid in who I am and helped me to trust that while the things I was going through may have appeared as new to those around me, they weren’t actually new experiences in queer history.
Approaching surgery while reading more of her poetry and quotes, one really stuck with me that heavily influenced my creative process: “Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it. … pain will always either change or stop. Always. … The confidence that it will change is what makes bearing it possible. So pain is fluid. It is only when you conceive of it as something static that it is unbearable.”
In 2021 prior to my solo exhibition, “GOOD BAD POSTURE” which served as a topography of my healing process, I was reading a lot of Octavia Butler. Two books of her’s immensely influenced the ways in which I strive to show up and own my space in this world. In “Parable of the Sower” she says “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.” As someone who has struggled my entire life with accepting that so many aspects of life are out of my control, this ideology gave me a sense of peace to the unknown; a sense of calm to foster into the anticipation of change; a sense of comfort in feeling secure as life evolves. It also spoke directly to the creation of art and bearing witness to the impact my art has on others, particularly the ways in which those conversations open new windows of knowledge, understanding, and community.
Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” reminded me that while we must have trust in the unknown, we mustn’t do it blindly. We must study the unknown, learn the language of the unknown, and find ways to work with the unknown even when we don’t fully understand it, or even when we fear it. “Knowing and using the knowledge aren’t the same thing.”
Contact Info:
- Website: annhaleystudio.com
- Instagram: @annhaleystudio
Image Credits
Casey Joiner