We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brenna Ivanhoe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Brenna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
One of my most meaningful art projects came from my residency at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. The residency operated out of their project space attached to the Tenderloin National Forest, a community garden they built in the heart of the Tenderloin district. This garden had two redwood trees, a koi pond, adobe hut and oven, and many murals and mosaics. I spent a lot of time in the garden sharing stories with the local residents. For my project “Keepsakes” I invited neighboring residents to lend me a personal object to paint. Painting each person’s keepsake felt like a way of connecting to a part of someone else’s experience, and really spending time with their story. I wanted to elevate the importance of something one might otherwise not notice as a way of sharing our inner lives with each other. I valued the exchange it formed, and the way it revealed the trust that we had built in the garden. The opening was a celebratory evening of everyone coming in support and witnessing each others objects. One participant even came with her friends and sang Christmas Carols. At the end of the night, everyone took their keepsakes and painting home.
Another extremely meaningful art experience was assisting the artist Luchita Hurtado. At 95 years old, she was about to have her first solo show in over five decades, and had shown some interest in making new work. I was brought on to help her manifest this interest. Over time we built a lot of trust and grew very close. I helped her establish a studio space in her home where she completed many new bodies of work. She was very independent, even in her late 90s, and I felt honored to help her manifest the work she was compelled to make at the sunset of her life and career. Her home was a sanctuary of vibrant plants, collected treasures, art, books, and her hand-made clothing. She shared the most amazing stories of adventures and wisdom. We had intense conversations about the beauty and fragility of our planet and the repercussions we have at hand for our neglect. My time with her gave me an invaluable perspective on the importance of gratitude, curiosity, and wonder. Her brilliance and spirit has forever changed me.
Brenna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Art has been an essential part of my life since I was a kid. My mother is an artist and it seemed like we were always engaging in some form of creativity with fun materials. My first grade English teacher tried to convince my mom I had ADD (an unfortunately common approach in 90’s schools at armchair diagnosis and ableism). My mother, knowing the value of difference, simply responded that I focused on art projects for hours, and perhaps her class might just be boring.
My early art education was observational, mostly drawing and painting from the figure. This taught me how to slow down and really look, how to really try to get things right. By the time I entered college at Carnegie Mellon, I had well-honed observational drawing and painting skills. But this was all turned on its head when the first day of class, my teacher Hilary Harp brought us on a field trip to Home Depot, and told us “This is now your art store.” CMU really challenged us to approach art more conceptually, to question traditional materials, and put ideas first. I still returned to painting in the end, though I was challenged to defend it more, and perceive my choices as being some among many options.
At CalArts while in grad school, I loved the provocative conversations that often had nothing to do with materials or formalism. I was interested in exploring perception, mythologies, and the human experience, and challenged by how to find form for all of these big ideas. At times negotiating these intricacies became a bit overwhelming. I worked closely with Darcy Huebler, who led an arts pedagogy course whose complex and expansive approach really helped me break through this block. We worked with with 2nd and 3rd graders from a local elementary school, and used prompts and jumping-off points for the projects that became a profound way to spawn creativity and became integral to my own creative process. I still return to these prompts whenever I’m at a stand-still. I also began experimenting in ceramics while at Calarts, which really helped me shake up the way I was thinking about painting. Ceramics entailed a lot of experimentation and playing with chance and loss of control.
No matter the circumstances, I’ve always continued some form of creative output- even at times in a very private internal way – sometimes small daily drawings, jotting thoughts about an idea, or seeing art. Presently I live in Los Angeles and work from my converted garage space. It has been a labor of love to build out the home studio, but extremely fulfilling. The studio includes an old ceramics kiln that, with a lot of care, makes some very exciting surprises (and a few ugly ducklings).
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I think its two fold. I really enjoy looking intensely at my surroundings—getting lost in the intricacies of spaces, sensations and objects. I get distracted pretty easily by things — plants, clouds, negative space of adjacent buildings, intriguing effects of peeling paint, strange discarded items along the sidewalk or road, shadows and reflections. Of course this isn’t limited to artists and creatives, just a way of looking and paying attention. I like to see the way time depicts itself naturally everywhere through decay and growth.
Contrary to many narratives, I don’t believe that there is some sort of “peak” in being an artist, a lesson well learned from Luchita. The more you do, the more you see, the more you live, the more that develops. It feels important to have something to be constantly challenged by and grow from, so long as that thread continues to unravel. When I’m not creating work I feel restless, but when I can push against barriers into the studio, it engages my mind and senses and gives me a way to continue exploring. I love learning about how other artists prioritized making their work and what journeys this brought forth. Even through challenging moments, being creative and finding a way or form to continue to make progress has been really inspiring.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When I was studying abroad in London, I became obsessed with the way reflections formed on the ground after it rained. With the way the city was lit up, and everything getting dark so early, suddenly there was abstraction everywhere. I had been painting scenes from my surroundings, and I realized I was much more invested in painting the puddles than anything else in the painting. These puddles gave me permission to completely release and really move the paint around. It felt like brief experiments surrounded by other regions requiring more learned skills and control. In these moments, I could embed more movement and gesture, which was very rewarding. I felt I was rejecting all the skills I had learned thus far to get to something deeper, something more surprising and felt. This has ever since been embedded in the way I make work. I like the dance between being in control and then completely letting go, having a plan and then leaving it all up to chance. Our place in the universe is finite and outside of our control, it is the space we give the work and the way we, and it, engage with others that endure.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ivanhoebrenna.berta.me
- Instagram: brennaivanhoe