We recently connected with Brittany Wilder and have shared our conversation below.

Brittany, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Currently I’m working on an ongoing series of paintings titled “(Today is)”. Each day I spend in my studio I paint the phrase “and it never will be again” As in: Today is July 19, 2023, and it never will be again. Part optimistic rallying cry, part nihilistic declaration, this phrase is a way for me to bestow permanence to my fleeting days.

I began this project at the very end of 2022. Sitting in my studio late December, I found myself in the midst of a rabbit-hole of nostalgia, looking at a photograph in a folder titled MISC Picture Files. In the photograph I stand topless in my college living room, with a strip of canvas hung behind me upon which is scrawled in black paint “Today is April 8, 2012” In my studio, ten years and some change later, I had the same urge as my twenty year old self. To prove I was here, that today was today, and that I wanted to remember it, or at the very least, remember that I had existed inside of it.

This practice has the strange effect of elongating time in the way that only a repetitive action can, while also in effect “wasting” a portion of the very day I’m trying to record. I have the record, but what does it really say about the day other than I wanted a memento of it? I don’t remember that day in April 2012, but I do have a record of it.

Brittany, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was amazingly lucky to attend and graduate from the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2013. Sadly OCAC has since closed, but it gave me a strong group of peers and mentors that continue to have a huge impact on my creative practice. While in school, I studied photography and book arts—letterpress specifically—which really still make up the foundation of my studio practice: text & image.

My studio practice is quite ephemeral. I’m most often responding to my internal emotional landscape, and as such art making becomes a call and response with myself. Sometimes with a past version, sometimes a future version, but the call is always coming from inside the house. My photographic background means I’ve spent much of my career concerned with documenting daily life and digging themes and threads out after a moment has been captured. In recent years several other methods and mediums have made their way into my practice—collecting objects and dried flowers, painting, text pieces, and writing poetry. I’m often the most concerned with collecting evidence, physical ephemera, and mining my writing as a way of coming to deeper understanding about my own identity.

Though being an artist hasn’t yet provided me with a full-time income, it’s truly my core identity. I’ve always done my best to prioritize my studio work and approach it with meaningful dedication. At the moment I’m living and working in North Central PA and have a beautiful studio space in an arts building called The Pajama Factory.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Universal basic income. Or, at the very least, wages that support creative industries. The pressure to conform your creative projects, ethos, and ideas into something that will sell is extremely crippling. In my experience this breeds a lot of either/or thinking. It feels natural to assume that if you make the kind of work you want to make, you won’t be able to financial support yourself. But on the other hand, if you make the kind of work that will sell, you won’t be honoring your creativity. And then on the other other hand, if you work a job that pays well but isn’t creative, you often won’t have the energy or emotional bandwidth to continue making art.

I’m very guilty of this kind of black/white mindset! It’s a very hard thing to break out of. And it can really stunt the kind of projects you take on or the scope of the art you make. If we removed the pressure to support ourselves under capitalism, there would be a lot more room for artists to thrive.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Being an artist shapes the way I see the world. It’s not a hobby or something that I can walk away from. Every little part of my life impacts my art practice, and vice versa. This feels like second nature to me but I recently made a TikTok video showing the wall in my art studio—covered with postcards, prints, ephemera, and more—and had a commentor mentioning how conscious artists are. They seemed a little taken aback at how much thought had gone into this inspiration wall, while I didn’t think twice about it! A lot of the decisions in art making are very instinctual, and those instincts are formed from a lifetime of thinking like an artist.      

Contact Info: 

• Website: https://brittanyvwilder.com/
• Instagram: @brittanyvwilder
• TikTok: @brittanyvwilder

Image Credits
Brittany V Wilder