We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Candice Greathouse. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Candice below.
Hi Candice, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I get so much out of curating group exhibitions more than anything. While I love making my own work and showing it, being able to do something that feels collaborative and has a group effort to it hits different. When I curate an exhibition, I get to start out with my favorite artists and works and create a space that didn’t exist beforehand and share that. It’s thrilling to have a reason to reach out to an artist you admire and opportunities to engage with them.
For example, my most recent curatorial project was MESS, in 2022, held at Los Angeles City College’s VAMA Gallery. That exhibition explored the messy aspects of womanhood, in relationship to parenting, domesticity, femininity… our lives. Among the works I exhibited were a selection of Jo Ann Callis’s iconic 1970s feminist photographs, a 15ft handknit sweater by Beth Abaravich, and an installation of dying houseplants conceived by Estonian artist Flo Kasearu. I literally cried when the exhibition was up, because the artworks were not only so gorgeous but the conceptual content was incredibly important to me to share (also hormones, my daughter was born the week after the show opened!)
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 am an interdisciplinary artist and I am an art professor at California State University Northridge, teaching darkroom/digital photography and experimental video art. I have always been drawn to a creative practice, but it definitely took time finding my primary medium. I have been working in photography/video now for almost twenty years, half my life!
I really enjoy teaching photography and video. The students are always motivated and it’s been fun (also challenging!) helping them expand their ideas of what a photo/video practice looks like outside of Instagram and TikTok. Getting students in the darkroom especially is life-changing for them – our lives are so digital now – and having to work with your hands in the lab for hours on end with no access to social media is a huge mind shift.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I work with photography and video and installation, my practice is all over the place and a lot of fun. Each project I work on is completely different – my most recent photo/video work (WIP) explores the closure of 98 Rite Aids in California since their 2023 bankruptcy. Before that, I literally made a video piece with 10 gallons of whole milk. That was actually really stressful. I still find spots of milk on my camera equipment a year later. I ran up the steepest street in Los Angles for a video performance. I got slightly lost in the desert one night in heels and just a camera. I record myself tattooing myself. I work with pop music and projections, and disco balls and rooms full of feathers! It’s mostly low-tech experimental video – there are a lot performative elements and I embrace the static camera. The clean-up is brutal though, to be honest. But it can feel a lot like play – it’s that hands-on tactility I referenced above.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Gosh I have to put on my teacher hat and say ubuweb – https://ubu.com/
As of 2024, it’s no longer updated but it’s an online archive of avante-garde and often impossible to find video and sound works. Not enough people know about it and it’s the best place to lose time in, so if you’re reading this, check it out! Start with Cheryl Donegan and Peggy Ahwesh and People Like Us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.candicegreathouse.com
- Instagram: @candicegreathouse
