We were lucky to catch up with Chloe Blodgett recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Chloe, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
I credit my parents as the catalyst for everything that’s driving me in life right now. They passed their interest in art, history, literature, and photography down to me from a young age. I grew up in Bryan Texas and we made frequent pilgrimages to Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, and Houston to visit art museums. I don’t think they ever had it in their head that their kid would grow up and want to be an artist, nor did they fully realize the obsession that they were igniting in me. In fact I know they had more practical hopes for me; thought maybe I’d be a pediatrician or something. Nonetheless, my parents let me major in studio art and have supported me through this degree. I realize what a privilege this is, that many parents don’t see an art degree as a worthwhile investment. My mom’s parents didn’t let her go to art school. My dad didn’t study journalism because he thought it’d be too competitive and therefore impractical. Ironically they went to school for English, which they actually told me they wouldn’t let me major in. Neither of them have a job related to their degree at all, but they have let me blindly pursue my passions against any statistical odds. I’m finishing up an Associates in Studio Art at Austin Community College right now.
I think knowing how to make things on your own is important and my parents share this opinion. I call them up and tell them about any new projects I’m working on and they’re always so curious to hear about how every process works. Maybe if they didn’t share my curiosity and passion for art I would’ve given up a while back, opted for something more “practical”. But my parents didn’t make me choose between passion and career. This support they’ve given me through school is the best thing they’ve given me. Once I made my decision about my field of study they have not said anything that led me to question my decisions, or even indicated that they question this decision and thus created a space for me to try something without fear of failure.
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’m a freelance artist with a focus in oil painting, printmaking, and film photography. I collect reference photos on film which either take on a life as a painting or are edited together as collections to publish as books and magazines. Painting and the process of mining for poetic imagery in daily life helps me stay present in my life and provides a way to synthesize things that I’ve learned about the places I’ve lived. My work has been largely autobiographical so far, but I try to invoke a sense of nostalgia and reverence for a particular time and place that I hope will resonate with a larger audience. I do a lot of figurative work: bar scenes or paintings of live music, what you see a lot of living here in Austin. Art-making is an act of utmost appreciation for me. I want to dignify our daily experience with anecdotal pieces showing emotive beauty in everything from more mundane, overlooked aspects of everyday life to our necessary connections with one another. I have an ongoing series of works of and about the bus. I find the space itself to be beautiful sometimes and at large I think the bus can be so underappreciated. I don’t have a car so it’s an essential resource to me and others and it’s become one of my favorite things to make images of. Partnering with CapMetro would be a dream collaboration for me. I do commissions for people as well. Currently I’m working through some album cover ideas for local band lluvii. I’d love to partner with more musicians as well.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
At minimum, I hope to see more people at least considering visual arts. The community here in Austin seems a bit small and disparate when compared to the music scene and overall population. But there are a lot of people out here collaborating on really cool projects and they need more eyes, more funding, more love. Like I said, I think people who don’t consider themselves artists can feel alienated and I want people to know that there’s a place for them if they’re even just merely interested in seeing what’s going on. I think one of the biggest challenges a lot of artists are facing here in Austin, and across most metropolitan areas in the US, has to do with accessibility and affordability. Artists are having to juggle multiple avenues of income to pay their living expenses and studio expenses. Studio space is still sparse and unaffordable for many. It would be really pivotal to see some public works projects that centered around creating art oriented third spaces that artists could use to build a tighter community, share resources, or access for studio space. Anything that would allow more people the time or space to create their work and develop their skills would be significant– more local residency opportunities for example.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
When I think about art, I’m often thinking about it in tandem with history. I see the work we make as additions to our collective history, mirroring, processing, and recording the zeitgeist. Maybe not everyone’s work will make it into an art history canon, but I hope people will see some importance in the work people are doing and feel affection for it because it is a reflection of something we are all living through. Art can be interpreted and enjoyed in so many different ways and is not confined to any museum or gallery, canvas or paper. Art is aesthetics and whether or not a person considers themselves creative or not, we all make aesthetic decisions on a daily basis. I want people to realize this and to see artistry as an inherent aspect of our daily lives, and not as a frivolous or elitist industry in which they have no place. One thing I want everyone to understand about art and visual arts specifically is simply that you are capable of understanding and appreciating art even if you don’t make it. As with music, there are many ways to appreciate a piece of art. In music you enjoy a song at a surface level for the beat or melody, the emotion it evokes, the dance it moves you to. Or you can listen to a song and appreciate the lyrics, hearing and understanding the meaning beyond the beat and the skill that it took to make it. I feel like this is more automatically understood with music than with visual arts. Often I see people omit from interacting with visual arts, intimidated and assuming that they wouldn’t be able to grasp whatever evasive, heady messages the artist is communicating anyway. But just like music, there’s levels to appreciate a piece. People just want to make beautiful things sometimes, to evoke a feeling, make a joke, etc, and it’s all open to interpretation instead of confined to specific symbolic codes. It doesn’t have to resonate, but I hope people can make the space to consider art at whatever level they feel comfortable with and enjoy most.
Contact Info:
- Website: chloeblodgett.com
- Instagram: @chloebbones