We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chloe Wilwerding. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chloe below.

Chloe , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Almost every day, I think about what it would be like to have a regular job. I’m occasionally jealous of friends who have bosses who give them direction and coworkers who partner on projects. I crave a consistent pay day and employee benefits, especially healthcare. I sometimes envy people who leave work at the end of the day and leave their work behind; I can leave the studio, but that doesn’t free me from bouncing between ideas and collecting images in my head.

There is a disconnect when I fantasize about having a different job though because my art practice is not first and foremost a job. It’s a vocation. Even if I did move to a more traditional job, the pull to make art wouldn’t dissipate. When I’ve had more structured jobs in the past alongside my art practice, the art just sneaks into the time before work, after work, and on the weekends, creating challenges for balance.

I’m a broadly curious person, and I could see myself being engaged by many different types of work. One of the main reasons I was able to settle in with art as both my vocation and my job is that art is a tool for exploration of any topic. I can study whatever I want through the lens of art. Art allows for breadth in its subject matter and depth in the exploration of ideas; for this reason, I think art can engage my curiosity in a way that no other job could.

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 a Catholic community in Nebraska. In this context, I was given definitive answers to questions about who we are, why we are here, and how we should live. The strongest impulses in my art practice emerged in response to seemingly unarguable answers to complex existential questions. In defiance of these conclusive answers, my art practice follows poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s recommendation to “love the questions” and “live the questions.” The core question guiding my art practice is, “What does it mean to be human?” I have explored this question through a variety of lenses. Currently, I am using my art to contemplate how climate change and digital culture require redefining what it means to be human as we recontextualize ourselves in these changing environments.

The questions come first in my work, and I decide on the mediums in response to the questions. I have my Masters of Fine Art in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and primarily make 2-D mixed-media work that combines printmaking with textiles, collage, photography, and painting. Almost all of my work has a digital component, most often digital printing or digital embroidery. I also gravitate towards the tactility and meditativeness of textiles and infuse new materials and play into my process so that I am constantly challenged and nothing becomes rote.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist for me is when my art takes on its own identity and finds its place outside of the studio. Generally, by the time I finish a piece, I know how I will explore the ideas or materials in the piece differently in future work, and I’m ready to move on. The same piece that had started to bore me in the studio takes on new life through others’ eyes when I show it. I almost always have this experience when working with curators for group shows. The ideas they use to tie together all of the pieces in a show give me a new context for thinking about my own work. Viewers of my work also give me new frames for understanding my work and new language to talk about my work. Once when I showed my Containers for Knowledge series, which is a series that includes twenty pieces installed in a grid, a viewer told me that each piece felt like a line in a poem. I think about that comment all the time when I’m deciding how pieces in a series fit together.

I think that sometimes people feel intimidated to talk to artists about their work, but I crave these conversations. They give me so many fresh perspectives to take back to the studio and incorporate into my art practice.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think that artists are taught that loving what they do is compensation enough for the work they make. There are so many opportunities for artists that are uncompensated or undercompensated. That lack of compensation is justified by the fact that most artists love what they do and would create in some form or another whether or not they get paid. As I’ve grown in my art practice, I’ve become more aware of when I am doing uncompensated work and more deliberate about when and why I am willing to work for free. While I love making my art and would do it in some format whether or not I am compensated, I have shifted my mindset because I recognize that the sustainability and growth of my art practice requires me to make deliberate decisions about compensation. While talking about compensation can sometimes seem inauthentic in the art world, I’ve learned that being critical about compensation and saying no to certain opportunities allows me to focus on specific opportunities that will move my practice forward without straining my resources. I have noticed some slight movement towards art venues acknowledging the risk and upfront materials costs and time that artists put into creating their work, and I hope that there are greater shifts towards compensating artists more fairly in the near future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chloewilwerding.com/
• Instagram: @chloe_wilwerding_art
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloe-wilwerding-880534b0