We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liese Chavez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Liese, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
A risk I’ve taken as an artist? The project I’m working on presently may be the biggest risk I’ve taken so far. Of course, every single time an artist creates something there is always the risk that the project will fail, that no one will see it or no one will want it, that the message or experience we were trying to share won’t come across, that in the end we have wasted both our time and our art supplies.
But the risk I’m taking with this year’s work feels to me like it’s on a different scale. It’s bigger. It’s taken more time. More financial investment. It may prove to be divisive or controversial. It could cost me clients or gallery representation. Or…it could be the start of an amazing new chapter, and open doors to opportunities I never even knew existed. It could engage people’s curiosity about art and technology in an exciting new way.
For the past several months, I’ve been deep in the development of a new project called Enchanted Walls. This collection of paintings is an interactive art experience that can work equally well in private homes or in public spaces. Picture playful artworks painted traditionally in oil or watercolor, and then brought to life through augmented reality. Scan a QR code, hold up your phone to the artwork, and the painting of the Raven King sighs and quietly surveys his kingdom. A fox version of Hamlet winks and turns Poor Yorick’s skull over in his hands. An elegant woman’s head drifts softly on the end of a string like a balloon on a gentle breeze. The paintings begin to blink and to breathe right inside their frames.
I now have several prototypes that have passed the beta testing, and am putting together a line of Enchanted Walls prints. Getting to this moment has required me to learn a lot of unfamiliar tools on top of my painting and drawing skills — image-to-video software, augmented reality image tracking platforms, a dash of coding. Months of development time where I haven’t been generating income the way I normally would. Every artist knows the particular anxiety of a project that hasn’t paid off yet, and this one has been a long bet compared to my usual workflow.
Then there’s the other risk — the one that worries me more than the gamble I’ve made with my time. To create the animation portion of this interactive art experience, I’ve used an image to video AI tool. And I know how fraught that discussion is right now, and the issues that using AI raises: the desperate need for strict regulations since humans are kind of awful, the environmental cost of not choosing sustainable cooling methods, the art theft due to image scraping and the questions about creative ownership that the industry hasn’t even properly addressed. I take those threats to our planet and to our souls seriously, and will be donating a percentage of all profits from Enchanted Walls artworks to entities fighting to address those issues. (AI Policy Institute, Algorithmic Justice League, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Climate Xchange, and many others accept donations, if you are also inclined to support their important work)
But I’m not here to apologize for using the technology. I create all my paintings with my fingers and my own little brain as I have done for decades, not by algorithm or through copyright theft. I enjoyed learning new technological skills, and I don’t believe the tools themselves are the villain in this story. The moral questions belong to the humans making decisions about how those tools are built, trained, and governed. I’m an artist making something I’m excited about that I believe will reach people and make our spaces more magical, and apparently I’m willing to stand in the crossfire of this debate to make that happen.
As for how it all turns out? I don’t know yet. The prints are nearly ready, and the pitches are going out. What I do know is that a painting that blinks back at you is the kind of thing that gets people curious about art, even if it wasn’t a part of their life beforehand, and that feels worth the risk.
You can check out the progress on this project at www.LieseChavez.com. Thank you for supporting the arts!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have always been fascinated by artwork, particularly images that tell visual stories or depict the complexity of being human, and that has certainly shaped the work I create today. You’ll be thinking about beautifully illustrated storybooks now, and although those were absolutely something I cherished, that wasn’t what left the biggest impression on me.
I have such a powerful childhood memory of crawling up onto my Mom’s bed to peer closely at a fascinating triptych printed on wood. It was The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. I returned over and over to kneel on that pile of pillows as if I were before an altar, trying to parse the densely tangled meaning in each panel. Alas, with of all the nudity and the exceedingly dark mood of the piece, I was afraid to ask any questions about it. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed or fearful of the possible meaning behind it. I just sensed that answering my questions could be “complicated” and I suspected that those questions might result in the painting being taken away from my eyes. I just couldn’t risk it! One day years later it did disappear from the wall, at some point I found it stacked in the back of the hall closet, and then it was just… gone. I suppose it got donated or something. I should buy my own copy now, and ask all the questions I like.
In terms of my art education, I didn’t begin the study of painting and drawing properly until I was in my mid 30s, and I have never regretted the pursuit for one single second. Art has been my full time job since 2012 and I plan to continue on this way until I finally expire. My husband and I operated Chavez Gallery in Colorado Springs from 2014-2022, where we painted live daily, sold our surreal paintings and prints, and regularly created interactive exhibits to transport our visitors to a new dimension in art appreciation.
Owning a physical gallery helped us reach so many people who said they had never collected art before, and that felt like one of the biggest gifts of that period of my life. We had print and small works collectors that weren’t even in high school yet at the time, who to this day add to their own art collections every single year. I hope that my new Enchanted Walls interactive artworks will reach out to people in a similar way, bringing humor and magic and the gift of art into even more homes and public spaces.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
By far, the strongest personal benefit of being an artist is the sense of self-worth and purpose it has afforded me. Each glorious year that I spend in pursuit of artistic advancement I gain more fluency in my craft, which gives me a deep sense of accomplishment and an excellent reason to rise each day. The best part is that art is something that I can never master in one lifetime, so those benefits don’t have an expiry date, and there is no pinnacle. No inevitable decline after reaching some kind of a peak. Art is mine, and it will remain new and exciting and perfection shall be unreachable forever and ever. It’s just not possible to run out of new art things to suck at, therefore, the study of art is eternal. Clearly I’m a big fan.
On top of all those other benefits, building new paintings and problem solving artistic technical puzzles in my head always keeps the demons at bay when I am otherwise unable to quiet my mind. It also means I will never truly suffer boredom or ennui. A passion like mine is a powerful advantage in the battle to find peace in a bonkers world.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I started to say that I am simply compelled at my core to create, but it is more than that. I’m not just in love with creating. I am in love with creativity itself.
What art stirs up in us is our own humanity, it brings the best inside of us to the surface. The arts are so very worthy of our support and our protection.
So my mission is to create, of course, but also to spend my own hard earned dollars on awesome art and amazing music, so that others can continue to make it a beautiful world. To support theater and dance, to help keep those playhouses and performing arts centers open so that we can be better people for having experienced them. I yearn to help bring a love for art into more people’s lives, to engage them in surprising ways and encourage them to share their joy in it with others.
Make more art, buy more art, share more art, please and thank you. That is the goal.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.LieseChavez.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liesechavez
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liese.chavez.1
- Other: https://www.LieseChavez.etsy.com
https://www.canyoncontemporary.com/artist/liese-chavez
Image Credits
All photos by Liese Chavez