We caught up with the brilliant and insightful McLean Fahnestock a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
McLean, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
My parents encouraged me to pursue art when I was young. I am lucky to have had their support in making that decision. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t try other paths. I worked in retail sales for a while and took my time finishing my bachelor’s degree. Once I did though, I started working on the creative side of retail, in merchandising, and it got me back to thinking about being an artist as a career. I began my Master’s program while working in retail still because I wanted to commit to becoming an artist and to making my own work after using my creative abilities to sell housewares. It was risky, starting school, eventually leaving my job, living on grad student jobs and loans, but it was worth it to invest in myself and my work.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
At heart, I am a landscape artist. I am interested in how place shapes our identity and how, in turn, our desire can shape a place. Landscapes can expose privilege, vulnerability, and power. In my projects I center the landscape in reference to the Western concept of Paradise and the subsequent values that have grown around it and have branched into colonialism, development, gentrification, ecological damage, and climate change. I do this using unexpected materials, like glitter and rhinestones, to represent money or value as placed by human beings or human society upon the land, sea, and sky and their resources. I use mass produced imagery that is sold as decor or escapist fantasy depictions of places such as calendars and YouTube relaxation videos.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Six months before the pandemic, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis after several months of testing. It is not something that I make work about, but it is something that I live with everyday, part of my identity. I am an artist with a chronic autoimmune disease. There have been days and weeks that it has been hard to make art because of the pain, fatigue, and brain fog. During the pandemic, especially the early days, we were not certain how safe it was for me to be out because I am on powerful immune suppressing drugs. My studio at that time was in a shared space in a converted Sunday school building 30 minutes from my house. Everything was so overwhelming, and I needed to just make things, creatives will understand that feeling. I started a small collage practice on my computer desk in my office space in my house. Small, like 5×7 inch pieces. I was using old calendars, books, whatever was on the shelves. It was so important for my mental health to just keep working even if it was not the large projects I had been making in my studio. Doing something related to my practice everyday, reading something, researching, doing some sketches, anything, is harder now than it was three years ago but it is also more important as I am transforming my work and practice to be more accessible for me as my dexterity and illness shift.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal is to continue to make and exhibit work. It is the full circle completion that I feel from presenting an artwork to an audience that is the most rewarding part of making art for me. There are things that I am communicating with my work, that I want people to consider and enjoy. Goals that I have for individual projects, but for myself it is the continuing cycle of making and sending the work out into the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: mcleanfahnestock.com
- Instagram: mcfahnestock