We were lucky to catch up with Molly Shea recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Molly, thanks for joining us 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.
After graduating from CalArts in 2019, I was jettisoned into the real-world of arts admin and the Los Angeles grind. I had spent all this time in a creative environment and now was met with a lot of upheaval. I did a solo show in Berlin, returned to immediately start a new job to recover financially, and shortly after almost getting my feet under me went through a break up. From there, the hits just kept coming as my employment became shaky with COVID-19 and I struggled to continue on. Anxiety and depression were hard to keep at bay, and cosplaying as a functional human being was harder and harder to do while the world melted around me. Despite the best efforts of my friends and loved ones to keep me afloat as the last Shea in Los Angeles, I decided to take a break and move to Gulfport, MS, where my family had relocated to in 2017. I packed up my teal Nissan-Versa with my art supplies, a suitcase and my dog Ripley on July 4th, 2021 and drove towards the unknown.
As a native Los Angelino, my adjustment to Southern life was not unlike Pauly Shore in the 1993 cult-classic, The Son In Law. An artistic, vocal-fried, weirdo from Laws Angleease was suddenly dipped into the rigid, faith-based, Deep South. The first few months were difficult, separated from my community that I had built and cherished my entire life, but I learned to embrace the differences in Coastal Mississippi by approaching it like a performative research project. One of the first things I tasked myself to do was to learn how to fish. With having a job at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art as their Marketing and Public Relations Director, I would stare out into the Mississippi Sound on my lunch break with the dream that one day I would cross the street, put a pole in, and take a fish out.
Along with that dream, I met a cast of characters who embraced how eccentric I was despite our differences. I dated a traveling gunsmith plagued with fixing 100 year old heirlooms, befriending a fast-talking, 27 year old tasked with running an entire local newspaper, and being mentored by the “Oprah of Gulf Coast” (if Oprah was shimmering in glitter, feathers and the occasional Basquiat bomber jacket). I became a regular on local television telling people about the Mad Potter of Biloxi, I went to my first rodeo, I sang “Delilah” at karaoke nights from the American Legion to the local gay bar, and I caught that damned catfish.
Molly, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I refer to myself as an “anti-social” practice artist because having gone to art school for far too long and I now cringe at certain terminology. I felt like the perspectives of social practice artists to be too top down and slightly condescending to the communities and environments they interact with. My version of social practice is to provide structures for community development that allow for collaboration and interaction with interesting themes, low expectations and many limitations (often monetarily). It takes a lot to build trust and faith into the relationships I’ve developed but communal hard work and excitement can be contagious. I’ve hosted an end of the world performance art series, a night in the woods performance with witches and orcs based off of D&D alignment charts, and even a performance art redo of the 1970’s Gong Show game show (complete with sculptured trophies).
Now I am gearing up for an art show which will be at a Haunted Bass Pro Shops store called, Bass Ghost Shop, where I’m bringing together artists, outdoor enthusiasts, ecologists, Southerners and Los Angelinos for the ultimate trip of American pageantry. This is set to be at Yes We Cannibal, an artist-run space in Baton Rouge run by Mat Keel and Liz Lessner. It is inspiring working with fellow new Southerners who are also proactive in creating communal spaces for experiential projects. Their space is a dream for anyone looking to try out a noise show, poetry reading, art programming or even culinary experimentation (although no people have been eaten, yet).
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?
I think that the word non-creatives can be a problem. What I’ve learned from living in the South is that people are taught that their interests and perspectives are not valued enough to be “creatives”. That creativity is perceived as a luxury for people with money. However, I’ve learned a lot about creativity through practical environments. What’s more creative than embezzling money to make a new volleyball court? It is pretty creative to figure out ways of sustaining yourself with vegetables you grow yourself and meat you hunt and render yourself. You know what’s creative? Survival and rebuilding after a hurricane and learning new ways to emotionally cope within the quiet threat of being wiped out again.
I think people need to cut themselves a break and realize that creativity comes in all forms. If artists and craftspeople want to be respected for their craft, why not appreciate a well made chicken coop? God knows Andrea Zittel has!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
One of my first ways of interacting with the new perspectives of the South was with the creation of my character of Cooter the opossum. My father, who is a special effects artist, helped me turn my sculpture of an opossum into latex face pieces I glue to my face and my mother helped me sew a giant wormy tail into a pair of overalls. Having done performances as a Tasmanian Devil in grad school, I thought embracing the South’s only marsupial would be a meaningful transition to living in the South.
Cooter teaches people how to get out of confrontation by feigning ignorance and then dying. Not really, of course, just how to play possum. Coming to the South, I learned a lot about passive aggressive smooth-overs and weaponized incompetence. Instead of growing weary of it, I tried to understand why it happens. When you are always painted as ignorant and stupid because of a Southern drawl, how you can manipulate people who think they know better than you to do all the work.
I took this idea even further for a performance at Studio Waveland for a group show called, “Dirt Cheap,” where Cooter the Opossum taught people how to not just die, but to travel through time and space in the bargain bin outlets of Mississippi. Dirt Cheap, a resale franchise in South Mississippi, recycles luxury products and slightly damaged goods by giving them their last reincarnation before being trashed. Using goods from Dirt Cheap and Bargain Bins, I created a jug-meditation station and psychedelic trip for people to go beyond death and into renewal.
Now Cooter will return for another performance at Bass Ghost Shop. This time as the “Virgil” for a descent into the levels of sportsman Inferno. As the night janitor of BGS, Cooter will show people objects from the store and tell the tales of what happens when the taxidermy comes alive at night. Even though many people will be contributing art, performances and pageantry for this exhibition; Cooter will be an overarching guide through Bass Pro Shop as viewers will descend into an understanding of survivalist aesthetics, ecology, and man’s yearning for the great outdoors. The “fiends” gathered are an exciting group of Southerners, Midwesterners, Californians, ecologists, musicians, puppeteers, researchers, emerging artists, academics, and crafts people that are coming together to make this strange hybrid of store, art show, and haunted house.
Come out to the opening on October 13th and then to the Halloween Party October 28th! Want to help with the show? Buy a Bass Ghost Shop shirt!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mollyjoshea.com/bass-ghost-shop
- Gallery Website: www.yeswecannibal.org
- Instagram: mollyjosheart
Image Credits
Cooter the Possum Picture by Lyndy Berryhill , rest of photos by Molly Jo Shea.