We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Risa Hricovsky a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Risa, thanks for joining us today. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

I took evening classes at the Toledo Museum of Art when I was in high school. While in an oil painting class, my class was invited to put work in the museum’s community gallery. I was working on a figurative painting of an adolescent girl’s head with two long braids, the head had no body and was floating in a blue background. When it came time to hang them, I accidentally attached hanging wire upside down. Then the painting was a large blue painting with a girl’s head floating upside down. I thought it was hilarious and left it, it was hung in the show and I priced it at $215. When the show came down and the rest of my classmates got their paintings back, I got a check for $215 because one of the museum’s directors had bought it. I was so shocked, it never occurred to me someone would ever buy it. I was holding the check with conflicting emotions. I felt excited to have sold the painting yet sad I would never get it back. In addition, I felt confused why someone would buy it. Did he see something that I did not? That experienced stayed with me and eventually taught me to trust myself and try to find value in all my art.

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?

What is real, what is reality and how do we know? These are some of the questions that fuel my studio practice. I spend a lot of time doing research and experimentations that ultimately lead to sculptural installations. My artwork punctuates space through pattern, color and with my use of the multiple. Working though dichotomies such as order & chaos, attraction & repulsion and similarity & difference, I make visual poems about perception. The work juxtaposes similarly colored materials with opposing properties, such as fired porcelain with soft sculpture or paper. In doing so, each material takes on characteristics of the other, giving rise to misperception and subtly introducing tension within the calm of repetition. Through this mimicry and indexical object making begins a critique of our ideological perceptions of different materials. I received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a post-bacc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BFA from Bowling Green State University. I have been a recipient of a Bailey Opportunity Grant, Current Art Fund Grant and won 1st place in mixed media at the Zanesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics. I have exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently they had a solo exhibition Then is Now at the Arkansas Museum of Art December. I have attended many prestigious residencies; most notable residencies are The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skealskor, Denmark and SIM in Reykjavik. Iceland. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Art at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN

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

In ceramics, there are many rules. All the rules are set in place to keep your work and the equipment safe. Every time you learn a rule it puts your creativity into a box, and before you know it, your creativity is inside something like a Russian nesting doll. I am still trying to unlearn all the rules in ceramics so my imagination can be unrestricted. My favorite Picasso quotes: “It only took me 4 years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Is a great reminder to unlearn something so you can approach it from a completely new perspective and with authentic originality.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

RIP NFTs

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cargocollective.com/hricovsky
• Instagram: risa.hricovsky

Image Credits
Jason Masters