Cosmic Turtle

Georgia Warren

Interview by C. VanWinkle

I suppose we should start at the beginning. What did you respond to? What was your prompt?

It was like a response someone might write as an English prompt to interpret a Native American turtle creation myth, but like weaving that into capitalism and current greed and situations. But the more I thought about it, I do love that story and the idea of the turtle carrying the weight of the world and everything being built off the back of the turtle.

I was putting my son to sleep the other night, and I was just thinking about shapes and Cosmic Turtle and how the shape of a turtle echoes this undulating form. I thought about that form moving through space. Then after I finished getting him down, I came out and did a quick little sketch and that then became the basis for a watercolor.

Now that your painting is done, thinking back to the beginning, is this the piece you set out to make?

I think so. I’m going to be honest here in terms of materials. It was like some watercolor pad that I have and then my kid’s Crayola watercolors, which I actually like playing with a lot because they’re super pigmented. They’re a lot of fun to mess around with. I saw them out and I thought, I’m just going to sit down and do something with this from the sketch that I had. I mean, I don’t know if this screams “Corporate demise Cosmic Turtle” like I think the written piece wanted to convey. I don’t know.

Are you curious about what this written piece was inspired by?

Yeah! Because I know this is just like a giant game of telephone. So I’m like, What’s the imagery that they were working with?

How does this watercolor fit with the rest of your work?

I primarily did a lot of large-scale installation work. That was kind of my background. And sculpture. Then when I left art school and didn’t have access to a studio and the space to really work that way, I started messing around with watercolor. It’s the one thing that’s been continuous throughout the rest of my artistic career, if you want to say I have one of those! It’s easily adaptable and portable. Regardless of the size of my living space or how messy it was, I could always at least find that and be able to work through that. I was never formally trained as a painter. It’s not something that was in my wheelhouse, but I enjoy it. I don’t think I know how to use them correctly, but I like them! It’s a very like fickle, tenuous thing that takes a lot of practice and devotion to really master. I am nowhere near that, nor do I think I will ever be, but I just enjoy the process of using them.

You know, I would say that the kind of frantic brushstrokes would definitely be in my wheelhouse. Lots of lots and lots of lines, that’s been a continuous element in any of the watercolor things that I’ve done. It’s not usually the typical watercolor, painterly, masking space type of thing. It’s more like lots of fill-it-in-with-color, so that is very much in line with when I play around with watercolor. That’s usually what ends up happening.

That’s great. So it still looks like you, it looks like a Georgia Warren.

Yes, I would say it looks like a Georgia Warren. Maybe it’s like someone, you know, took some drugs and did a Lisa Frank interpretation of a Georgia Warren. Maybe.

Do you like turtles?

Oh! Yeah! I worked as an outdoor experiential educator at the Prospect Park Audubon Center in Brooklyn for a while, and we had this giant tortoise named Frodo, whom I would have to take out, and make sure he stayed in his pen on the side of the boathouse, and that no crackhead came and stole him. That sort of thing. So, yeah, I like turtles. Also, something about the size of this turtle reminds me of when I was growing up downtown New York City, like the Lower East Side bordering Chinatown. Whenever you walk through Chinatown, there’d always be these people on the streets selling those tiny turtles in the little aquariums. I always wanted one and my mother always said we weren’t allowed to get them because they give you salmonella.

So in my mind, yeah, I enjoy seeing turtles in the wild. But the idea of keeping turtles has always just meant you’re just harboring salmonella. That’s the only thing that comes to mind because it was so firmly drilled into my head from a child, desperately wanting these tiny salmonella-ridden turtles but being told I couldn’t have them.

That’s what turtles represent for you? Salmonella?

They do! You know, of the terrapin family there’s a really wide range of turtles as well. You have like your land turtles, your sea turtles, your little salmonella turtles. What the big mystical sea turtle represents in my mind is very different than the tiny salmonella turtle. A little red-eared slider in a $3 bowl is very different to me than the sea turtles that I saw at the aquarium with my son recently. A cosmic sea turtle in my mind is a mystical, giant creature, rather than just swimming through the water but then stuck in a cage.

In the piece that you responded to, there was some ambiguity there about exactly what the scale of this turtle is. It seemed to be some combination of an epic, mystical creature and something you accidentally step on in a park. Maybe it’s both.

What usually inspires you?

I would say like my own psyche and whatever’s going on in my life at the moment. I think that’s where I draw a lot of stuff from. I’ll usually use watercolor to process feelings or ideas about the space that I’m in. When I went back to doing a lot of watercolor work was when I was living with two of my friends in a loft in Brooklyn. It was a two-story loft and we had to build our bedrooms in the basement. While we were doing that, we were all living upstairs in the living room/kitchen area with all of our stuff just piled around us. So instead of dealing with the piles of things, I would just do abstract watercolors of these amorphic blobs of clothing. Yeah, I guess whatever current situation I find myself in tends to inspire me.

That’s great. I’m also drawing my feelings a lot more than I used to. And I am learning how to stop trying to make art according to “rules”. I don’t know who makes these rules and why I feel like I have to follow them, but I’m having to practice letting go of structure or expectations or the rules. It’s hard to unlearn. I encourage everyone to try.

Look, a little art therapy is good for everyone.

I think so.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about that I didn’t ask?

It was funny that you mentioned the scale of it and the scale of the turtle, because I thought I had much bigger paper than actually did. It ended up that I had this small watercolor sketch book. I had thought I had some bigger sheets where I could explore the space little bit more. I don’t know if this is me just trying to be like, WELL THAT’S WHY IT’S SMALL. But it kind of was! I think I would enjoy exploring this on a larger scale. Yeah, it was nice to be able to this. It was the first time in a while I’ve formally tried to make something that was inspired from something specific, as opposed to just messing around with stuff and more doodling. It was nice to be able to come back into some form of a practice.

Lastly, do you have any advice for someone else participating in this project?

I would say don’t get too bogged down by the rules, like we were talking about. Don’t let the prompt push you to try and make it the best thing that you could or the best representation of it. Just take it as a starting point to allow you to go through the process.

Call Number: C46PP | C49VA.waCo

Georgia Warren is an artist, educator, and lover of cheese. When not knitting, she can be found hiking with her family or in the pursuit of something delicious. She lives in NY.