Prunus Mume

Benjamin Stalnaker

Interview by L. Valena

Let’s start from the top. Can you first just start by describing the piece that you responded to?

Yes, the piece was this really interesting instrumental kind of synth vibe. The one part that really stuck out to me was, every once in a while, it had a little bell chime that sounded kind of sleigh bell-esque. It was just such a different feel to the rest of the piece that did have that very electronic feel to it. My immediate thought was of the movement in the vibration of it on my first listen, that it was a very kinetic piece of music. Then the next was, when I heard the bell chime, it reminded me of being in a crowd, but maintaining individuality in the face of a crowd. There was all of this sameness and then this one very bright note that was very different. And I think that, more than anything, I wanted to try to capture that feeling. Rather than one-to-one, I wanted the sensation that we’re given play of both blending in and standing out.

Where did you go from there?

From there, I thought through what I had on hand. First, I thought it sounded like when you’re a kid and would stretch rubber bands and play with them. I realized I had thread on hand, so I looked through my thread. At one point, I couldn’t decide what shades of blue and teal I wanted, so I just got all of them! I had ten or so different shades that, if you held them up against each other, you could tell apart, but looking back, they very much blended in. I was like, Okay, that’s the synth. That’s all of the different parts blending in, creating that harmony. I also had a bunch of different cool paper. You can get a mixed pack of all the odds and ends for a pretty reasonable price and a bunch of different things. I had one that was a little magenta flower blossom, which was perfect! It was just the right complementary color to the blues, so it really stood out. I very laboriously cut it out and just dropped it onto the canvas. I was like, Wherever it falls, that is where I will Mod Podge it.

I love that you let natural forces at work just take it where needed to go.

You know, I could’ve sat there for hours trying to figure out the exact right place to put it. And honestly, it wouldn’t be as good as if I’d just let it fall.

Once you Mod Podged it, what happened next?

Well, before Mod Podging, I put in all of the thumbtacks. I knew I wanted that movement, and I’d used thumbtacks in the past as just a little awl to poke holes in the canvas to make it easier. I had sewn canvas before, and I figured I could just place a million of them around and make a makeshift loom. I pushed them all in by hand. One of them got stuck in a knot, and it was only at that point in time when I realized there was a hammer in the house that I could’ve used! It was a bit late, but, you know, better late than never.

Is weaving something that you get into? Tell me about weaving.

I had tried to get into embroidery. I had gotten the embroidery thread and had some hoops and stuff. I ended up doing a piece and then getting sidetracked by other stuff. Then I figured out that the embroidery hoops were really useful for drawing big circles for making Dungeons and Dragons maps! So I took all my embroidery hoops apart! I had all this thread and I don’t think I’d ever woven before. My mom is a big knitter, so I have the “fabric gene”, we’ll call it. I at least knew enough to know that I could get the movement that I wanted out of it and have those layers of depth. After I did it, one of the people in the house with me was trying to figure out which was the last thread that I placed. I said, “Oh no, I like did ten of them all at once and I have many different layers.” He was like, “Oh, you bastard!” I told him, “I don’t even know which is the last one I placed. Good luck trying to figure that out!”

When you look at the piece now, what does it say to you?

I think it’s really the depth that I like, especially in my room, depending on the time of day. The light will hit it differently and it will cast shadows. There’s a million different ways of looking at it and each one’s a different iteration. It’s that feeling that there’s the whole of the crowd, but depending on where you’re standing, you’re going to see all different types of people even if they do blend in. I like that I got that feeling that I wanted to get across.

One thing that I’m getting from this piece is, while there’s an element of standing out, there’s also an element of hiding. That’s a duality that we all deal with, standing out and hiding ourselves. Do you have anything you want to say about that duality?

I definitely am someone who gets very overwhelmed in crowds. So I think there’s that aspect of it. It’s like you’ll kind of fade away. But also, when push comes to shove, I’m going to be me and I’m going to have that voice and it’s okay if it’s different. A song lyric comes to mind, which is, “I scream as loud as anyone, but when asked to make a point, I tend to whisper.”

I love that.

Yeah, if what you have to say is important enough, you can just say it and it will be heard. The very soft note of it might fade into the background, but it’s a whisper yet it comes through.

It’s such an interesting and complicated relationship. I know I’m a really shy person, but I don’t like to blend in. I like it to be known that I am different, and I have a lot to say, even though I probably am not going to say it unless asked.

Yeah, that was definitely me in high school. Some days, I would just wear a dress shirt with a bow tie. Teachers would ask, “Oh Ben, what’s the occasion?” “Didn’t anyone tell you? It’s bow tie day! Didn’t you get the memo?” Nobody else got the memo, but I got it. I got it loud and clear. It makes the world a progressively weirder place.

That’s the goal, right? I make all my own clothes, and as a thought experiment, I like to think about what it would be like if everybody made their own clothes.

Oh, it’d be so interesting! I feel like there would be a lot more toga parties. I can see a lot of frat boys with bed sheets and nothing else.

You’re right. We’d just default to togas. Maybe pants would just go away. Or pants would be reserved for the elite.

“La di da, you and your pants and your pockets! Mister highbrow here!” [both laugh] I’d love that.

How was this process for you, working through a prompt like this? How’d it feel?

It felt good. At first, it was very daunting when I saw it was a piece of music. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I have aphantasia, so I don’t have a mind’s eye. I can’t picture things and I don’t have any visual memory.

Really?! “Aphantasia.” Wow, okay, so no mind’s eye.

I discovered in first grade or something, when I started to learn how to read. I’d talk to the other kids and say, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if, when you read, you could see the book in your mind like a movie?” And everyone was like, “Yeah, that’s what reading’s like.” I was like, “No, no, that would be an amazing superpower!” They were like, “No, that’s how everyone else experiences books, Ben.”

So how do you experience books?

Just the words themselves. I’m much more of a thematic person. I don’t really care about imagery. I’ve found that the arrangement of words, how they come together, syntax and sentence structure, that’s where I find the beauty rather than in imagery itself. And the sound of the words is a big part of it.

Isn’t the human brain fascinating?

It’s bizarre! I don’t think there’s a name for it, but I also can’t recall sound. So I can’t think of a song and hear the song in my head. It’s like my brain is a court stenographer or closed captions. If music is in my head, there’s just [music] in brackets, or it’s me, you know, making saxophone noises or something.

That’s so cool. Okay, so if you don’t hear music, do you ever get songs stuck in your head?

Yes, but the lyrics. Sometimes the songs themselves, but it’s literally me going, “doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo”, doing my best at being a musical instrument.

You said that getting a piece of music was daunting because of this way that your brain works. Did you end up having to do any sort of middle step to make it work for your brain?

Yeah. I wrote down the sensations and feelings, and then tried to put the focus on translating those feelings into a new form of media. So I had vibrations and movements, frantic harmony, getting lost/overwhelmed in a crowd but maintaining individuality, a child trying to find their voice, and also the notion of getting lost in a snowstorm.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about, related to this project, that you want to talk about?

I can say that the title of it, Prunus Mume, is the scientific name for the Chinese plum blossom. I was trying to think of that quote from Mulan: “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” I looked it up and it turns out it’s about this Chinese blossom that blooms in the winter. I was like, Oh that’s perfect! But then I wanted one level of abstraction away from it, so if people are curious, they can look it up and the Wikipedia article will talk about it, and if not, they can just be like, Huh, that’s a weird Latin word.

Do you have any advice for another artist who is approaching this for the first time?

To be open to trying very different things. I think this is never anything I would have created on my own and was totally just a combination of what I happened to have on hand that I could make work for what I wanted to get across. I think that having that balance of openness, but also limiting it to just the supplies I had on hand rather than scouring for the perfect thing to copy it one-to-one, let me explore it in a more abstract feeling rather than a more literal response.

Call Number: Y61MU | Y64VA.staPru

Benjamin Stalnaker is a multi-media creator who dabbles in anything and everything that strikes his fancy. Born to a crafty mother and pack rat (engineer) father, he delights in making use of whatever he has on hand to inspire the next creation.