Rising From Ash

Lu Valena

Rising From Ash, Mixed media, 11.25 x 8.25 x 3 inches

Interview by C. VanWinkle
January 18, 2024

I suppose we should start at the beginning. Tell me about the prompt that you responded to.

I responded to two images of sculptural pieces. One was a sort of cage, like a bird cage, that had a heart inside of it and there were a bunch of other hearts that seemed to have escaped from the cage. The second image was almost one of those same hearts, and there was a strip of text being pulled out of it.

I see. Did you approach the two images as two separate pieces or one?

I felt that they were so related to each other. It felt like two steps of the same story. My first reaction was like, “Oh no, I don’t want to go there!” It felt like the absolute middle of some of the hardest feelings that I've had as a human being, feelings of grief and heartbreak.

There's something about the hearts on the outside of the cage that felt like the process of having to free yourself from something, whether it's a relationship or a thought pattern or whatever. All sorts of things. It often requires that you first have enough space to be able to see that you are trapped in order to start to get out of it. But then the next piece is beginning to move through the feelings themselves, and that image of the heart with the text being pulled out of it felt like this visceral yanking, which also made me say, “God, this makes me uncomfortable!” [laughs]

Yeah, I think “visceral” is a really apt word here. That's a good way to describe these pieces. They’re not abstract so that you have to search within yourself for an interpretation. No, they’re bold and visceral.

Yes, very direct.

You had in your mind this narrative that the two images were telling you together. How did you figure out where to go with that?

I did some writing. I decided that instead of replicating the feeling I was having, I wanted to add a third part to the story. The idea of the phoenix has been coming up a lot lately, so that's where I went with it. I realized that that's the third step. There’s the freeing of oneself from something, there's the digging deep and moving through these really nasty feelings to cleanse yourself of them, and then there’s the burning up and being reborn from the ashes. So I decided that I would do something related to a phoenix.

How did you begin? Walk me through your process.

I started looking up images of phoenixes, but particularly images of the bird that is said to be what the popular image of a phoenix is based on, which is a golden pheasant. They're so beautiful. I was looking at those, thinking about what I wanted to do. I knew I had to keep it small because my work is so labor-intensive, and this was a tight deadline. A couple of days into ruminating on this, my husband told me out of nowhere that he had seen on my Instagram page this 'magic eye' piece that I’d done as a kind of test run a year ago or so. He was talking about how cool it was and I thought, “Oh yeah, that was cool and I kind of want to explore that some more.” And then it all kind of came to me in the shower, as things tend to do. It all fit together, and I realized that I wanted to do a magic eye piece with a phoenix.

What do you mean by “magic eye” piece?

It's a high-relief mounted sculpture, and I projected an image of a paper cut over the sculpture and painted that on to it so that the sculpture kind of disappears.

Oh of course! I love it. It’s super effective. When I first saw your piece, it took me a moment to register the image within the image. It's a fun trick and it's really cool that you managed to do that in three dimensions. How else does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

This is really different from what I usually do. I have two main things that I do in art. One of them is sculptural paintings. They tend to be either wall-hung or just 3D objects that I paint over, and by painting on the sculpture, it’s like bending light around something that already has light working on it. That really tickles my brain, which is why I’m just obsessed with that work. And then I also do paper cuts, usually to create textile patterns or something like that. I was looking for a way to blend these two things, and what I came up with feels like the opposite of bending light around a three-dimensional object. It feels like taking the three-dimensional object and just flattening it, making it completely invisible. And I love that! It’s another way of messing with the eye of the viewer, which is all I want to do.

I feel like it’s also not uncommon that your work features birds and plants, images from nature. That’s interesting to me because you live in such an urban environment. Is nature pretty significant in your life?

Well, I grew up in nature. I grew up with a half-mile dirt driveway. My grandmother lived in another house on the property, and there wasn't anyone else for a mile or more. Sometimes if I was alone in the house, I was just the only one, you know? I grew up immersed in that. But it was the pandemic that got me interested in making work about natural things. Before that, I was really fascinated with making self-portraits. Then I just stopped feeling as interested in painting my own face and much more interested in beautiful flowers and birds and things. I just felt like there was enough sad stuff happening in the world. All I wanted to make was beautiful things. And that’s how things have gone the past few years.

You and I talk to artists all the time, and it's so interesting how the pandemic has caused such a sea change for so many. I’m glad you mentioned the self-portraits. I think it’s worth pointing out how different your beautiful nature imagery is from those because they were specifically angry self-portraits.

Yes.

That's a big jump!

I've been in beautiful nature land for a couple of years now. I got tired of looking at my own angry face. [laughs] Self-portraits are always going to be interesting to me because I personally can't really understand what I look like. I guess the pandemic helped me to release the need to figure that out, which feels healthy.

Oh, that’s beautiful. Since Bait/Switch began, you’ve spent years sending out prompts and wrangling all these artists, doing so many interviews, but this is only the second time you’ve ever been able to contribute a piece yourself. How has the experience been on the other side of the process?

The first time I participated in this project, I had already been coordinating it for a few years, and it really blew me away that it grabbed me in the same way that every other artist that I've spoken to has reported back. So I knew going in that I'm not immune to this project having its way with me. I think that I was a lot more open to coincidence and seeing things as they unfolded this time.

I allowed myself to go down a little bit of a research rabbit hole about a couple of things to collect my thoughts. In the paper cut for this piece, the flowers are red carnations, which in the Victorian flower language mean “Alas my poor heart aches.” [laughs]

That is wild!

From that same rabbit hole, I learned that a pink carnation means “I will never forget you.” I don’t know if you’re a Boygenius fan, but I really am. They have a song about being reincarnated and finding the person you love in the next life. There’s a lyric that says, “I'll be the boy with the pink carnation pinned to my lapel.” I was just so tickled that they somehow got Victorian flower language into their lyrics. Just had to mention that.

I love that your knee-jerk reaction to something is to do research. Any excuse, really. And then you find so many fascinating things!

Nerd to the core.

Very much so. This is normally where I ask for advice for newbies, but you’ve heard it all before! Do you have anything?

Yeah, I have no new advice. Except don't ghost, which is advice but also a request. [laughs] I guess I should say my advice is to see it through to the end.

Call Number: C110VA | C112VA.vaRi

Lu Valena is a Boston-based multi-disciplinary artist, writer, educator, and the executive director of Bait/Switch. They research the intersection of food and art, and are currently studying the cultural phenomenon of hyperrealistic cake decoration. Their artwork has been shown in many places around the US.