Tip Top

Laura Bullock

Interview by C. VanWinkle
January 3, 2023

Let's get started. What was the prompt that you responded to?

It was a sculpture made out of fabric. It was a hand showing the number four, and it had four words on the fingers: unravel, ravel, revel, and reveal.

What did you think of it?

My first thought was that it was something very cerebral and I got the impression that it came from a place of intimacy. The artist probably feels a very intimate connection with this piece and it probably has a lot of history. It had a lot of emotional weight to it.

It didn't make me think “Oh this is what I'm going to make” immediately, but it made me think of how I sometimes talk to myself or how I assume other people talk to themselves as well. It’s like “Unravel, Ravel, Revel, Reveal” could be a self-soothing mantra of sorts, to catch your breath in a way, you know? So that made me think of the times that I do that, what it would look like for me, the places I can go to meditate in that sort of way, where I just talk through things to myself with my own mantras. That was my connection. I assume this artist was very similar to me and did things exactly as I did. [both laugh]

You have no reason to believe otherwise! How did you get started? What happened first?

I like to draw outside every day that it's reasonable to do so. It's something that makes me very happy. I was just gonna marinate on the idea just to have it in my mind, but I was drawing outside and I had a few different ideas. For one, I wanted to do a drawing of a photo I had of my friend blowing out a birthday candle. She had been really encouraging to me this year as a role model in a way because she had her own “Unravel, Ravel, Revel, Reveal” situation. I liked that a lot and it was very personal to me, but I didn't think that it communicated precisely what I wanted it to. It wasn't really my response. So I kept waiting, kept drawing different things.

The location where I went to draw is known for its incredible sunsets. In the image, it's the side of a building at the end of a sidewalk. It’s on the edge of a cliff and there are the trees and stuff below. It was just really beautiful. I started drawing the building and the sunset as it was going down. I took a picture and thought it seemed to express the ending of something, the reveal of the sunset, the feeling of joy and celebration I felt. Such a beautiful moment to capture and reproduce. It really fell into the category of the words that were on the fingers and I had my own really cerebral experience, too. And that felt like it would be my response. It felt very natural, the way it came about.

Ah, cool. I’d wondered if it was a sunset or a sunrise. How are those two things different to you? Especially as someone who likes to make art outside!

I love everything outside. I want to stay in the woods forever. I feel so much peace and like I'm a part of something bigger. I feel like I'm a puzzle piece when I'm outside, especially the deeper in nature I am. So to me, a sunrise feels very euphoric, hopeful, optimistic, excited for the future. It's motivation, it’s a boost. And a sunset is the welcome home, the return to safety, the closure, the comfort, the feeling of belonging. They work together as two very essential things.

Do you get up early enough to see the sunrise very often?

I actually do, but being in the South, I'm not built to be cold. So in the wintertime I don’t see as many. But in the summer I’d say that I see more sunrises than not.

Nice. You also made this piece right before the end of the year. Do you think that has some relationship to a sunset or starting over?

Definitely. It definitely was a sort of closure. I graduate in the Spring and I just got through a semester that felt like army crawling with one arm. So to be able to paint this and to be outside drawing, being playful, it felt less like an ending and more like a return to myself and being very autonomous over what I create. It felt like both the end of something and the beginning of something at the same time. That tension between those two things is what made me really confident that I was truly responding to the sculpture.

That's awesome! How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I think it shows a lot of confidence. As a student and a young person, I feel very humbled and overwhelmed by how much more there is for me to learn. It's also exciting to feel myself comprehending how color and paint work, how mark-making and all of those things work. I just feel this energy when I'm going about it. In this piece, I got really excited with the way that I was able to use color and mark-making to show the movement. What I hope translates to others is the momentary temporariness of the color on the window, and in the background as well. How I put the paint on the panel, and what that says to other people, communicates my favorite part of composition, which is using things that can only come from the person who's doing it. Basically, the moment is what I love, capturing the movement of a moment. That’s what keeps me curious about creating stuff.

I love that! Let me see, you sent some images to show your process and one of them is a video from a moving car. Why did you include a video and not just still photos?

I could have just used a photo, I guess. That road is called Shades Crest Road. It's this extremely long road that goes from the city center, where everyone lives, all the way to where nobody lives. I drive that road often and it's just beautiful. I'm never upset to be on that road. I see these spectacular sunsets every single day. I see different things depending on the time of year: whether there are leaves on the trees or not, whether there are people parked outside taking pictures or not. I think that in that video there's a car at the end because someone is watching that sunset. Also, that black line is a power line, which makes a little wiggle. I think these things take something like a sunset, which is so universal and familiar, and put it in a specific place and time. It becomes its own entity, as opposed to just a beautiful picture of a sunset. This one is different; this was there, this was then. That was exciting to me and I thought it was cool video.

Knowing more about your process now, I can see how that further captures the moment. The moment in the painting isn't just a still thing. It's the experience of movement. Do you like working from a prompt?

Yeah, I would draw or paint for any reason. And I like participating in stuff, feeling like I'm a part of stuff. I don't get a lot of opportunities to do that where I live. You just meet cool people when you say yes to stuff, you know? That’s basically why I did it.

That’s great! I totally agree. I’m trying to jump in and say yes a lot more these days. What would your advice be to someone else approaching this project?

I think the best advice for any art-making at all, but especially for Bait/Switch, is to be playful with it. When you’re playful and you take the time to, you know, fiddle with a leaf or see what wire looks like when you tie it a bunch of times, stuff like that, that's when you get the most subconscious information out of yourself. Go outside and just play with stuff. This sounds so cliché, but if it makes you happy, then you’re doing it. You know? Just play with it and it should bring you joy.

Call Number: C88VA | C90VA.buTi

I’m Laura Bullock, an oil painter and ceramist based in Birmingham, AL. I’m focused on making works that represent fleeting moments from life that are otherwise only glanced at, or happen too quickly to be captured. I use recognizable but unfamiliar subjects as a bridge between my experience and others’.