Connect
To Top

Meet Colleen Louise Barry

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Colleen Louise Barry.

Colleen Louise, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
As an artist and writer, I feel like I’m constantly starting and arriving. I am always trying to make my life flow and integrate as much as possible, despite having a lot of variegated interests and projects. It’s hard to say where I began and even where I am today, but I do know that I have a vision for my work, which I am slowly growing closer to (even as it morphs), and that I am extremely grateful to learn from and collaborate with kind, hard-working people.

Running Mount Analogue in Seattle for three years (2016-2019) was the first time that I was able to make my multidisciplinary, collaboratively-focused artistic practice something larger than myself. The project ran as a gallery and community space, focused on monthly immersive installations and performances, as well as a small press book shop, an artist residency, and a publishing project. Mount Analogue was a hugely expansive experience for me. Working with the artists I brought to that space was transformative ~ it taught me how to build, how to find funding, how to listen, how to engage a community authentically, how to creatively problem solve for basically any setback, and so much more.

Now, in LA, I am so lucky to find myself working in art departments. So much of the same skillset I learned from Mount Analogue is necessary on a set ~ you have to be humble, hard-working, focused, creative, positive … it’s all in the service of one shared vision, a true and enormous collaboration. Plus, I get to really obsess over the odd life of objects, which seems to be never-ending in LA. I just wrapped two music videos that I’m really excited about, my first two projects as the sole art director!

Set is also an extremely immersive experience. When you’re working on a shoot, it’s all you can do, both physically and mentally. The days are long and can feel grueling. I LOVE this. Anything that demands everything ~ the intensity and absurdity of that process ~ if there is one thread throughout all the work I’ve ever done, that’s it. Immersion.

When I was small, reading books was a huge deal for me. They were my first wholly immersive experience inside someone else’s craft, the writers’ and the publishers’. Even now, when I start any kind of new project, it almost always begins with language.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road has not always been smooth nor has it always been rough. The defining quality of my road seems to be that it is extremely variegated ~ lots of twists, forks, a lot of different scenery. I always want to try new things, see new things, conquer new things.

The challenge I seem to be facing most at the particular juncture is the wielding of momentum ~ how, as an artist, do I constantly create? How do I get everything turning at maximum speed and then ~ keep it there?

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am an artist and writer. I make objects and collaborate with people on various creative projects, sometimes including sets and props, books and printed matter, and installation/performance/curation work. I try to inject everything I do with a kind of wry humor, but I never want it to come across as too self-aware or ironic. I always want to be as genuine and accessible as possible.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I’m working on a few different extremely immersive installation ideas at the moment, one of which involves giant welded and plastered sculptures of everyday objects that function (like a martini glass you can sit in, a transistor radio that picks up AM stations, etc.), a functioning Tunnel of Love ride (I want my biography to be titled “Art: the Ride”), and a chain of pop-up Entertainment restaurants in galleries, a la Chuck E. Cheese and Rainforest Cafe.

I have also started a new interdisciplinary publishing and design project with my dear friend Mave Bowman ~ it’s called Angel Tears. We’re looking at the pop culture iconography of our girlhoods through the lens of analog media, namely, our giant VHS collection. Our first publication, AIR DUCTS, comes out this April. It will be the first in a series of publications called “VHS Tapes 1977-2006”, which catalogues VHS movies by trope. We archive all the scenes on VHS tape that include air ducts by watching them together and taking screenshots; we then rearrange these screenshots into a new narrative that becomes our book. The next in this series will be MEN CRYING! We also plan to publish work at the intersection of performance, media, and humor by other women ~ there is so much to come from this project. Mave and I design everything together and it’s a huge and beautiful thing to collaborate with a girlfriend in this way.

There’s also other things in the works, always ~ I’m learning to build a robot, starting a radio show called Angel Energy on KCHUNG this spring, and always working in my studio on personal shoots and poems and drawings. I love plans…

Pricing:

  • VHS Tapes 1977-2006: Air Ducts (Incl. special insert Sewers, Tunnels, and Garbage Shoots), $18.00

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Melissa Kagerer, Rachael Henson, Poster design by Angel Tears

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in