Today we’d like to introduce you to Deborah Aschheim.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I am an artist, I studied Anthropology undergraduate and got my MFA in Art. For most of my career, I made installations– immersive, room-sized environments– based on invisible worlds of bodies and the mind…
In the 1990s I built imaginary, blown up landscapes of microbiology, and in the 2000’s I built a series of “nervous systems for buildings” that invited viewers to engage with the emerging consciousness of “smart buildings” might look. Since 2005 my work has been about memory: I wove networks of video and glowing plastic around fragments of family home movies to try to remap the private world of my childhood memories across the gallery. I collaborated with musicians to make sound sculptures based on words I never want to forget: each sculpture plays a song written around one of my favorite words, to “back up” my memory for language as music.
Most of these projects were shown in galleries and non-profit art spaces. In recent years, I’ve gotten excited about the idea of collective memory– a shared space of memory that is made up of many people’s experiences and stories. I have been primarily showing in public spaces, and I like the idea of people encountering my art when they’re going about their daily life. I’ve been supporting myself through publicly commissioned projects, which allow me to engage with diverse communities: I have been the Visiting Artist at the Memory and Aging Center of the Neurology Department at UC San Francisco, I’ve gone for ride alongs with LAPD and Santa Monica Fire Department.
I spent eight weeks getting to know the incredibly inspiring rehabilitative medicine community at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, an outstanding LA County hospital in Downey. I try to take what I learn and translate it into artworks that tell the stories I collect and observe. I also do a lot of temporary projects. I created a glowing, misremembered city, “Camelot,” that was a mash-up of buildings from around the world, to greet weary international travelers at LAX Airport. I made posters for San Francisco and Pasadena bus stops that combined my drawings, based on historical photographs I dug up from old archives, with oral histories I collected from participants in the 1968 East LA High School Walkouts and other 1960’s activists.
I live in Pasadena, and I work out of a former post office in El Sereno that my friends and I converted into artist’s studios in 2012. We love the building and are also very sensitive to issues of gentrification. We try to provide secure and affordable workspace to the artists who rent spaces from us, we have a long term commitment to the neighborhood, and we try to patronize local businesses and be a good neighbor. My bus poster project that involved interviewing longterm residents of East LA and Pasadena gave me a deeper understanding of the history of the places I live and work.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s very hard to make a living as an artist. Soon after I graduated from my Master’s program, I got a tenure track teaching job at a liberal arts college in New Jersey. I had what every artist is supposed to want– a teaching job and access to New York art world.
I came to Southern California in 2000 to be a visiting artist at CSU Fullerton’s Grand Central Arts Center, working with the amazing curator Meg Linton on an installation for Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (now the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara) and I liked it so much here that I quit my job and moved to CA. It was not an easy transition. I taught for about five years at UC Irvine as a lecturer, which was rewarding but ultimately I couldn’t support myself on an adjunct salary.
Now that I am freelance, some years are better than others, financially– it is definitely a “feast or famine” type of work. Sometimes I am so busy I have no social life, and sometimes I still worry where the next project is coming from. The security of having our studio building has been a great stabilizer of my sometimes rollercoaster life. In general, I think I am very lucky. I get to travel and meet all kinds of people, and individuals, as well as communities, have been incredibly generous in sharing their lives with me.
In a way, a lot of the time I am doing what I had hoped Anthropologist do when I chose to major in it: engaging with people whose lives are different from mine and trying to see the world through their eyes and share their stories. (I’m not sure that is what Anthropologists really do.) I like that I get to reinvent my job whenever I want.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I make temporary and permanent public artworks, usually for cities or local government agencies. Many cities and counties or even states have policies that set aside a very small percentage of the budget for public construction for artwork for the building, park, public space. Sometimes I am fortunate in being selected to make the art for these projects. I think one of the things that sets me apart is my commitment to research and in-depth community engagement.
Some people who do public art come out of an architecture and design background. They are great at integrating with the design team and really visualizing their artwork in the (unbuilt) space. I envy them. I am great at research, whether it is pouring through archives to dig up obscure images, reading everything I can find about the history of a place, and particularly spending in-depth time getting to know the people who live and work in the space.
My favorite part about being a public artist is the public, and I hope that shows in my projects.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was a kid, I used to fly by myself or with my younger sister to visit our grandparents in Queens, NY. I must have been about eight.
I remember we would get very dressed up, and the flight attendants would give us coloring books and a little wings pin that they’d pin on our sweaters, and then my grandparents were waiting for us at the gate. I still love airports from that experience.
In November, a pilot asked me to push a button he couldn’t reach as I was boarding a flight, and I said I’d do it if they gave me one of those pins– they did! I wore it all day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.deborahaschheim.com
- Email: [email protected]
Image Credit:
Alise Spinella, Zoe Taleporos, Deborah Aschheim, Kelly Barrie, Christine Steiner, Lee Thompson, Ben Benschneider, Andy Barnecut
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