THE
MUSEUM
OF
IDEAS

    

By Shannon Mullen O'Keefe

 

What is the mind?

 

Technically speaking, it is what thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills things.

 

It encompasses the totality of mental experience. But if you dig a little deeper,  you’ll find that while the centrality of the mind to our lives is rather undisputed,  the exact nature of the mind remains a philosophical wonder.

​

A philosophical wonder?

 

That's mysterious.

 

It is precisely this mysterious, philosophical wonder that The Museum of Ideas explores with a range of creators in conversation with them about their work.​

​

The exploration begins with Artist Laurie Victor Kay. Victor Kay is based in Omaha, Nebraska. We had an in-person conversation at her new home on July 10, 2024.

​

The Conversation

 

Laurie Victor Kay's home is an idyllic artist’s space, high ceilings and sunlight, projects in progress, portraits and words… books. Leaving after our conversation, I noticed the forest at the edge of her lawn–a thick and beautiful bracket of trees. It's not surprising that she has located her new studio here. A recent series of her work is indeed about trees.

 

But let’s back up and head back into her studio space. 

 

The artist’s studio is the first glimpse into the artist’s mind. After all, the mind—that philosophical wonder—is unknowable without trying to find a path in. You can guess by viewing an artist’s work what they might think about. You can try to imagine what the artist feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills…into whatever they create—the work leaves its impressions, but to really understand, it takes some proximity to the artist.

 

A conversation. 

 

As for my conversation with Laurie (I'll refer to her as Laurie hereforward), I’ll start where the conversation ended. Our conversation ended with a question that Laurie posed: Is symmetry the answer to chaos?

 

In viewing Laurie's work—you might get the impression that the idea of symmetry matters more than we may often give it credit for—symmetry as a sense of balance and proportion, a sort of harmony. A ritual that isn’t a ceremony, but that is a visual meditation to latch on to so that our eyes can take us out of our–sometimes anxious ridden—bodies.

 

When you visit Laurie’s work, if you’re like me, you’ll notice that she works in many styles, but a common thread is a sense of symmetry. 

 

At one point Laurie said, “my work exists in a circle color wheel that is all parts of me…every artist has their own way of expression but I’ve long been interested in opposing elements.” 

 

The color wheel is a nice analogy for the work — opposing colors—colors next to—or, in other words—adjacent to each other. 

 

There is symmetry to a color wheel.

 

And any artist knows that a color wheel is also the key to everything colors can become, primary and tertiary colors that mix in order to become everything else.

 

It is the source. 

 

Everything connects.

 

Here is our conversation:

 

SMO—When did you first see yourself as an artist?

 

LVK: Probably about when I was seventeen or sixteen… I’m thinking, yes… I felt like an artist, then.

 

SMO—Did somebody else notice or encourage your work as an artist?

 

LVK: My mom...from a very young age. I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and she signed me up for all sorts of art classes from batik to needlepoint. She was very into the arts and theater and she was from a very early age exposed to the arts, so she very much made that a part of our home, though I didn't take it seriously as a career path. She was a single mother of five children, and she emphasized to all of us that getting an education mattered and, in her words, “never relying on a man to support you,” mattered too.

 

So, art was important to me, but not as a career path. I was interested in international relations, law school, and world travel. My mom always said that I was the child that was going to wander. I wanted to take in the world. 

 

SMO—How much of your time are you thinking about your work? Something that you’re creating?

 

LVK: Oh my gosh, all the time. It ebbs and flows, but probably 85 percent of the time. A lot more even in recent months.

 

SMO—Where do your ideas come from?

 

LVK: Experiencing my life. Art is life for me. Emotionally, it's the micro and the macro. Really, it's distilling the vastness of the world and the emotions of everyday life. And ideas come from letting yourself think and not second guessing yourself. For me, I see it [an idea] well; they come up visually… As they would be like in a dream, I daydream a lot. I visualize what something can look like. I have a crystal clear vision of what something can look like. 

 

SMO—When you get started on a new project…How do you get started? Where do you begin?

 

LVK: By writing, drawing… by placing things together, by starting small. I use little things to test ideas out. It's a matter of getting into my studio…taking time and space to see what happens.

 

In my works a p o t h e c a r y and P A T H O S, that was an intense two-week time period where I laid out and planned [the work] and it all changed in a good way. I had prepped for weeks, leading up to the time by gathering objects like collected pill bottles, journals, books, and all my pencils.

 

So it's about trying to keep my mind clear. Remembering that place where true artists create from, to give myself permission to create something, to make it with no outcome in mind.

 

Rick Rubin, the author, has a comment about that. He says it’s easy to get clouded when you go through a difficult time… are you making it—the art— because of that? Or are you staying in tune with making work from a pure space? 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​SMO—Tell me a little (or a lot) about your process. As detailed as you’d like. I’m supercurious.

 

LVK: Oh my gosh. I think for me the process is so based on what I’m feeling inside of me and trying to understand the reason and experience. You feel the blues… blue begins as an adjective….but can become a verb. It [the color blue] is many things in my vocabulary. 

 

But I don’t always know where I’m going to go on any given day. My computer tells me. I see something that I want to work on and think, “I want to work on this today.” I don’t always know why… But I won't stop the process. It can make finishing tricky. My moods can drive what I work on, too. And words matter.  Words inspire me. What we say, how we say it. This is very important to me. I’m also text based. I love word play. I like working forward and backward, too. Playing with things that way. [Xanax [a feature in Victor Kay’s latest work] is an anagram. *Note the symmetry.* In this work, Xanax is photographed repeatededly. Digital drawings are also repeated. Graphite drawing of the word TINY are repeated in different languages, forwards and backwards. There are butterflies, too. Written words and scribbles about her internal thoughts. (An almost  glimpse into the artist’s mind.) There are other things to notice, the hand, the pigment, the ‘newest-bluest’ pigment YInMn blue invented by Oregonian chemist recently. (Its a gorgeous blue, you could take a vacation in it.)]

 

LVK: And I also like the idea of erasure…handwriting is really important to me. I went through two major hand surgeries… and [for a time] I lost the ability to write. The act of writing makes me go off [into exploration.] I write and erase….I’m also thinking about saturated colors right now. The colors matter even more to me now. Yellow…is featured

prominently in my new work.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

​

SMO—What do colors mean to you? 

 

LVK: Colors give hope and meaning to things. They make me feel. If I don’t have color around me there is a void, there is something about color in my soul. Pure color not muddy color. 

 

SMO—How do you know when you’re done? Is your work ever done?

 

LVK: I would say I think it's a great question. It's hard as an artist not to go back and rewrite something… I guess even a painter could still go back. During the good times, I don’t always know when it's finished. How do I want it? I have to listen to my intuition… I feel it, I guess.

 

For example, a p o t h e c a r y is unfinished. Installed ...there will be another dimension added to it. I see these [she holds up a box with images of a p o t h e c a r y photographs in it] installed in a space…[She explains an interactive, multi-layer and multi-dimensional exhibit that she can already see in her mind.]

 

SMO—Now thinking specifically about your current work…What are you most excited about right now? 

 

LVK: I’m really excited to get P A T H O S out into the world and to share that. I feel really strongly about this work. There was a scorching background that went into the making of this. I was saving my soul at the time. I’m a mid-career female artist experiencing a lot of loss and some darkness that can come with this phase of life. Not only for me, but for others, too.

 

For me, this work is about reclamation of self. I used two cameras—it's gritty. But the people are responding to it—as they can relate, I think. It feels real. 

 

SMO—You have a lot going on…several series. Do you have a favorite? How do you juggle it all?

 

LVK: My favorite right now is the gold paint that I’m working with which is tied into a p o t h e c a r y. This work began around 2010 when I began questioning beauty, artifice, the standards held up for women. But I love the blue work, too. There is something surreal or otherworldly I feel in it.

 

Right at the beginning of the pandemic, I did a visible light series…. And exhibited it at Buffett Cancer Center. It really is about the light in Greece, the historical part, the blue, the Aegean sea. It has this sapphire purplish undertone that I love. It is the BLUEST blue with purple undertones. I'm using bits of architecture and musical compositions steeped in the history of the white space there—that is a utopian sort of space for me—something new in our minds—something as yet unknown.

 

[She talks about several of her works and then says…]

 

LVK: They are so different, but they connect.

 

Think of a woman. She has all these parts of self. We do… [Then she showed me an old sketchbook that she used to keep as a journal in which on the journal page she had drawn boxes. And on top of each box, a word. And each word represented a definition of self. Imagine words like the good wife, the perfect mother, daughter.] She explains that even though that was from years ago, the notebook may represent the origins of a p o t h e c a r y and P A T H O S.

 

Maybe they were already brewing in the artist's mind all those years ago.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​SMO—Is there a thread that connects everything in all of your work?

 

LVK: [Laughs.] The thread would be me……yearning ….perfectionism…I’ve done so much inner work. Countless hours… And trusting instinct for that to show up. I use art as the conversation—in a way I use it to liberate myself. 

 

The French word “Liberté,” shows up in a lot of my work.  

 

SMO—There is a lot of repetition in your work. What is it about repetition that you find so intriguing?

 

LVK: Formally I’m very compositionally drawn…. [She points to a portrait on the wall that includes her daughter Evie in it.] Evie being on this side of the frame [she points at the lower right of the frame.] It…breaks the rules of the frame, but it felt right to do it that way. 

 

Early on in photoshop…digitally… artistically… and with the early internet…. I had the idea of creating something new from something existing. [In her work “Compositions” she takes sports figures and miniaturizes them.] I like taking sports and football players. There is a sense of de-identifying….making something known, less known, mysterious. 

 

Moving it—making it static. This idea of changing a visual language.

 

She points to her new work TREES. She explains how deconstructing and adding white space into the piece mattered to her.

 

LVK: It creates pauses, she said. It's really an intuitive space that's when my work is the best.

​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

​​​​​SMO—Is it meditative for you? 

 

LVK: It is a meditation for me. And it allows someone to see it in a new way. The series Kaleidoscope is a visual game. It takes a physical thing that already exists and displays it in a new way. In a way that there is no order to it. I play with chaos and order. Making order out of the chaos. And some of my work is calming…

 

[She gives the example of a work from her Blue series—a woman, so tiny you barely see her, walking through the ocean. It is just the woman and the sea as if the world is only hers.]

 

LVK: When you see it, the woman walking through the water…. She is carving a path forward through the water. That space and time that will never exist again …she was me… splitting the sea ... walking into the unknown two years ago… my intuition saw that.

 

After the last question, Laurie discussed her work she ended up at where it started for her as a portrait artist.

 

LVK: What is a portrait? The word (art) is in the word portrait. … [Her recent work PATHOS has a hint of a portrait in it. A self-portrait through multiple lenses…. An interrogation of self—-how much closer to ourselves can we get? The work begs us to ask that. It's a portrait rarely seen. Not the polished headshot, but a glimpse into the inside life of a woman. The drawers opening to the details of an interior life—-most may not view or showcase. The Mona Lisa is mysterious– that mysterious smile. But portraits are mysterious, aren’t they? What do we really know about what is behind anyone’s smile?] Laurie’s work P A T H O S is an inside out portrait. [You can learn more about the work here.]

 

LVK: What do we hold on to and what is the meaning of that? Even the portrait…. What happens to a family portrait when the family is changed? Portraits can be haunting and beautiful, holding pieces of the past and present.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​Then she digressed for a minute into talking about the simple beauty of a pink bar of soap. Sadly, her mother passed away a few months ago, and that loss is one feeling factoring into her recent work. This pink bar of soap that she noticed she found in the shower at her mother’s house. She noticed herself reflecting on the shape of it, even. 

 

How it grew smaller over time. 

 

A bar of soap touches our bodies—it's a part of an intimate routine— but we probably rarely think about it.

​

The empathy it offers us.

 

It provides a simple proportion and balance and harmony as an accompaniment to a rather invisible daily habit--a shower with water.

 

In David Whyte’s poem Everything is Waiting For You, he says:

 

“You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.”

 

Until it is erased by use, perhaps soap is a part of a daily symmetry that enables us. 

 

Is symmetry the answer to chaos?

 

Erased images are entering into her new work.

 

There are already new sparks of ideas sparking in this artist's mind.

​

***

​​​

"Is symmetry the answer to chaos?"

-​Laurie Victor Kay

​