Interview

"Horses" by Jenny Eng.

Adriana de Barros, Scene 360: Your mother passed away when you were young; she is the muse for “Sugar on Snow.” Was making this art series a therapeutic experience for you?

Jenny Eng: Yes, it actually was therapeutic. I don’t know that I want to get into the whole story behind this, but suffice it to say that after my parents passed away, I was in mourning for a long, long time (years) and am finally really getting over their loss.

In my late 20′s I basically had to drop work and school to care for my parents when they both fell ill at the same time for different reasons: My father had an illness that required multiple intensive treatments, while my mom required major surgery. Both of them required constant care and supervision for a while and my family and I felt I’d be their best advocate and caretaker. Despite all the efforts we put into seeing my dad well, he died within months of diagnosis, probably more from the treatments than the original illness. I was in shock, but not completely surprised by his demise considering the toll the treatments were taking on him. While I was extremely sad, I felt I still had my mom at least, and she was a rock. When I lost my mother a year later, however, I was devastated as her loss meant I was at that point completely parentless and alone. Lost.

When they died I felt suddenly bereft of the sky and the stars. Even if they were obscured behind the cloud of some argument we were having, I knew were there for me and loved me and that we just disagreed on the best way to solve something. Like the stars and the sky, I took for granted that they’d always be here. And like the stars, when I was lost, I’d look to them to guide me towards doing the right thing in life. Although I didn’t always follow their lead (as excellent as they were, they were still very old-fashioned), I often charted my own path relative to theirs, so whether by emulation or by rebellion, who I am today is certainly a reaction to their influence.

For many years the pain of their loss and especially the guilt I felt for not doing even more than I’d done ate at me. It was genuinely hard on those around me, especially my partner at the time, who is an amazing person that took great care of me despite my despondency. It took a long time to get to a point where I was functional again and to get back into the flow of life.

When there’s a loss in your life, it brings up memories of other losses in your life. Kind of like how getting one new scrape suddenly makes all your existing scabs itchy. When I made this book I was dealing with a recent breakup, and it really echoed through many layers of losses in my life. When I saw the cover’s color, I just knew I’d have to make the piece about finding myself through the losses.

"Verbal Orders" by Jenny Eng.

Do you think it is necessary to experience challenging situations in life, from relationships to losing a family member or friend—to begin to find awareness, self-growth, change, and a greater value of life? Does negative need to exist to encounter positive?

Dude, what is up with all of these heavy questions, Scene 360? Can’t we talk about puppies or flowers instead? (:

In all honesty, I don’t think it’s necessary to personally experience challenging situations in order to grow as a person in the ways you’d mentioned above, but I think it does add depth to a person’s character to go through and survive hardships for sure. No one needs to get 3rd degree burns to know that fire is hot and that they can’t touch it without consequence. However, I think going through experiences and having the awareness of other’s situations and a touch of empathy helps to open up the way you see the world and to understand your own place in it. Negative does not need to exist before we encounter positive, though after encountering negative, I think it certainly makes us appreciate positive more. Did that make any sense? I felt like I just channeled Yoda, jeez.

Your artwork allows you to express and communicate your emotions and thoughts. It mirrors what you see in life as well as give hints as to who you are. What did you learn about yourself that you didn’t know before making “Sugar on Snow?”

I don’t think I knew I was capable of thinking on my feet so quickly until I worked on this project. The bulk of the concept for the artwork came together in the first hour of a six-hour workshop I was taking with artist Lisa Kokin, and the rest of it (mostly the hand-carved topography on the front cover) I did later on my own.

"Poultry Timetable" by Jenny Eng.

You’ve defined your art theme as: “subtraction and abstraction, evidenced in my common use of negative space to imply the emptiness and voids in life that sometimes occur after the loss of someone or something.” Can you explain more about negative space? How did you visually compose it?

Wikipedia defines negative space as:

In art, generally, negative space is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the “real” subject of an image. The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. [1]

In Sugar on Snow, very often I cut a main character out of the picture, leaving a void, a visual hole in the page such that what should’ve been the subject on the page is now the negative space, and what was the negative space now has to work harder as it has become the de facto subject on the page. (See “soul topography” or “projecting” to see what I mean.)

You talk about your preference of books, these so called “tangible objects!” Do you think that the new generation of artists will disregard books and traditional art mediums?

No, I don’t think books will ever become obsolete. There is something so inherently perfect about the book—the way it fits into the hand, its heft (as if the words contained inside had their own weight) and how its form has been honed over the years to a known standard—that I just think it will always remain an object in our visual vernacular. I’m sure traditional painters freaked out with the introduction of photography (a change in technology, “painting with light”) over a century ago, and sharply inhaled at Impressionism and Cubism (a radical change in artistic style), and yet here we are in the 22nd century and oil painting still enjoys the same respect and popularity it has always had despite the rise of other media.

Sure, there are far more efficient and less antiquated ways of expressing oneself, but oil paintings have a special lustrousness. And so with a book and other traditional media—they each have their own unique qualities that make them irreplaceable. I guess what I’m saying is that just because there’s a shift in technology does not mean that people will abandon their old methods of expressing themselves. Most artists and designers choose the method and medium that is right for their message.

"Projecting" by Jenny Eng.

5 Things you Hate and Love about the Technology era.

I HATE:

1. When technology fails and I don’t know how to fix it. I hate when my computer crashes.
2. Obsoletion of new technology within months of its introduction.
3. Phishers ‘n’ scammers, and spammers who think I need Viagra. I get too much email in a day to be bothered with filtering this junk.
4. The fact that people can reach me 24/7—this is the downside of having multiple channels for communication.
5. Both the persistence and fragility of electronic data.

I LOVE:

1. The popcorn button on my microwave. Genius.
2. The convenience of a cell phone/camera/PDA/mp3 player smaller than the size of most chocolate bars.
3. At this moment, Scrabulous on Facebook is rocking my world. I also love Amazon, Wikipedia, Flickr, Crush3r, Pandora, Epicurious, Craigslist, and, of course, Scene360!
4. Flash drives. It’s amazing what you can fit onto something the size of suppository nowadays! Man, I still remember segmenting files across multiple floppy drives, so sometimes I trip out over this. Kids these days seriously don’t know how good they have it.
5. Multiple ways for keeping in touch with people—from instant messenger/VOIP apps and blogs, to social networking sites and cell phones, technology has allowed us many more ways to share ourselves with others.

Have you considered sharing your artwork with the author of this book?

Ha, what a fine question! I think I will and I’ll try to have no expectations either way. On one hand, I imagine the artist and writer might be shocked that I defaced their work of art by deconstructing and recontextualizing it to fit my narrative. They might even be mad. At the same time, I could imagine that they might be flattered by someone being moved enough by their work to literally build upon it. I guess it is a matter of perspective.

Link
Mosspink

Reference
[1] Definition of “Negative Space”, Wikipedia.org, retrieved on Nov. 17, 2007. 

Credits
All collage artwork © Jenny Eng.

Jenny Eng's artwork uses pages from the book Sugar on Snow, (1964) by Nancy Dingman Watson,
Illustrations by Aldren A. Watson, The Viking Press, Inc., New York, NY.