episode eleven | wendy orville

Published 3 April 2019

Miranda Metcalf  Hello print friends, and welcome to the eleventh episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I release an episode every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I publish an article on the Pine Copper Lime website featuring images and maybe a bit more information about the artist I'm going to interview. This has been a big couple of weeks over at PCL headquarters in Sydney. We celebrated reaching 10,000 on Instagram by giving away a Ben Beres etching, and I launched the Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) Patreon page. Now, I know, I know. Patreon. Why buy the cow if you're getting the milk for free, am I right? But I have tiers starting at just $1 a month, and there are some pretty fun gifts I'm giving away as thank yous, including buttons, stickers, personal serenades, tote bags, good vibes, postcards, and of course, bonus content, including minisodes with tidbits from printmaking's history. As some of you may know, before I took up the glamorous lifestyle of a podcast host with its fast cars and loose women, I was a humble art historian who got her Master's in the history of printmaking. So I have some super interesting anectdotes up my sleeves, such as the tradition in Japanese woodcuts of Tanukis using their gigantic testicle sacks to go fishing or catch birds. Or, say, Albrecht Durer taking the first copyright case to trial against artists who forged his woodcuts. So if you'd like to join that party, head on over to the Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) Patreon page and take a peek. And of course, as always, there's a link in the show notes. Now, if for one reason or another the support you can offer is more emotional than financial, don't you worry about a thing. I see you, I feel you, and I appreciate you. And it would really help me out if you could tell a friend or two about Pine Copper Lime or leave a review on your podcast app of choice. That kind of support is truly invaluable for helping Pine Copper Lime grow and bringing our community closer together. Printmaking forever, shun the non believers, join the party. My guest this week is Wendy Orville, whose stunning monotypes are unlike anything else out there today. If you haven't had a look on the Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) website or Instagram yet to see them, I highly encourage you to do so now, and prepare to have your mind blown. They are dramatic and emotional landscapes which are full of tension and from a distance are often mistaken for photographs. Wendy herself, as you'll soon hear, is an absolute delight, and is incredibly self aware when it comes to her practice. We talk about the nature of pursuing making something that is truly great, how motherhood changed the way she worked by making her a more relaxed and intuitive artist, and how she came to the place where she could engage with her time in the studio as a curious observer rather than a harsh critic. So sit back, relax, and prepare to find your new life coach in Wendy Orville. Hi, Wendy, how's it going? 

Wendy Orville  Really well, nice to talk with you, Miranda. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, thanks for joining me. So I know you from showing your work at Davidson, but people may not be familiar with you. So if you want to just give us a little intro about, kind of overview of sort of where you're at right now and who you are.

Wendy Orville  So my name is Wendy Orville. I'm a monotype artist, although I also do a lot of drawing. I live on Bainbridge Island, Washington, which is a 35 minute ferry from Seattle. I live here with my family, my two kids and my husband. And we've been here for 17 years now. And it's a really wonderful place to be an artist and part of the community and have a family, actually. There's a lot of creative people here, a lot of writers and artists. So there's a lot of cross pollination actually. And because it's a fairly small community, we end up talking to each other. And I think kind of being an influence for each other as a community. So I feel really lucky to be here and be able to show at Davidson and to live on Bainbridge.

Miranda Metcalf  Wonderful. To get a little more context, before we dive into talking about your current practice, tell us a little bit about your early childhood influences, what place art had in that period of your life.

Wendy Orville  So I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. My parents were both in the sciences. My dad was a geology professor at Yale, and my mom taught in an inner city high school, she taught biology and chemistry. And I have two sisters. I'm the middle of two sisters. And we were really encouraged to ask questions and be creative, and really learn about the world in a lot of different ways. So I feel really lucky in that way. My father died when he was 50 and I was 17. But he's really remained a very important influence for me, because he was curious about everything. And so I just have these wonderful memories of talking about history and art and science and cooking. You know, he just had a real joy, as my mother does. She's a really wonderful person, and very funny, and also curious about everything. So I kind of hit the jackpot in terms of parents. And I think it allowed me the confidence to develop kind of in my own way, and I didn't know that I'd become an artist, I actually ended up deciding to be an artist when I had almost graduated from college. I thought maybe I'd be in science, and then I became an art history major. And I actually think the art history aspect of my education has been really important, both as an artist and as a teacher. So I have a very large collection of art history books, which I draw on heavily. So I feel like I still have that encouragement coming from my family, and actually from my husband as well, because he's very supportive of who I am as an artist as well.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's wonderful. And then so you, as you mentioned, you had been trained as a painter. But how did you come to printmaking?

Wendy Orville  Yeah, so I was a painter for about 10 years, I actually have an MFA in painting as well. And I think I was probably allergic to paint the entire time that I was a painter. I would get really severe headaches. And this was in the '80s, where people were not using ventilation or gloves. I associated the the discomfort that I felt physically with painting just as kind of part of the process. And I just kept going because I really did love the medium. In my late 20s, I ended up moving to Taos, New Mexico and I was invited to make prints with Hand Graphics. And I printed for the first time, I made monotypes for the first time, and I just fell in love with the process of monotype. And some light went off for me. And I didn't switch from painting, I was still painting at that point. But there was something that happened when I started making monotypes that just opened up a different part of me, I think it was something about the process of rolling out the ink and wiping away to reveal the image and not knowing how multiple layers would, you know, what kind of image you'd make by doing multiple layers. There was something about that relationship with the press that was just thrilling to me. And I think it made me more relaxed and more intuitive, kind of, in my process. So I was both a painter and a printmaker for about four years.

Miranda Metcalf  And then you just gave painting up at one point?

Wendy Orville  Yeah, so I went back to DC to get my MFA at American University in DC, and after a two year program in painting, moved to Seattle. And at that point, I just realized that I my love was really in printmaking. And I felt a kind of freedom and curiosity about making monotypes that I just didn't feel, I didn't continue to feel that with painting. And so I kept thinking I would go back to painting, but my heart was in printmaking at that point. I think because my training is almost entirely in painting and not in monotype, and not in printmaking, I just felt like I could experiment and figure things out, kind of in my own way. And I had this very playful, experimental way of approaching monotype that was very different than how I felt as a painter, you know, I think I felt the burden of the history of painting in a very different way. And so I just ended up shifting towards the thing I actually really wanted to do. And noticing that in myself, and just trusting myself, that that's actually what I wanted to do.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I think that's huge. In conversations that I've been having with people sometimes get to a point where they almost say, 'And at that point, I gave myself permission to do this.' And I think that that's something that is true in art, but in many aspects of our lives when we do feel a pull towards something, but we've got this narrative in our heads about, 'What will people think of me,' or 'Is this really what I want?' And then at some point, they eventually just say, 'No, I can do this.' 

Wendy Orville  And people aren'treally waiting for you to make anything in particular. I mean, that's what I realized too. It was really whatever I wanted to do. And then there is, I think, a lot of power in the work when you're really engaged.

Miranda Metcalf  Yes. And that is one of the things that cannot be artificially cultivated about art making. You can't fake that. 

Wendy Orville  Yeah, that's true. It's the magic. 

Miranda Metcalf  It is, it is. It's the aura. It's everything. And I think that that's one of the things that, when I get in conversations with people about 'How do I get seen in a gallery,' it's really just, keep making the work until it's something that you love. And then when someone sees it, they will love it, too. And it's a really interesting side of art that I think really does make up the magic of it, when you talk about art making in those terms. I think that your work just doesn't look like a typical monotype when you think of it, and a lot of times some of the monotypes that you see more often have more of a watercolor feel to them. They've got a looseness to them, and a layering that you see in that. 

Wendy Orville  Of, like, a fast painting. Like a sketchy painting. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yes. And I can say that, from experience working with your monotypes at Davidson, the number one thing they were always confused for was photographs. 

Wendy Orville  Which always surprises me. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. From far away, which I think is interesting. You know, once you get up, your hand is very obvious. But when people walk in the gallery, and they kind of just take that span from, you know, three meters away or something, they'll often say, 'Are you having a photography show?' So they're black and white landscapes, and they tend to have a really dynamic relationship between sky and earth. And they've got a drama to them and almost sort of a moodiness to them. They don't look like other monotypes. And I think part of that maybe comes from directly what you were saying about having the formal training as a painter, but having the freedom as a printmaker, you've kind of developed really your own look and your own style.

Wendy Orville  Yeah, I didn't know what I didn't know. And I took a lot of time to figure out technique, different techniques, I had a really strong feeling of wanting to create the equivalent of what I saw and experienced by looking at the sky. In a way it started with, I think, clouds in the sky, and just the impossibility of trying to capture the volume and the movement and the emotion of of this abstract world of the sky. And it just lodged in my being that I wanted to make an equivalent, and it wasn't like an impression. It wasn't, 'Oh, I want to make something that looks looks exactly like this photograph.' I just wanted to make that world and I didn't really have the technique for it. My first skies, and I was older, I mean, I was 37 when I had my first child and 40 when I had my second child, I really began making the monotypes, the tonal monotypes, the landscape monotypes, in my late 30s. I was basically at home with my kids, and I had some time, but I didn't have a huge amount of time. I had a lot of time to look. So driving around, being at the playground, you know, just being a mom, if I wasn't looking at my kids, I was really looking around me and just absorbing kind of ordinary landscape around me, and then returning to my studio. And I began to have more time as the kids, obviously, went to preschool and school and so on. And I just started playing with inks in different ways, and rolling out these gradations and wiping away. And like I said, the first ones were pretty clumsy. And I kept a lot of my work, I just stack it because it's all information for me. I'm very careful about what I show, I edit like crazy, and I only let the work out that really feels fully resolved to me. But I had this like freedom and privacy to spend a lot of time just kind of going after imagery. And I was just fascinated. It was like - and I'm very, very process oriented. I wasn't worried about showing the work, I wasn't worried about whether it was any good. I just wanted to kind of see if I could make the images that felt true to my experience. And then very slowly, I felt like I began to kind of make work that felt more like my own work. And instead of saying, well, I've always made these very colorful, painterly landscapes, which was more my paintings actually, I ended up really just following my curiosity, and I ended up making work that was tonal and more specific, more, as you said, more photographic. And that surprised me too, because that hadn't ever been true before. But I just didn't really question it, I just kept following what I wanted to do. So I think it led me to, really, my own voice, maybe for the first time. And that felt really exciting.

Miranda Metcalf  You know, there's a few really interesting things in there. And one of them is when you're talking about trying to capture the experience of seeing clouds, and not a photographic reproduction. What it reminds me of, and I may have even said this before to you about your work, this anecdote that I heard once of when CGI in movies was really taking off, and they were doing, you know, their first sea storm. And they were trying to create the waves. They were looking at pictures of the ocean. And they were just replicating what was there and it just didn't work. 

Wendy Orville  Yeah. It wasn't alive. 

Miranda Metcalf  It wasn't alive. And what they had to do was go back and look at the 17th century Dutch masters' seascapes and imitate them, because they were capturing what it was to experience looking at the ocean. And I think there's something similar going on in your cloudscapes, for sure. And then the other one was that really interesting bit where you were sort of saying that when you became a mom, and your primary job in life switches from artist to mother, at least for a period of time, where you're in the business of keeping them alive in those young years. Sometimes, that can be described as a really limiting time for female artists, or a closing off time. But for you, it sounds like it really gave you this freedom to think about making for making's sake, without the narrative of 'Where's this going, when's my next show, who's gonna see this?' And so I love that. I haven't had kids, but one of the ways that it's been explained to me that makes the most sense was someone saying, 'You're no longer the protagonist in your story once you have kids.' And it seems like if that was the case, it really became a time where you got to just be the scientist, just be the experimenter with your work, and came out the other side with something really brilliant and unique and allowed you to come to Davidson really fully cooked, as I always thought of you. You just sort of showed up with this body of work that had been already curated, because as you said, you're careful about what you show, and was really fully formed in a beautiful way.

Wendy Orville  I think I was very present as a mom, and I was incredibly tired and didn't have an internal life, particularly, you know, it wasn't like, overtly creative. But it didn't really need to be. I mean, the creative part was obviously, you know, having the kids and then being with them. But I think what it did was make me relaxed and unselfconscious and just able to respond to just kind of instinct. It made me very instinctual, I think. So as I had more and more time, I think I was able to just follow my own inclinations, because I wasn't looking over my shoulder. I was trusting myself. And so even though I lost a certain amount of time, perhaps, that was okay, because I just was different. When I emerged after having kids the first, you know, five years or so, I just think things opened in a very different way for me. I didn't have as much doubt, and I was less neurotic about my own work. Because I was a pretty relaxed mom. I didn't second guess, I wasn't a hyper mom. I think because I grew up with parents who really enjoyed being parents and kind of took us on their adventures, I just kind of leaned into that. And then I think it helped my art process where I was more judgmental about myself and kind of more self critical. And so I think I was calmer and more present when I returned to the studio in a more kind of serious way.

Miranda Metcalf  And I've heard other women describe parenthood kind of in similar terms, that there's almost a release that happens when you're not so focused on yourself, all of a sudden, and it's really a gift, in a way, that all of this control that you thought that you had over your own narrative goes completely out the window, and you can just wave goodbye, good riddance, and see it go. A lot of other things can open up. So I love that. That's great. So we talked a little bit about the actual physical form that your work takes. At one point, we were talking about how, and this is probably clear to anyone who's been listening, that you are very lovely and bright and positive. And your work has, again, that kind of moodiness and we were talking about.

Wendy Orville  I make cheerfully, cheerfully moody paintings. Prints. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And at one point, I remember you saying something like, 'Well, I just kind of can, like, get that out in my art practice,' you know, that it's almost like an exorcism or something. 

Wendy Orville  I think it's what I find beautiful. I mean, a lot of the work that I love from artists and art history are kind of gritty, and, you know, dramatic. I love Rembrandt and Wyeth and Degas, and so it's a kind of sensibility. And I've always been drawn to that, too. So I'm not deliberately trying to make it moody, or it's more what I'm drawn to, I think, and part of it - I'm very interested in tension, though. So the tension between, you know, the sky and the rock, the relationship between the trees and the clouds, I think of it in some ways as, well maybe, I guess, as a drama in some ways, because they're like characters, although I don't want it to be explicit. I don't even think of it in this, you know, this is the... I don't give them personalities, exactly. But I want the world that I make to feel alive and mysterious on some level, and not just be a reproduction of nature. I want it to have secrets. And I'm also interested in creating a kind of spare landscape. So I take out a lot. So then what I leave needs to have, I think, a lot of power, a lot of... you know, there needs to be tension in there, or else it's a single note. Because it's not a really... there isn't loads and loads in the pieces, it is it is quite spare. So if I take out too much, or the different elements don't have a kind of energy, it just won't hold your attention, it won't hold my attention. So I tend to work in layers, and I'll make these more atmospheric skies, or it could be the opposite, the lands. And if they're not really believable to me, and they just feel like a background, I won't use them. They have to have a kind of light and energy and kind of mystery for me, before I then print the landscape into them. So it's like taking these distinctly different techniques and images and then fusing them in some way, and making something that I can't really entirely predict. So I love that relationship of the press, because I can't see it until I've made it. And I allow each of those different processes to be distinctly different. So when I make the atmospheric skies, it's a subtractive method, and I'm rolling out large gradations of black and transparent ink, and then wiping away to kind of reveal the form. And then with the landscape, I'm rolling, that's the additive technique, and I'm rolling ink onto another plate, and then using credit cards and brushes and toothbrushes and so on, to create the landscape. And they're made so differently, that there's something about when they're combined that I think is still kind of magical to me in the sense that I just can't predict how it's going to work. And a lot of my work is not successful, there's many pieces that I just, it's a numbers thing, I have to just make a lot to really get what I want. And I can't be too controlling, because then it loses its life. And so I have to be on the edge of some kind of chaos, or there has to be enough, kind of, muscular energy to make it interesting. And so I can tip into it being just too out of control and not coming together. Or sometimes I hang on to the control too long and it's kind of dull. And so it's this funny line that I kind of play with, I think, that keeps it interesting for me.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And that's a really wonderful way to articulate what really does make your images so interesting. And your ability to self-select and be self-critical of the work is something I've always really admired. And it's one of those things where, talking about you coming sort of fully cooked to Davidson, when the owner and I would go for a studio visit with you and you'd have your work laid out, we'd always just sort of look at it and be like, 'Oh, okay, there's the show.' It's great. And I think it's something that all artists and writers and musicians and anyone really should try and cultivate more, because it makes your practice so much more rich and, I think, interesting, when you find that space between being just a very astute observer and being overly critical. Right? Like that's the balance, because at a certain - you can't get to the point where you're just so nitpicky of your work that you're just paralyzed from making anything. But you need to be able to just say, 'Would I want to look at this more? Would I want to read this?'

Wendy Orville  I think one of the things about getting older for me is that my internal voices are much kinder towards myself. I think I was really highly critical, and that's not a bad thing, but it can stop you, as you said, from making, which can just feel like every move needs to have meaning or needs to already be good. I think once I realized that I needed to make a lot of work in order to get what I wanted... When I'm making work, I often actually talk out loud, and I'll be like, 'Wow, that really didn't work.' And I'm not being upset with myself. I'm like, 'Why didn't that work?' But it's out of a kind of curiosity as opposed to, you know, 'That's terrible. Blah, blah, blah, blah.' You know, I stay engaged. I'm a better coach to myself now than I was when I was younger, where I it could just be, 'Oh, a disaster!' And I'm able to stay with myself and take chances. Because it's not that big a deal if it doesn't work. I'll just try it again.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, and that's such an important skill to have, I think, is to snip the cord between something that you create being unsuccessful and some kind of moral judgment on your personhood. 

Wendy Orville  You've got to deload it. 

Miranda Metcalf  You do, you do! But that can be so hard. You know, one of the things that people talk about, you know, with the kids these days, everyone getting a trophy, you know, that constant thing that people talk about? I do wonder if they're not being given the opportunity to disentangle that, because they're not being motivated to. They're not getting the "ow" that then makes you dive in and kind of say, 'Oh, maybe it doesn't need to be "ow." What if it wasn't?' 

Wendy Orville  Well, and you don't need to be perfect. You actually really need to fail a lot to do anything original. And I really embrace that.

Miranda Metcalf  I love that. So one of the other things that I wanted to chat with you about was one of the things that I've heard you say before, is that you're drawn to that kind of vastness of skies. But here you are, in western Washington, with some of the smallest skies, I think, maybe in the world? 

Wendy Orville  There's a lot of trees, a lot of trees in western Washington. 

Miranda Metcalf  There's a lot of trees, and a lot of overcast. So I know that you travel for your work as well, or maybe when you travel, it influences your work. Anything maybe between that connection between traveling and inspiration and documentation?

Wendy Orville  Well, you know, the funny thing about the pieces from Hawaii is that they really look like the Northwest. I'm not doing the typical Maui scene. I found these, you know, windswept trees that already looked like something that I had seen in some way. And even the pieces that I did influenced by Norway, in a way, felt like where I live now, too. So I think travel is really important, and I love to travel, but I don't feel like I need to travel to make my work. You know, I love just seeing landscape in different parts of the world. We were in Spain last summer, and that was just thrilling. But I didn't end up actually making work from that trip, even though I photographed a lot. And I think part of it is that I really like going deep with where I live and what I know. And so I keep returning to, probably one of the inspirations for me, is the Nisqually Wetlands, which is about an hour and a half from where I live here, in Olympia, Washington. I really love returning over and over again to places and seeing them in different ways. And so I don't need an entirely different landscape, I think, to be inspired. In some ways, a lot of the things are variations on work that I've done, or a different angle or a different, you know, kind of light quality. And it's kind of just going deeper, as opposed to shifting entirely.

Miranda Metcalf  And I think again, though, the funny thing about Nisqually, because I know it's really beautiful. It is, though, one of the few places in western Washington you can find a vast sky.

Wendy Orville  And I drive for the skies. I drive to Port Townsend, which is about an hour away. Because I do want to see wide open spaces. And I think the four years I spent in Taos, New Mexico was a big influence too. Although at the time, I didn't know how to make work about that wide open space, I didn't really have the ability to do that yet. So it would be interesting to actually return there and make work from there. But I think I seek it out. And where I live on Bainbridge, there's a lot of trees, but I look up a lot. So I'm driving and if there's a sky, I will pull over and photograph. And often, I'm combining. It's not one place that I'm making. It's not really about one place. So it may be clouds from one visit, and wetlands from another place. And I feel like I'm combining a lot of different things to make my own world. So it's not meant to be an impression, or even exactly about that place. In a lot of ways, I think they're kind of internal landscapes. And I'm struck by various things as I kind of go about my day and then bring things together in a way that feels true to me.

Miranda Metcalf  I feel like that is a great place to wrap up. So thank you for chatting with me and being your wonderful, articulate, open self about your practice. And I definitely look forward to sharing this with everyone. 

Wendy Orville  Real pleasure Miranda, look forward to talking with you again soon. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Thank you. Well, that's our show for this week. Tune in again in two weeks' time when my guest is Patrick Wagner of Black Heart Press. We talk guerilla lithography teaching groups, what you do when a fire destroys your entire archive of prints, getting in touch with Nigerian printmakers for a chat, and the connections we make across the press bed and across the world. This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you in two weeks.