Abstract
Natalie relates her experiences preparing to create public art in Cleveland for the Innerbelt bridge project. The project is in progress during 2012.
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Interviewee
Lanese, Natalie (interviewee)
Interviewer
Lanese, James (interviewer)
Project
Project Team
Date
6-9-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
25 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Natalie Lanese interview, 09 June 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 999096.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1031
Transcript
Jim Lanese [00:00:02] Hello. My name is Jim Lanese, and I’m joined by Natalie Lanese to conduct an interview for the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities of Cleveland State University. Today we’re going to document the process involving public art in Cleveland on a particular project that Natalie will tell us. The interview is being held at the Laneses’ household, located in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Natalie, would you please introduce yourself and briefly give us a sketch of your connection to Cleveland in particular?
Natalie Lanese [00:00:45] All right. My name is Natalie Lanese. As Jim said, I’m his daughter, and I grew up here in Cleveland. I’ve recently applied to participate in contests to submit work for a public art project here in Cleveland associated with the new westbound Inner Belt Bridge that’s being built, and was selected as a finalist and also selected to do a commission at the Ontario Street location in the Gateway district.
Jim Lanese [00:01:30] And if you would start off by giving us a little bit of your personal background as far as art is concerned and how you’ve come to the point where you’ve connected with the Cleveland project.
Natalie Lanese [00:01:47] Well, I’ve always been involved in art, you know, starting with early art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. So, you know, having grown up here, Cleveland has been a huge part of my artistic development. I participated in a somewhat rigorous art program at Beaumont High School, and then I studied at Xavier University for my undergraduate. Was back in Cleveland at Case Western Reserve and the Art Institute, where I received an MA in Art and Education, and then finally attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where I got an MFA in Painting. So although I’ve kind of traveled around, Cleveland has always been home. It’s always a place where I’ve wanted to participate in the arts, and it’s been an important, you know, project for me to just get my art back here at home.
Jim Lanese [00:02:54] So where have you, what kind of artwork have you been doing most recently, as far as your own work is concerned?
Natalie Lanese [00:03:06] The work that I think people are, whoever’s most familiar with my work would be familiar with is large scale collage and paint installation. So, as I said, I studied painting at Pratt, but during that time, I was really exploring collage as a medium and particularly how to take collage beyond a small scale, paper cut and paste kind of mode of working, which is, I think, how it’s most often recognized. So I wanted to figure out some way to use it that would be different, that would kind of break beyond those boundaries. So I began making large scale, like 30 or 40 foot murals that are painted directly on the wall of an exhibition space or a gallery, and then photographic images that are collaged directly onto the painting. And the type of imagery I’m using is the painted elements are very much pop inspired geometric patterns that are sort of creating a flat space on the wall. And then the photographic images are often vintage or sourced from old magazines and resources, and they usually create some manner of landscape or cityscape on these flat pattern backgrounds to create a real space that the viewer can kind of enter into.
Jim Lanese [00:04:46] And where have some of these installations been worked on?
Natalie Lanese [00:04:57] The first one I made was at Pratt as my thesis exhibition. And after that, I’ve had the opportunity to exhibit similar works at a gallery in Brooklyn, at an art fair in Basel, Switzerland, and in the Hamptons in New York, and most recently at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and at Montserrat College of Art, also near Boston in Beverly, Mass.
Jim Lanese [00:05:27] And have your themes been similar in these installations?
Natalie Lanese [00:05:33] Yes and no. I think they’ve developed. The pattern that I’ve discussed has pretty much stayed consistent. I use a zigzag pattern that’s, I think, come to be a real signature in my work. So that’s. Even though that’s a consistent pattern being used, it has changed and developed over the years. As far as the content goes, you know, all the work uses nostalgia and humor. I think fairly consistently, those are aspects that are very important to my work and to what I’m usually trying to say. They usually use those things to make some type of social commentary, and they’re all similar in that they. Each piece is exploring some part of American culture. So most recently, a few of the installations I’ve made have dealt with the idea of tourism or places that Americans visit or gather, for instance, Coney Island and Niagara Falls. So places that have historically been popular vacation spots, but, you know, also sort of have this culture of tourism that has come to take over what is initially the attraction.
Jim Lanese [00:07:06] And besides Coney Island and Niagara Falls, what are some of your other themes that you’ve worked with?
Natalie Lanese [00:07:14] The piece that I– The piece that I made at the DeCordova dealt with a slightly different idea, and that’s kind of one that I thought about for a good deal of time while I was living in New York. It was inspired by some of the landmarks, particularly the existing structures from the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows in Queens and the TWA, or former TWA terminal at JFK Airport. Both, to me, kind of signified a monument of a past attitude. And so I made a piece based on the idea of Retro Future. That’s actually the title of the piece. But the idea that there were once technologies and designs that signified what we thought the future would be, that, you know, now looking at them are definitely obsolete and even kind of silly sometimes. So Retro Future was a landscape made up of existing architectural structures, pop cultural references, actual historic figures and so forth that all occupied this alternate 2012 reality. Had we kind of followed along some of those ideas if other technologies didn’t come along?
Jim Lanese [00:08:56] Now, using this as a background for your initiation of a project, Cleveland, tell us a little bit about how that came to be and how your work has influenced what you’re thinking about right now with respect to that project.
Natalie Lanese [00:09:17] Well, I first heard about the project from you. You had sent me an article that was in the Plain Dealer actually announcing that Cleveland Public Art, which is now joined up with Parkworks and is known as LAND studio, was working with the Ohio Department of Transportation on finding artists. There was a call for artists to submit ideas for murals to be put on the underpasses of the new bridge that’s being built. So this was last November. I applied, wrote a proposal, and submitted some images of my work, and then in January was contacted that I was a finalist for one of the locations. So the next step was visiting the site in March and then presenting after having seen the site and having a little more familiarity with what the neighborhood was and what I would be working on creating a proposal that I presented in May. And I was originally asked to propose an idea for the Fairfield site, which is near Tremont. And then after I presented and the committee saw my work, they felt that it might be a better fit at the Ontario Street location. So currently, I’m kind of reworking my idea now for the new location, and I’m as far as my work and how it fits with this project, I think that’s one of the reasons I was drawn to it. For once, a public art project is open to people who work, photographers or painters, or people who typically are making work that is meant to be indoors. It’s not made to withstand the elements. And the reason for that is the final work will actually be a digital reproduction. It’ll be printed on a material that will be safe outside. So I was pretty excited because this is not normally an opportunity that’s available to a collage artist. And I think with a lot of the ideas I’ve been working with and the installations showing or depicting different landscapes, Cleveland has always been, in the back of my mind, a subject I kind of just hadn’t gotten to it yet. So this presents a great opportunity to see how I’ll do Cleveland in one of my pieces.
Jim Lanese [00:12:06] So you bring to this project your own experience of living here for and growing up in the Cleveland area. What are some of the perspectives you might bring from having lived and worked elsewhere, in particular towards the east coast?
Natalie Lanese [00:12:30] Well, one of the things that I discussed with the people at LAND studio was that, I think the committee, one of the things they really liked about my work was the humorous side of it or the use of comedy in the work. And we were kind of joking that Clevelanders have a special way of, I guess, not making fun of ourselves, but we know. We kind of know what it’s like living here. We’re aware of how Cleveland may be seen around the rest of the country. And so I think having lived in New York has kind of made, I think, strengthened my pride in Cleveland. It’s definitely a place where I encountered people who just don’t know it or aren’t familiar with it and maybe aren’t familiar with it beyond our struggling sports teams and things like that. So I think I’ll have a lot of fun bringing the sense of humor in my work that is typically in my work to this piece, both from the standpoint of someone who’s from here, but also who’s kind of strongly defended my hometown for a long time, too.
Jim Lanese [00:14:02] So give us a little bit of an outlook now where you’re at with the project right now, and at least what the perceived progress will be towards its completion.
Natalie Lanese [00:14:19] So right now, I’m kind of reworking my idea, since the location of the work has changed. So what I had initially presented was an idea very specific to the Tremont neighborhood. So since I’ll now be in the gateway area, I’m working on redeveloping a proposal, which in about a month, I will share once again with LAND studio and the selection committee. And then once we’ve kind of discussed those ideas and concepts a little bit, I will begin work on the actual piece and the bridge. As of now, I think, is scheduled to be completed early 2014. So the work will probably be made in the next year. And once it’s completed, it’ll be. And this is kind of what I still have yet to figure out the logistics of. But it’ll be photographed and printed by a professional printer. So the reproduction of the final work and how big to make it in order to reproduce it is still a challenge ahead of me, but that’s basically what will happen in the next year or so.
Jim Lanese [00:15:50] You will still exchange ideas with LAND studio with respect to final content concept design.
Natalie Lanese [00:16:06] So we’re scheduling a Skype meeting since I’m long distance, mid July, and then after that I think we’ll definitely work together. You know, I’ll be in touch with them on where I’m at on the process. And, you know, they’re fairly more experienced with public art than I am. This is my first time working on a public project, so, you know, they’ve made themselves available to me as far as any advice on imagery and content, you know, and what to include and what not to include in a public art piece, so I’m sure they’ll be a huge help to me throughout the process as well.
Jim Lanese [00:16:56] Now, you may have mentioned it, but how large will the final images or murals be?
Natalie Lanese [00:17:04] There’s three murals at the site. One is, I think, on the west side of the street, will be about 6 feet tall and 64 feet long. And then there’s two murals on the east side of the street. And I’m forgetting off the top of my head, the exact measurements, but each one of those is about 30 and maybe 40 feet in length.
Jim Lanese [00:17:39] So you just produce a scaled down rendition of that which will be produced in photographic form, or you’re not sure how the final application will be?
Natalie Lanese [00:17:53] I think that’s a good– Yeah, I think that’s a good description of it, although I haven’t figured out exactly how that will happen yet. For instance, what, you know, what size to make the original work, so that when it’s reproduced, the, you know, the scale is where I want it to be, and that the images hold up as far as their crispness and things like that. But the basic process is that I’ll make the work as I usually do, and that’s by hand painting and cutting out individual images and putting them together. But then it some point in the process. The real change for me is that it’ll be documented, and then the final exhibited work will be a printed reproduction of the actual work.
Jim Lanese [00:18:58] What other impressions do you have just your own reactions to this project, or at this time, what you foresee or experiences that will contribute to how you might approach the theme and content of your work between now and July?
Natalie Lanese [00:19:22] Yeah, it’s coming up, isn’t it? Well, you know, the first proposal that I did at Tremont presented a few challenges to me that I think really reflected in the idea that I shared with the committee, and that was one of them, was that the murals at that location were going to be pretty far above eye level, and also there was a little less pedestrian traffic there. And so we were kind of cautioned that a lot of the experience of the work might be from moving cars. The real deviation from my typical mural in those designs was that I simplified them quite a bit. Usually I have a lot of figures, like tiny details and people kind of spilling out of a landscape. And my feeling was that being so far above the viewer’s head and perhaps not being in a place where someone would stop in front of the work and look at it, I really reduced the amount of imagery and kind of solved a few of those issues, I think somewhat strongly. But a few committee members mentioned when I spoke with them that it was missing some of the things they really liked about my work. And so I explained that typically, my work is at eye level, and it confronts the viewer in a space where the viewer can really participate in it in a physical way. And so I think that might be part of the reason that they decided to move me to Ontario. The largest of the three murals will actually be at a level where people will be walking by. There will be a pedestrian path in front of it, and it will be a little closer to the ground. So that’s sort of shifted the whole way I was thinking about this project once they assigned me to that location, and I knew that that’s how a person might experience the work. I can really approach this more like I normally do with my work. So I’ve already kind of started thinking about, you know, filling, you know, a Cleveland, both historic and current landscape with, you know, actual figures from Cleveland, history people, you know, everyday, anonymous people from Cleveland now, and kind of mirroring a, you know, like a Cleveland of all time, you know, both past and present and future. So that’s. That’s about where my idea is right now. I have about a month to kind of tighten it up a little bit and, you know, visualize it a little bit more. But I’m excited to be able to approach it the way that I typically approach my work and being able to include a lot more detail and elements of the piece that can be really closely inspected by the viewer.
Jim Lanese [00:22:55] So the committee, then, notwithstanding your specific presentation for a site in Tremont, was relying a lot on your original proposal, which depicted your earlier works, and that’s what brought them to prefer the eye level viewing?
Natalie Lanese [00:23:21] That’s my guess. I haven’t actually had that conversation with them, but based on some of the questions that they asked, I also presented my work as part of my proposal when I met with them just to familiarize the group with what kinds of things I’m working on and thinking about. And so just based on some of the questions that they brought up at the end of the presentation and the discussion that we had, that’s, I think, maybe what led to them entertaining my work at another location. I also talked a little bit about my Indians fandom, and so they also joked that that might be a more appropriate location for that as well.
Jim Lanese [00:24:22] So we have a good idea of where you’re at right now with the project. Is there anything you’d like to add as we close this interview and perhaps pick up at a later date to see further progress during the upcoming project?
Natalie Lanese [00:24:40] You know, I think I’m just at this point excited to see how it begins to come together. You know, as I said right now, it’s an idea. Over the next several weeks, some physical representation of it will happen, and, I’m sorry, sort of anxious to see how that turns out. And I think it’s going to be fun to, you know, stop and reflect on the process every so often as I’m working on it and see, you know, maybe nine months from now how the idea is either consistent with what I’m telling you now or maybe how much it’s changed.
Jim Lanese [00:25:28] Well, thank you very much for your time.
Natalie Lanese [00:25:30] Thank you.
Jim Lanese [00:25:31] This will be the first of hopefully one or more follow up interviews to inspect the progress and also to watch your work evolve visually as well.
Natalie Lanese [00:25:47] Looking forward to it.
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