Interview: Stacie Maree Willoughby

What is your occupation?

Artist, Poster Maker, Book & Record Buyer

What led you to your art form?

I like to draw so I found a niche that worked for me.

What mediums do you use for your posters?

I use whatever feels right at the time...a lot of pen & ink, various markers, watercolor, colored pencil, sometimes collage, and I've even used charcoal and acrylic paint from time to time.

What’s your general creative process?

I get the information (words that need to be included, the tone of the event, etc) and then I start drawing, and then, eventually, I finish. That's it!

All images in this interview are used by courtesy of Stacie Willoughby and are owned by her and (((folkyeah))).

To what extent does your knowledge of the band influence the art? Do you also take a strong cue from the words? Do you consider the aesthetic that the band itself projects?

I work with my knowledge of the band, the venue, the overall theme of the event, to the extent that it is helpful in the direction I already felt like taking. I don't really take a strong cue from the words unless it's funny somehow. I do consider the aesthetic, but 'consider' is the key word. I'm kind of spoiled in the sense that I only do this because I get to do whatever I want, and that's really the only way the picture will be a success anyway.

How would you characterize the relationship between text and image in your art?

Text IS image. Text is a picture, a form, in itself. We are just so trained to read those images as symbols for other things that we tend to look past it, but it can be really interesting to have certain forms to work with which are abstract but can be skewed and made to fit and match the rest of the picture.

Do you think a drawing can overcome the meaning of the text? Even though text is image, if you were to use the word "butterfly," and drew flocks of birds streaming from that word... will the mind connect their association and try to make sense of the whole image? Will it just be confusing? Can we take the intended meaning out, and re-define it by its proximity to other images?

Well, first of all when I was talking about that, I didn't mean that the meaning of the word was the image. I meant the physical shape of the letter itself was the image, for example the letter A, in and of itself, as an image, without the meaning of that letter, and so on. It's like Duchamp and "This is not a pipe", sort of. The shape of the thing is what you pay attention to, not the meaning behind the shape of the thing.

You have to train yourself not to immediately assume something about the shape, and thereafter you can manipulate it in new ways. This is especially useful with the alphabet, because if you are going to make pictures with words in them, the words will ruin the overall effect if you are not able to use them as any other shape, for your own amusement, to the benefit of the overall composition. That's why I've never liked posters with typed words over them; to me they become mere advertisements, with a little picture included, rather than an entire picture with all its parts intact. This is what is so great about hand drawn posters by Mucha and Toulouse Lautrec and all of them, they really knew how to use text.

Secondly, I happen to have this thing called synaesthesia, which is a condition that causes the senses to overlap, and in my case, a fairly common and low-level form, letters all have very distinct colors that are part of their very essence, so if I am looking at text in black, in the back of my mind every letter still possesses its own hue, and this is true if I just hear words as well. The reason I bring it up is because of your example of the birds and the word "butterfly"...I think it's important to develop an ability to see things in their physical form, with as little meaning as possible, in order to be able to recreate anything even remotely new.

This is why I love Escher, and optical illusions, and even abstract art. I think it's important to be able to see something in front of you and not immediately associate it with everything else like it. Association between things is wonderful, really, but if you foster the obvious, you will find nothing new...you will just be carried along unconsciously down the same stream to all the same conclusions.

Last but not least--I think that having words in your composition really takes the pressure off the meaning of the piece, by which I mean people do not need to worry so much about why they are looking at it, what the "point" of it is....it's a sort of espionage... this, while also lending a lot more meaning to the words themselves and what they stand for, or at the very least causing some kind of growth of possibility in the minds of those who see the juxtaposition. In short, the combination causes excitement, confusion, some kind of energy to be emitted. I can think of no better outcome from showing art.

Your art has a special integrity in being hand-made. What lead to that decision?

I like to do things with my hands! It's so much more fulfilling for me, more in-the-world, than looking at a computer screen. Things like printmaking and letterpress are also interesting to me, but personally I really like to manipulate images with my hands alone, pencil to paper, and drawing text allows me to treat it as imagery and to maneuver it however I need. I also have a real love of the design from the days when everyone hand-made their signs and advertisements. In this day and age, it really stands out, in my opinion, which kind of all goes back to the idea that taking the extra time in any act is really worth it. It's one thing to have certain processes made faster and more convenient, but when that starts taking over the actual making of art, it's kind of missing the point. Why should I spend LESS time doing something I enjoy? I'm sure some people can do wonderful things on the computer, but I personally can't feel it. It's not art to me. And with posters, why would I want to go to an event where the poster was sort of shat out in five minutes? That makes me feel like the entire event is going to be like that. Now, it might NOT be, but if people don't put their all into every aspect of the event, then that's minus some excitement points on my part.

I'm not saying that people who make posters on computers are the ones who do it in five minutes, I can only imagine that's extremely time consuming...I was actually referring to scribbled stuff in that particular case...

In the hand-made process, is there something of magical realism in it, doing it by hand imbues it with energy and life?

That is very interesting. Some would argue that a computer is just another form of tool, no different than a pen, but I feel that anything with a screen diminishes the real somehow, as though it were one further step removed. I certainly can't explain it very well, but I feel like the skill you use on a computer is limited--there are keys, and a mouse, and some people have those drawing pads or whatever they are, but the skills you learn by hand with the different implements are endless.

Is it not true that the very purpose of a computer is to make things easier for us somehow, to allow us to do many more things faster than we could without them? And that is so much my point, that every minute spent in the doing of something that takes many of them is fully necessary to the spiritual experience of creation. When I lose time in front of a computer, I feel like I have been drugged. When I lose time in a drawing, I feel like I have been meditating. I have respect for the skills of people who make things on a computer, but I just haven't so far found what they make to be remotely intriguing as art, not do I particularly wish to trade in my methods for theirs. It's an issue of personal taste, of course, but I feel pretty strongly that it's more than that too. I guess not everyone who makes a sign or an advertisement is trying to create something timeless and engaging, but why the hell not? Why spend time on something so disposable when you could spend that same time doing something more? If we live in capitalism, and the idea is to make money, can there not be more to the experience as well? Can we not make money while making the most of our existence here together? To do any less is obscene.

Of course, bottom line is I'm all for people doing whatever it is that brings them to a point of feeling alive, and who am I to judge?

What feels weird to you about overly-polished computer-generated art? Is it a visceral reaction, like finding it cold and dead in a way?

It is a visceral reaction, and one I really find difficult to explain. It definitely leaves me cold. You know when you look at a painting in a museum and you can see the strokes? And while you stand there you know you are standing where the artist stood, not on the same ground but in the same space in front of the painting, and you can imagine holding the brush, and you are transported suddenly across time to that day when that stroke was laid down? It is amazing. I was completely astounded to find that out, when I first went to a museum and really paid attention...when you first learn about things, you think that some knowledge passed on is the same as experience, but it isn't at all. Anyway, the same is true when I come across any art or any creation, a garden even, a building, where I can feel that feeling.

There is so much to the act of making and creating, the idea of putting your whole self into it, and it's not pretentious at all, it's just--it is the silent thing that puts you in contact with the life source, and stops time. It really just pulls you right down to the center of things. It is meditation, and prayer, and the knowledge of the body as well as the mind, in an act of unity. There is a lot that we are losing by trying to speed everything up and get more and more crap done faster and faster with less and less effort.

So if I can't feel all that from art, it isn't art to me, and if I had my way everything around me would feel that way, art or not. Of course, everything someone makes in order to communicate something of his or her essence and experience to others is art to me. That's pretty much the definition. When you are told what to communicate, it isn't really art anymore. That being said, I don't even always make art. But I strive to do so.

Aside from client-based work, what does your art that you make independently tend to cover in content? What imagery and issues speak to you?

All my art is made independently, because I don't take direction in my imagery from my clients, or almost never. If I do, it's because it's something I would draw anyway, but even that is rare, because I don't want to have to think about what the finished product will be. That's not entirely up to just my conscious mind, you know? It just comes how it comes.

As a professional, how did you bridge the gap between being an artist who wasn't making money to an artist working with (((folkYEAH!)))?

I just did what I wanted to be doing and eventually I was asked to do it professionally.

What books do you like buying? What records? Any favorite genres, authors, and musicians?

I become fascinated with different things as they come into my path, with no particular pattern. It's like floating down a giant river with endless tributaries.

It's a huge part of my daily life, reading and listening and finding out. I kind of blank out when asked these sorts of questions.

I did just finish reading some Joseph Campbell and Carl Sagan and now I'm going to read Bataille's "Erotism" because when I was hiking the other day I had this incredible experience
where a tree branch that felt like a skeleton claw sort of ran through my hair while I was really thinking hard and all these ideas I'd had about death and sex sort of congealed, and then that book crossed my path so here we are. I've going through a pretty heavy classical music and opera phase, mostly the really dark stuff...it's not nearly all I listen to but it's definitely holding my attention most strongly at the moment. That and the most confessional ghost-causing musical tales I've ever found, which are by The Broads.

What is your best networking advice for someone shit scared with no visible social skill?

I really dislike networking as its own goal. As long as you are thinking about what you can get out of others, you aren't going to get shit, and rightly so. That being said, no matter what you are doing with your life, it is good to be open to the opportunities that are presented by being around other people, having conversations with them, finding mutual interests, and then following up on that. Find what you have to offer others and then offer it to them. There's nothing to be afraid of, and if you're inexplicably afraid, you just have to do it anyway, or else waste away.

I like this idea that your art is commemorative. It is about making a moment in time special, because posters become valuable if preserved, and for years to come they will travel the world and have meaning for so many people, even people who WEREN'T there. Do you feel very connected to a mission of honoring a moment by making a poster?

Only beforehand! I love the idea of causing people's energy to rise in accordance with an event so that when the time rolls around, they have that much going for them no matter what. It's hype for a good cause rather than empty hype... it's contagious, like "Oh well this thing could turn out to be amazing, look how much effort everyone put in! I better be sure to be ready for anything!" Every time I've had an amazing experience with others in a setting like a concert or a party, it's always because the people are in the right frame of mind for it to happen. In times like these, sometimes it's hard enough for people to show up at all, let alone be able to show up ready to have fun and follow where the energy takes them. I want to push that likelihood as much as I possibly can.

As for things being collectible and all that, isn't it true that a thing is much more collectible when the event was a success? Like there was so much energy that even more than just the idea of the good time that was had is still in the air? I think nostalgia is generally not so great a thing, except maybe when some hope is raised that energy can be found again, when each new generation comes into its own and discovers that it can make things happen, remake the world in its image. Or even better, when the same generation can find that out about itself through each phase of their lives. That's how I felt when I saw the old psychedelic rock posters, so, great if that's how people feel about these...but not as relics, you know? Only as magically imbibed instruments of living large.

What are the next five opportunities for people to see your work (online or otherwise)?

I have a new line of t-shirts coming out for Vanishing Elephant, an Australian menswear company, and I have a show in October at Candystore Collective in San Francisco, and my new website is nearing completion; there are a couple of poster shows and art shows in the works that aren't set in stone yet; and I'm working on some covers for a new 7" label that's coming out of Oakland soon...

(Also, check her out on Facebook: Notes from Below -- Posters by Stacie Willoughby. Please note, you must be a Facebook member to access the content.)

When should we check back in on you?

Whenever the mood compels you!