By Sally Lim
I met with Lena in the studio as we bonded over our mutual Juul ownership and sampled each other’s flavors. Practicing as a mixed media and interdisciplinary artist, Lena’s work is constantly moving towards the same levity and inventiveness that children put into their art. The mediums they work in span the gamut to include drawing, metalworking, puppet making, sculpting, animation, photography, video, and generally anything tactile that they can manipulate with their hands.
Generally sticking to the four credit art classes that Evergreen offers, they’ve been able to explore a variety of disciplines and refine their technique. Despite having priority registration as a senior, when they couldn’t get into any ceramics classes this year they took matters into their own hands and took a different approach to the material. Opting to work with Sculpey instead, a polymer clay meant to be used by children that can be baked and cured in a kitchen oven, they’re continuing on their own to expand their familiarity and ability with sculpting.
Last year, Lena created a puppet show that involved making felt portraits of their friends and the different stories that were important to them. This kind of collaboration is a common practice for them where they can think about real people and their personal narratives and interpret them into an art practice. Their friends will also occasionally give them drawing assignments like to draw “sad egg boy from the 1970s walks home from school” or “grumpy big pants looking at a frog.”
Working with bands to create album art or flyers for shows is another way that they bring other people into their creative practice. This also has the added bonus of publicity since the flyers are displayed in public around school and the town. Working with bands can sometimes be difficult, however, since they’ll sometimes have a specific vision in mind and reject some of the really neat ideas that Lena throws at them.
Much of what influences their art comes from channeling the inner child to bring out a sense of whimsy and playfulness. This is evident in the types of materials they choose to work with: felt, hot glue, Sculpey, colored pencils, etc. Bodies, color, and camp are the three biggest motifs of their work as these all intermingle in order to evoke a sense of levity.
As playful as their work is, art making has never been a therapeutic or calming experience for them as many other artists will describe. This is attributed to the highly critical attitude that they evaluate their work with (thought they are trying to ease up a bit.) Even as early as four years old they remember throwing away the drawings they made that they judged to be ugly. Secretly, their mother was rescuing these from the garbage all the while and formed a collection of these rejects.
That is to say, Lena has been making art their entire life and their first art class was taken when they were in kindergarten. Art has always been a central component to their family. Their parents continue to make art in their spare time just for the fun of it. Mom paints and collages. Dad makes line drawing. On family vacations they remember spending time having group art sessions.
Currently, their focus is on the fine metal work that they’re doing for their program. They are making useful and usable objects like lamps, utensils, and jewelry. For their current assignment, making a set of six utensils, they didn’t want to do the obvious—forks, spoons, knives—so instead they decided to circumvent the over-done and make a set of silly straws. These will likely be silver plated in order to make them foodsafe and extra luxurious.
After graduating this spring, they have plans to move back to Los Angeles where they will be assisting the jewelry maker Hannah Keefe in her studio. However, they aspire to be working with children, either as a nanny or teaching art workshops to kids.
Finally, they want to proffer the advice, both to themselves and to all the other kids out there, to keep making bad art.
