Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice Stone-Collins.
Hi Alice, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My grandmother, who was my first art teacher, was very much into family history. I often found myself as a kid dragged to cemeteries out in the middle of nowhere so she could do a rubbing of the headstone. She would sketch old homesteads and trace family trees. I feel that those questions of family and freedom, home and leaving, loss and change, were always on the front and center or periphery of my childhood. They are with me still. In my work. And when I pick up a brush, I can still feel the pressure of her hand curled around mine. That first motion. The first turn in the wheel. My hand. The same hand that now guides my daughters through paint and paper.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
After I had children, I lost some of my confidence as family life began to take on more of my time and focus. I think in part by the sigma of the art world and thinking that my career as an “artist” and not just an art teacher was over. It took me way longer than I want to admit to take that leap and put my work on social media and Instagram and to start reaching out to artists in the areas I lived. I was afraid that because my subject matter wasn’t as politically charged as aggressive, that it wasn’t successful. But we all need quiet. We all need reflection. And that is what my pieces strive to do now.
The one mentor from graduate school that I have continued to keep up with was also the only women professor I had. Professor Marcia Goldenstein told me in my first year to never think that any opportunity was too good for me. In my last year, she told me to never stop making work. In those years after first becoming a mother and dealing with questions of where I belonged and what was next, I never stopped making. Now, when I am frustrated or stalled, I remind myself of her words (create, create, create) and that we all have to start somewhere.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I feel that so often, we are more interested (myself included) in the next thing that we often forget about what is right in front of us. When I teach, I often talk to my students about the difference between “looking” and “seeing.” In order for us to pay attention to the world around us, we have to be willing to see everything and not mechanically go through the motions. To not just be attracted to the bright and shiny things.
Most of my subject matter is very close to home… literally things I can see waiting in the carpool line or on a run in the neighborhood. But I do like to create a mythic quality to these places by adding a disorienting sense and flavor to these compositions. Much in the same way you might feel returning to your childhood home after years away. I feel that by taking these very mundane ordinary scenes and bringing them to life I am able to ask the viewer questions of the way we engage with our environment and each other.
I once read a quote by the artist John Register who said of his western cityscapes and landscapes, “I look for offbeat beauty. I don’t know what I’m looking for until I find it…I like the patina of things that have been battered by life.” I think that is a perfect description for the connection I’m striving for in my work. Something with layers. Something that suggests a story. Multiple stories.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I am always up for collaboration with other artists and members of the community. I feel that each time I have worked with someone else to create something new it has invited me to explore new physical materials and provide another window of inspiration.
This is in part why I love teaching. I feel that it makes me a better and more active artist. My students engage in questions and artists that allow for a sense of community to evolve.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alicestonecollins.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicestonecollins/
Image Credits
All photographs by Alice Stone-Collins
