Transcending self-portrait: evolutions of an iterative artistic practice—An interview with Emily Mogavero

—With Chris—November 2020—

An interview with visual artist Emily Mogavero

We are illuminated rectangles. Even with limitations of Zoom interviews, I observe Emily Mogavero’s environment. Behind her, a half-hexagonal wall with broad windows opening to the outside. I see the sides of trees and houses as we catch up on what life has brought us the past couple years and the oddities of living within the pandemic. The frame brings me into intimate spaces, the insides of our home where we now spend even more time, opened momentarily to additional eyes. With a cup of coffee and gentle laughter, we are together.

Before her interview, I spend extensive time with her artistic series featured on her website. Familiar with some of the projects from our undergraduate days, I was captivated by the expanse and evolution of her work, her ability to add new dimension over time. Moreover, I could constantly feel the reverberations from her work, that even while different, are constantly in conversation with one another, or perhaps more aptly, the artist in conversation with herself.

C. M. Chady: Are there any projects that you’re currently working on or revisiting?

Emily Mogavero: This always seems to happen, I take a little break in the summer because I go outside and am less focused, but I’m working on a few different things. One of them, Places of…, is the thing I’m working on, which I started this summer and I’m doing it with a friend. It was in response to COVID and our whole situation, and hopefully we’re going to be able to set that up in her backyard for people to visit. I’m also revisiting a series that I hadn’t done since junior year– Shifting Spaces–the self-portraits in mirrors, and now I’m more interested in the space themselves so I did one recent painting of my grandma’s house before she moved. I did the painting after she moved, but I did the work from video footage which I took before she moved, and I think I’m going to start a painting of my other grandma’s house. That way of working is like the act of remembering.

I also have an idea, but I haven’t done it yet, because I haven’t gone anywhere, but post-COVID when I go places I think I want to do some more in public bathrooms because that space is very weird, it’s the public and private, and now it’s kind of scary to go to a public bathroom.

And my Aufheben series, I’m always doing. It’s sort of like a sketchbook practice, so I am always making those. And I started my watercolor, that’s new. My paintings from oil. Those started as oil paintings but those didn’t work, so then I switched to water color and started working smaller, which is starting to work. So I feel like that series is in its initial phases and I’m still working out those ideas.

CMC: Thanks for the overview. When I was looking through your site I was like, oh my gosh, there are so many different projects, which ones do I ask about or talk about?

EM: Yeah, I work iteratively, for sure. And then, I feel like I don’t spend that much time making art now, but I work pretty quickly, so I feel like I’ve touched upon all of those in 2020, which feels recent. That feels current.

CMC: I mean it is 2020. (laughs) Even though it’s been a long year.

I was really curious about the Shifting Spaces series, kind of about what you picked up on. It seems like it’s evolved a little bit from your initial visions in 2014, but it’s interesting to note that it is a maternal space, and you also want to explore your other grandmother’s (room). So I guess as a question, why your grandmothers? Why does that space feel significant to you to explore and commemorate like that?

Shifting Spaces. Grandma’s House. Oil on canvas. 28 x 30 in. 2020.

EM: That painting that exists now, my grandfather passed away in 2017. And then after that she ended up moving, and just that space that I had been going to, it’s very sentimental. And maybe it’s because she lived there longer than my grandpa, but I do think of it as my grandma’s space, but I haven’t really thought more about why besides that.

CMC: I love that. I have, I don’t want to talk about myself during your interview, but as a connective point, I’ve been really interested, like my grandparents both passed away about three years ago, and my aunt still owns my grandma’s house, and I’m really curious about re-inhabiting and reanimating the spaces that she lived in… I literally call it my grandma’s house. Even though it was both my grandparents, it’s grandma’s house. I don’t know why it gets that maternal charge, but I feel that.

EM: Yeah. I feel like when he was alive, well, when he was alive it was grandma and grandpa’s house, but I think it’s that she would cook and yeah, she…Well, they both were very close with their kids and everything.

CMC: That’s lovely though. I would love to see more of it once you keep going with the project and do your other grandmother’s house.

EM: Yeah, I guess my other grandma’s house I have more of a reason, even though both of my grandparents live upstairs now, and that house is also not going anywhere, but they redecorated so it’s different, it’s not what I grew up with. But, this house has been in her family for generations, so that’s why it feels more tied to her. I haven’t even taken video yet. I’ve done some sketches of what I want to paint, but her sunroom that has a dollhouse in it, and that’s her dollhouse, that might have been her mother’s, I don’t know, it’s really old, but there are reflections from the glass, the sunroom doors are glass, so I’m interested in the different layers of windows and looking in and looking out into the sunroom, then outside, and also into the dollhouse.

CMC: That’s really cool. You can just do so much with the perspective and the layers in that. Because even in your older iterations, they’re really interesting too, the originals, just thinking about the different layers, and I was kind of curious too about the creation of them. Because in some ways, I mean, I don’t know if you necessarily view them this way, but they kind of are self-portraits, but in a lot of ways they are sort of obscured or distorted from what you might traditionally expect from a self-portrait, so how did the decision arise to use mirrors and space in that way?

EM: That was started more with the self-portrait as a genesis. I was interested in how do you usually view yourself looking down, and I did a lot of paintings like that that I’m like very embarrassed of now. I was very embarrassed of them like a month after I made them they just didn’t work. But especially now I’m very embarrassed (laughs). But I added the mirrors and the video really to make it a good painting, to make it more interesting. And I wanted it to be a little glitchy. Those I actually worked a little differently. I printed out stills from the video and then I painted from those, so I was interested in that collage aspect of things not exactly lining up and color shifts. My more recent one I painted from the video and also from just thinking and working out the painting. But yeah, I’m still in it, but I’m less important, and I took out my self view. I thought about putting that in, but I don’t think I will, I think it’s done.

CMC: In the new ones? Yeah, when I was viewing I was trying to see, is she in the mirror?

EM: Yeah, I’m in the mirror and in the window, so I’m in it twice.

CMC: I need to look at it more closely, but I love seeing that process, or the ugh, yah, I did that, moving on, and learning and adapting and making it perhaps more dynamic or versatile or hidden in different ways, as you think about it and see what you like and don’t like about the previous project.

EM: I also, it was like really fresh. I feel like now I know more of how to start a new idea and work through it. Before I was just like, Now I’m going to make a painting! This is the painting!

CMC: What’s that process normally like for you? To think up an idea and decide yes, this is the idea that I’m going to actually spend the time and energy on? (pause) Or does it change?

EM: I don’t know. I feel like I just…I think of a lot of ideas in the shower. I’m not a big actually sketchbooker, like I do some sketches but I think a lot of it goes on in my head. Or I’ll be like, I’m interested in this, and then I’ll do it. It’s just in my head as it develops. And then I’ll try to make, I usually do some sketching, especially this most recent Shifting Spaces painting, I was also like I want to attempt a complicated painting because I usually make painting with one thing in them, and I wanted to challenge myself and work out the space. And there’s a lot of repainting, a lot gets worked out on the canvas. But then a lot of what I do is stick with ideas that I’ve been sticking with and then they evolve.

CMC: I can definitely tell. And even, I was just looking through some of your different projects, and I can feel the conversation and the resonance between them, even if they’re slightly different or you’re working with different ideas. I was thinking, especially with some of the other things that I’ve been reading or working with as far as feminist theory and different artists or writings, reclaiming a woman’s space or a woman’s position in history, but I was looking at your Artist-Hero Squish– which I love that name, that’s so cool–but I was drawn to the distortion that occurs within them. And I guess, what drew you to that particular project and this act of reclaiming or reprocessing? What was that like for you?

Woman (De Kooning, 1945–50). Oil on canvas. 28 x 23 in. 2017.

EM: So that’s another one started in school and I wanted to do, well, a teacher told me I should try to combine my painting and printmaking, and then I took that totally literally, which is fine. I feel like when I get feedback, I tend to overcorrect, or think, yes, you said this thing so I’m clinging onto it, but I think it’s the process of studying and learning, because I also majored in art history and I work at a contemporary art museum and I really like modern and contemporary painting, and so many of those, especially modern painting, are by white men. And how to combine study and learning because they’re not…like they’re good paintings. There’s a reason they’re in museums, but a lot of other artists should be in museums but most of these are good paintings, especially the ones I wanted to paint are good paintings and there’s a lot to learn from them but studying them, like in the academy, you would paint things, but then also destroying them, and I was thinking about iconoclasm and what does it mean to destroy a painting but not destroy the original printing but my quotation of the painting. And what does that mean?

CMC: Like I said, it ties into a lot of things that I’m reading, but when I was looking at them it feels kind of like this disruption or distortion of the male gaze on the female body.

Blue Eyes (Modigliani). Oil on canvas. 33 x 19 in. 2016.

EM: Yes, definitely. This is the series I wrote about in my thesis, so I did a lot of extensive writing and thinking about it, but it’s not fresh. I was quoting someone about the site of projection. It was good, and I did think a lot.

CMC: I love it. I can feel it resonate, and I don’t know, if this doesn’t resonate or if you don’t have anything to say about it it’s also totally cool, but probably for the past year or so, especially during my MFA, I’ve been reading a lot of Hélène Cixous, a French feminist, but one of her, I don’t want to say main claims, she had many, many claims, but one was basically that woman needs to write herself, write of and through her body to empower other women to do the same and to come up with this work that is of women not about women by men, which is ridiculous. But I guess, do you feel any resonance with that as a painter, as an artist? Of writing of the female experience, writing of a woman’s body through a woman’s body, does that resonate, I guess? Or do you have anything to add?

EM: Yeah, it does. The idea there are just so many things in this world, it’s overt, there’s too many things, so the fact that I’m making things, I’m like, that’s audacious. That’s, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a big deal to be like, I want to make my thing. This is worth making. My statement also, I talk about rewriting history, which is part of the Artist-Hero Squish, but also making my own histories and writing myself into history. Yes.

CMC: That resonates so much with some of the things I’ve been reading. Over the summer I read H.D., and she did a lot just taking back history, taking from different traditions and just saying, you know, this is mine now. And has Mary holding the book of the imaginary and its blank and it’s for us to write. That it’s not this, you know, foretold, patriarchal sentiment. It’s open and it’s for the women to claim, which is awesome. But I love that, I love that sentiment that my work is worth it and I’m going to put it in the world. That’s so good.

Rhythms (Aufheben). Drypoint, chine-collé, and aquatint. Twelve 1 x 13 inch prints. 2017.

CMC: I was also going to ask, just a few things to follow up with, but I was curious about the Aufheben series. It’s really interesting as a dynamic to have this ever-growing catalog of your thoughts and emotions, which is what you label it as. I was just drawn to it. Would you mind describing that process, or when you decide this needs to be in the Aufheben series?

EM: So that also goes into rewriting history. It is very much that process. I’ll just go into my spiel about it, because I’ve presented it a million times. This is also the series that gets into shows, so I’ve shown it more than anything else, so I’ve talked about it more than anything else. It started as an assignment, but then it grew, and now it’s my favorite thing. I had one zinc plate–zinc is very soft so you can draw on it–and just started adding to it. And then I would erase and I would cover up. It’s the idea of preserving my mark in the print and then destroying it by drawing over it or erasing it, but then also it never truly goes away because it is etched so deep. So it’s like rewriting, and rewriting, and it’s something now that I’ve been…Well, I started off more rigid, and was like, I’m going to keep this format, and now I’m going to change this format and do it for twenty-five prints like this. It was also school when I was more rigid, and then I’ve started adding more elements, color and collage and more plates. Now I have a bigger plate, I want to use it, but it doesn’t fit. I have a baby press. My studio is in the attic.

CMC: You have a press though? That’s amazing.

EM: Yes, I bought it. It’s great, but it can only print 10x12. It’s a little guy. But it works! It does make pretty good prints. Hopefully soon I can rent some space in a print shop and do some bigger ones. That would be great.

CMC: This is maybe a follow up or a clarification–do you usually work off of the same plate that you’re constantly reworking or do you change plates?

EM: Yeah. It’s the, so, there’s this central plate that I started with. That’s in every print. But then I have, I got another two that were that same size, and then another one that was double in size and then I cut one of them in half so I have other plates, so I mix it up. Sometimes I don’t draw all the time, it’s more like a collage process, and changing the colors, pushing and pulling, but there are more elements. I think I want to add more colors.

CMC: Do you ever feel like the process of that project filters into some of your others as a way to process and work things out, or are they are separate to you?

EM: I feel like yes and no. So in college–thesis!–I thought about Aufheben and Artist-Hero Squish as sort of counter projects, like one was about art history and one was about my history, and one was about self-destruction and self-preservation. It was like this internal and external side of the same thing. But now, I don’t know, I feel that shapes or ideas that I’m thinking about will come into it. Like once, a few of them, I was like, female forms, ba-da-da, how can I make these? Other things come into it. During the Kavanaugh hearing I had a lot of phalluses and was working out my anger and, well maybe not working out, but just expressing. During Hanukkah, I was playing with this flame and getting really red paint. So sometimes it’s conscious, but sometimes it’s not. My other work, it’s definitely I think less intuitive, for sure.

CMC: That makes sense. But it’s nice to have both as a practice, just depending on how you’re feeling or what need to be expressed.

EM: It’s also like freedom within boundaries. My other projects don’t have the same I’m working with these colors, and this size. It’s like the boundaries are in different places.

CMC: How do you feel like those kinds of restrictions help you? Or how do you feel that freedom within that space?

EM: I feel like it is freeing to not have too many choices, because if you have too many choices it’s can be difficult. It also, I mean, it would be great to make things and not care if they’re good, but resources and time are so limited that I want things that are good and I really like these, and people like them, like I’ve sold some, so the fact that I know I’m not going to like, make garbage, like it’ll turn out–even if it’s not something that I love–like, I don’t love all of them, there are some that were better than others, but knowing that I’m not going to make crap and waste my time and materials is nice. And also there’s like, even if I’m using two colors and collaging with one type of Japanese paper and this size, and that’s it, there’s infinite space within those boundaries, so it doesn’t feel limiting.

CMC: I mean, there are so many people, I guess now my reference is so much writing, so it’s a little different, but they are Oulipo in France, and they would do weird shit like don’t use anything with this letter, but it just forces you to work in different confines and be more creative because you have a limited space. I mean they’re all so different, they’re all so unique, even though they have the same grid or baseline.

I was also curious to hear a little more about the Places of…, especially in light of the pandemic, why has that felt like an important space to be exploring and how does that feel more significant, or just differently significant, right now with the state of things?

Places of… Mixed media on acetate. 2020.

EM: That’s something that has had a very long, I feel like, thread in my heart and career. It’s an idea that I keep coming back to, but I don’t feel like I’ve fully explored it. I’ve been interested in religious spaces. Back in high school, so going way back in AP Art, my concentration was paintings of my synagogue. They were baaad.

(laughs)

And then in Florence I made some light sculptures based off of the baptistry and things like that. I don’t know, this idea does not feel as flushed out as some of my other ideas. But, so I had this idea with my friend to turn her porch into a gallery, and I was like, what should I do? And I was like, oh, paintings on acetate, that could be cool.

I’m part of this Rosh Chodesh women’s circle, I don’t know, are you familiar with Rosh Chodesh.

CMC: No, I’m not, if you wouldn’t mind explaining it.

EM: Of course. It’s for the new moon, in Judaism the new month, the months are lunar, and traditionally it’s a holiday for women only, and you wouldn’t work and you would just like, have a great day. Each month has a different theme, and there’s different spiritual practices that you could do. My circle is led by my friend Naomi Azriel, who is a Kohenet, which is a Jewish priestess. She’s very cool. So just thinking about how do you make sacred spaces, it’s virtual, so I’m like in my room, so how do I make that into a sacred space? So that has been a new practice for COVID. I’ve done it every month during COVID, which is a lot of months now. Then I was also interested in the idea of different houses of worship from different religions and similarities and what happens if you simplify them. Are they different? If they are, especially when I set them up, there are domes and arches that can line up. I also was thinking about places I’ve been and places I haven’t been, so I painted some of both, used different colors, and patterns in the spaces. I also had some columns, which felt like a fun way to break up the space, like sort of a joke. But also, those are originally from temples, but I have Doric and Ionic and Corinthian columns.

CMC: You gotta have them all.

Places of… Mixed media on acetate. 2020.

EM: Art History 101 joke. (laughs).

I set up so many in my backyard, mostly to take pictures to get them on my website, but hopefully I’ll get to set it up at my friend’s porch. It’s been a process.

CMC: You could even do it, I mean, I guess you’d have to get permissions, but like in a public space, like a public park, where people can kind of walk through and view them, like an outside gallery.

EM: That would be cool. I think I would need to figure out a better way to hang them, because right now it’s like packing tape and fishing line and they were blowing everywhere, so I was just waiting until the wind stopped, then I would take the picture, and it was so loud I was worried my neighbors would complain.

CMC: They look gorgeous though. They get to look at them and appreciate them.

EM: Thanks. I’ll need to figure out how to tack down the bottoms. It would be great if they were in a park, but they’re going to blow around. Some things I’m sorting out still.

CMC: It’s nice to see it at the beginning. It’s interesting, what you mentioned about some of the different patterns or shapes and things recurring across all these different religions, that in and of itself feels very significant that there are these similar foundations and similar building blocks, not only to the architecture or to the artwork within a religion, but the religions themselves, like the all come out of similar, if not literally, the exact same tradition, they’ve just morphed to be expressed in different ways, which feels important to be reminded of.

EM: I wanted to originally want to widen the scope, besides the columns, which is random. All I painted were from Abrahamic religions.

CMC: Would you see it expanding beyond that in the future? Or sticking more with that?

EM: I think it could expand. Some of them I feel like I chose things that I liked or that I had seen or that I had learned about and remembered, so part of it is like the self-critique that comes to mind and why have I been to these places that I’ve seen churches and synagogues and mosques, not places where I’ve seen other temples and other things. Besides, I guess the columns are out of place. Well, there are columns, but I don’t know if they’re like, this is a Doric column, like I painted. That just felt like a fun thing to put in there. But also a nod to art history. Which besides, even like places I’ve been were a lot of them in Europe when I was there studying art in Florence and taking art history in Florence, I feel like a lot of my work ends up going back to my education.

CMC: That makes sense. It’s where we pull a lot of inspiration. And you’re not that far outside of undergrad, it’s been four years for you? So that makes sense, it lingers. And it’s impactful. Studying anywhere, I still hold onto all the places that I’ve traveled and studied at, so it just feels more powerful or more impactful.

I was also curious, since you mentioned it and making that space, when you are with your religious group and trying to make a sacred space in your room, what have you done to make that a sacred space for yourself?

EM: I’ve done some things. I’m not that good at it, but Naomi, the leader, she is really good. She is a sacred space builder. That’s also her business, but I don’t do a whole lot. I light a candle and I have tea, that’s pretty much it.

CMC: That’s great though!

EM: Before all this, I had gone to her house for Chodesh circles, and I also did a retreat, and she made everything beautiful­–flowers and altars and all these things.

CMC: Sometimes it’s what you have too, but it’s just as much the mindset as it is the items that you put out. It’s the intention.

EM: I’m in my bed, that feels like a sacred space.

CMC: It is! It definitely is. Sleep is sacred.

This one is maybe random, but I wanted to ask it. I don’t even know if it really has anything to do with your practice anymore, but I’m also just thinking–a lot of time with my group we’ll talk about embodiment and somatic practices and stuff like that as it relates to the creative­ as well–but you were a dancer or are a dancer still, right?

EM: Was. (laughs).

CMC: Okay, good to know. How we identify changes through life. I was curious and I guess I’ve always wanted to ask you this, but how did or did that at all relate into your creative practice as a painter? Did it ever inform you or influence you in any way or did they always feel separate?

EM: I feel they’re separate. Also, I was a dancer, I wasn’t like a dancer. You know some people…I wasn’t very good. It was never as important to me as art. I took it in high school and then in college, it was more like I took a few classes, that was fun, I did Carnival, that was fun, but nothing serious. So I would say it doesn’t really relate.

Untitled (Shifting Spaces Ballet). Oil on canvas.30 x 27. 2014.

CMC: That’s great. I was just curious because you have the one painting in a leotard in the mirror, so I figured I would ask it.

EM: I was in a ballet class that semester, and that was more like this space would be great for a painting, and that also has interesting elements. You’re in a leotard and tights, and it’s interesting to draw the body in that way. But overall I would say they are unrelated.

CMC: That’s all good. I figured I would ask. I have someone on my newsfeed who is a dancer, like a capital “D” dancer, you know what I mean, but they’re also a poet. You can feel it in their work and how they compose themselves.

Well, Emily, thank you for much for your interview and for bearing with my questions!

After the interview concluded, Emily and I talked a while longer, about what life holds for us during this uncertain times once I finished complimenting her work. I’ve always deeply admired her art–the way that despite experimenting with different themes, a conversational thread runs throughout all her pieces. As I even stated within the interview, having seen some of her projects in their genesis while we were in undergrad around 2014/2015, it is truly inspiring to see how her iterations have evolved and matured as she ruminates on all the topics that interest her most–history, art history, self-portrait, memory, and spirituality.

Emily Mogavero is a printmaker, painter, independent curator, arts marketer, educator, and community builder. Her work addresses memory and history through abstraction and chance, forming an extended self-portrait through both a spiritual and secular lens. She received her BFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis in 2016 and currently work in arts marketing. She has curated exhibitions for Post-Cibicle Gallery, Mayyim Hayyim, and Temple Ohabei Shalom and shown at Boston Center for the Arts, Italian Contemporary Art, and Suffolk University Art Gallery among others.