Where are you from originally?
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
How did you find out about Anderson Ranch Arts Center?
I found out about Anderson Ranch while an undergrad at The Rhode Island School of Design.
What is your favorite part about Anderson Ranch so far?
The time, the amount of space, the facilities, all things that are hard to have while supporting yourself as a young artist fresh out of school.
What are you working on during your residency?
I’m working on a series of narrative lithographs.
How would you describe your artistic practice?
Messy, political, perhaps woefully introspective.
What inspires you to create art?
I’ve always been drawing painting habitually, making feels often like compulsory for me rather than a decision, though as to what makes me want to make is often how political and personal intersect for me. I feel gratified when my work can substitute for communication that feels most difficult, but the most urgent. For me personally this delves into contemporary feminist theory, sex, and body politics, and how mental health and identity form these kind of muddy intersections with those issues. For example, how to digest misogyny and objectification when your own judgment, logic, and overall mental health are compromised? Grappling with these two uncontrolled parts of your identity, for me, create the feeling of occupying a sort of limbo where you feel not quite resigned to your body or your mind because both are threatened, in some way. I feel like working out those questions through images and patterns that, for me, serve as a more effective way to express abstract ideas that might otherwise be hard to empathize with when I only have words to work with.
How do you spend your time when not working in the studio?
I feel very much studio-bound here for the most part. Although, I have been getting to run on some of the hiking trails here which all have incredible views of the mountains.
How can we find you on social media and the web?
https://www.instagram.com/carolineraer/
