Julie A McConnell answers FAD Questions.

1 When did you start to make art?

I started making mixed media collage and assemblage at 14 or so. I loved precision scissors.

I took a photography class every year throughout high school. Eventually I would apply a collage aesthetic to my photographic work.

2 How did you evolve into a professional artist?

Evolving into a "professional" artist remains a heated annual discussion between my tax accountant and me. I've felt the most "professional" when I was a teacher of photography.

But, if professional also implies a person's committed, passionate life work, then I'm lucky I discovered in the visual a means to express all kinds of desires, secrets and ideas.

3 What drove you to make art as a professional vocation?

I think the visual was the only language I felt confident communicating in early on.

4 Explain your inspiration?

"Problems" become an inspiration. For example – the human head – big problem. I've been photographing it for 7 or 8 years now. In a sense I'm stuck in the nightmare the human head is adept at manifesting in real life but I keep chipping away at "the problem" in different ways, breaking rules along the way.

5 In what way does your inspiration transform into ideas?

Given that "art" is a vehicle for "ideas": I transform problems into art via obsessive depressive thinking, the hoarding of newspapers and news clippings followed by the sketching out of ideas, eventually trying it out materially/practically which generally falls short of my original vision. Cycle this pattern a few times and eventually I'm on to something tangible and seemingly significant.

6. From Ideas to production of art – how? And why?

I seem to keep returning conceptually and formally to the frame of the photograph – to what gets contained within it and how to simultaneously disrupt its geometric 2-dimensionality.

7. Could your ideas be portrayed in any other medium? If so which?

Sure – lots of other mediums but I’m only skilled at one or two.

8. Which artists would you most like to blatantly rip off?

None – what would be the fun in that? If the question were, "who are my favorite artists", I'd have to say writers (Nancy Miller, Bell Hooks, playwright Wallace Shawn… an endless list of inspiring word artists.)

9. Why is your art made?

I’m trying to say something (by using / exhibiting parts of myself) while still remaining hidden.

10 What does being an artist mean to you?

Being an artist means you "make things" to make sense of and see other things.

And in the process you keep pushing the boundaries of the form your making in response.

11 Are you happy with your reasons for making art?

i.e Are there any trade offs that make life hard?

Not at all happy – visual art is an incredibly frustrating, lonely, alienating endeavor which requires fierce countering with small intimate islands of artist cohorts/ communities. Euphoric, fun moments exist too but I'm not sure that's the main ingredient that keeps me at it.

12 When does your art become successful?

If my work challenges me to take it further – then I've been successful.

If it exposes something about myself that I didn't necessarily know then I also feel it has succeeded.

13. What is art?

A crafted object that educates and offers new views or ways of thinking.

14 How do you start the process of making work?

As I mentioned art making is frequently created in response to something negative but sometimes the process begins blissfully lying on a beach warmed by the sun musing on the overlapping elements of water and sand.

15. Who prices your work? And how is the price decided upon?

Different factors that go into pricing work. If I'm unsure I will ask others in commercial fine art fields for input.

16 What is your next; move,project,show etc?

Delighted to be part of the group show, Neither Muscles, Nor Secretions

(www.nimusculosnisecreciones.com) in Madrid, Spain this May.

I'm eager to continue exploring cutting shapes out of my photographs, using lighting and further complicating their installed arrangement.

I'd also like to continue with some video filming that narrates strategies for soothing my internal desperation when reading news articles of animal and environmental collapse caused by human behaviors and lifestyle choices.

17 What are the pros and cons of the art market?

Though my work is generally well liked and found to be "interesting", it has not been financially productive within the "art market".

18 Which pieces would you like to be remembered for?

Self portrait, Greece, 1988. The back of my head resting against the edge of a huge flat rock, my hair trailing down its center cleft. All of my work that is about the question…. well, Shakespeare said it rather famously, "To be or not to be…"

This is both a personal question and 21st Century human question.

19 Any routine in making your artwork? If so what?

None that I've ever stuck to.

20. What has been the biggest break in your career?

A friend introduced me to the late Bill Bartman (Art Resources Transfer, Inc.), whose enthusiasm and generosity toward artists gave me a space to exhibit my work for four years. I'd also have to mention my having twice taken the late Arlene Raven's writing workshop for artists. 10 years later I still meet with the same artists every month practicing her invaluable techniques for crafting words around our visual productions.

21. Who has been the biggest influence on you?

I've been most influenced by writers (feminist theorists and

philosophers) and

most recently Animal Rights theorists.

22 How many artworks have you given away and to whom?

I've gifted half dozen or so photographs to family and best friends. I always suspected it meant more to me than to them which should never apply when gift giving. (The exception to this is when the family/friend was the model).

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