Associate Podcast Producer & Interviewer Michelle Ratchford

A creative response to the work of artist Marilyn Minter

My name is Michelle Ratchford. I’m in my 4th year at Michigan State University majoring in Global Studies and Chinese, and I am an Associate Interviews Producer for The Creative Process.

Marilyn Minter is deeply engaged and highly political. She recognizes her own positionality in the world, pairs it with her lived experience, and uses that to drive her art and enable change.

Themes in the forefront of a lot of Marilyn’s works are her desires for change and to see unorthodox beauty. She departs from many societal comfort zones to create art that isn’t always seen, but is honest, realistic, and straight forward.

Marilyn talks about how when she took photos of her mother who was a drug addict, she was unable to grasp what was so surprising and foreign to others about these photos of her mom. Along the same vein, she mentioned the concept of “high end addiction”, another concept that confuses the audience, who were more than likely socially trained to associate drugs with negatives. She has also created paintings of naked women with generous amounts of visible body hair.

These are just a few of the many examples of art that she has created that to her, are completely normalized but are outside of our societal comfort zone.

One part that stuck out for me was when she mentioned how she felt she had to create and make art because that’s the only thing she is able to do.

Marilyn had an almost visceral need to make art, regardless of whether people liked what she was doing or not. As a student, I felt a wave of reassurance wash over me when she mentioned that. I originally was a Genomics and Molecular Genetics major, and while I found it interesting I was absolutely miserable. I knew that I had to change my major, so I switched to Global Studies, and did that with another major in Chinese, and minors in bioethics, religious studies, and Arabic. These changes made sense to me and I understood that this is what I had to do to be happy and feel like what I was doing was meaningful and purposeful enough to sustain myself now and in the future. Unfortunately, its taken quite some time to have my immediate family understand and support me. Similar to Marilyn, I knew I would always have a voice, but for me, its manifesting in ways outside of art. After graduation, I plan to engage in nonprofit work and eventually get a PhD so that I can teach.

Associate Podcast Producer & Interviewer · UCLA · Ayuni Kelton

Currently, I attend UCLA for Psychology and Gender Studies. I am a Native American from Oregon and am a member of the American Indian Student Association, Bruin Synaptogenesis, and the Archery Club. This year I’m also a contributing writer for The Native Bruin which is UCLA’s ethnic newspaper. We publish once a month and discuss hot topics, resources for minorities at school and also some fun prices that the normal newspaper won’t publish. We like to push the rules. This year, I’m writing, helping run the social media, celebrating strong Native leaders and honoring our people as part of Native American Heritage Month. I also just applied for a large research scholarship program that would help me design and execute a town research project. Over the next 2 years, I will attend graduate school/research seminars and present my work at undergraduate research meetings. In the evening, I volunteer with Bruin Corps and American Indian recruitment where we tutor underserved schools in the community. I love to give back to the youth to encourage them to attend college. As a part of The Creative Process, I am engaging with intellectuals who are pushing boundaries and conducting exciting research. I’m my own field, I am fascinated by interpersonal communication in intimate relationships. Gender biases and aggression between the sexes really sparks my interest. I am looking forward to the opportunity of interviewing and learning from great minds.

Writer, Artist & Associate Podcast Producer Sorella Andersen

I am Sorella Andersen, a writer and mixed-media artist based in Florida, a recent graduate of Eckerd College, and Associate Interviews Producer for The Creative Process.

As an interdisciplinary creator, myself, I am interested in work that resists categorization, or redefines it. I recently anchored the interview with Itamar Kubovy, Executive Director of Pilobolus Dance Company. When he says that he thinks of Pilobolus’ work as “theater, or sculpture, [the creation of] icons,” or even “movement as the manifestation of thought,” he grasps at an essentially elusive nature -- a form defined in relation to more recognizable forms, but not quite centered in any of them, always shifting and, he says, “creating its own rules” as part of the collaborative process.

I am interested in work that must be understood on its own terms, which seems to call attention to its indefinability. In my thesis exhibition at Eckerd College, titled “The Collection,” I explored the book as aesthetic object, and the process of creation as one that exists in collaboration between artist and audience. I hoped to illuminate, with my work, the dualities brought to mind when experiencing a book as, for example, both Aesthetic & Functional, Luxury & Disposable, as a Complete work left Incomplete without an audience, as something Privately experienced but (often) widely available, and as an experience Of the body (in its tangibility) and Of the mind and imagination.

Part of the intriguing nature of Pilobolus’ work is, I think, in similar dualities. In this interview, Kubovy speaks to the, quote, “central tension” between the individual voice and the group-as-author. I find Kubovy’s wording here interesting--when he speaks of dance, what one might think of as a purely visual art form, Kubovy introduces concepts of authorship and language. This is not a language of, as he says, “an agreed upon set of conventions,” but rather of the spaces between individual perspectives - a language of abandoning the known and conventional to arrive at new “rules.” This is “giving up” the self, in two senses: to contribute, to “give,” one’s voice and experience, but also to surrender to the language of the group. The audience, too, engages with the language of the dance -- even sometimes as overtly as when Pilobolus dancers form letters and words with their bodies, physically embodying the abstract.

Their words have allowed me, as I hope they will for you, to consider not only the diverse stories to be told in life, but also to embrace the various possible methods of telling.

Sorella Lark is a 2018 graduate of Eckerd College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing and Visual Art. Her written work has been published by Prime Number Magazine, Z Publishing, and Eckerd Review.

Sorella's primary works of visual art are in collage, mixed media, and printmaking, the former being the focus of her Ford Apprentice Scholars Program study at Eckerd. Her senior show, The Collection, took place in April 2018.

Self-Portrait; selected artworks from The Collection, Sorella’s senior thesis exhibition; and monotypes created during her Ford Apprentice Scholars Program