Interview in Mesa Republic

My friends out in Mesa were kind enough to bring me over the actual Mesa Republic with my first interview as a Phoenix artist.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure. Click to view the article.



From the Article:

Every Saturday MACFest, Mesa Arts and Culture Festival, a community-owned "Made by Me: quality arts and crafts festival features artist exhibition spaces on Main and Center Streets in downtown Mesa. This shopping opportunity is free to the public, and at each week's event a MACFest Blue Ribbon Winner is presented.

"Exhibitors create and sell wonderful handmade art and each has a story to tell. I am enticed to ask the winners a few questions. This is an example interview from one of these fine artists" said MACFest Volunteer Committee Member, Denise A. CUrrier.

For this issue of the Downtown Focus paper, Denise profiled Sienna Morris. The artist and her husband moved to Phoenix after two and a half years in Southern China. Sienna uses pen and pencil in her "Perpetual Motion"(Numberism) series and is also a painter and a designer.

When did you start your art work or creative process?

I started this series about five months ago during a very difficul time. I've been painting and drawing for as long as I remember. My family are all artists in one form or another, so I was supported from early on to pursue art.

Do you have an actual art studio within your home and/or location in which you create?

I don't! I had a great home studio when I was living in China, and everything was either tile or stone in the house, so I could splash paint around without having to worry about it. Now that I'm back in the world of carpet and wood, I have to be careful again. Fortunately, I'm mostly working in pencil and pen now.

What is it that makes you aspire to create your work?

The focus of this series, Perpetual Motion, is time and the idea of living in the moment, being that there's really ntohing else. That's not easy for me. I'm constantly in the future, planning or worrying abou it, or in the past, regretting or daydreaming about it. Maybe I'm trying to impart wisdom, but I'm trying to get it through my head too.

What is your greatest art accomplishment?

This series, hands down. It's the frirst important thing I've done as an artist. This is the first time I feel that my work is speaking for others and not just my personal battles.

Sienna's statment about her artwork:

We're constantly moving in one of four directions. Even if we choose to do nothing at all, we are still moving through time. Every frame, there is a new "you", fully formed in the present, built on our past and hoping for the future, but only exitsting now.

---------------***************---------------***************---------------

So, how do you think I handled my first interview? I'm me, and I see me and everything I do in a weird light, so of course I've cut it to pieces already, but I'm still excited to see this in the paper.