Brianna McDonald is a Drawing Major at Texas State currently working on her Thesis and is soon to graduate. She plans on working on her MFA to begin teaching at the college level.
Laney: Can you tell me a bit about your background? Have you always been involved in art or did you find it later in life?
Brianna- I always liked doing create things, but my school didn't offer any art classes until later on. I was in 8th grade when I took my first art class and I thought, “This is fun!” and since I liked it, it was always the elective that I stuck with. My school would submit to different competitions. I’m a big nerd, so in high school I was always stressing myself out about trying to get top grades. Art class was where I felt I didn’t have to stress out, I was able to go with it. I never thought about it being my major or career that I would pursue. I changed my major around 4 times when I got here. It was a mess.
L- Does your background ever influence your art? B- Nothing specific, I don’t have a traumatic thing influencing what I create. The only thing is how I came here planning on being a biochemistry major, because it's the smart, academic thing to do with good job security. As I changed majors, art wasn’t in the question. Even in high school, as well, it was more of handling what I thought people’s expectations are and accepting that that’s not what I have to do. So, in my art I use a lot of surrealism and with most of my things I take something normal and wonder, “how can I flip it?” “how can I make it slightly different than what you’d expect?” L- Tell me how your major change went. B- I came in as a biochem major. I thought about getting a PHD or something because that’s what smart people do. Right off the bat I was in a whole bunch of science classes and I thought, “I hate this so much, this is terrible”. I changed to electronic media thinking I could do film. I did that for around a year or so, but looking at the classes, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I signed up for a semester of urban planning classes thinking, “Maybe I can go the architectural route”. I went to two days of classes and thought, “This is the most boring thing I’ve ever listened to”. I actually got into all the art foundations in a semester, thinking that this would be my minor while I figure out what to do. I was in the classes for a week and thought, “This is going to be my major. I need to do this”
L- Where do you draw most of your inspiration from? B- I draw most of it from a mixture of mass media things, like brands, and day to day, mundane, life things. I’ll be walking along and think, “The that that shadow hits the sidewalk is nice” and looking at things like, “What’s this tiny thing nobody thinks about and what if was turned around or something was added to it?” I like to focus on mundane things but also media and mixing it. L- Do you work with them together in a piece or usually a piece about something that involves the everyday? B- Typically it’s different. I’ll do paintings of a Coke bottle that’s zoomed in. For some of my thesis pieces I’ll use different patterns from real life, blending the two.
L- How would you describe your type of art? B- I like to blend surrealism and pop art themes. I like to use bright colors and graphic line work with contemporary imagery while twisting it and warping it. I did a series of watercolors that were photographs where there’s clothes, but there’s nobody in the clothes. It was group photos, but nobody was in there. What if you have people that aren’t there. A lot of weird things. Most of the time, especially for my thesis work, I want people to do a double take and say, “This is an interesting composition” but also, “Why is this pointing this way? Why are these images mashed together?” L- Is it usually 2D? Or do you anything three dimensional? B- Typically 2D. I’ve made sculptures for my 3D classes. Whenever I work sculpturally, I like to take one simple thing and repeat it. I’ve taken 50 threads and lined them out by color. I did a project where I took a thing of bubble wrap and molded paper onto the bubble wrap and repeated it a bunch. I like the repetition of one small thing. L- Would you still consider that to be in your surreal theme? B- I don’t know. I would probably put that more in the mundane type of thing. I’m taking this one small thing and repeating it or repeating this action. For example, I cut 20 bed sheets into strips and sewed them all together so that they overlapped, making this ripply type of thing. Whenever I work sculpturally it tends to have a lot of repetition, which I do like. That's why in my thesis stuff I do a lot of stippling, and I'm trying to get the dot work to mimic a scan, because I scan most of those. L- What are your plans for the future? B- I’m trying to figure that out. For a while I was opposed to getting my MFA, because I thought “What am I going to do with that?” but as I’ve done more work this semester I’ll say, “This is pretty cool.” I would love to teach at the college level. It would be great if I could be a professor. I would need to get an MFA to do that. That would be one of the bigger goals. Being able to make a career out of being creative would be a huge success for me because I never thought I would be able to do that. L- For teaching, would you be interested in staying here or going somewhere else? B- I wouldn't be opposed to staying here. I do want to go somewhere else for grad school though. It would be cool to go somewhere else for a few years and get out of Texas for a while. L- Where? Do you have any plans? B- I don’t know. I’m looking at schools but I’m thinking about taking a year off. Maybe the east coast.
L- What are your long-term goals? Would you always teach or do something else? B- Maybe. I know the majority of our professors, especially studio professors, go make a name for themselves doing a lot of work within the art world, and they have that experience to teach. That would be nice. I don’t want to be doing gallery work all the time. That's not me. I don't like the wealthy affluence side of the art world, it feels greasy to me. I don’t want to make art that is only served to a certain type of audience and only creating stuff that is acceptable to that audience and found in those types of gallery spaces.
L- Can you walk me through your process of creating a piece, your thesis pieces specifically? B- At the beginning of this semester I raided Half Price Books for different magazines, mostly National Geographic and fashion magazines, they’re good. I cut a bunch of random objects, anything that looks interesting. I don’t have a selection process, I try to find if something can sit well with something else. Most of the time it creates a setting. I cut out pieces ,making as many collages as I can, moving things around and figuring out if it fits or not. I originally made 30-40 collages. There was a ton, it was crazy. From there I look at all of them and say, “These are compositionally the best.” I scan all of them so they’re black and white, and it gives them this texture. It’s a gray-scale, dotty sort of texture, like you put it through a xerox machine. I like that texture, especially depending on what color the original collage is. Sometimes when you xerox them, the image might look good in color but it doesn’t transfer well. I’ll look at which ones transfer the best to black and white and pick out one or two and project the collage onto a piece of paper to get the big lines drawn out. I’ll go replicate the collage with stippling and trying to mimic that texture as much as possible with ink. I use ink mostly because of its saturation compared to watercolor. I got frustrated in watercolor class because I could never get dark colors, and thought, “I’m terrible at watercolor!” I started using ink and it works a lot better. I’ll stipple everything and I add color where I think would be a good focus or accent to a person or something. And that’s how I made the thesis pieces and it’s going pretty good. The first couple of pieces that I made were exactly that, I made a collage, I xeroxed it, I transferred it to a piece of paper. I’ve been experimenting more as the semester progresses, like abstracting it. I’ve been cutting more. A couple piece right now, for example, I’ll take the collage and cut it into strips and move them up and down and transfer that. It’s an abstracted, surreal scene that asks “What’s happening? What’s not?”.
L- Are there ever parts of your process that you find yourself struggling with? And if so, how do you overcome it? B- One of my biggest struggles at the moment is working abstractly, because I've never done that. All the way through high school it was me realistically drawing pictures. I’m not a huge abstract person, but my professor said, “Loosen up, do it!” To let go of that control, especially when I’m trying to mimic something that I have made already and make it in that style, is hard.
L- What is your favorite part of your process? B- I like working with ink because it’s satisfying. I can zone out and do that. Whenever I’m making the collages specifically, whenever I’m moving the parts of the piece around and think, “I can’t find it” then put one piece in and I realize that’s it.
L- What made you turn your focus to collage? B- I’ve always been curious about it but never have done it, and I do like working with a surreal-like themes in my work already. It seemed like a good way to go with my thesis. For Thesis I, it's the first time you can do anything, and I thought, “I can try making collages.” The first couple piece I made turned out pretty successful, they’re some of my favorite piece that I’ve made this far. I want to keep diving into that and see how I can change it or expand upon it.
L- Are there any magazines that are your favorite to find images from? You said that national Geographic was your favorite magazine to work with, are there any others that you love? B- National Geographic is good, I like Vogue as well because its fashion, you get a lot of weird poses. A lot of times I like to juxtapose high fashion girls and place that aren’t fashion, which is where National Geographic comes in. You get a lot of weird objects
L- Are there any subjects/themes you find yourself exploring through your work? B- Not particularly. Whenever I’m originally creating a collage, I’m mostly focusing on composition and how things work well together. Themes come out with that because when I’m putting things together things that relate to each other, subject matter wise, will look good together. In the first couple of collages and bigger piece that I've made, it's mostly anonymous women. I do a lot of not drawing heads, I don't know why, maybe it's because I don't like to draw heads. I like the anonymous feminine figure and what that means juxtaposed again this weird world. It’s a lot of body image. The biggest theme is looking at the media and looking at what it can be turned into, like the media we see everyday. How can that be turned into something else and how can you talk about things though that? That's the biggest theme For example, I have a couple I’m working where its a couple of well dressed, wealthier looking people but in the background there's this great orange hue, but it's from a forest fire. Or there's this white guy pointing at this figure that you can’t see. There’s a lot of two sidedness or how both things exist at the same time.
L- How do you go about seeking out new opportunities? B- I look into internships, especially because of graduation. I got a job working as the student curator here this semester and it’s been fun to learn how to do that. I look at anything to do with the art world, what kind of residencies could I do, what kind of MFA programs can I look at.
L- How do you balance art with other aspects of your life? B- It’s hard. When I came in as a biochemistry major and changed my major. I never told my parents that I changed my major. They do not know that I'm an art major. I don;t know when I’m going to tell them. We’ll find out. I’ll go home and won’t talk about it. But overall, all of my friends are supportive and will come hang out in the studio with me. It’s the fact that when I have a project I can’t go to Alkek and go glue paper together. It’s nice to have to have a support group that can adapt to wherever I’m going to be.
L- Were there any classes that you’ve taken here at Texas State that helped you grow as an artist? B- Yeah, all of the classes that are not my major have been good. I started out drawing and that's what I’ve done the whole time. Learning soft sculpture, learning how to paint, overcoming the fact that I can work with 3D, and I can mix oil paint. Expanding on my skill set as an artist has been helpful. I took Tarver’s Art and Politic class and it was cool because I never thought about how, as an artist, how political it can be, how your art plays into it, and what it can mean. That’s where I first came to the realization that I don't want to do gallery art that's pleasing the art world. That class was helpful for shaping what direction I want to go with art.