Olivia Armstrong Interviewing Tia Daubas on her history with art, her art process, and her connections made throughout the years to art as well as her work for her thesis. Tia Daubas’s webpage: https://tiakdaubas.weebly.com
OA: Okay so tell me some background on your art life or your art and life in general? Well, what's your experience with art what made you think you wanted to go into it?
TD: I guess from a young age I was always interested in art and always sort of creating art. Whenever I would go to visit my dad for Christmas or summer vacation he would give us a sort of impromptu art course with videos on art and documentaries teaching us about perspective and the rule of thirds. I always loved it as I was always drawing and doodling. I was drawn to it and this carried on throughout High School about then I reached an age that I didn't think I was good enough. Like, what is an artist? I just like to do stuff for fun and I was in the yearbook and that was cool. I actually initially came to Texas State to do international relations as my major, and I had plans for working for the UN and being in government, and then kind of realized that wasn't me at all. I don't really know what made me just switch to art photography. I'd taken art history in a class in this building (a mandatory fundamental in art history) the teacher was so lively and fun. I love art history and was like God I want to do this every da. I don’t really have the skills to draw or paint or anything like that. Like sculpture what is that? I don't really have hands that can do that, but I have an eye and the concept of spatial manipulation. My dad always told me you have an eye for composition. I've always liked photography even in high school even though I was super amateur in high school, and I didn’t even have a DSLR. I created just awful and overexposed bogus pictures. I just said whatever and went for it.
OA: What is your strongest memory from your childhood?Anything it can be about anything you want.
TD: Okay well okay something to do with art. Well, I don't know if it's cool but it involves art. I lived in France briefly before coming to Texas for about 6 months. I was about 13 and my dad and some family friends and I drove all the way to this place called The Cathedral of Images; it was like this sort of abandoned chateau with cave like buildings it was gorgeous. I guess they have exhibition's every few months or few weeks. I'm not entirely sure, but the exhibition they had up was about Picasso. So they just had Picasso's images everywhere like projected onto these giant Chateau walls and that way that it was a maze. You're in the sort of dark maze like structure, so a maze of Picasso, and it was gorgeous. I just remember walking around and then leaving the exhibition. I just saw the nature outside and I had seen the resemblance between the landscapes Picasso was painting in comparison to the actual French countryside, but I don't know I thought that was really incredible.
OA: Do you have a favorite work of art? and if so why? It could be of any era or any time period. TD: If I've got one, it's probably it's saved my photos right? Something that I could look at every day and not get bored.
OA: I myself don’t have a set favorite work, but I have a favorite style which is usually realism. So pretty much any era that has that as its main focus is my favorite
TD: I was about to say something similar I always return to Caravaggio. Like his use of Tenebrism just gets me going and like his subject matter not that it's not interesting and like it's very real and biblical at times it's just his use of color and how he paints people.
OA: I compared these two pieces awhile back of Judith slaying Holofernes one by Caravaggio the other one by Artemisia Gentileschi. They're both their own different take on the story, but both are also very similar in their execution.
OA: Do you research your subject before you take your photos or are these kind of adlib things whenever you have a camera?
TD: I feel like I ad-lib a lot there's some cases where research is needed or comes in handy like for my thesis and particularly my thesis. I kind of wanted to have a lot of historical context influencing and enticing me so that I could kind of expand my horizons. So that in my professional portfolio class there a lot of people talking about their process; drawing majors and painters and they're like “oh yeah like I said something in my head and I can just put it down on the canvas or paper” “I try to translate it onto canvas or paper and I'm like well” as photographers’ kind of have to take images of what we find. It's like I kind of go out and I ad-lib things I shoot what I see that interests me, and usually when I come home and look at all my prints, or all of my film, or digital scans, or whatever I make connections between things that I wasn't thinking about during shooting. I start to build a relationship upon that, so yeah most often than not I'm ad-libbing, and something I didn't expect to see comes out although I have this like insane obsession with like lost shopping carts
OA: Really?
TD: Yeah
OA: That’s actually really cool
TD: I haven't really photographed many except for like on my phone while I’m in my car I take a quick photo. I really want to go to a city and just spend the day walking it mapping how I walk it and just photographing these as they just fascinate me. That's like one idea that I have, but more often than not I'm just ad-libbing stuff and connecting the dots later
OA: do you by chance know why you're drawn to shopping carts? I found that really interesting
TD: Thank you, I’m like it's so boring
OA: Well they're all over the place, you see them everywhere especially here in San Marcos
TD: I don't know there's just something about them, particularly empty shopping carts; you sometimes see the ones that are full of people’s stuff that's one thing, but empty shopping carts. It’s like how did they get there? Why was it left here? Why is there a group of them? Sometimes there's like one that was knocked over, and It’s kind of sad and lonely. I've seen some like in a ditch I'm just like what? It starts to get my brain kind of moving in that direction like how did you get here? Why is it here? What does it mean that it's here? Do other countries have things like this? Do they have a similar problem like this? I don't remember seeing this in France, but maybe they were I just didn't see them. Was I just not paying attention to it? Makes me start to think about consumerism, and like living out of a shopping cart. Like maybe being a kid thinking like ‘I'm going to steal this shopping cart.” Also structurally they're beautiful especially in the right light, just like the lines they make with metal. I don't know I'm just in love with them I have no idea why.
OA: Do you prefer the all metal ones over the plastic ones when you are looking at them?I ask because I work at Office Depot and ours are plastic so I see them everywhere.
TD: Yeah definitely, I don't think I've ever really seen a full plastic one. I’ve never really seen any plastic ones out in the wild maybe a few.
OA: Do you often challenge yourself when creating your work?
TD: Not as much as I would like to probably. I'm taking an art education class, and they're always talking about setting boundaries for yourself. I found that I don't do that as much as I should. I mean I'm trying to think in terms of my last project. I guess I do as I never want it to be too easy for the viewer or for myself. So like while I was making my book for my thesis I kind of kept telling all these people like I'm going to write some sort of essay or a poem to go along with the images. So it's kind of easier to digest, and then I sequenced everything and then thought I don't really think it needs it. Some of the images are really out there and cerebral it might not make sense to the average viewer, but it makes sense to me. I think that I like to have people work through things mentally, and I see that I also never like to have things super obvious.
OA: How does your practice reflect your past experiences?
TD: My The Space Betweenproject that I'm working on right now. It's super personal as it's all about this feeling of displacement that comes from moving around so much as a kid, and not really having a big family. I’m like what is a family reunion? I have like one cousin that's it. This project was very therapeutic for me to do, and it was dredging up a lot stuff made me very emotional. I did a performance piece last semester in expanded media that has to do a lot with sexual assault, and how women are spoken to based upon like millions of ways that men have spoken to me, or of me. I guess it's been very cathartic. I have an idea of this dreamland of images that I create. Kind of like an eternal search for a sense of belonging, and looking at the world through other lenses to build this place that I want to be in.
OA: Do you have a goal in the art world?
TD: I guess it just kind of networking is the biggest thing. I kind of would hate to be like “I want to be famous” even though I have this weird desire for fame it probably comes from something else. I'm not really in it to make money obviously because I'm an art student. Like networking and meeting other artists. I kind of want to be in this lifestyle of constant creating and just like expanding my knowledge and skill. Especially if it allows me to travel that's even better. I never really have been interested in having my own business and do portraiture and taking wedding photos or graduation photos. I want to push the limits of what I can do with photography. (1873 words)