R: Your work doesn't seem to have any gender specific aspects to it, appropriate for you.
L: Yeah, it started in school, I was just becoming a sexual being, I looked at both (sexes) and I found that I was attracted to one and not the other, I didn't know why. The first piece I did had three panels, the left one was a woman, the right was a man and in the middle are a sperm and an egg that had fused together. That was my exploration of being sexual, I didn't see the internal spirit as either or, I just saw it as a chemical difference. That's where it started. Then I thought about desire, and I was trying to understand why I wasn't wanting the male, and so I started to explore sexuality in its pure sense.
R: Breaking it down to a chemical level, do you have a science background?
L: I have always been interested in the sciences, I had a father who was very logical, and he instilled in me that in order to understand something you had to break it down.
R: You said that you started off creatively by doing more illustrations and your teachers said that your work wasn't "art". Tell me about that.
L: In high school the emphasis was to render, then in college they tried to push me away from that. But the way I expressed myself was by twisting objects and creating a new dialogue between symbols that didn't in reality fit together, so I created my own language still keeping the details of each image, but being surreal with my symbols and how they connected. So I created actual objects with new meaning, like a hammer represents protection.
R: A hammer represents protection?
L: It started from a painting I did of a women trapped in a box and she's holding this hammer and there were nails and she was actually hammering from the inside out, to keep out what she needed in order to keep her reality her own. People see the hammer and say, "oh you're destructive," but I see it as a tool to build and create things
R: What are some other reoccurring images?
L: The fetus, the pacifier, images of child hood, sexual images, female genitalia.
R: I see artists as very spiritual; do you think you put that in your art?
L: Defiantly, growing up with the whole ritual of being Catholic was a very beautiful experience and I like my art to be beautiful. I want to pull from the classics but then stick in my surrealism.
R: I noticed the spoon in several pieces, what does that represent?
L: I think it is about feeding, the mothering aspect.
R: Do you think you had a hard time coming out as an artist because of the difficulties you had coming out sexually?
L: Ya, I wasn't valid to my parents, to my family, and from the beginning my parents looked down on the artist in me.
R: Were there any artists that influenced you?
L: Dali, he created his own language, and Magrite he still kept the detail but threw in a derby with the naked woman.
R: Do you think that, at this point in time, we live in a world where it is safer for women to create images that are classically sensual and not have them seen as misogynistic?
L: I defiantly think so. I think men have a lot of pressure to not be emotional. Being a woman lends itself to being able to see past the mask and to see the emotion of each individual.
R: Lets talk more about the working process, when you seek motivation, ideas? Where do you go?
L: I find that the best way for me to see images is to just start with doodling, and then whatever I've been dealing with comes out, and if I see something interesting I start elaborating and it takes off from there. The day to day influences my work, but also profound images will come to my head.
R: Do you ever go places and sketch people and environments?
L: When I go to coffee shops I do that.
R: Are there any icons that show up presently that you are drawn to?
L: The most recent one is the spoon. I like it because of its simple shape, and you think of eating. I think of it as a feminine object. It became another tool.
R: Where do you see yourself going with your art? Are you evolving with more textural stuff, more mixed media?
L: In school all I did was two-dimensional art, anything 3D had to be functional. My challenge is to try to jump into the three-dimensional.
R: You see yourself doing sculpture?
L: Yes.
R: What type of sculpture attracts you? Found objects?
L: It's going to be a combination of things. I like the natural world combined with the industrial man made world.
R: Is there something you would like people to say about as time passes, like in future sight.
L: I would like them to comment on my ability to evolve. I really think people need to reinvent themselves on a daily basis, especially if they are in the public eye. I want it to be evolving into something better. I think it's important for people to say, Wow, look what she is doing now, something new. And I never want to be satisfied in my work, it keeps me going.
Let's face it, coffee house art is mostly from those slavish to the good old avant-garde of slap paint abstract expressionism or the rude mechanics of constructivist found object neo-gothics. (What?)