Rosalyn Driscoll is the newest exhibitor on Koo de Monde. Her work and her medium is very unique, nothing like we have seen before. We just had to find more about her and her work! One of our curators, Georgia, got the chance to sit down and ask Rosalyn a few questions. Her answers are very deep and it gives a whole new perspective on her work.
G: Have you always been an artist?
R: Yes, I could say I've always been an artist, even including the years around college when I studied art history and worked as curatorial assistant at the Yale University Art Gallery, where my intimate, hands-on relations with artworks fed into my future work in sculpture and the sense of touch.
Rivers of Hades Disconnection
G: How did you begin creating your pieces?
R: My first efforts were in painting, but I grew frustrated with the flat impermeability of the canvas and turned to handmade paper, which allowed me to submerge my hands in the pulp and make images from the inside. Then I began making books, which led to a growing curiosity about touch as a way to know artworks.
The body has always been central to my work, first as a subject in painting—the body as seen from the outside; then as the source of imagery in the paper works—the body as felt from the inside; then as an actor in my tactile work—the body as sensitive perceiver.
G: You focus on tactile and multi-sensory work….tell us why and what is the inspiration behind it.
R: My fascination with touch grew out of years of exploring my own bodily experience through various somatic disciplines (movement, Rolfing, meditation, etc). Much later I realized the knowledge I had acquired could be applied to the experience of art. I began to wonder: how does the body figure in the encounter with art? How could someone come to know a work of art through the body?
To begin answering these questions, I spent a year visiting art museums with a woman who had lost her sight soon after art school. Then I began to make tactile sculpture, focusing on creating pieces that people could actually touch. Over time, my understanding of touch has broadened and deepened to include visceral, emotional, proprioceptive responses evoked by what we see.
As we embrace increasingly disembodying technologies, this multi-sensory approach gains a purpose and urgency that transcends art. I want to remind people they live in bodies, which are the most profound meeting place of culture and nature.
Pandora's Box 1
G: You use an unusual variety of materials such as hide and rope: what is the process usually like?
R: I choose materials for their strong physical presence and expressive qualities. I stockpile objects and materials in the studio, and something catches my eye as a solution or an element for a piece. Materials speak to us, and to each other, in direct, powerful ways.
I began to use rawhide after working for years in obdurate materials such as steel, stone and wood. I wanted a material that could take organic forms but still support itself, and was drawn to its rough beauty and its meaning as skin. It arrives from the stockyard soft and malleable then, dries hard into the forms I give it. I have to negotiate with the natural forces within the skin as it shrinks and curls, remaining animal even as it transforms into sculpture.
River of Hades Fire
G: You have collaborated with neuroscientists and have shown your work at MIT and Brown University…fill us in!
R: From the very beginning of the tactile work, I considered what I was doing as research, since nothing was known about touch in art. I set about learning from every possible source, especially people who engage with my work, but also psychologists, engineers, neuroscientists and philosophers who are investigating touch and perception. These connections led me into worlds beyond art and enriched my perspective.
I'm also conducting another kind of research with a French philosopher who does in-depth interviews of people who engage with my sculptures, as a way to better understand the multi-sensory aesthetic experience. These interviews are incredibly rich and expressive, providing material to explore in the next exhibit, where we will conduct more interviews, which will lead to the next exhibit, and so on, in a wonderful cycle of feedback and feedforward.
Pandora's Box 12
G: Have you already thought about your next series?
R: I'm currently collaborating with a neuroscientist at Brown University to make sculpture that is also scientific experiment, which explores the dynamic relationship of sight and touch, and will include rawhide, video and EEG. We’re considering using people’s brainwaves to shape the unfolding narrative of the video.
G: You also have an audience in the UK and have just returned from Edinburgh. What did you do there and how did you develop those connections abroad?
R: My links to the UK evolved from presenting my work at a conference on touch and sculpture at the Courtauld Institute in London and simultaneously meeting through the internet a Czech film-maker studying at the Royal College of Art in London.
One thing led to another, and I'm now a member of an international collective of artists committed to making and exhibiting multi-sensory, embodied art. The collective, called Art in Touch, consists of myself, the Czech film-maker, an American ceramicist working in London, a French textile artist working in Paris and London, and an English writer living on the English coast. We created a collaborative installation, Just Under the Surface, in the Crypt Gallery in London last spring. My rawhide sculptures lay on the stone floors of the Crypt, representing the rivers of Hades, the Greek underworld.
I was awarded a month-long residency at Dartington Hall Trust in Devon to make sculptures for the installation in the Crypt. My work there was inspired by the garden at Dartington and the English attitude toward their land and trees.
My recent trip to Edinburgh was to install at the University of Edinburgh a sculpture-video piece in an exhibit called SensoryWorlds, which accompanied a conference that considered the awakening of the senses as a useful response to the environmental crisis.
River of Hades Lamentation
G: Where would you like to expand next?
R: Moving out of the classic, spare gallery space into the richly sensory atmosphere of the crypt was revelatory; half our work was done by the place itself. The addition of light and sound opened new avenues for sensory experience. The collective is now scouting in Edinburgh and Paris for unusual sites to create more such multi-sensory, collaborative installations.
Rosalyn was very gracious to give us the time to ask all of our questions. We have learned a lot about her process and how she got started. Rosalyn is such a talented artist and we are so excited to get to know her better. She has taught us to not only look at her works but to take them in as a whole sensory experience, for that we thank her!