Interview with Lucia Alber

Jessica Michels: So, let’s start off with the typical first question. Can you tell me about yourself, your artistic experience, and “Leave Worry Behind”?Lucia Alber: I went to Tyler for Fibers and Materials Studies. I was actually a transfer student from PAFA. I graduated in May 2016, I stayed in college for an extra year. I was a dual major in jewelry for a minute, so I was very technical in all of the stuff I was making. And after I graduated, I did a show with a couple of interns at Vox- there were four of us and we had a group show. After that show, I took a break for a while, got really disoriented because it was right after graduating college. It’s terrible, and it took me a while to get over it too. I knew I wanted to have a studio space and share it with somebody, so I got a studio at Viking Mill in Fishtown with a classmate of mine. I guess after pulling myself out of that funk, that’s when I started working on this show. The experience that led to this show happened the winter before my graduation. It was all kind of pretty fluid. It started, the harassment and the calls, started around January and I graduated in May, so that December of the same year, December 2016 is when I started working on things.JM: Would you mind speaking more on the incident, and how this project came to fruition?LA: So this all started when I went home from Christmas break, and I had to get a taillight fixed and I had to get an oil change so I went to Jiffy Lube. And I had been going there for a while, the same one for a few years in my hometown. There was a stranger there that I didn’t recognize, and I don’t even think he was the one to work on my car. I got an oil change and left because they didn’t have the light that they needed. They were like, “Come back later” and I was like “Okay, great.” So I went back one week later. In the meantime, in that week’s span, I got a friend request from that person that I didn’t recognize. We didn’t even interact. I just remember him commenting on me when I pulled my car up. You have to roll your window down and I overheard him talking to his friend about me. That’s it. We didn’t even talk. And then when I came back in to get my taillight changed, he approached me as I was in the waiting room and he said, “I know you.” And I said, “No, you don’t. We don’t know each other.” I didn’t bring up the friend request. And he said “No, I know you. You went to this highschool, you’re from this area.” I said, “No. I didn’t go there. I mean I’m from this area.” He’s like, “I’ve seen you around the city.” It was really really weird. I left, and I think the following week or so, I was already back at school, I got a phone call from someone saying, “I love you, and I want to be with you.” I initially thought it was actually somebody that I knew, I thought it was a friend of mine. It sounded like him, he had the same kind of Philly accent, and I’m thinking, “Oh my god, this is so and so. Oh, it’s so funny that you’re calling me. Haha. Yeah me too.” Joking around with him. And then they started getting more frequent, and then they started getting creepy. You know, he said really perverse stuff. It wasn’t cute anymore, it was freaky. JM: Well I’m sure it was never cute to begin with, coming from a stranger.LA: Well it was only cute because I thought I had it figured out. I thought it was somebody that I knew. When I realized it was definitely not someone I knew, I was like, “Oh fuck.” It was bad, it was a real issue. So that started and kept going on and off. He would stop for maybe a few weeks and then he would start up again, and it was incessant. It would be like 5 calls a day. The police got involved. It was really bizarre and dramatic. And then I just change my phone number. They (the police) were finally like, “We can’t really do anything about it because he hasn’t made a physical attack.” It all ended. I changed my phone number and moved.JM: What’s done is done. And this is kind of your way of processing things?LA: Yeah, exactly. JM: It seems like you took a pretty horrifying experience and were able to create something positive out of it.LA: Yeah, It’s nice to kind of put it out and have a physical thing from it. And then be able to take this all apart and put it away. JM: How would you describe your creative process? This project specifically seems raw and personal. Do you think that your personal experiences play a big part in your body of work?LA: Definitely. I think everything stems from personal experience, or at least my views on certain things. I like to make work about issues that are directly affecting me. I guess a way to kind of talk about things through work and then I go from there. The first thing I started making were the flags that are hanging up. It was a really meditative process. I was sewing squares together. And when I was sewing the squares, that’s when I kind of thought about everything else coming together. Like getting that bench, putting the platform together, using white satin, all the random things. The details really come together as I’m thinking about it. JM: Did you have a clear end goal in mind when you first started out with sewing the squares? Did you know what you would end up with?LA: Not at all. I think the very first thing I made was the patches that are on the jacket worn in the video. And the video was the first thing I really thought about. I kept thinking about the person that was calling me, and thinking, “What the hell does he get out of this? What the hell is he doing in his spare time? Like, what is the point of all of this?” That’s when I started thinking about the shower with motor oil, and the bathtub, and just things that he would interact with, and why he would be putting me in this position. It gets convoluted and weird in your own head. When I started making those patches, I didn’t think about it being a show at all. The only thing I thought was, “Oh this could be a great video.” I could make it and be over it.JM: What have you learned about yourself through this project, or ever though your work as an artist in general?LA: I learned that I have to do it. I really hate when I can’t be in the studio, it makes me crazy. I always feel like I have to be working on something, I have to be making something, because if I’m not then I feel pretty crappy. I feel like I’m not fulfilling my purpose. Through making this show, and through working hard on art, that wasn’t even for a show, in school especially, I felt super fulfilled.JM: It’s what you need to be doing.LA: It’s what I need to be doing, it’s what I want to be doing.JM: Do you think working in multidisciplinary art is helpful for you in developing and describing the project’s thesis?LA: Its important for me just because I can get really bored with one medium. I’m really interested in design, I’m interested in fashion and interior design. As far as having an instillation and having a video and things on the walls and things on the floor, I think it drives it home a little bit more. I think a lot of my work has to deal with domesticity and furniture and textile, and that’s something we all have a familiarity with. Because most of us interact with bedding and sheets and chairs and couches and upholstery and I feel like it all kind of coming together. I think when you put it all together in one big space, it’s distracting, but maybe in a good way, because it just feels full.JM: It feels well rounded and very descriptive.LA: Yeah. I kind of don’t want to leave too much up in the air but I also don’t want to hit people over the head with anything.JM: I know that this project is part of a larger, ongoing series, “Headlights”. Can you speak more on that and how “Leave Worry Behind” fits into that project?LA: Before I started working on the show, I was writing a lot and reading a lot about car culture and the automobile industry, because the person that was harassing me worked at a Jiffy Lube and worked with cars. It was the nature of the way he spoke to me. He felt that he was allowed to do that, not even just allowed, but should do that. I kept thinking, “Well, it’s because he’s a mechanic, it’s because he work with cars, and probably does this to women all of the time.” I just kept thinking, “What a shitty place for a woman to be.” Then I kept synthesizing all of that together and thinking, “Why is it like this? Why is there so much sexism in this industry? Why do you guys hate women so much?” So I started reading about the automobile industry and their advertisements early on, and just the history of being in the 40’s and 50’s and being a housewife and not really getting to do what you want to do. So that’s why I started this zine. I had all of this really great research that I was sitting on, I was taking these really great notes. I was sitting on this well of knowledge I want to share, but I wrote it up in an essay and I’m thinking, “Who reads essays? I’m not in school anymore.” I wanted to find a way to get this out there for people to read it, and I’m like “Oh zines, people love zines.” So that’s why I started “Headlights”. There is only one issue so far, there will be four. The first one is about the history, and the why, and how the history of the automobile industry has affected so many tiny things in our daily life now. The second one I was going to kind of like introduce car fetishisms and the sexualization of women within that industry. But there’s like fetishism involved, car fetishism involved, mechanization of sex, sex toy evolution. I feel like it’s all connected. So that’s where this zine is headed.JM: The idea of art as commodity has a large presence in today’s art world. I think we are slowly moving past that, and Practice is a really great example of an alternate to the conventional operations of an art gallery. What does it mean to you as an artist to work with such a gallery, where you are introducing your work to show and to share rather than to sell?LA: I’m a nanny, and I love talking about it to the families that I work for because they always kind of say like, “Why don’t you get money from this?” And I’ve never thought about it, because I went to Tyler and a lot of my professors were members of, or had friends that were members of Vox, and they all were like, “Oh yeah, this place is great and you should keep going to it, because it’s awesome and you can do whatever you want.” That’s what’s great with Practice and these galleries. They really encourage you to be weird andcrazy. Katie Rauth and Jerry Kaba told me, “It’s fine if you drill holes in the ceiling. If you need to install that way, then install that way.” And I really like that I have a lot of freedom and there’s a great community involved with these galleries. I feel like I can experiment here, and they want me to experiment here.