my niece and my nephew. My older sister is fourteen years older than me, so her daughter is ten years younger than me and her son thirteen years. We’ve always had a strong connection. They are both artists as well. When I left Oregon the three of us drove across country together. Whenever we get together we just really like to play with costumes, photos. It helps us to stir it up and be playful and not quite so reverent about art.
22: So after Oregon you moved to Atlanta? RL: My brother at the time had this house in the mountains in North Carolina. I was leaving Oregon
and I thought I would just go drop my stuff off in Atlanta at my brother’s house and go up to the woods, explore the country and figure out a place to move. My brothers house just ended up being so isolated and the town was not right for me. Alec and Lucy at the time were living in Atlanta and it ended up being the right time and place. As soon as I moved there Alec helped me make a website, and get all my artwork online. Which was huge. We spent an entire year going through twenty years of my work. It became a year of digesting and getting work into shape and finally eventually letting go of it. That was the point where we made series out of the work. It affected the way I think about my past even to go through everything and catalog it.
22: The website is beautiful. RL: Yeah at the time Alec was in school with these guys Kirby Mcclure and Julia Grigorian. Their
now a collective called “Radical Friend.” They were early design students then and now are music video superstars.
22: Can you tell the story about finding the painting in Chattanooga? RL:
Well my grandmother had been a portrait painter. She lived in Columbia, TN which is an hour outside of Nashville. She was “the artist” in my family. We used to draw names to give presents and I drew her name one year. I think I may have even asked for her name beacuse I wanted to do this painting that was a still life with a book, with her initials, and some African violets. I gave it to her at Christmas, and I don’t think she really liked it but she put it up in her house. So she passed away and my aunt lived in the house, and after my aunt had to move to a nursing home my mother and sister went to clean out the house. For some reason I always assumed the painting would have been a keepsake. Anyway, I was driving back to Atlanta from Chicago and I had been sick, my car had been broken into—it was a really bad trip. I think I was driving it all in one day and usually when I drive I stop at antique malls but on this trip I decided I wasn’t going to stop. I didn’t have the time. I had just driven through Chattanooga and there was an antique store at exit 109. I thought about stopping but I kept going. Finally I felt really compelled to just pull over at exit 109. I didn’t really want to go but I just kept going. The antique mall was just a shanty in the woods. It was old and creepy. I go in and start looking around, and in the back of the store there were all these paintings hanging on a wall. I look up and there, is my granmother’s painting. I was totally shocked. It was a disorienting moment.