An Interview With St. Louis Artist Carrie Gillen

Everyone knows an artist. Everyone knows someone that’s creative, plays around with paint, can sing a good song, makes a mean pinch pot, or can break dance like a boy band star. Everyone knows someone good, but only the lucky few get to be friends with someone great. I’m one of those lucky ones.

When I first met Carrie Gillen it was at a big, loud party where a mutual friend introduced us. At the time I had a people-pleasing affliction that would send me into a full-on anxiety attack if I didn’t immediately win someone over. Gillen barely said hello to me, gave me an indistinguishable look, and walked away. Ask her about this now and she swears it didn’t happen. She’ll argue she was simply being introverted. What I know now, is that—shy or not—Gillen cares little what other people think. Either that, or she’s an expert at hiding it. And that trait might be exactly why she’s one of the best fresh artists in the St. Louis scene right now.

That simple, no-nonsense, no-drama style is just one of the qualities that bucks the artist archetype. She’s a hard worker and doesn’t necessarily wait for inspiration to strike. Like many entrepreneurs, the balance of life and a successful business is something she thinks about daily. In 2021, she quit her day job and moved to exclusively supporting herself through her work.

“Prior to this, I was teaching and also working as a set designer and builder. The lack of regular fixed income really changes the game.  It’s hard not to run yourself into the ground. I find myself saying yes to literally everything that comes my way, in part because I am genuinely grateful for the opportunities, but also because this life can feel incredibly insecure at times. I am slowly learning to trust my work and myself which is really what it boils down to.  I’m trying not to force myself into the studio or onto social media when I know walking my dog, or meeting a friend is what I need. 

Time management also becomes really important. I like to nerd out with scheduling and to-do lists. I literally schedule time for experimenting and collaboration and research. This may sound like the least creative or intuitive thing, but it’s what I have to do to prioritize new ideas and new projects. I really wish inspiration would just strike me out of nowhere and new brilliant work would manifest instantly, but that is not my experience. The best work almost always grows out of a glimmer of interest, into a weird material experiment, into days, weeks, months of trying to make it make sense,” Gillen says.

A part of Gillen’s prowess is how she utilizes those interests she mentioned to work with multiple mediums creating pieces that speak well to each other and at the same time are truly unique. Her painted stretched canvases contain Kandisky-like color combinations that sing together with the straight folds of the fabric. But her sheetrock excavations evoke another mood entirely, reminding us of the fragility and constant change in our physical world. And different still, are her large installations and sculpture, ranging from a life-size house built into a hillside and hanging canvases housing live plants. As different as her work can be, Gillen’s art has an organic feed that runs through it. When chatting with Gillen I asked her about this and more.

Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

I was born in Bloomington, IL, and moved to St. Louis when I was about three. I went to high school in West County, spent my undergraduate years in New Orleans, and then moved back to St. Louis City around 2009.

How did your upbringing influence your decision to become an artist?

I don’t know that my upbringing was particularly art-centric, but I was always surrounded by a supportive family. I would assume most parents think their children’s artwork is fantastic, but mine really did pump me up. They were always encouraging me to draw and write and be creative. When my mother would need invitations for something or a sign designed she would always task me with the job.  I loved to create but I think this sort of trust and encouragement added some agency to the act. 

Also, my grandmother was an incredibly talented oil painter. When I was maybe 10 she gave me a little still-life tutorial with real oil paints and medium and actual canvas. I think I was pretty hooked after that. When she died a few years later I inherited loads and loads of high-quality paints and materials. I was experimenting and playing and learning on my own in addition to anything happening at school.

When browsing your website I didn’t see an artist statement? Was that a specific choice? 

Yes. In one way the choice is logistical and in another ideological.  I make lots of different types of work. Some of it is a conceptual response to my world, and some is more formally driven, a fascination with material mostly.  I will write statements for exhibitions and will put words to the work if asked, but on my website where I am showcasing multiple different bodies of work, an encompassing statement feels unrealistic. I don’t have one way of making or one singular idea, so in that space, I suppose it’s a choice to let myself swim around in whatever I’m feeling. 

In my graduate experience, the heady artist statement was so prevalent. I was no exception. I read my graduate thesis now and cringe. Don’t get me wrong I will gladly geek out on all the art speak and all the research, but since my time out of academia, I have come to really value candid dialogue about the work. It’s always easier for me to have a conversation about my work than write about it.

Your work spans from large sculptures and installations with live plants to tiny, colorful boxed paintings. But, to me, all of your work has an organic edge that feels connected to our environment. How would you describe the way your pieces are connected and formed? 

I have always been drawn to the material; its inherent makeup, the limitations, the possibilities, and the intended function. If there is a through-line in all of the work that’s it. I’m always bending, breaking, and stretching material into abstraction. You will likely recognize the material in my work as sheetrock, tile, or fabric, but when you reconsider these forms outside of their standard context there is space for re-imagining all the materials in our world.

How did you start as an artist–for example, what kind of art did you first make? And how has that evolved? 

My mom will still sometimes ask why I never paint portraits anymore, haha. I used to love figurative painting. It wasn’t until late in my undergraduate years I started playing with abstraction and scale. I truly love all types of artwork, but there is something in abstraction that really inspires me. I am always seeking out that little gut-check when I view artwork. I get the most excited when the work isn’t so literal. I think it’s in our nature to crave the explicable, but I think there is so much understanding to be gained from the uncertain moments in our lives. I feel like abstraction in artwork leaves us open to connection and dialogue that might not exist otherwise.

You know I’ve always been a huge fan of your work since we met. My favorite piece of yours right now is “Revealed 2021.” Can you talk a bit about your sheetrock excavations, how they make you feel and why you started working with that material?

I started working with sheetrock in 2015. I was interested in interior spaces and architecture so I started employing all sorts of building materials in my work. In my graduate research, I became obsessed with housing trends and specifically the mortgage crash in 2008. Brand new homes were built right before the recession and in certain communities, these homes just sat there falling into ruin. It prompted all sorts of questions about how we create the spaces we live in, what is the history that is motivating our obsession with the home and interior décor? Who is benefiting from our built world? What is valuable? These questions led me to all the materials I use.

When I make the excavations I’m sort of inventing domestic histories. I’m telling stories of imagined space. At one time a home may have been opulent and shiny and at another time faded or torn. Our homes are not the covers of design magazines. They can be beautiful but also broken or worn. They tell stories that are so much more complicated than the highly curated and filtered world we present.

With music or to some extent words, artists can create something and it lives forever. There’s really no way to destroy it. As long as someone is living, they can sing or talk–they can read and write. But with visual art, that’s different. You can spend hours, weeks or years creating an installation. Then, when the building gets torn down it can be lost forever. How does it feel to let your work go?

I have zero attachment to my finished work.  That probably sounds horrible. Don’t mistake this for me not valuing my work. It’s just that once a work is finished it’s not for me anymore. I truly want my work to live in the world for as long as possible, and to be experienced by as many people as possible, but I’m never content with what I’ve done so far. The next project or the next piece is always the most exciting. When I think about some of the larger sculptures and installations and their imminent demise it’s not the object I’ll grieve, but only its ability to remind me of the experience.

In 2015 I made a 35-foot house sunken into a Valley on the Campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. It’s the largest thing I’ve ever made, and will surely be destroyed in the next few years.  The object itself feels so inconsequential to my life as an artist. Its value is in my memory. I remember how I felt when I accomplished something so far beyond my skillset and experience. I remember crying daily in frustration. I remember my friends and partner showing up throughout the whole process because there was no way it was getting done without them. I guess what I’m saying is that my love for my work is in the process. All the drive and excitement evaporates when the work is done. On to the next, you know?

What’s one of the most emotional pieces of art you’ve made?

All of the work I don’t show anyone: the sketches, the streams of consciousness, the writings, the spilled paint, the broken mirrors. I am a proponent of art as catharsis, but this might be the one piece of my practice that I’ll keep for me, keep separate from the viewer. It’s really hard for me to put work out into the world that comes from a purely emotional impetus or impulse. I will often wrestle with a material or an idea that has me fired up, sad or contemplative, but these emotional works feel more like a piece of research rather than a realized object. I know I could probably grow from being a bit more vulnerable with the end results. Someday, maybe.

Can you share a few people that are inspiring you now? And perhaps also a few local artists you’d like to shout out?

I have been following Kennedy Yanko, a St. Louis native, for a few years now. I am genuinely enamored with the way she uses material and speaks about her work. Also Ebony Patterson. I’ve been lucky enough to catch her work at multiple museums lately and I just can’t get enough. Clearly, I am a sucker for some rich material exploration.

Some local folks, there are really too many that I love and too many whose work I really love, here’s just a short list:

Yowshien Kuo
Tiffany Sutton
Sarah Knight
Ben Pierce
Evan and Stacy Smith
Chloe West
Foster Owen Atkinson
Jessica Hunt

How do you feel about the state of the art scene in St. Louis? In your opinion, how do we support it and celebrate it, while also acknowledging the hard and very real problems we still need to work through as a city?

It’s been my experience that the community of arts organizations and other artists in this town are incredibly kind and supportive. The past two years have been wonky, and supporting one another in real-time still feels a little strange, but I think we’re getting back to that.  

I do think we need to be more creative with how we bring art to folks in this town. The models that exist currently aren’t serving everyone and don’t work for every type of artwork. But I do really believe there are enough resources in this city and enough folks who care about art to support the artists who live here. Every year I see folks crowd the streets in Clayton purchasing very expensive work at the St. Louis Art Fair, largely from folks who don’t live here. This isn’t a knock on the fair, but I want to know how we draw that energy into different neighborhoods and communities? How do we create new and sustainable opportunities for equity and growth amongst local artists?

I think we start by purchasing their work, as well as supporting the systems and organizations that fund local arts opportunities. I know many folks are not in a position to purchase artwork, but I also know many are. Don’t sleep on your local talent St. Louis. They are a sound investment. In 10 years we’re going to kick ourselves because that affordable work we didn’t pull the trigger on is selling on the coasts at 10 times the cost. This also means buying work because we loved it and it was important despite the fact we didn’t have the perfect place for it or it didn’t match our couch. It definitely means buying artwork from BIPOC and LGBTQIA artists. Buy artwork! Buy it and support it.

All photos courtesy of Carrie Gillen.
Artwork and images include Gillen in her studio, “Awash 2021,” “1234 Shady Valley Lane” and “Encroach 2018.” View Gillen’s work available for purchase on her website carriegillen.com.