Cyra Jane has an eye for textures and patterns. Intricate spirals, abstracts of lines and shapes, most are paintings but some incarnations manifest themselves as sculptures both large and small. Examining the perfectly placed pieces around her home studio in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, feels almost like a tour through Cyra’s own mind, heart and soul. Seeing her work, older pieces mixed with new work, a few recurring themes and designs begin to show. There are stories there that want to get out, and in the process they draw their audience in.

During our meeting, we talked about Cyra Jane’s work, her involvement with Burning Man, art as healing and more. I wish, I could share all the tangents, details and side notes that came up during our conversation, but the following interview is a great starting point for getting to know Cyra Jane as an artist. From there, I can only urge you to seek out her work in person and explore her website.

AP: In November you are putting together your first large, solo steel sculpture, resembling DNA torn apart by human hands. What’s the story behind this piece?

Helicase is about the dangers of playing god. The idea was borne in the painting, Helicase, in which two human hands are tearing apart a DNA strand. In early 2007, midway through working on Three Quarter Turn, which is an unapologetic study of the gradients of reality surrounding a particular romantic relationship, I stopped to paint Helicase. The playing god reference was a commentary on my own hubris in painting the story, a fifth and external level of the perceptual recognition that was otherwise uncovered and encapsulated in Three Quarter Turn. I tend toward using universal symbols that strike at multiple levels, leaving room for various personal interpretations. The picture of man deconstructing dna applies not only to me as an individual artist here, but to mankind (consciousness) meddling with nature (truth) and various other interpretations.

This last year I’ve been expanding into metal and stone sculpture. Part of the initial process of retraining my brain to think in 3d was to start visualizing my prior works as sculpture. Helicase was one of the first to form itself and will be the most technically ambitious piece I’ve worked on so far, plus I like the juxtaposition of construction/deconstruction in my first large piece. I drew up the plans for the sculpture, consulted with a professional metal artist and an engineer, and then set about to make it reality. The James Washington House granted me an artist residency that includes use of their shop for one month and a stipend for materials. I am very much thankful for the opportunity and looking forward to the work.

AP: After moving to Seattle in 2002, you began using art as part of a healing process, following grad school. Could you share a little more about what this process was about?

Sure. I spent graduate school in a co-dependent, abusive relationship, watching a man consistently trying to kill himself and, sometimes, me. For two years, I was nurse-maid and provider, enabler and provocateur, and the object of daily emotional, physical, and verbal abuse. I lived through stories I will never tell and by the end of the relationship I was a raw, beaten down, broken shell of a woman. In college, before getting into that relationship, I painted for fun. I was extremely active in student organizations and a top student in the Honor’s College, attending on a full scholarship. I studied creative writing and singing, but kept art for my very own. During the course of that relationship, I lost my connection to art, along with my connection to everything else including my friends, family, spirituality, and self-trust. For about a year after it ended, I couldn’t leave my apartment without being accosted by vibrant visions of my own death and did little more than play video games and cry. I couldn’t make sense of much of what was going on inside my head. To cope, I distanced myself from my emotions, put on a smile, got into a loveless relationship, and basically stopped feeling.

At some point, I began to paint again and discovered that when I opened up the door to my creative stream, my emotions tumbled out onto the canvas with it. I saw stories and truth putting themselves onto the canvas. I watched ideas that I couldn’t articulate form themselves into pictures I could no longer put off dealing with. So in a way, it became the primary method of recognizing and expressing my feelings. In 2009, I embraced the process fully, pushing out in fairly quick succession Anew (better known as the Guerrilla Gasworks installation which was very much about my final break through the repressed state I had lived in for seven years), The Elephant on my Stomach (a 30-painting series for the Forgotten Works challenge attacking and exposing all my underlying demons from having grown up an overweight child), and Meconnaissance (the first and only painting of the aforementioned abusive relationship that acknowledges him, and my part in letting it affect me for so long).

After that, I was a little… oh, burnt out with that level of exposition. And with finally having put Meconnaissance onto canvas, I was finally freed to begin pursuing art on a different level.

AP: You are involved with the Burning Man art community. Why is community important to you, what do you contribute and what do you get in return?

The Burning Man community is made of some of the most solid, tuned-in people I’ve ever met. I’ve found, especially in the local community, an unprecedented celebration of self-expression that provides open avenues for creativity. What do I mean by this? Well, for instance, Ignition Northwest puts on Critical Massive, a regional burn (or week-long art festival/camping trip) oriented around workshops, portable dance clubs, pyrotechnics, and, mostly, large scale outdoor sculpture. The event funds over $10,000 in art grants and is attended by about 1,000 people each year. Over the course of the week, up to fifteen large sculptures are erected, almost entirely built as labors of love by groups of volunteers and individual artists. This year and last, I was both part of a group bringing large scale pyrotechnic sculpture and an individually granted artist, working first in paper mache for Anew and this last year in copper, stone, and cotton for Filaments. They have given me the venue, inspiration and support to explore conceptual public art as an art form. I have been working on providing meditative spaces for participants that promote reflection on the relationship between the self and our environment. So far, it was worked out beautifully. I feel that I cannot adequately express the impact these opportunities have had on me both personally and professionally.

AP: Your academic background is in writing. How do these two forms of communication compare to you? What can visual art do for you, that writing can’t?

Writing is my craft. Visual art is my art. They come from different places. Steve Martin wrote a fantastic play called “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” that is essentially a study and discussion of the link to the muse. In the play, Picasso and Einstein walk into a bar, meet, and proceed to have an intense and amazing discussion of that moment of inspiration when you turn off your conscious mind and let the ideas pour through you as though they come from somewhere else. It’s about inspired visualization, and how it feels raw and uncontrollable. The Ancient Greeks called this a Genius, and described it as an outside entity that took over an artist’s body and controlled their hands or voice.

I studied persuasive writing and rhetoric in college, and can still spend hours crafting a finely tuned letter, where every word is chosen to emphasize a particular tone, or environment, for the underlying message. Though very fun to play with, language is still an extremely limited tool of communication; even the most carefully schemed nuances of phrasing pale in comparison to a shrug or hand gesture in getting a point across. Visual art works on this same level of emotional cues. It strikes your audience below the conscious mind – somewhere language cannot reach without first striking visual images in the reader that hit deeper senses. It is communication directly from one subconscious into another.

I’m actually very interested in the intricacies of interplay between written language and visual art. Percolating into my conscious have lately been images of stories as sculptures – taking words and interpreting their inflections and lilt in a static visual format rather than animated retellings. I’m currently visualizing this as a mingling of stress dreams, cigarette smoke and steel.

AP: Exploring different forms of expression is in itself a recurring theme in your work. In your own words, you’ve moved from one to another (eg. from expressionism to realism) when it “was necessary”. How does this necessity manifest itself? Is it ambition or curiosity that drives it? Or something different?

It is necessity. What I mean by this is that my need to communicate visual continuously surpasses my skills, and so I must learn new ones. When I moved from abstract emotional expression into more complex story-telling, I had to move into figurative painting. I recall at one point sitting in front of a canvas realizing that I had to paint a hand, and a realistic one at that. So I took some pictures of my hands and then painted my first realistic one. It was kind of a terrifying move – as I mentioned earlier I didn’t study art. I’ve never been a doodler or sketch artist and have only the occasional class under my belt. The first hand was terrifying enough that I put it off for a couple of months and just sat there, scared to ruin what I’d painted so far; once I finally started painting, it was easy.

I’ve gotten to the point now that I’m pretty fearless with trying new media. If I have a vision, I consider it doable and so I learn the media and make what I need to. For instance, when I had the vision for Anew, and had found a small grant opportunity, I simply researched very quickly how I could make them on that small of a budget over the course of a month by myself and then did it. At that point, I set a five year goal to create a permanent field of men in various stages of breaking through and so began to learn and study metal work. While I find myself exploring many tangents in the meantime, as practice I suppose, that vision is what is driving me.

I guess the operative word here is drive. I don’t necessarily have any control over this drive, over my artist, over my muse. The best I can do is give her the skills and opportunities necessary to do what she wants and then move over.

Be sure to check out Cyra Jane’s website and blog, The Spaces In Between.

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Tara Brannigan makes jewelry and costumes out of silver, bones, stones and leather. Among other things. This is almost a counter to her tech-oriented day job, except that her love of technology occasionally steps into the artistic realm. Such as in the case of her bench-cam, a live webcam from Tara’s workshop where interested parties can watch her work in real time.

I met Tara at a coffee shop in Seattle, where she showed me a few samples of her work and took the time to talk to me a bit about her process. We also talked about some of the personal motivations and experiences that have helped fuel Tara’s creativity.

AP: What is your process like? How do you get started on a new piece and when do you know that it’s done?

I force myself to sit down at the bench on a fairly regular basis, but I don’t always have a plan before I do. Generally if I have a plan, it’s because some random idea popped into my head earlier in the day and I feel the need to flesh it out. Usually this happens in a completely inconvenient place or time, such as driving down the freeway or in the middle of some important conversation. I’ve been pretty horrible about actually sitting down to try and go through the brainstorming process, but I’m getting a bit better about it.

Other times I’ll acquire a new piece of material and dink around trying to figure out what it’s supposed to be in. Usually I’ll keep these in sight while working at the bench, so even if I don’t immediately know what it should be, I can be thinking about it in the back of my mind while working. I may not know immediately what it’s meant to be, but I latch onto it as something particularly fantastic that I need to find a purpose for.

The Horn Ring is one of those sorts of projects. I picked up the Duiker antelope horns from a clearance bin at the Bone Room in CA while I was down there visiting. I had no idea what I wanted to make from them at the time, just that they had a great deal of potential. I bought them, put them on the shelf next to my workbench and kept going back to them, but never really sorting out their purpose until I was making a project for a friend. I’d built out a box ring and was looking around for what to put on its top. I wanted the ring to have a proud, rebellious, but also protective nature. I just wasn’t finding the right stone in my collection of random ‘things to set’ though, and started looking through my personal Pile of Random Awesome Stuff. That’s what I spotted the Duiker horns and, after a quick check to make sure one of them would fit, realized I’d finally found the perfect home for it.

Tara's mask caught the attention of the barista, who posed for the camera. Thanks, Greg!

Oh most certainly.

Many of my materials come from old thrift store fur coats, scraps from taxidermy road kill and the ‘waste’ bits from various industries. I treasure the idea of creating a new and fantastic object from that which might ordinarily be discarded or left to rot; Rebirth and transformation via reuse of the material in a new way.

I do not intend to make light of or ignore the very real nature of the organic materials. Very few of them are not the product of the death of a living being, either accidental or otherwise. In utilizing such things, I strive to create a sort of bridge between the material as a dead ‘thing’ and the life it previously belonged to, either symbolically or through direct association.

A horn serves as protection and aggression, as it might have in life. A barnacle shell scavenged from the beach holds a secret treasure, transforming the shipyard pest into a guardian of simple beauty. It is my hope that when someone comes into contact with something I’ve made using these components, they can take the time to think about what really went into it, and consider the life or lives that lay behind its creation.

AP: A major motivator for you was your brother’s untimely passing. Could you tell us a bit about how that affected you as an artist, creatively and in terms of focus?

My brother was in his early 30s when he died. While I objectively knew that death could happen at any time, the reality of the situation never really hit home until it happened to someone I loved. His early death struck my core and left me feeling raw and wounded for a long while thereafter. I’ve always been introspective about death due to my father’s murder when I was very young, but Ian’s death sent me into a far more serious look at what I wanted to accomplish with whatever time I might have.

I realized that while I had allowed myself to dabble in those things that I was passionate about, I never really dedicated any real time to them. It was always only if I had the time and didn’t fill it with some other distraction. It was easier to ignore the pull of something ‘frivolous’ if I didn’t allow myself to really immerse into it. I couldn’t know what I was missing if I never really allowed myself to experience it. As cliché as it may sound, Ian’s death made me realize that putting off one’s passions in the hope that you’ll have time ‘later’ is never a sure bet, and that I was tired of doing just that.

With my employers exceptionally understanding blessing, I took two months off and took the plunge, enrolling in the Jewelry Technician Intensive course at the Revere Academy in San Francisco. It was exactly what I needed. I returned to work with new skills and a promise to myself that I would pursue those things I love, even if it’s not always easy to accomplish.

Tara laughs as she talks about her work. In front you can make out a feather, part of a head piece.

At the core it’s motivated by the same sort of need to make things as the jewelry, but it’s also a bit more than that. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of being someone or something else for a little while. I was a bit shy and insecure as a kid, but Halloween was always that chance to be something wild and completely unlike my day to day self. I’ve always liked creating an experience, not just for myself, but also for those around me. As an adult I have more confidence in making the world a little more surreal and not caring too much about what some might think.

I also just love the process that goes into creating a costume or prop. I always find myself thinking about why something should look a certain way, what the character of the person wearing or using such a thing must be, what their mannerisms might be, etc. While it’s possible and fun to make something simply for the sake of making something neat, I love the surge of imagination and ideas that it can produce when you think about the why and how of an object or concept.

AP: You keep your tech-oriented dayjob and your (self described) low-tech art fairly separate, yet they seem to complement each other. You also have a “bench cam” on your website, which doesn’t seem very low tech. Could yell us a bit about that balance and what it means to you?

That’s not to say that my work life and home life are completely separate. I’m not sure that would be possible. I’m a bit of a geek at heart and that sort of thing just trickles into everything I do in one way or another. As you said, I run a web cam while I work on projects and stream it live on my website whenever I feel the urge.

Creating something by hand can be highly technical as well, so perhaps high-tech and low-tech were poor word choices on my part. It’s more the perception of the end product at the end of the day that feels different when something is made by hand. My job focuses primarily around communication and planning. While there are products that come out of it, they are of a somewhat intangible nature and generally not directly created by me.

I enjoy my job, the people I work with and the life it enables, but it doesn’t fully sate my urge to create. An email isn’t something that will be found on a curio shop someday. It doesn’t have a weight, a solid presence in the world. Much of what I do day to day is valuable, but of a momentary nature.

I’ve always felt more engaged, more focused and vividly alive when I’m making something with my hands. It’s one of those few things that can make the passage of time seem to cease to exist and make everything else just sort of fall away for a little while. And at the end of a day, I have something physical to show for it. It may not be finished within that day, but it’s something solid and tangible that I created. It’s something that would not exist, save for my efforts, and that never ceases to excite and motivate me.

For more about Tara and her work, check her website Kind of Strange, which also has an attached Facebook page. Tara can also be found on Twitter (@kindofstrange) and on the Crafthaus ning-network.

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Storytelling is power. When you tell a good story the world stops, magic happens and those who listen are enthralled. We use stories to build brands, find potential mates, friends and partners. We use them to convey feelings, morals and values that might otherwise be difficult to address. Anything can be sold through storytelling, from religion to mini-ovens.

Telling stories makes you powerful, because they give you an opportunity to control others. Stories can change lives and telling them well makes you extraordinary in the mind of your audience. I’ve narrowed storytelling down to four points. If you practice these, you will become better at it. If you master them, the sky is the limit.

1. Know the Ending

If you’re telling a joke, you have to remember the punchline. Other stories are no different. You have to know where you want to end up – whether it’s “and they lived happily ever after” or “this is why my art is worth your money”. If you don’t have an ending, you’re just rambling. Whether your goal is to make the audience laugh, cry or sign the dotted line, you have to know ahead of time. Every element in your story should help you get closer to that ending.

2. Timing Keeps People Interested

Timing is the vehicle that gets you to the ending. It drives the story and keeps the audience interested. Just as you are ready to put the book down, a cliffhanger ending makes you think “okay, I’ll read one more chapter tonight”. Before you know it, it’s three in the morning. Just when you’re sure you know who the killer is, the movie throws a twist at you and keeps you guessing. When the offer on TV couldn’t get any better, they throw in two for the price of one.

Timing is knowing when to work in the boring details without losing your audience’s interest. Timing is knowing when to surprise, pause or even stroke your audience’s ego. Timing is a skill that anyone can learn.

3. Talk Directly To Your Audience

Who are you telling your story to? Who is actually listening? Are they the same?

Don’t try to tell a story that appeals to everyone. At best, you will end up with a mediocre result that is only tolerable, not remarkable. Tell the same story differently to different audiences, or seek out an audience that likes your particular voice or style. The memorable quotes and funny comments that appeal to a group of bankers will not necessarily work for the medical marijuana proponents.

My grandmother would never appreciate how the movie “Memento” is told backwards, whereas I love it for that very reason. The gruff, twisted style of Tom Waits makes him one of my favorite musicians, but I’ve met many people who can’t stand him because of those same qualities.

Realize that the story is only yours until you tell it. From that moment on, it belongs to those who were paying attention to it. Don’t let those people down.

No matter how trivial your story, you can make it interesting if you know how it ends, how to pace it right and who you are telling it to. Research is good. Practice is good. Being willing to risk making a fool of yourself is crucial.

4. Make a Fool of Yourself

You may make fun of Vince the ShamWow guy (I do), but his manic movements and silly headset work for him. He knows his audience likes it because they buy his product. Whether they like the product, they won’t even know until they get it. But they liked Vince enough to take that chance. Does he look like a fool to a bunch of people? Absolutely. Does he make money on it? Absolutely.

When a musician misses a chord change mid-song they don’t stop and start over. They suck it up and move along. Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham once said that when he made a mistake, he would immediately try to replicate it. That way it would sound planned, like part of the music.

Remember the best story someone ever told you. How did they do it? Did they change their voice for different characters? Did they use body language? How did they mix fact and fluff? Humor and suspense?

Making a fool of yourself is not the same as failure. It simply means standing up for what you believe in, in spite of what others think. It’s taking a chance and sticking your neck out. It’s overcoming the fear of failure and owning your mistakes.

Stories are at the core of everything we love and hate. They are the basis of our culture, of civilization, maybe even humanity itself. From the caveman painting images of his life on the wall to the endless streams of twitter updates, the world is full of stories. It’s all about how you tell them.

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Erin Staffeld, Cheryl Robinson and Mary Enslow (front to back) are the three owners and operators of the Twilight Artist Collective (TwAC). They have a boutique in the heart of West Seattle, where they show and sell the works of local artists. I meet up with them after a business meeting, and I’m immediately infected by their positive attitudes and, dare I say it, bubbliness. The store itself is full of bright colors and beautiful pieces of art. Were I not on a mission, I would probably spend half an hour just looking through the many pieces available. At the time of this interview, Twilight has about 70 associated artists, all of whom have an opportunity to have their work displayed and exposed for the local community. Each work of art typically has a shelf life of 60-90 days, and with that many talented artists, those shelves are never short of interesting work.

AP: You have an art boutique featuring the works of many artists. How did you get started and grow into the collective you are today?

TwAC (Mary): We got started, when after several hours of passionate discussion about making it as an artist. We spoke of artists like ourselves falling out of the scene after college and getting trapped in the work world, never to produce art again. We felt the need to create a space for us and people like us. Cheryl and I had been working as a part of the Special Projects crew for One Reel Productions at the time. Erin and I had just returned the year before from a study abroad program in Rome, when this whole thing started to grow. Erin and Cheryl had not yet met.

I had been designing purses and selling them in various locations, one of my outlets was a shop in the Pike Place Market that would soon become the home of Twilight Artist Collective. We got word that this store was going out of business. After a few energized meetings Erin, Cheryl and myself were signing over checks and starting a venture that had all the passion and good intention in the world, but not much actual structure.

During the first year we found ourselves in a sort of business 101 reality show. We learned by doing, reaching out for guidance and following our senses. Looking back it was ridiculous, but when your young and passionate, anything is possible. In January of 2007, Twilight was in a good spot, we had started paying ourselves a small monthly stipend and felt that we had the potential and know-how to get bigger and better. We stumbled upon a great location in the West Seattle Junction, where we had all been living for a few years, and decided to go for it.

We realized after keeping two stores afloat for 1.5 years, that we had too much on our plates and that to survive and provide the quality of service we hold ourselves to, we needed to pull out of the Pike Place Market location and re-focus on our ever growing, beautiful West Seattle location. As a trio, we’ve faced everything together and subsequently make a powerhouse partnership.

AP: When new artists want to join, how do you decide if that person’s work is good enough?

TwAC: We look at the quality of the work first and foremost. We expect work to look finished. The artist must show a certain amount of respect for his own work. We look for work that has an edge; if it’s got a great or compelling concept, shows amazing skill or attention to detail, or if it’s just plain great fun. The work must be new for the viewer. We do consider price point, if the work is out of our range we encourage the artist to pursue the big time galleries. As I said, we are here to be a stepping stone into the art world for artists that want to continue along this challenging path.

Once we are working with the artist we are in a business together and we expect our artists to be active business partners. We don’t continue relationships with people who’s only interest is in dropping off their art and leaving it for us to sell. We want to have an ongoing dialogue that teaches both us and them how to serve eachother better.

Our most successful artists are the ones who take an active role in their position here. We appreciate artists who attend events, promote events, network and are otherwise engaged in the community. These artists are the ones who reap the most benefit as a member, their work sells with greater frequency, because we are equipped with a greater knowlegde of them and their work. This story adds a great amount of value to the work itself. People want to know what inspires art.

AP: You participate in local art walks, you have a twitter account, a blog and more. What does community building mean to you as opposed to traditional advertising?

TwAC: Because we are an art gallery, we do not generate a huge amount of profit. We’ve found these free options to be essential tools for us to communicate with Seattle and our greater community.

Twilight has grown organically from the get-go. Each artist that becomes engaged has a personal experience with Twilight, this goes for our customers as well. Because all the work has a story that is in some form tangible to us all, as humans, coming into twilight is not a standard shopping experience, a platform for interesting dialogue is set and more often than not they begin. Kids express insights and their parents learn something new about their childs mind. Art evokes powerful emotions. The converstations and ideas that are generated inspire us and when we are inpired we are compelled to share. Word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool we have and is a natural product of the environment we offer people.

AP: You’ve been around for more than 5 years, and with art being such a luxury item, how do you deal with tough times like the current recession?

TwAC: Hard work and dedication with a large amount of ingenuity and faith. We realized during the recession that people tend to go one of two ways, they either fold in and spiral down, or they reassess and replan for a sustainable approach. Many people become responsible in a new way, they buy less of what they don’t need and wait to buy the perfect something that will fullfil their consumer itch and give them a the greater gift, that art provides.

Learning how valuable art is, can be difficult. If you grew up in an environment where the only value came from getting more for less, it may be challenging to understand how buying one piece of art that makes you smile every time you see it, is actually more valuable than buying a huge artificial something or other, that only costs $10, but ultimately brings you nothing but more stuff. We had some customers who would save and save for the perfect piece of art. Our loyal customers know that if they want us here, they have to support us being here. We did see that support even in the toughest of times. We are very grateful!

AP: Surely, there are easier ways to make a living. What do you get out of running the Twilight Artist Collective, as opposed to having “regular” jobs?

TwAC: Well, we do both. We all support ourselves independently of Twilight. This is a question we’ve asked ourselves several times and we keep coming to the same conclusion: we can’t not do it. We care too much about what we’ve started and what we believe in to stop. We’ll be here until something tells us, its time to stop.

This experience has absolutely changed us for the better, both collectively and individually. We’ve been able to build something from the ground up. It’s something that we believe in and this is a very empowering accomplishment. Once you have a taste of this sort of gratification, you really can’t go back. Living with purpose and meaning is invaluable. The day we can back off our other jobs and work here more, will be a great day, both for us and for the community. We have so many more things we want to pursue as Twilight Artist Collective and we’ve got the foundation to provide these things. Our other jobs have value because they enable us to run Twilight, but ultimately we want to put all of our time and energy into TwAC.

Check out the Twilight Artist Collective’s website for more about upcoming shows and events. There is also a Facebook page and a Twitter feed, you can subscribe to.

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