Fellows at 30: Interview with Pat Oleszko
“My mantra is ‘I am therefore I art.”
This year marks the 30th Anniversary of NYFA’s Artists’ Fellowship Program. Over the course of this celebration, we will be posting interviews with various fellows from the past three decades. This month we bring you four-time fellowship recipient Pat Oleszko who was kind enough to write to us about her life as a New York Artist in her characteristic pun-filled prose.
NYFA: As a recipient of four NYFA fellowships and countless other awards,can you talk about why NYFA’s fellowship is unique and how itimpacted you differently at different stages in your career?
PO: I escaped the modest Midwest at the first possible moment and hightailed it to the greatest city in the world. A lass, New York, I knew it was to my advantage to ply my tirade in a place wondrous, encompassing and bold. To be accepted in that sprawl of artists, fellow renegades from the prosaic, well how great is that?
My first NYFA fellowship meant I had managed to weasel myself onto the bench of this esteemed artistic community. I got a barrel-fool of money (for those daze) in a category entitled Emergent Forms, which sounded like something that crawled out from beneath the refrigerator. Never mind, it suited me fine, I was amongst like minded fiends.
Another grant sent me in a different direction. I have always worked on multiple levels of performance, from the popular art forums of the street, party, parade and burlesque house to theaters, museums, films and lithe installations. Fueled by the NYFA belief/relief system, I took the money and ran, falling hard for de Nature at the Banff Center with after many opulent forays into the fields, streams and mountains I gained infamy performing as the PATSQUATCH! on the transCanada Highway stopping traffic for four hours until as I was lassoed by the Red Cross. I maintain there is no peril when properly appareled.
In 2001, the local cache of NYFA again rescued me. I live several blocks from the World Trade Center. During that protracted cataclysmic moment, I worked in the recovery effort and honestly never thought I would make art again. It didn’t seem like there was a place for me, my brand of art, in tragedy. After many bleak months, I found myself with a piece that responded not only to life with and without the twin towers but also one that encompassed every emotion, experience and the curious humor of a fraught situation. Rubble Without Pause got me back on my feat. I toured nationally with it until something finally healed.
When you play The Fool on the whirled stage, ever wonder who pays that fool? This city/ state capitol recognizes the importance of burnishing art with capital. I like the public cervix aspect of the grant, earning a portion of your keep and potentially reaching a different audience. It’s the closest connection we have to the enlightened WPA.
NYFA: In the past you’ve referred to art as a verb, which makes sense given that you are a performative artist. Did you always think that you would create performative work or did something facilitate that choice?
PO: My mantra is “I am therefore I art.” Early on, I wanted to make big sculptures but my supports would inevitably collapse. Too embarrassed to learn how to weld properly, I started working at home and casting about for armature I realized I was six feet tall and that anything I hung on myself would stand up to the challenge. In that eureka moment I became pedestrian art: using the world as a stooge and the body as a platform for notions in motion. That seminal impulse morphed into creating art that lives and breathes in society, noting absurdity as a norm while easing aesthetic barriers thru humor, satire, subtle-tease and insubordination. Escaping the confines gets your game up; you can resonate wildly or flail in a dangerous way. Death by humiliation is always present, never mind that it’s Jest ‘artin’ around.
NYFA: In your opinion, how has the funding climate changed for artists since you received your first fellowship award in 1987? Has that changed the way you work?
PO: Talk about climate change! Funding altered radically when the NEA bit the proverbial in the 90’s and abolished individual artist grants because of the manufactured controversy with a few performance artists and exhibitions. It was political mayhem; funding organizations became more fiscally conservative, touring was limited and the wild and wooly art experiences were hard to come by. The imprimatur of government support made a huge difference in getting recognition, additional money, gigs. Since then, other organizations and smaller philanthropies have fueled the gap but it ain’t the same. The concept of the state government directly supporting artists is a wonderful thing. I’d like to think that I’min a country that is a patron to its artists rather than patronizing them thru labyrinthine token support.
This hasn’t necessarily caused the change in my work but I do work more at residencies and ad hoc situations than theatrical shows where there is plenty of money to be lost preparing stuff and too much baggage for me to travel. More time is spent applying and descrying new sources. The internet has allowed an easier application process, but has led to many more applicants for everything. While my work sprawls larger, the pot gets smaller.
NYFA: Could you tell us about your studio space and artistic process? One would imagine that you have a treasure trove of interesting objects and other materials!
PO: I have been in the same modest-sized loft space in Tribeca for over forty years that keeps growing smaller because I make work to use rather than sell. In addition to the relentlessly diminishing interior space, I have two and a half storage units. Those fun rents necessitate periodic Ritual Cleansings, truly unique performances that have culminated in a mighty conflagration (Burning Pat), a submerging (All Abort!) or a mash pit
(Road Kills) which somehow aids the transmigration of those loft souls and leaves me elated, exhausted, bereft and momentarily free.
I do have a lot of curious stuff. I collect everywhere I go: words, pictures, material, diverse objects from the lost and profound. It’s all fodder for the muddle. For process, something puts me in a spin, there is tragic thumbnail sketch and then the work compounds wildly until I meet and eat the dreadlion.
NYFA: What projects are you working on now?
PO: There are a number of see/worthy pieces in the works about environmental issues including a multi-tiered community work in Baltimore called No/Oz Ark that concludes in an installation, parade and spectacle. The Passing Wind Armada is a windsock piece in construction and will be featured on boats and bikes (no planes) on various urban waterways. Hello Folly:The Floes and Cons of Arctic Drilling featuring a phalanx of Bi-polar Bears, the evil Drilling P’atform, the Writhing Sea and a marching band will be at HONK! Tompkins Square on October 17.
As most of the recent pieces have been site-specific, the challenge now is how to render the material into a performance and/or installation to reach a larger audience and possibly influence. Mission impossible? I hope not. If da fools shit, bare it.
Pat Oleszo is a visual and performance artist living in New York City. Find out more about her work here.
The Artists’ Fellowship Program makes unrestricted cash grants of $7,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines, awarding five per year on a triennial basis. Since it was launched in 1985, the program has awarded over $27 million to more than 4,000 artists. This year’s class of Fellows marks the 30th anniversary of the program and NYFA, with regional partners, will be celebrating that milestone with public programming around New York State this coming year.
NYFA’s Artists’ Fellowships are administered with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.
Images, from top: Snowden vs Pussy Riot, Moscow, Russia, 2014 photo by Oleg Donilovich; Jazzmin, Interview Magazine 1994, photo by Neil Selkirk; Darwin’s Nightmare: Pat Too, ACA, New Smyrna Beach, FL, 2013 photo by Paula Gillen.
