“Where The Rain Obeyed The Sky,” Sierra Luna
Sierra Luna’s new exhibition at the STATE Gallery at The Forge is called Well Where Are We Anyway. It’s a fun name for a show of works that spill ceaselessly across mediums and genres, daring viewers to categorize and compartmentalize them under convenient but reductionist labels like “photography,” “drawing” or “literature.”
Luna is currently an artist-in-residence at The Forge’s STATE Gallery + Studios project, which hosts an annually revolving roster of six creators who are each given free studio spaces and a gallery exhibition over the course of their stay. The whole shebang is underwritten by the Tennessee Titans, and the program represents one of Nashville’s most creative and successful solutions for connecting artists to an increasingly rare resource: affordable spaces to make in.
For creative folk, there are innumerable benefits to having a dedicated art space — including being able to make a mess that doesn’t destroy your living situation, being able to leave it and come back to pick up your process right where you left off. Artist and filmmaker David Lynch — in interviews and in his own writing — talks about how important it is for artists to “have a setup” so that they can be ready to work when the inspiration comes. Working in a dedicated space brings a creative focus that’s hard to come by if you’re painting in your living room, or sculpting in your kitchen.
Being a resident at The Forge’s studio space for 12 months can bring level-jumping concentration and confidence — along with the constructive criticism of STATE Gallery curator Alyssa Beach. You can see all of these at work in Well Where Are We Anyway. The most impressive aspect of the show is just how “multimedia” the works actually are. Lots of artists mix and match materials and techniques, but there are usually particular elements that identify the maker as, say, primarily a photographer or primarily a painter.
By contrast, Luna’s work feels thoroughly confident and capable across a variety of mediums — an impressive feat given that this is her debut solo exhibition. Her photographs — mostly black-and-white scenes staging female models in natural settings — play a central role here. But they’re mounted on large pieces of paper, where Luna adds fantastic charcoal elements (“You’re Never Really Alone and It Doesn’t Matter How Hard You Try or If You Try to Talk to Them”), unique applications of sewn details (“The Moon Used to Be So Small”), sure-handed abstract ink painting (“A Big Try”) and detailed etching (“Where the Rain Obeyed the Sky”), as well as poetic texts that even manage their own shimmering images and provocative insights (“Where the Fae Play”).
Luna’s everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach works because she has the craftsmanship to keep it all glued and stitched and folded together. Her restless style is also indicative of where she’s at in her career — an emerging artist emboldened by the resources and the opportunities that her studio residency offers. According to Beach, Luna originally planned a display of painted garments as her residency exhibition, but Beach encouraged the artist to push herself beyond familiar materials and techniques. Still, Well Where Are We Anyway includes an artifact from that show-that-might-have-been in the form of “It’s a Jacket” — a long black leather jacket decorated with an assortment of colorful elements painted by the artist. The jacket features acrylic paintings of two skulls on the back shoulders looking down at a church on fire. A large red fish floats across the back waistline of the coat above two white cranes balancing on the bottom hem. The overall look of the piece recalls black velvet paintings, and everything kitschy and rock ’n’ roll that they conjure. The detailed renderings and unique materials are a perfect fit with the rest of the show, but the piece is also a telling monument to just how broadly Luna’s capacity for expression has exploded during her residency.
In his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity, David Lynch writes: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.” That’s a good reminder for young artists — it’s important to take chances and push past comfort zones. Well Where Are We Anyway is a great example of the thrashing and flashing things an artist can find when they have the confidence and resources to swim a little further and dive a little deeper.
