Kaleidoscopic pain

Stolar, an artist, educator and chair of the UNM-Taos Department of Fine Arts, Film and Digital Media, articulates through a cross section of mediums including figurative drawings, oil painting, photography, text-based block prints, and edible art.

When not with brush in hand, Stolar is a stalwart advocate of the arts and especially art students, helping to open doors throughout the Taos arts community, including her part in establishing an educational partnership between UNM-Taos and SVA.

Along with a number of online residencies offered to Taos students throughout the year, each year one student is able to attend a funded summer program in New York City. UNM-Taos's art and literary journal, "HOWL," is another of her many undertakings.

Through a deeply openhearted conversation, we were able to learn more about Stolar's background, process and sources of inspiration.

LRG: Congrats on your upcoming show in New York. What was "Selected Works from the Grief Club" inspired by and how did you capture it visually?

SS: I started the project right before the COVID quarantine in 2020 when I became the primary caretaker for my mother, Merlene Schain. My mom was an accomplished artist and educator who owned an art school. I was raised in her vision as an artist and teacher, and she was my mentor for my entire life. When she was diagnosed with advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, I brought her to live with me in New Mexico. Because she owned a commercial building with several personal art studios and her school, I wanted to try and recreate some normalcy in her life, so I built a large studio on my property for both of us.

It was always the dream to live together one day and have a big studio where we could paint together, I just didn’t expect it to happen under these circumstances. When COVID hit and we all were quarantined, the studio became a place fueled by intense and conflicting emotions. On one hand, I was able to work side-by-side with my mother on our artwork and make unforgettable memories, but on the other hand, every time we entered that building I witnessed my mother’s rapid decline, not only with her personality, but also with her artistic skills. I first lovingly nicknamed our studio "The COVID Clubhouse," which then evolved into "The Grief Club." It all felt very fitting since my grief was only a speck compared to the massive loss of lives happening during COVID.

The entire body of work began to take on a fictitious narrative surrounding the idea of a party or nightclub. I am interested in how certain imagery or experiences create duality within us, like how something can be so devastating that it becomes absurd, or when you are crying so hard that the tears turn into hysterical laughter.

LRG: You personify Kubler Ross's five stages of grief into female entertainers. Walk me through this process and how you created each persona; are they based on people you know or totally fictitious?

SS: I am not sure how I exactly fell upon the idea of personifying the five stages of grief. I know that it was an organic result of the creative process of art making in the studio and researching topics on grief. When I learned about the keening women, I was also in therapy. I started to think about how we seek out people to talk to and experiences to help us cope with loss. This led me to investigating how we are expected to grieve and how we actually grieve, which can often be self-destructive. Because I am a sex-positive, intersectional feminist artist, and because I wanted to harness the idea of false beauty, it felt natural to develop these characters as keening women that you could hire to help you mourn. My father, who committed suicide in 2008, was a renowned psychologist, so the Kubler Ross psychological model was a natural jumping off point. Returning to dark humor, I played with imagery and words to create a playful story — and the female entertainers as personified stages of grief were born. While their “backstories” are not directly based on real-life stories, the portraits are all of people who I know and who I feel close to.

LRG: How does a project of yours come to life? What are the rituals or consistencies surrounding your creative habits, output or workflow?

SS: All of my work is autobiographical and stems from some sort of personal story or experience. That is always my jumping off point. I often start with the figure and the most obvious interpretation of that story, then allow it to evolve into a more conceptual place. I gather imagery that connects to my investigation, and then dive into art history and other areas of research to find similarities that can inspire me to further the work. I have learned never to question an idea. I just make the art and then I decide later if it is worth keeping it.

My rituals are firmly rooted in studio practice. I block out whole days on my calendar for the studio and don’t allow anyone to disrupt that time. If I have no new ideas or works in progress, I still go in the studio because I know that if I do, something will happen. I draw a lot and make many iterations of each work of art, trying each time to discover new meaning in a new medium or approach. I produce a lot of work, knowing most of it will never be shown. That said, I find that the act of production is the only way I can advance my concepts.

LRG: Your work dances through a variety of mediums — is any one medium your favorite or preferred, and how do you decide which to use at any given time?

SS: I am first and foremost a figurative oil painter. I am a descendant of Adolf von Menzel, 19th century German master painter and draftsman, [and] John Menzel, master Rookwood potter, my great grandmother was a Gibson card painter, and my mother was a tremendous artist who also worked in realism, among other mediums. It is important to me to carry on this tradition, both as a practitioner and teacher. My paintings are as much about the act of painting as they are about the narrative. My BFA is in painting and my MFA is in new genres. This diverse eduction really gave me the tools to shift between representational art and more conceptual and non-traditional approaches. My background in dance and movement informs figuration in two-dimension as well as in photography, video, and performance; and my interest in feminism and psychological experience feeds the concepts.

What I have discovered during my lifetime of making art is that I cannot always say what I want to say with figurative realism in painting. I am grateful that my mother instilled in me the importance of “growing my mental artistic toolbox,” which allows me to shift between mediums when necessary. Most recently, I have been exploring text-based art and playing with language. Regardless, I am always thinking about how I can connect all the different work so it feels cohesive.

LRG: You're originally from Chicago — when did you move to New Mexico and how did the change in landscape affect your work?

SS: I moved to New Mexico with my husband in 2015. I have been asked this question a lot since moving here. My initial response was — I am a studio artist who primarily paints the figure. I don’t think the landscape will affect or change my work. Then, over the past eight years, I realized my color palette was changing. The deep browns and dark grays were starting to be replaced with violets and blues. I discovered neon oil paint, which naturally brightened up my colors, and I started to use more hot pinks and yellows. Upon reflection, I realize that the landscape did change my work. I think the incredible sunrises and sunsets indirectly shifted my relationship with color.