Artist Sarah Burns has brought an odd feeling of home to the MIA with her MAEP exhibition “midday.” Her sculptures are given plenty of breathing room in the gallery, spaced like strangers at a party, a meditation on vaguely familiar objects taking unfamiliar forms. If you’re curious how someone sees beauty in innocuous items, or why lumber and polystyrene might be preferable for sculpting than more common art materials, Sarah Burns is your kind of artist—and this is your kind of Q&A.
A sculpture from Sarah Burns’s “midday” MAEP show at the MIA.
Courtney Algeo: As a title, what is “midday” trying to get at?
Sarah Burns: There is a strange energy to midday as a time; the day isn’t freshly awakening and it isn’t nearly over either. I felt that the works existed in a midday scenario, bringing this second wind, slightly tired yet silly energies to the gallery.
CA: How is it that you began making art from common house-building materials?
SB: It started with a sculpture that I wanted to make that was too large and precarious to execute in ceramics. I then turned to lumber and polystyrene. I remember being shocked and excited at how quickly I could execute my ideas in these materials.
CA: Have you built a house?
SB: I’ve built a very small house, a shanty, for the art shanty projects. (Shout out the basketballers Beth Chekola, Jess Hirsch, and Eamonn Mclain.)
CA: Could you build a real house?
SB: Yes, though the BBW might be able to blow it down.
CA: Do you actually have a background in carpentry?
SB: I do / don’t. I’ve never worked as a contract carpenter nor been to carpentry school, but I did work in the U of M Art Department wood shop for a few years. (Shout out to Mark Knierim.)
CA: What is your favorite material to work with? Why?
SB: It’s hard to say but it has to be lightweight. I work alone and it’s important to me that I can easily move and manipulate materials by myself.
CA: Do you build your structures with any sort of memory or thought in mind, or is it mostly about aesthetics?
SB: Some stem from vague memories, others from dreams. Certain images keep coming back to me. It’s the incessant ones that I materialize through sculpture. Though, once the process of creating the form begins, it may change depending on my response to the materials.
CA: How much do your pieces change depending on what space they’re in?
SB: In my studio/my apartment the works seem like little Pinocchios. There is a personality that I am trying to bestow upon the sculptures based on what they are giving me. Once they make it into the gallery, though, they come to life in a new way.
CA: Do you have an ultimate dream project—something you would work on if there were no constraints on time, money, or space.
SB: I’ve wanted to make a large tile sculpture that sweats.
CA: What artists really pump you up?
SB: Renee Magritte, Robert Gober, Betty Woodman, Agnes Martin, Robert Irwin.
CA: What’s your favorite piece at the MIA?
SB: I always visit the Duluth Living Room designed by John Scott Bradstreet. I enjoy the immersive experience and feeling like I am being transported to a new time or place.
Sarah Burns’s “midday” and Andy Sturdevant’s “Alley Atlas” are on view through December 31, 2013.