What led you to painting and storytelling?
I was a fine arts major in college, and ended up going to law school. I really started getting back into painting a couple years ago. I’m really interested in portraiture and documentary and narrative, and I love shows like This American Life and The Moth. I started meeting with people who did yoga and with yoga instructors. I’d interview them—take audio tape of interviews, and take a few pictures. Based on what they said about their practice, I created these yoga portraits that were supposed to reflect something deeper about them. It culminated in a show at first Friday in May. The paintings were lined up in a space with their edited interviews playing, like a yoga class. It was a pop-up venue called Power Station Lab, in Old city.
For you, what’s the connection between images and stories?
When I started doing this, I thought it should come to life in a play. But I didn’t make the play out of the materials I recorded. Instead, I cast actors involved in yoga practice and each of them worked on, and then collaboratively we developed, their characters and stories. The interaction with these people made what is a very rich story, which is the script.
We started rehearsal without a script. We did exercises so people would become these characters. We did writing exercises, we shared interviews. We were able to pare it down to the most poignant and funny things that emerged. The collaborative process for me was almost as important as the end result.
What’s the connection between art and yoga?
I’m a project artist. The project before that was a painting for the Haggadah. I like to work on a subject, and then on a project on that subject. Yoga seemed so natural because I have a lot of experience with it. It works well because you have the visual asanas, and there are a lot of interesting stories about what brings people to yoga. Out of that sprung something I had to do. I was compelled to do it. At the time I had a job, my kids—I made this project just because I had to do it.
