Creative Process: Technology and Methods

Kiki Smith’s creation mode does not follow any specific methods; the work instead informs her artistic means. She indicated in the interview that things become apparent when she engages creatively. The relation between her concepts and her

practice determines which digital technology or digital medium will be used. When describing her interaction with technology, Kiki Smith stated:

I always say that things become apparent . . . you have an idea to do something or make something or draw something, whatever, and everything you engage with has some technological aspect to it. Sometimes it is technology that is no longer current but it works, and some is more current and up-to-date, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. You just gravitate towards what you need. If you see that you are doing something that would be facilitated by a given technology, then you use it. I also make multiple representations of the same piece with the same idea, using different technologies, different methods or different materials.

Through analysing Kiki Smith’s interactions with technology, the artist- researcher observed that she uses different methods, and that depending on the project she is working on, she would opts for an analogue or a digital approach. Through these observations, the researcher understood that her creative strategy involves following the influences of a concept or idea that evolves and changes as the work develops. However, when working on her sculpture, she favours hands-on work, followed by 3D scanning. Once a sculpture is digitized, she plays with the form data from multiple perspectives. From 3D to 2D representations, the data output is made into a sculpture, a print, or a tapestry. The analogue artwork is then reworked in a material form by hand and transformed again. The ease with which Kiki Smith’s creative process navigates from analogue to digital and digital to analogue and from 3D or 2D perspectives is fascinating. As she described it:

I think it just depends on what I’m doing. I like doing something by hand . . . then working on it by computer . . . then having it come out again of the computer again to be either printed or woven or made into a sculpture or into a print . . . and then cut by hand.

In Kiki Smith’s creative approach, concept, and process are closely related and the artwork evolves from analogue and digital platforms simultaneously. Navigating from an analogue-digital-analogue method, Kiki Smith uses technology mainly to facilitate the production mode. However, everything can change in this process: Kiki Smith is open to the “unexpected” that can manifest during the creative activity. She does not anticipate what the work will be, as she also does not anticipate how the world should be. She stated:

I don’t have a way (or imagine how) the world is supposed to be or what my work is supposed to be I think that you just use . . . everything is fair game to be used or utilized, the different technology or methodology of working . . . you do it on a case-by-case basis, of what you think makes the most sense.

Kiki Smith’s approach to materials and processes is grounded in her creative process from paper prints to paper sculptures to bronze castings and from bi- dimensional to tri-dimensional artistic propositions. Her great capacity to move easily from a 2D medium to 3D sculptural form is evident. When she was asked if her working method is analogue or digital or analogue and digital or analogue digital analogue, she stated:

I mean . . . just different methods, working with different materials . . . it changes if you make something in metal or in cloth or in paper . . . I have recently been making drawings, then I make it in book print, then a collage. I have been making them into tapestry and into low relief cut out bronzes, so you know in the end, I got three or four pieces that are very similar in image, but have a very different feeling about them depending on the material that they are made of or depending on how they are made. I have been doing a lot of tapestry lately . . . which radically changes how I can think about traditional tapestry-making, even though it comes from the early 1800s it is still a technology that can be utilised in a very contemporary way.

When asked if her original idea is based on an analogue or hands-on interaction to space, material, and process or based on a digital spatial perspective, she stated:

I think it’s both. I think it just depends on what I’m doing. I think that often I like making something by hand and then scanning it into the computer either for a two-dimensional or three-dimensional aspect and then working on it on the computer and have it come out again of the computer again either to be printed or woven or made into a sculpture, or made into a print than you would could cut by hand . . .

In regards to a digital and technological approach to sculpture practice, she commented:47

I think digital computer work . . . there are a lot of interesting things (that can be done), but there are tremendous limitations too. It not particularly graceful, but it does afford you to move in a relatively fast manner or change scale, both things that you were not able to do . . .