Art in Isolation with Julia Haft-Candell

Lindsay Preston Zappas: Hello Julia! How’s it going?

Julia Haft-Candell: I’m good! I’m pretty good today.

LPZ: Great. Day by day, right?

JHC: It is very day by day. 

LPZ: I know. I’m so happy to talk to you and just check in. Cheers! Tell me what you’ve been up to—what has your routine been the last couple of weeks? 

JHC: Part of why this has been so weird is I’m a really routine-oriented person, and it’s obviously changed my whole routine, so that has been weird. I don’t know, it’s hard to remember what day it is. The main structure I have is that I teach. I’m a part-time professor at USC in ceramics. That’s been through Zoom now and it’s been very hard to try to figure that out.

LPZ: Right, because your teaching is typically hands-on. How do you translate that to a Zoom experience? 

JHC: Very hands on—that’s like my whole reason for doing it. All of the ceramics folks have been discussing all of the different possibilities; there’s videos, there’s readings, there’s so many different things. Some of my students have clay at home, some don’t. The teaching has been a big part of [my routine]. But besides that, I’ve been trying to go to the studio, we’ve been cooking a lot—trying to create structure, structure and space. 

LPZ: I think it’s amazing that you’ve been going to the studio. How has that been feeling for you?

JHC: It’s been really good, but weird. I felt a little conflicted about it because it’s technically not home, it’s a short drive away, and so I didn’t know if that was allowed under shelter in place. But it’s a pretty quiet space, I can go there and not really interact with people, so I figured it was okay. I really think I would go nuts if I didn’t go there. I have plenty of things around the house that I can do like sewing, and knitting, and gardening, but I really need to work in the studio. 

It’s been really nice to have the time and quiet, but I realized through this is that it’s not enough to just have the studio and the time. I think I thought maybe that if I had all this time in the studio and no one to distract me, that it would be great—and it is. But also I really felt something spiritually missing, and I realized I was interacting with people and showing my work to people in a one-on-one way—because you know, you can show it digitally too but it’s not the same, especially with sculpture and ceramics. 

LPZ: Isn’t that interesting, though? I’m an artist and I feel like so often I’m like, “if I only had the time. If I just had two extra days in the week then that would fix things.” But it’s really interesting to realize that no, it’s not just that. It’s the community, it’s a conversation, it’s the peers that kind of push you and are able to sort of intellectually jiggle what you’re doing…  

JHC: And get you out of your head, too. That’s really important, I think. 

LPZ : So you were normally doing that pre-isolation? And how have you found to do that now? 

JHC: I realized that in the last year or so, I’ve been pretty regularly trying to do studio visits—have people to the studio and go to people’s studios and have conversations about work, usually just with artist friends or whoever is interested. I guess I hadn’t realized how much that was helping me or sustaining me, or just making me think—spiritually giving me some sort of thing that I needed.

Sometimes that feels like a distraction, it feels like I have to do this thing, and so the idea of having the time to be in the studio uninterrupted sounds really wonderful. But now I’m thinking about, after realizing that wasn’t enough, what can I do to, in this different kind of space, try to make connections between the community or in the community? And so I decided I’ll just reach out and try to do Zoom visits. 

It’s kind of nice because it’s allowed me and some of my friends on the East Coast to connect more. My friend Rebecca Manson and I were working in our studios at the same time on FaceTime and that was really nice. And I’m maybe going to do some sort of crit group with some folks over and New York also. Normally I would not be able to join in on that.

LPZ: That’s such a great idea. I love that. 

JHC: Yeah, it’s feeling optimistic today because of that. 

LPZ: Yeah. I mean part of me feels like, even with this interview: is this just one thing of hundreds of things that people have on their dockets today? I felt like the first few days when people were announcing Instagram live videos and all these things, my days were filling up so fast. It was too busy, kind of. 

But I feel like we all have a community that we feel part of and feel pulled into, and feed energy into, but also get energy back from. So that was part of my logic to do this kind of format. This is our community; I want to talk to you guys. So it’s really cool that you are pursuing some of that on a personal level with people and finding ways for it to be fulfilling to you as an artist. I think that’s really cool. 

JHC: I try to remember that ultimately I think artists have to be optimistic, because otherwise what would keep you making work if you weren’t hoping for something? Even if it’s in a dark place of making work. I really believe in one-on-one, in person interactions— that’s everything with teaching and making. But in the circumstances, we’re creatively problem-solving and I think it’s nice to see how different people do that. 

LPZ: Totally. And [figuring out] how to get that one-on-one when doing things digitally—it’s very interesting.

JHC: It feels sort of like a contradiction or a paradox because I think there’s nothing that is as good as in person or hands-on, and knowing that, but also doing these sort of things to help—having both and holding both of those ideas together and knowing that they can both exist together.

LPZ: You’re such a hands-on maker and clay is such a physical medium—that’s a very physical, one-to-one connection with you and the material. Is that fulfilling some of this connection that we’re talking about?

JHC: I think it is. In any case, it’s very therapeutic. I mean not always, it’s super frustrating as a material sometimes—things crack and break and it’s heavy. But it is the most interactive, hands-on— there is a therapeutic aspect to it that I love and I am very grateful to have that as part of my life. I think that it’s really helpful, and a lot of the work that I’ve been doing right now is very slow, tedious carving in the clay. I’ve been thinking about the slowing down that this time encourages as being all the more reason to kind of slow down in my studio and really do those slow, repetitive, tedious moments that you just can’t rush through. 

LPZ: Right, right. Interesting. I was going to ask you if you felt like this time has kind of shifted what you’re making, but maybe that’s part of it,  just focusing on that type of work?

JHC: I think it’s all kind of converging. I think my work recently has brought together this really slow, tedious stuff, but also combined with an expressive, very hands-on, mushy quickness. In my new pieces, I’ve really found a way to combine those and it’s really exciting. I think it is timely. I don’t know, it feels good to work on it. 

LPZ: And to have both of those actions, the actions that are slow, peaceful, but then also fuck this, let’s rage and punch this clay!

JHC: And I do, I love punching clay, it’s so satisfying! Smushing it, and scratching it; I love the idea that your feelings can be in your work. I feel like my professors would tell me not to have anything too expressive in my work, that it’s kind of cliché sometimes. I feel like now I’m just kind of embracing it, going in and being like, “this is all my feelings, all there,” and just standing by it and having it be really expressive. 

LPZ: That’s awesome. I think we all want to see others having emotions. We’re all having emotions and so much is happening in this distant way, so I feel like if anything, showing emotions right now in your work and seeing the body of work that you make right sounds so exciting and really cathartic for other people to be like, “oh, yeah, she’s feeling it too.”

JHC: We all have so many feelings!

LPZ: Totally. Well that all sounds great—going to the studio and connecting, having different support structures. Do you have any other thoughts on how we as a larger art community can support each other or what we need to be doing or seeing right now?

JHC: I think that I’ve been trying to remember that it doesn’t matter, this idea of productivity… we don’t have to be productive just because we have time. One of my students today was saying how someone told her that Shakespeare during some downtime wrote one of his masterworks, and the pressure that that puts on this time is insane. 

[My friend Allison] was giving me a pep talk the other day, just saying that there’s no right way to do this. That’s been really helpful. So whatever that means for everybody. And maybe that’s just all ideas of being an artist, there’s no right way, and we all have to figure it out, how it works best for us, and find people that we can commiserate with.

LPZ: Yeah, especially for artists in our community that have been fortunate enough to make money off of what they’re doing, and then those opportunities drying up for a lot of people. I feel like now more than ever connecting back to those roots of why we started making work and finding fulfillment that kind of sidesteps a lot of the weird structures that the art world has that aren’t the most generative, or aren’t the most conducive—and as we come to learn, a bit flimsy. 

JHC: Yeah it’s interesting to think that I got my MFA in 2010, right in the market downturn, and so I feel like I started this career not really counting on much—hoping for the best but expecting for the worst. I’m really grateful to be teaching, and I feel really fortunate to have a lot of the support that I have at this time.

This review was originally published in Carla issue 20.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder of Carla. She is an arts correspondent for KCRW. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), OCHI (Los Angeles), and City Limits (Oakland).

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