Interview with Lauren Lyon

Interview Begins:

Hello, this is Kate Fowler interviewing Lauren Catherine Thibodeau Lyon, aka Thibby. Could you please tell me your name? 

Lauren Catherine Thibodeau Lyon the 1^st!

Ok, great. Well! Tell me about Portrait as Community.

As a class?

Yes, How do you feel? Why did you decide to take this class?

I decided to take this class because of Zwelethu, honestly.

Why? 

Because I love his work and I was excited to have the opportunity to be in a class with such a distinguished professional… not that you are not, Michael Lease. But, of his caliber, I guess. ...it was also a class that I wanted to take because it would pose a challenge to for me to make work that I’ve never created before. I’ve never done work about any sort of real ideas about a group of people or any...documenting (of) real things in general.

What type of work do you make?

I would describe most of my work as being both analytical and formal, and also sort of poetic.

Describe a piece that you’ve made which fits all of these categories: Analytical, poetic and formal.

I guess one of the most recent series that I've done, printing Van Dykes on fabric... a series of gestures, paired with sort of graphic representations of what those gestures are about. So, a gesture representing an emotion, and secondly, a metaphorical representation of the psycho-sematic  response to that emotion. Which sounds kind of complicated, but in my mind it’s a simple concept. 

So, you went to school originally for nursing?

Well, originally when I went to college out of high-school... I was going to pursue photography. I started off at community college taking graphic design and drawing classes… but, after my friends left to places like Miami, Michigan and New York, it sunk in that I was there without my support system. I began to doubt myself and my ability and drive to pursue photography. So I thought it would be a good idea to do nursing instead. It was a total cop out. While I am interested in science, like I find anatomy, physiology and anatomy really fascinating, it’s just not who I am.

It seems like you’ve always had kind of an interest in deep knowledge of the way your body works in relation to your mind. Do you think that’s true?

Yeah, I mean… I’ve always thought that people don’t know enough about the way their bodies work, but I also think people don’t know enough about the way their emotions work. I don’t know, people just need to figure themselves out.. and understand why things affect them in a certain way. 

Do you think that’s why you create the work you create… as an attempt to figure yourself out?

Yeah, but also, its going along with figuring out how your body works physiologically…Yesterday, we were discussing how people think it’s such a weird and strange thing to go to therapy and start talking with a  counselor, but to me it’s something that I’ve done since I was eight years old. It’s like going to any other doctor for a check-up. So I think my ability to conceptualize my emotions has been pretty strong since I was young. Not necessarily being able to control them, but in understanding them.

How do those physical, kind of tangible representations of your emotions…what role do they play in your relationships? Do you feel like, rather than communicating with people about it, you make these things and that’s your form of communication, or are they just kind of secondary? Or, once you create that work are you not trying to work through those issues anymore?

It took me two bodies of work to work through one particular relationship that I was struggling with… I found that when I was making that work, it was the only way I could make work is if I could make it about that thing. It was all consuming and so hard to think of anything else. You make work about what you know… you write about what you know. So, at that time, it was unfortunately all that I knew… this really stressful struggle in our relationship.

What’s the most important thing that you’ve learned or gained as a photographer in the past two years… either through your education or through your experiences personally? 

To let myself be scared. To recognize a fear of something and just try to demolish it.

Is making work for you scary?

Making work about myself was scary, the idea of doing that was really scary to me. A lot of what I did was very formal, geometric, observational... about... relationships between objects in the world… so yeah, the idea of making work about myself was really strange and scary. I learned a lot from it and now I’m approaching another fear with the Burlesque project… a lot of different fears, actually. Approaching a community that I don’t really know, I get really nervous. Last time I went to shoot I wanted to leave within 15 minutes, but I made myself stick around... I’ve just realized that the power that doing something that you’re scared of has, how much it helps you grow. I feel that way about a lot of things in life, like food. I hate not liking food, so I will eat something until I like it. A couple of weeks ago, I’m proud to say that I finally like pickles.

I love pickles!! Dill Pickles?!  

I don’t know what kind of pickle… it was a Panera Pickle.

That could mean anything…They say that if you eat something ten times, you’ll like it. I don’t like olives. I think I’ve had olives like 150 times in my life.

Black olives, even?! They’re so good…

ANY OLIVE! Any olive in the world, that’s ever existed. It’s terrible.

So if you had to identify yourself as being part of a community, what community would it be? What are your communities?

My mom and my stepdad’s friend circle.. 

What community are they?

The Real Housewives of Roanoke. I’ve always been close with my mom and her circle of friends. I don’t feel connected to a lot of communities. I guess we’re in the lower end of the Richmond photographic arts community, but I’m also sort of involved in a little Illustration community with people who are working on comics and all sorts of things. I did some portraits of them last year in the studio. Other than that, I don’t have any weird hobbies or religious connections. Hopefully I’ll actually become a part of the Burlesque community in some way. I’ve never felt myself to be so inspired and attracted to a certain group of people before…

What is it about this group of people? 

It's something that I can never see myself doing… 

I don’t think that’s true! I’ve seen you break it down in the middle of a dance floor, with only one other person out there.

Yeah, but those are like little… I don’t know! They just have such balls! They’re so brave. It’s just really inspiring to me that there are so many different women, that do it for different reasons. So many different body types… It’s just inspiring… they look so happy and empowered. Before going to my first show I was really weirded out by the idea, but it’s nothing like a strip club where drunk men are just silently, creepily staring at a girl on a pole. There’s a really positive interaction between the audience and the dancer.

Have you ever been to a strip club?

No. Maybe I should for contrast.

Yeah, I was thinking it may be interesting to verify your beliefs.

I don’t think I need to go there to do that, though. I just know it’s a different thing.

So, you’re thinking about performing with the Burlesque group?

Fifteen percent of me can see that as a possibility. I don’t know, we’ll have to see. It will depend… it seems like a really trans-formative experience, going through the class and meeting all of these women. I mean, maybe. I’m definitely going to take the class. But, performing is terrifying. I can only imagine utter humiliation. I’ll just pee my pants on stage. Part of me wants to.

You’re a performer , though. I think of all of the times we’ve done karaoke . You want to be up there, by yourself, you want space to do your thing.

Yeah. I have different characters within me.

Yeah, that’s perfect for Burlesque, right? I do think there’s potential for you to be comfortable doing that since it’s inherently character based.

Yeah, it’s a different self. The stage self. I talked to one girl who said that she didn’t know her instructors real name until she had been taking classes with her for six months. So, you are totally Deanna Danger... 

So who will you be? What’s your name?

I have no idea, I’ll probably just do some silly pun with my last name. 

So, we’re currently at 17 minutes. Some Final Thoughts? What do you stand to gain from this class?...

I think that it’s going to be the first project that I can really get into long term and explore in a lot of different ways. There have been projects that I’ve done before where I tend to be a product thinker. When you only have a semester, you almost have to be that way. I look at this and I’m excited by the idea and the endless possibilities in exploring it, knowing that they’re endless in my mind is really exciting, whereas before it was scary… not knowing how to approach something, and how it’s going to end. I’m kind of a control freak in a lot of ways.

Do you like working alone?

I like working with other people. This is something that I would want to get a lot of people involved in, just because I think the ideas behind it are really important. Ideas dealing with female sexuality and body image.

She’s paddling off into her canoe for the rest of the night… thanks for tuning in, this has been Kate Fowler and Lauren Lyon.

Audio Interview: http://soundcloud.com/quietchannel/interview-with-lauren-lyon