Carrie Reichardt

Interview with Carrie Reichardt

- What is your personal history in terms of creativity? Have you always been London-based?

C: I am Chiswick born and bred. I have lived here most of my life, except when I did a degree in Sculpture & Fine Art at the University of Leeds in 1991. When I left, I thought that I’d never do art again as I was really put off during my time at University. My work was also completely different as I was more into body casting and it was much more autobiographical; it was all about me at the time. I then spent a few years doing unfulfilling jobs that paid my way and enabled me to go traveling to various countries. I also worked as a residential careworker and it was at this time that I had a nervous breakdown. It was a combination of doing too much drugs and losing my boyfriend.

. I became a chronic self harmer and I really should have been hospitalized but I found that at these times of trauma, the one thing that could help me and give me some direction was art. Internalizing the problems and converting them into art gave me distance from it.

I married and had a child and it was with my then husband that I got into mosaic. He suggested I do one in our back garden and I fell in love with it! I think it had something to do with the fact that it was such an obsessive compulsive craft that requires a lot of patience and time. It taught me that the process of making the art was just as important as the final piece. In mosaics, the artistic part is the initial design; from then on, it is just a matter of choosing certain colour tiles! I found the process to be meditative and so rewarding.

I helped to form a group called Living Space Arts and we started to teach and create community & public art mosaics for 10 years. It was through this decade that I self-rehabilitated myself and realized the power that art could have to enrich other people’s lives too.

- When did the political activism start creeping into your work?

C: During the time I was working with Living Space, I got divorced and met someone else which provided me with a much more stablising relationship. At this time I picked up a magazine that had an ad from a Human Rights charity, which was asking people to befriend death-row inmates for a humane act. I was very curious and became fascinated with the idea of being able to communicate with a potential serial killer or murderer and ask them why they did whatever it is that they had been accused of. So I applied, wrote a letter, which the charity gave to an inmate and I received one back. It sat in my room for about four days before I opened it and when I finally did, I was surprised to find out that the inmate had also previously done some mosaic work and he had enclosed some pictures of stuff that he had made!

That’s when the humanity instantly hits you and all pre-conceived notions of ‘murderers’ goes out the window. I ended up having a very intense relationship with this inmate over the following five years. Through the power of the pen, Luis Ramirez became one of my best friends as well as a confidante.

I visited him for a few days prior to his execution and I found it to be an extremely difficult thing to try and digest. He hadn’t done the crime and was innocent and that made me lose faith in the pillars of justice. Once this notion of justice has crumbled, then all you are left with is an anarchic feeling inside you. This inspired me to start mosaicing a mural in his memory, 13 hours a day for eight months; and not just do it in an artistic sense, but mosaic it with a purpose and try and say something in the mural as well.

. On what would have been his 43rd birthday, the year after they executed him; his mother, friends & family flew in from Texas, America and unveiled the mural. So it was in 2005, when everything came together and I started to merge Arts & Activism together.

A little while later, I met Anita Roddick, (The creator of Body Shop) who introduced me to writing letters to the Angola 3; who are three political prisoners in America who have been locked up in solitary confinement for 38 years. It was one of the prisoners’ (Herman Wallace) 65th birthday and so I wrote him a card as I know how important & beautiful it is to receive one. It shows the government that there are people out there who care and are watching the prisoners. Herman once wrote in a poem, ‘The deeper they bury me, the more my voice is a vibration for unity’.

- ‘Craftivism’ seems to be the new word that describes what you said about merging Arts & Activism together. What do you think it means to the many other people around the world who practice it?

;C: What is interesting is that it is a relatively new word and actually I have been a Craftivist long before I actually knew that there was a word to describe what I was doing! I actually discovered the phrase through looking at streetart online and when I delved deeper, I found that there were people doing it from all over the world; groups like Radical Cross Stitch and Extreme Craft have been using various tools/crafts to voice their opinions. It’s places like America, Australia & Canada, where Craftivism is really big and it isn’t so prevalent in the UK.

- Why do you think that is?

C: I think that it is because traditionally, the Art world in the UK has primarily been run by the ‘Establishment’ and it has always had trouble accepting other genres of art, like Outsider Art. It is only recently that a more ‘punk’ style of art has slowly started to become more acceptable, and is popularly coined as ‘Urban Art’. This is something that Banksy has to be given credit for, as he has made art more democratic. He gave art back to the people. No longer would we have to be told by art critics what is hot and what isn’t. We could finally decide for ourselves and not have to take notice of what the Establishment were trying to feed us. I hope that Craftivism will grow even bigger in the future and one of the main reasons I hope it grows is that it really enables social & political issues to be more accessible and attractive for the general public. If I have a stall on the street claiming to be ‘Anti-Death Row’, hardly anyone will come over and ask for information. However, if I bring my Tiki truck, which is completely mosaiced, then people will flock to it and ask a million different questions!

- What is the concept behind your Tiki truck?

C: In 2007, Manchester City council gave a large budget to a great organization called Walk The Plank to do the UK’s first ‘Art Car Parade’. They gave me some money to do a ‘Tiki love Truck’ which was supposed to have Hula girls walking alongside it, handing out messages of Love! However, at the same time I was working on this project, I was invited to be a witness at a friend’s execution in Texas, America.

At first, I really didn’t want to go, but after some gentle persuasion from my boyfriend, I decided to fly over and support this man’s (Ash) family. At the same time, I decided that since Ash had been in a cell down from Luis & that I was going over to support his family, I would dedicate the truck to him, much like the wall that I dedicated to Luis. I met a fellow artist, Nick Reynolds who asked if he could also come to the execution and make a death mask of Ash. I agreed and so did the family so we set off for America.

Bizarrely, Texas is the only state in America where legally, you can transport a dead body if you provide your own bodybag! So within five minutes of Ash being executed, we turned up with his family & our own bodybag and moved him to a cabin in the woods. We took of the door, put it between to campbeds and laid him down and casted his arm and head. If you look carefully enough at the original cast, it looks as if he has stubble, but that is actually goosebumps! His skin had reacted to the cold plaster even after his death! It took us eight days to finish off mosaicing the truck when we returned to the UK and on the eighth day, Ash’s mask was being paraded through the streets of Manchester.

- Tell us about this elephant project you are currently working on.

C: This elephant is one of about 250 that will appear on the streets of London for about three months and then they will be auctioned off at Sothebys. It will be London’s biggest public art project and the idea is that you will get a pamphlet showing you the locations of these elephants and you can walk around London, looking for them.

The money raised from the auction will help to fund conservation of elephants in India. Their populations have gone from 200,000 to only 30,000 and most of that decline has occurred in the last 10 years. The project has been set up by Camilla Parker-Bowles’ brother, so it is very high profile, with lots of celebrities, high-end designers and artists taking part.

We (Nick Reynolds & I) also managed to secure one elephant and the concept of ours is that one half of it is absolutely beautiful; the way that elephants are revered and decorated for ceremonial purposes, where it takes hours to paint them and make them colourful and striking. The other half is meant to show the reality of what has happened to these amazing creatures. On this half, we have words like ‘Landmines’ near the foot bones, as well as ‘Ivory’. This is supposed to help people to see what sorts of things are happening to get these elephants killed. We like the idea that you can walk around the elephant and see both sides of the sculpture.

- Can you explain to our readers what the working process is like when you use mosaics in your art?

C: Firstly, you come up with the design and it has to have strong lines that can define certain areas; you also have to be careful with tonal colours because when you come to the grouting part later, you may lose the color gradation that you had originally gone for. (Which is why I try to only use black grout, as white grout tends to ‘bleach out’ everything) Once you have your design, you can lay it on a table, add a layer of clingfilm to protect the design and then place a special mosaic netting on top. You can then stick the mosaic tiles onto the netting, add an adhesive and then add the grout to keep the tiles together. It’s actually the same process when you want to tile your bathroom.

Sadly, printing workshops and ceramics departments are quickly dying out as they are the most expensive courses for schools to run. The cost of a student sitting at a computer, doing their lesson and walking away is nothing, compared to the cost of having a specialized workshop, technicians, clay & storage space. So I feel that it is up to me to preserve the skills I have learnt over the years and try to re-ignite and inspire a new generation of young people to get into these crafts; because once they are gone, they won’t come back and that would be a tragedy.

- Apart from the elephant, are there any other projects you would like to share with us?

C: I have just curated a show in Brighton at the Ink_D gallery, called ‘Renegade Potters & Extreme Craft’. I chose around 12 artists who create ceramics, glassware, embroidery etc and brought them together under one roof. It looks like it’ll be a really interesting show and if you have the chance, please go and check it out!

Carrie Reichardt : http://www.carriereichardt.co.uk

Written by Selph