Alice Tippit

Alice Tippit left Seattle, where she was becoming a well-known artist, for Chicago to go to art school, work two jobs, and have no friends. She's also scared of bears.


Chief: I don’t know about the “art scene” in Seattle or Chicago, but what has it meant to move to Chicago, for you and your art?

Alice Tippit: It means letting go of anything that I was comfortable with. In Seattle I had people who knew me, I had places to go, I had people to talk to if I was interested in doing anything. Here I have nothing, it’s just a totally new situation. So I don’t know where galleries are, I don’t know people, I don’t have friends and it’s liberating in a way.

You’re already an accomplished artist, so why did you move to Chicago (after a lull in your college attendance), to finish your undergraduate art degree?

I’m not an accomplished artist, really.

Yeah you are. You’ve had articles written about you, you’ve sold art for money…

Yeah, but in the world of accomplishment, I’m a turd. But here’s the thing: you can always get better and everyone has crises or moments of doubt and I had one about a year ago and I decided I was going to go back to school. I had never had that experience, an art school experience. And there was a time when I was going to go to school in Washington state and I didn’t. I decided that I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere new.

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But what can you get from art school that you can’t get from the “art scene”?

That’s an interesting question. I’m not exactly sure. I guess I get the experience of being in school. I’m also learning things, I’m filling in holes that I thought I had. And maybe they aren’t really there, but I felt like they were there. So, yeah...

How much does it suck to have to work two jobs while going to school in a new city?

“Sucks” is a weird word. It’s hard, but it’s the kind of hard that I can handle. I like being busy and caught up in things. I really don’t think I would have it any other way. I can’t imagine not having the jobs and just going to school. Jobs bring me into the world, they make me relate to people, they give me a community that I wouldn’t have except through school and they give me a place to be powerful or whatever, so I enjoy working. But sometimes I’m tired and stuff like that.

But if you are working, wouldn’t you rather be working on art?

I’m poor. I have to pay rent and school’s expensive. It’s totally worth it, but it’s expensive.

Why do you create art?

To satisfy a need to express myself. To deal with feelings that I have about the world, about interacting with people, about relationships. Not in an overt way, but it definitely helps me. It’s a mode of expression and I do it because I like it. It’s funny and it’s fun for me to do it.

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Has anyone ever said that you “explore the convergence of art and sarcasm”?

No...I’ve had many things said to me, but not that.

Do you?

I definitely like humor. And I like art to be funny. And that has more to do with exploring power of relationships. It’s a kind of iconoclastic approach to power. And one of the ways that I approach people in power, powerful ideas, is through humor because it deflates things. It’s the great leveler, in a way. And I use it. I don’t think my art is sarcastic though.

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No, me either. I was just asking if you anyone had ever said that. Anyway, what are you working on now?

Well, it’s school. It’s weird. I feel more able to just create crap to satisfy project requirements, which is good for me. Before I was typically struggling to finish these projects, these things that were due in the world. Where as here, this is like a fake art-world. It’s not like the one that I was participating in formerly where something would go up on the wall and people would judge it. It just goes on a wall at school and gets judged there. It’s just like this fake world where I can do anything I want, so that’s really liberating, in a way. But I’m still working with power/relationships, definitely. I actually have the appearance of what I’m doing and the content being almost entirely different. So that when you look at it, and you approach it, and you read it - although by reading it’s not necessarily literal, though sometimes it is; literal and figurative - when you read it, you get a completely different sense than from what you’re seeing. Your interpretation changes. And it’s hard to balance that relationship. Am I making any sense at all?

Well it sounds like you’re working on one of those Magic Eye 3-D things?

Pretty much. You have to stare at it for a long period of time and gradually a figure appears. It’s hard to explain. Ugh, how do I put it? In the relationship that I am making between what the picture looks like and what the picture is actually saying to people, the inherent contradiction is what makes it funny. Or it makes it interesting. Actually, the word I am looking for is “discrepancy.” The discrepancy between the appearance of the piece and the content of the piece is crucial to me.

Good thing there’s pictures next to these words. Are you going to do anything else with Dawn Cerny?

Possibly. Right now I’m really busy with school but we have tentative plans to keep working together, but just to take a break. Because it was really exhausting.

Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Do you know anything about the bears? We could talk about the bears and how awesome they’re doing.

Are you into them?

No, I’m scared of bears. I hear if you see a bear in the woods, you’re supposed to ignore it.

Does that hold true if you see a bear in Chicago also?

Yeah, if you see a bear in Chicago, you try to ignore it. I went to a sports bar by accident the other day. We went to Shamrock City -- some fake Irish bar, bonafide sports bar -- with these huge big screen TVs.
The Bears were playing and they won, because that's what they do, they
win.

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So it was exciting?

Yeah and I think normally in any other situation I would make fun of the Bears and talk about how stupid they are, but here I’m actually scared to say anything bad about the Bears, because I could get my head chopped off. They’re crazy here, they’re crazy about the Bears.

So instead you just want to put your hatred of the Bears on the internet?

Yeah, whatever. Is that cyberspace?

Website

http://www.alicetippit.com/

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