Super Natural, 2006, pencil, color pencil on paper, 78" x 37", Courtesy The Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens
AUREL SCHMIDT
IN CONVERSATION WITH ANA FINEL HONIGMAN

Nature is beautiful, but it is not necessarily nice. And humans are the most vicious, selfish and destructive presence in the natural world. Ironically, while our activities proceed with wrecking the planet, we simultaneously maintain a romantic and inaccurate image of the natural world and our place within it. In her meticulously crafted color pencil drawings, Manhattan-based artist Aurel Schmidt brings us back to earth, as she brilliantly and beautifully spotlights our irresponsible treatment of the environment and illuminates our intentionally unrealistic attitude toward nature.

Using pencils, acrylics, burn marks, food stains, blood and archival paper, Schmidt details the interrelationship between our human excess and the debris we create with nature's beauty and natural decay. She constructs her drawings with the care of a Victorian horticulturist. Because of the exactitude with which she represents every detail of her subject matter - from the vile textured paper of cigarette butts to the scales on a reptile or the petals of a flower - her images have been critically compared to Renaissance drawings. Born in Kamloops, Canada, the twenty-five-year-old artist had her first show at LA's seminal Peres Projects gallery and has since shown in Tokyo and Greece. Rumors have it that she will be showing this year at Deitch Projects, New York's emerging artist Mecca. During Frieze, Schmidt will also be showing five new works on paper with The Gallery @ Adventure Ecology, as part of their mission to showcase artists whose work draws attention to environmental concerns, particularly climate change. The Gallery @ Adventure Ecology's profits after artists' commissions go back into Adventure Ecology's education programme and green projects. In itself, Schmidt's work is the beautiful by-product of ugly realities; hopefully the footprint she leaves after this show will lead to a cleaner future.

ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: Your work appears to be making the statement that urban daily life, symbolized by urban ephemera like subway tickets, junk and junk food, is far more connected to nature and natural decay than we realize. What we consume and discard contributes to environmental decay. Am I right in reading your art this way, and is this the primary message you want to convey with your compositions?

AUREL SCHMIDT: I don't have a primary message in my work, although I do see how you could find that idea in some of my compositions. I am interested in urban life's connection to nature, but I'm much more interested in treating it as a whole, not as a juxtaposition of positive and negative. In my work I like to highlight an un-romanticized version of nature. I am inspired by what I see in the environment of the everyday world. Exquisite natural beauty living side by side with pollution, mutation, sickness, and death.


AFH: Sickness and death are obviously part of nature's processes, but are you saying that we need to accept that pollution and other human waste is also a part of nature? Are you saying that humans, in all our ugly aspects, are connected to nature even when we're behaving at our worst towards nature?

AS: I think that this way of viewing nature is realistic. The word 'nature' generally refers to the parts of the world that exist independently of human beings and civilization. I can't help but feel that this traditional idea of nature no longer refers to the current environment on earth. Nature in its pure form has become a romantic fantasy. Global Warming, pollution, and human expansion have changed every inch of this planet. Human beings are not connected to nature; human beings have destroyed nature.


AFH: What do you think of the "conscientious consumerism" movement?

AS: I think it's great. A conscientious anti-consumerism movement would be more interesting but this is still better then nothing. At least it gets people thinking about the where the things they buy come from and tries to make individuals more responsible for the choices they make. I personally don't feel good about buying a pair of shoes made in a Chinese sweatshop by workers with no basic human rights. I don't want another human being making the same four movements twelve hours a day for me. I don't want that person's life to be manipulated and exploited for my pleasure. Once you start thinking about these things it is not a difficult equation: If you don't want to hurt other human beings or destroy the eco system then don't buy goods and services that promote those things. Of course because it is a popular movement it is easy to get jaded, but I think it's important to stay focused if you really believe in the ideas behind it.


AFH: Do you think there is a possibility an anti-consumerism movement could also become popular?

AS: I wish. I think an anti-consumerist movement is much more difficult then a conscientious consumer movement because it goes against the entire structure of our present society. Everything would have to change. I think minimal-consumerism could catch on though. I feel like there is already guilt in consumerism. There is a gaudiness to excess that I think a lot of people find undesirable. I think there was a time when having a lot of things and showing off what you had was something to be desired by most people. Post shop-a-holics, mall walkers, and corporate hip-hop, it all just seems a little shameful.

AFH: Were you raised in a rural environment?

AS: I was raised somewhere between hippy idealism and redneck actuality. I was born and went to school in the terrible little city of Kamloops British Columbia, Canada. My parents built their own house thirty minutes outside of town, we grew our own organic food, we chopped wood to heat our home, and got our water from a natural creek. We had chickens, pigs, cows, fish, dogs, and cats. There were a lot of flowers and trees and sunshine. My father drove a pickup truck and dirt biked around in the forest listening to classic rock, drinking beer and shooting at animals. My mom grew marijuana in our backyard. I was a teenage slut in gold hoop earrings and leopard hot pants blacking out at bonfire parties up in the woods.

AFH: So would you say the blend of junk and beauty in your work functions as sort of self-portrait?

AS: I feel like the mix of beauty and junk could function as a self-portrait for most people. Our entire lives are in a constant state of decay and renewal. Things we cherish and value rapidly become symbols of disgust and shame. The lovely dinner we have the night before gets shit out early the next day. Our healthy bodies fall apart. Our brand new iphones will get recycled in China, polluting the drinking water and giving the same children who assembled them cancer.

AFH: Would you categorize your work as Gothic?

AS: In some ways definitely, but more goth then Gothic, and more realist goth then a romantic goth. The doom and gloom thing is definitely present but the inspiration for the morbidity mainly comes from the horrific brutality of the real world. I reference a lot of death related subject matter and imagery when I make my work. I use photographs from magazines or printed off the Internet of dead bodies, mainly victims of war or suicides. I don't necessarily draw directly from them, I use them more as a visual reminders. It is important to me to be constantly aware of the real horror in this world...what's in the news is much more terrifying then any fantasy.

AFH: What can art do to effect these realities?

AS: I think art has the ability to affect these realities through cultural osmosis. Art is a visual language; it can express dissatisfaction, alienation and sadness just as easily as it can beauty. The artist, as a cultural figure and as an instrument of their work, has the power to both translate and to influence greater society. In a direct manner a piece of art cannot save a life, or change a political policy; but through it's subtleties it does have the power to effect individuals. It has the ability to inspire thought, and therefore has the potential to promote awareness and ultimately influence change.

AFH: You frequently feature cigarettes in your drawings. What do cigarettes symbolize for you?

AS: Cigarettes for me symbolize anti-life. Man unlike any other animal knows it will one day die, to smoke is to consciously move closer to that inevitability. You know it will kill you and you continue with it. Addictive or not, it is still a self destructive and terribly romantic personal decision against life. I don't regularly smoke, but when I do have a cigarette I am very aware of my decision. On a simplistic level though, I like to take my subject matter from my everyday world and cigarette butts grow like grass in New York City.

AFH: You're mostly self-taught. Do you think there are things lacking from not having a formal art school education?

AS: I was never interested in the idea of going to art school. When I was 19 I decided to teach myself art history. I was crazy for it in a way that I don't think I could have been in an academic setting. It did not provide balanced learning. If I was interested in a particular artist or movement I became completely obsessed. I was also still just drawing, applying all this new information directly into one medium. In this way I was able to specialize in one area, although I am sure at the cost of learning other things...like writing or talking about my work. I don't always have the words or know all the references to articulate myself in the way I would like. Which can be really embarrassing, but humbling at the same time.

AFH: Where did you start your self-designed course of study and how did you structure it?

AS: I was working the door of a very unpopular bar at the time. I had a lot of spare time at minimum wage so I thought I would put it to use. It began as a very ambitious project to study 20th century 'culture'. I set out to thoroughly understand one decade per month. My plan was to study art, fashion, music and base politics of the time. I ambitiously planned that during each month I would only listen to the music made in that decade and create artwork in the popular style of that decade, and even dress according to fashion of that decade. It lasted about a week. The first to go was the fashion, then the music, and then the politics. Art was the only survivor.

AFH: Are you an auto-didactic in other areas too?

AS: I try to study philosophy on my own. It isn't that glamorous though... imagine Existentialism on book CD and those 'Introducing' books with the cartoons.

AFH: What are your current historical obsessions?

AS: I love history, but am currently obsessed with the present more than the anything in the past.

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ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a critic, PhD candidate in art history at Oxford University and Senior London Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine. She also contributes to Style.com, Grazia, Tank, Sleek and Harper's Bazaar.