F1 Hybrid

Laura Barth

Interview by C. VanWinkle
April 20, 2024

What was the prompt that you responded to?

The prompt was a poem called “Fried Hard” that was short but evocative. There's a lot of good imagery in there. It was a story about this mother frying chicken and overcooking it, but the family ate it anyway. I liked the imagery about the violence of killing and preparing a chicken and some of the hunting imagery. What I took to be the main theme, and what I used for my response, was the familial ties and obligations to family members. At the end, the person said to their mom, “You can air fry this and make the chicken better,” but Mom was mad and said, “You don't have to eat it. You can just go.” And I feel that's just so familiar. I think we've all probably been there with something with our family. I remember when I moved away from my parents’ house. Then coming back, I realized, “Why do you do things like that?” But that's how they do it. I'm not going to ruffle any feathers and I’m gonna just go along with it.

I’m glad this poem was so meaningful to you right out of the gate! How did you get started responding to it?

As I interpreted it, there were two directions I was thinking about going. I've been working toward being vegan lately, so part of me thought I could respond to the imagery of the hunting and brutality that was in there, or I could respond to what I thought was the familial-obligations part of it. I was kind of stumped as to what I wanted to do with it.

Then I went on a work trip to California with a coworker and we had this really wholesome, friendly connection. He’s a lot older than me, and at dinner one night, he really started opening up and telling me about his life growing up and his background and his family. I was touched that he would tell me that, but also curious about his life and why this person is who he is. I was just chewing on that for a while, thinking about that poem in relation to some of the things he told me.

I knew my deadline was coming up and I really needed to start working on [my piece], so I thought I’d just write some things down and see what happens. I started writing down my impressions of the prompt and then out of nowhere this poem just started flowing out of me. I just had to do it. I was at work, but I just dropped work and started writing this poem. My original poem is probably about a page longer, but because it’s about somebody I work with in a professional capacity and I didn't want to betray their trust, I edited the poem way down before I submitted it. But I didn’t really want this poem to be my actual response. It felt like more of means to an end, the start of the flow of my response.

Because I wrote about plants and I was thinking about parents and having kids and lineages and things that, I thought of F1 hybrids. I realized, “Ohhh, my response should be a hybrid piece made by everyone in my family.” My art that I make on a regular basis is somewhat collage-based. Sometimes I’ll use flowers or moss or bits of anything interesting, and my four-year-old daughter loves to find little pieces of things, and she’d want to contribute. She’d already brought me this bit of a vine which I used in the final piece. It’s a stick, which has a tendril on it that’s coming out and wrapping itself around another stick. To me, that represents the obligation or the ties you might feel to a family member. And she brought that to me; she was like, “Mommy, you can use this for your art!” She’d also recently brought home from school this picture of a bird that she’d painted, and I thought it was so beautiful in an abstract way.

Right after I wrote the poem, I was thinking I’d just make a hybrid piece from me and my daughter. I’d do something with the bird picture and paint in some blue delphiniums and put that stick in there somehow. I was telling my partner about it and its relation to familial ties, and he was a little miffed that I hadn’t thought to include one of his pieces.

He’s an artist as well?

He’s a photographer; he does really beautiful landscape and nature photography. So I went through some of his recent pictures and picked one. After I decided it would be a hybrid art piece between all of us, I picked up my daughter from daycare and she had another piece of art for me. It was something that she and her friends had worked on. It was the little stencils that I showed you with the leaves. I figured I’d put some of the leaves in there too, and it’d be perfect.

I don't work a lot in digital collage, but I wasn't sure how to put everything together other than a digital collage. So I just took pictures of everything and smashed it all together in Photoshop. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to paint delphiniums. I really wanted to do watercolor on it, but I was struggling to get it how I wanted, and I was running out of time. So I found a stock photo of something similar to what I would have painted, which was a stand-in for what I would have painted. I took all these pieces and put them together in a way that made sense to me in Photoshop.

It's so cool that you responded to a poem about a person's relationship with their parents, specifically a mother, by actually making a collaboration between you and your family, you and your kid. Has she contributed to your work before? Are you frequent collaborators?

Not as much as I would like. Sometimes we'll go out and scavenge for little plant pieces or she’ll bring me a piece of something. I'm hoping to encourage that more.

I get the impression that you work with a lot of different materials. What are you into these days?

I love mixed media, so I’ve done a lot of graphite and charcoal, and I love watercolors. Photography is probably the thing that I've been doing the most lately, especially emulsion lifts and experimental processes. Sometimes I'll take an image and turn it into a Polaroid, which I then cut up or manipulate for the final image. I do enjoy messing around in Photoshop and I want to learn more about digital collage or maybe digital illustration. I am not particularly skilled in Photoshop; I’m just using some of the knowledge that I do have.

Sure. These are tools we have to work with, and we all use them differently. I think it speaks to your commitment to mixed media that you wrote a poem in the process of this whole thing. Do you tend to write while you make visual art or was this a wild experiment?

I do. Not always poetry, but I do tend to have multiple things going on. I feel like my art exists right next to my professional work. Or certain aspects of my art exist next to each other. I'm doing this thing with block prints that I'm trying to incorporate into a larger story with some of my photography.

Poetry is something that I've always done, but I’ve never felt really good at it at all. It's just something I do when I'm feeling something. But I have been reading more poetry lately. Actually, in the latest issue of Bait/Switch, there was a fantastic poem called “Metaphors Screaming My Name” by Adams. I was really struck by that one. I thought it was so good! It was like reading a modern-day beat poet. It’s really intense and awesome. I had recently been to the National Harbor, where I picked up this book called “Black Nature,” an anthology of African American nature poetry. So I had poetry swimming in my mind anyway.

Do you like working from a prompt?

Yes, I do. I don't usually work from a prompt. Usually it's an emotion that's the inspiration and I'm just working on it immediately. Unless maybe it's my own image and I'm using that as a basis to create another image, like the block prints I'm doing which are a response to some of my previous work. I like a prompt because it gets me thinking in different directions than I probably would; it gets me out of my own bubble.

Did you think about how closely your finished piece would relate to the prompt? Or to whatever your work inspired next? Was that on your mind?

Yes, I definitely thought about that, especially this being my second time and having really enjoyed the process so much. I went through the previous issues of Bait/Switch and looked at the maps. Maybe I thought about that too much! I thought, “Would two poems in a row about a similar subject really be helpful for the next person?” And also, if my work friend decided to Google me one day and they found this poem, would they be mad at me?” So maybe I’ll nest the poem in another response. I did think about the next person coming after me and what may be more interesting to them.

Oh sure, and we leave that entirely up to the creator. It's all up to your process and how you interpret things. How was doing this for the second time? Was it a different experience than the first?

A little bit. I felt freer the second time around. Through social media, I've gotten a lot of engagement with my work and opportunities have come out of social media, so I frequently feel pigeonholed into doing a particular thing. Then when I deviate from that thing, I don't get as many likes, nobody's responding to it… Not that it should matter, but it does influence how you feel you ought to create. The first time I participated, I still felt a little obligated to stay within my normal, current practice of using emulsion lifts. “When this comes out and goes on my social media feed, is this something that my followers and colleagues are going to like, are they going to respond to it?” And this time around I just didn't care. I'm going to respond to the prompt however makes sense to me.

Also, going through some of the older magazines and see more of the art that comes in reminded me that you get people from all different levels, which is awesome. Some are established in a certain thing, and then other people are experimenting, or they might be new. That made me feel safe and free to stop thinking about social media engagement.

I love that. We definitely try to remove any sense of competition here. We have such a span of attitudes toward creation and all these different facets of being an artist, there is no “usual.” Everybody is floating somewhere in the middle, so whatever you do, it belongs.

Yeah, it’s a really safe space to get your creative juices flowing and think about your process. I don't think about my process much at all and this gets me thinking in a way that’s beneficial to my overall practice.

What's your advice to a new be getting their prompt today?

This ties into what we were just talking about. Use it as a way to grow your own creative process and thinking, especially if you're feeling pigeonholed into a certain style or medium, or if you’re looking at measures of success in certain ways. Try to let go of all of that and just enjoy the process of creating. Find the joy in creation. Letting go and not being worried about success or what your followers think is such a good exercise. It’s so beneficial to your “normal” art, I would say.

Call Number: G118PP | G119VA.baF

Laura Barth is an artist, musician, and horticulturist living in the mountains of North Carolina. Primary media include analog photography, alternative and experimental photographic processes (particularly emulsion transfers), graphite, charcoal, watercolor, and hand-carved prints. Laura has a degree in music performance from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and a Bachelor's and Master's degree in science (horticulture) from North Carolina State University.