I Imagine Pink

Kelle Capewell

Interview by C. VanWinkle
May 3, 2024

What was the prompt that you responded to? Can you describe it for me?

I had two collages and a piece of prose. I'll start talking about the prose first. It was incredible! It was lovely to read a piece of writing that was so visceral. I trained originally as an actress and performer, so I've read many Shakespeare plays and Chekhov and Tennessee Williams. This was a treat because the language of the piece was just amazing to read. It immediately jumped to me that it felt like a monologue. It was a man talking about bringing a pig back to life and it was very sensory based. He imagines pink, but purple organs protrude from his belly. He talks about the smell: it smells of thick rot. And touch: my fingers press into his softness like clay. Taste: I taste wood, ice. So straight away I thought, Wow, it's very sensory. I could feel those things. I could taste those things. I also felt it dealt with elements: water, fire, earth, ice...

When I look at a text, I always remember what I was taught at drama school: What do the characters say about themselves? The figure, the man, talks about himself saying he’s unshaven, homeless, schizo-eyed, various other things. So I took that down. That's him giving his opinion. Does the pig ever give an opinion of the man? No, not that I could see. [laughs]

I created in my head this world of what I felt the piece was about, which was kind of the circle of life. Some of the last lines, which I think are beautiful, are “Our flesh will melt into each other’s,” and “In the order of things, we will be gone.” Now to me that is just Shakespeare. It's monosyllabic, and if you understand language… “We. Will. Be. Gone.” Beautiful! For me, those last lines are saying, I've done all this, but no matter what we do, we will all go into the ground and start again.

That is so epic! It's the entire human experience in this little piece.

Beautiful. Amazing. So good.

So there was that piece and also a pair of collages. How did those strike you?

The colleges were very random. There was jellyfish, brains… The figure that stuck out to me on one of them was a little Black girl playing croquet, which didn't seem to fit with all the rest of it. There was also a tree with people sitting in it at different levels, eating apples. I felt it said various things about status; there was a keyhole and a man trying to go through it like a door. There were some jewels. I saw a very simple picture of two phones, which to me brought up communication.

And seeing this little Black girl playing croquet. The picture looked very old and I wondered if that was something that they would’ve done back then. Maybe. I thought, Does she seem comfortable? In the picture she seems very uncomfortable. Her eyes are looking up as if to say, “Come to me, come to me.” With all the other elements, I felt like she was trying to communicate, to use her brain, to access something. I don't know if it’s an emotion or thought, but that was how it spoke to me.

You had A LOT of imagery and ideas to work with. How did you transmute that into something of your own? How did you get started?

I love that I had multiple pieces because my brain is like this all the time. I am bonkers. I love to be creating all the time. So to actually have more than one stimulus was really good for me. With the collage, it took a while for me to figure out how to capture that myself within my creativity. I knew I wanted to create a painting or some other sort of actual piece. So I did a painting of the girl because she just stayed with me. Those eyes, that face, looking up as if to be connected with something. In the painting, you can see a soft blur as if she is trying to communicate something. It was all very easy to get down, to know what it wanted to be.

And then something else happened.

My second piece was obviously a little bit harder. I wanted to embody what I do, but I went through a million different things because I do a million different things. I thought I'd design some costumes around this piece, some makeup, a song, a dance – and then I realized that all those theatrical elements that I work with spring to me a show. Those different pieces of text were so visceral, they were like musical numbers. “It smells of thick rot.” You can see them there singing, “It smells of thick rot!” “Exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale.” I could hear it, it was like Hamilton. “Drowning in the snow…”

Sorry, I've jumped to what I actually created. At first it was going to be just a theater poster that said, “This is the show starring Pig,” because Pig is the main, pivotal character in this piece of prose. It does have the Man, but Pig is the star. Then, I thought, “Mmmm, needs to be a bit more than that.” I wanted to paint on a piece of acrylic because I paint a lot on clear surfaces. I love transparency, when you paint something and you can still see through it. Then I realized, “Oh wow, this could be a lightbox! Never made one in my life, but I'm going to have a go.” So I created this lightbox, which is like a poster itself, with the lights around it which gave it depth. Also, my favorite color in all my artwork is pink, and that’s great within this piece. One of the lines is “I imagine pink,” and I put pink lights within it so it was still personal to me. And as we know, most pigs are pink! I wanted to keep that running theme.

I used acrylic paint to put down various texts on it. I wanted to create a thick white ice snow feel. It's hard to see in a picture but it's very texturized. Pig is a little bit abstract and actually painted the purple organ meat coming from his belly as the Man pressed into his softness like clay. You can just about see it. The organ meat goes into the earth, and the words I have here are “Our flesh will melt into each other's;” that's the sort of last line. And for some fun I've put, “Broadway's one and only maggot-filled hit,” because there are many mentions within the piece of maggots, and I'm sure we can all relate to thinking about going into the ground and what happens to our bodies. It's nice to have something playful in there. We also have here, “Starring Pig and Broken Man.”

I am so excited to see this show! I’ll never get to, but I'm definitely interested!

We need to talk to the to the writer! [laughs]

I think it’s definitely safe to bill it as the “one and only maggot-filled hit.” It's got to be the only one. It’s brilliant. You talked a little about how this piece relates to the rest of your work: it involves transparency and the color pink. What else does it have in common with your greater body of work?

I think all my work has movement and a theatricality about it. And even though I use pink a lot, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily girly. I think it's a very visceral color. It gives you a big hit. I think you can see that within my work. I like texture. Maybe the biggest, most important thing is I like to play. I'm not scared to try this and try that. I don’t think that in my journey as an artist so far, I know what my style is or what anything will be. I just continue to play. I never will stay the same. Within the two pieces, you can see that my style is very free, it's playful, it's expressive. It can have many facets to it.

I love that. I’m always doing different things, too.

That's really good to hear. You know, sometimes other people say you need to stick with one thing and it needs to be this or that. But if I stick with one thing, the work is bland for me and boring. It's not responsive.

And if you always did the same thing, then you still would never have made a lightbox, and instead that is now something you have done before.

Yeah! I believe there's nothing that you can't do. You just gotta try and see what happens. From that, we find other amazing developments.

I totally agree. A lot of our contributors use this experience as an opportunity to try something new and experimental and I love getting to witness that adventure.

The prompt came at a time when I was suddenly given a million different things to do. I started a new job, various other things, and so for me, this experience was great because it made my brain focus and shut everything else out temporarily. I couldn't just go and create whatever came into my mind; I had to respond to a visceral gut feeling.

This project that you’re doing is amazing because that, for me, is art. And how you respond to one piece then affects somebody else, like a chain reaction, it's been wonderful to do. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You give us the stimulus, which is so unique, and keeps my brain in contract but also gives me the time to play. And I also get to do this with like-minded people who aren’t going to judge or reject what I create.

Another interesting facet of your work is that, because you like working on transparent and shiny surfaces, it’s naturally going to be hard to photograph. It’s pretty special that just by nature of the materials you work with, someone has to see it in person to really experience it.

Yeah, throughout all of my work, it's all about experience. Theater is about experience. Maybe within my subconscious, I want to do that. It's not meant to be hard to photograph or hard to be seen, but to feel it, you have to experience it in the flesh.

That's cool!

Actually, before I made the lightbox, I wanted to make a model set. And that would have been great, but I knew I would spend far too long creating it within the time I had, with the snow and the cabin and everything. It just shows that there were many things that you could create.

It is too late to include that for this feature, but I'm not going to stop you from doing that someday! If you ever do, please show me. Alright, last question. What is your advice for a new person just getting their prompt today? What would you tell them?

Be open, know that your mind can change. Don’t respond right away; maybe take notes and see how you feel, but know that it's a journey. I think everything is a journey. How you feel about the piece then might be different from how you feel about it in a day's time. So being flexible is always really important. Do something that you've never done before because this is a chance to play and to do and to experience. So don't be scared.

Call Number: B117PP | B118VA.caI

When I was a young girl, I dreamed of being a fashion designer and continually sketched and made clothing. I now love to use the basic fashion croquis to create what I call my Dolls using collage and mixed media. I worked for many years as a professional performer, which required a huge amount of discipline, and I became obsessed with perfection, which has influenced how I like to create my art today. Imperfection is my love; messy, creative play and fun with no rules and a raw feel are what make me happy.