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| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Jill Giegerich | . | |||||||||
M. Did things change?
Yeah. I think that the economy... the art world falling apart economically, I think that was a huge change. That was a serious, serious reassessment. And for me I don't know what came first. I think that just about the time that that happened I was burning out. But I was still running on past assumptions. It took me a long time to burn out. And it seemed to me to be happening simultaneously with the disappearance of the art market and that was very traumatic for me. Very confusing. So I think that my environment was changing at the same time that I was just burning out. I often wonder if that hadn't happened, what form would my burn out have taken then. If the art world that I moved in hadn't changed. It may not have been very different. It may still have taken me just as long.
M. To me, economically it seems like the way it was when we were in school or in undergraduate school or younger. There was this point where it went up. And then it dropped back to where it was. But it seems to me that there's still this kind of fantasy going on that didn't exist before, and it was getting under way. It hit this peak, but when the bottom fell out the fantasy kept going. That's the part that mystifies me.
To a certain extent I guess it matches my entire experience of being on the planet. I always experience 
that sense of "Am I missing something here?" You know? I mean I've experienced it all my life so it's nothing new. (laughs) But that happens all the time. I might occasionally read something in the L.A. Times about some kind of real boosterish kind of thing about the L.A. art scene, or you know, you still read occasionally about these things, it's like in the whole world it's considered the cutting edge in the art world and I'm thinking "Am I missing something?" But it's no different than what's being reflected in the whole culture. I see that all the time. I listen to stuff Clinton says and [ask myself] "Am I missing something?" Maybe it's just that American boosterism. And no matter what's happening you... it's like a used car salesman. No matter what kind of piece of junk you're looking at, and you can see that there's smoke coming out of the engine and the wheels are falling off, and the guy's going to tell you that it's a great car.
M. Yes, well why am I so mystified by that?
Yeah, (laughs) come to think of it, why am I so mystified? I guess the deal is that experience is the teacher. I can remember in graduate school at Cal Arts, Judy Pfaff one day was coming down the stairs near the super shop and somebody had done something to her, (somebody) in the art world but she didn't say who it was, and she was real distraught. And she saw me, I was coming up, and she sat me down on the stairs and she just laid out the whole thing for me, you know, "Don't you ever think that it's not going to be this way, because it is." And it was a very intense conversation. And so someone told me all about it when I was in graduate school... But what difference does that make? I mean it's kind of your job as a young human fool to go do it. (laughs)
M. Can we look at some work? Or should I keep that [camera] very tightly cropped? (laughs)
(laughs) I think you'd better do that. Um... I don't have a lot of work here. I keep it in my storage space. And the work that I make now tends to be pretty site specific. Right now I'm not, I'm just in the stages of planning a few things, so there's not a lot to see right now.
M. I'm curious about what form the work takes in relation to your survival. Your actions change so your work has to change.
Yeah. Well, it has.
M. What doesn't change?
Well, I guess interestingly enough what hasn't changed is the fact that I'm still an artist. Which, of all 
the things I've been through, was the biggest question for me. Throughout, it was "Will I go on being an artist?" That's been a question actually for me since I started making art. In a way it's the way I let off steam. I have these constant fantasies in my head about these other things that I could be doing. But when I go through a real serious meltdown, it's a real reorientation, that's the first thing that I'm convinced is going out the window. And oddly enough that's the thing that's never changed. And I've come very very close. I've never actually come up with something else that I actually could do, though I've run through a million possibilities. But I have absolutely lost the desire to make art. Given it up. And then I suddenly, almost inadvertently, [find] that I've made the next piece of art. And then when I get to that place I think, "Well okay, I just make one piece of art at a time and maybe I actually will go on being an artist." Now that question isn't so important to me and I don't really care whether I go on being an artist or not. It just seems to happen anyway. But that is the one thing that hasn't changed so far. How I feel about my work has changed a lot. The work has changed. I look at the work I used to make, not that I don't like it, but I see all the stress and effort and exhaustion of those years in that work. And I don't understand who made it, who had the energy to make that? Who was that? So I'm not at all interested anymore in vast output or accumulating objects.
M. So when you're sitting here and saying "Well I do things very deliberately now", I'm thinking that's not a change.
No, I suppose that's not. That's true. But when I said that I wasn't thinking so specifically about my art... You're right. I have always done things very deliberately. You're right... I think I'm deliberately making better decisions. I deliberated on everything before but I'm not sure that I always made the best decisions for myself. And I have no regrets in any way. But I just couldn't go on with that way of thinking. So anyway now when I make art it tends to be much more portable or ephemeral or sometimes not even hardly existent. I've been making banners for the last few years. That's one of them there. You can take a picture of the packaging (laughs). And I did a piece in Italy that was very site specific that I'd actually really like to do on a much more ambitious scale,which was this kind of very anthropomorphic very operatic pile of clothing that had this internal structure that was very sensuous and cascading. It was free standing, which was the first time I'd ever done that. And there 
were lamps on it, fur, and jewelry cascading down it, very carefully chosen thrift store clothes and fabrics. And that was about seven feet tall, but I'd like to do one that's about twenty feet tall. That's something I really want to do. And I don't come now across a lot of art that I really want to do. But that's something that stays with me. I'd really like to do that. And then I have a friend who might be putting together an art festival in an abandoned quarry in Moldavia. And that sounds very interesting to me. And so I'm thinking through what I might make for that. Or what I might do for that. Or some event I might instigate for that. So, that's the kind of stuff that I'm doing. And I'm really interested in collaborating with people. I made a number of attempts a few years ago. But I found it very difficult to get people involved in the kind of stuff that I wanted to do. Now, I find that it's a little easier. I'm finding people are a little more open to collaboration than they were a few years ago.