Tia Factor

Artist, Curator

Originally published in Arts Interviews, April 2010

Tia Factor is a Portland-based artist and curator. She received her M.F.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 and her B.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in 1997. Factor has taught at the Oxbow School in Napa, California; the Department of Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley; Portland State University; and Portland Community College. In this interview, she shares how her roots — stretching from a rural region of Northern California to the suburbs of Chicago — along with her experiences traveling nationally and internationally, inform her art.

LN:  Your paintings have a very relevant feel in relation to contemporary art sensibilities. They incorporate complex color schemes, combining biomorphic and geometric forms to create almost musical, fragmented, frenetic compositions that suggest real or imagined places and times. What is the significance of landscape in your art?

TF:  There are a lot of reasons I'm interested in landscape and place. I was born in a beautiful, semi-remote backwater of Northern California — the Russian River area in Sonoma County. My parents and I lived up on a hill in the redwoods, living close to the land. When my folks split up, my mom and I ended up in suburban Chicago, where I was raised from the age of eight. I had a pretty rough time of it in the suburbs, feeling alienated from my surroundings — the sprawl and rampant development of that landscape. As soon as I could, I graduated early from high school and moved back to Sonoma County, where my dad lived. I had the distinct impression of coming back to myself, of finally being allowed to express who I was. The place had so much to do with it. I realized through that experience that everyone is far more affected by the quality of their surroundings than they think. Once I began exploring how I was so profoundly affected — both negatively and positively — by my surroundings, I dove further into the study of geography, wanting to create images dealing with landscape and the effect it has on people.

LN:  You recently created a whole series of paintings based on your move from California to Portland. This seems to have been an important life transition to have spawned this project, which also has a social practice component. Can you talk about your process in developing it?

TF:  Moving to Portland was a pretty intense transition for a number of reasons. I went to school — both undergrad and graduate — in the Bay Area, and nearly every friendship and professional contact I had made in the previous twelve years was there. Though my husband and I bought a house in Portland, it just didn't feel like home even after we filled it with all of our things. I wasn't sure how Portland could become home.

We had actually just come from living in Tasmania for close to half a year, and because that was clearly a temporary situation, I retained that privileged sense of being a visitor — not needing to create a real sense of home in a foreign land. But Portland was different.

So, I created a project for myself that grew out of something I had just completed during a residency in Tasmania. As part of that residency, I was housed for a month on the outskirts of a prison ruin. I was seriously lonely, but I developed a project that helped remedy that. Each morning, I would walk around the ruins asking tourists about their personal impressions of the place. It helped me feel connected to humanity and the world again. And I found — just as this interview requires me to clarify my own thought process, which feels good — that people liked being invited to answer questions. They liked participating in someone's project, knowing that what they said might generate a work of art. That was the beginning of a more social side to my practice as a painter.

After moving to Portland, I decided to ask the few friends I had here about how they had made the city their home through a formal recorded interview process. I took pictures of things they brought up during the interviews and arranged those images into compositions, which I then painted with gouache on paper. I sometimes refer to these paintings as symbolic portraits, or mental maps of my subjects. I'm not sure if it was the effectiveness of this project, having a baby in Portland, being here for over two years, or some combination of all of the above, but I've finally begun to feel a lot more at home here.

LN:  Your paintings combine a beautiful mixture of abstract forms with realistic elements such as building structures, trees, and animals. There is also a fine balance between control and chaos in your use of materials. Can you talk about the development of your techniques and imagery?

TF:  This combination of abstract and realistic elements is how I represent place from the vantage point of both inner and outer experience — a fusion of subjective, personal, or emotional reality with the environments surrounding us. I am also interested in the tension between control and chaos. Throughout my practice, I've explored the idea of order emerging from chaos and our basic human need to find patterns and meaning in chaotic information. I love the exchange between organic, amorphous patterns and the harder edges of architectural and geometric forms. In my paintings, this often results in pools of gouache or watercolor drying in naturally formed patterns, juxtaposed with harder-edged, refined mark-making.

In terms of imagery, I frequently return to these themes: chaos and order, nature and the built environment, and the interconnectedness of human beings with their surroundings.

LN:  You have been awarded artist residencies in India, Vermont, and Tasmania. You touched on your experience in Tasmania — how do residencies and travel influence your art?

TF:  Travel has been a very important element in my life generally, and as an artist specifically. I seem to be most open to experience when I travel, learning the most about the world and myself in relation to it. When I travel, I try to make art, even when the conditions aren't ideal. When I learned about residencies, I couldn't believe that such a perfect fusion of what I love most — travel and art-making — existed.

I didn't necessarily make my best work at any of those residencies, but I don't think that's what they're about. The effect those experiences have had on who I am will always contribute to what I make as an artist and will continue to deepen my understanding of and curiosity about this world. And there is always something wonderful about being given a studio space and meeting other artists in a foreign land — or even Vermont!

LN:  In addition to being an artist, you have done curatorial work. What has been your favorite curatorial experience?

TF:  Curating has never come easily to me — it requires a lot of coordinating and communicating with many people, which is not my preferred way to spend my time. That said, I am currently organizing a group show of contemporary art from Tasmania, which will open in Portland at Gallery Homeland in a year. While I'm genuinely excited about it and glad it's happening, I feel the weight of being responsible for art being shipped from Australia to the U.S. — and of trying to make everyone involved happy with the results. It's easy to get excited about an idea for a show. Making it real is another matter entirely.

LN:  What projects are currently in the works?

TF: I currently have a solo show, Places We Call Home, at Swarm Gallery in Oakland, California. For that show, I began a series called Pocket Canyon, which explores the place I was born in rural Northern California. I've completed four paintings for that series so far and have begun another. I'm certain there will be more; I'm only just beginning to come to terms with that place I no longer call home.

Tia Factor is represented by Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA.