The Art World Works From Home: Laurie Simmons Is Now Photographing Props Instead of People and Taking Dog-Training Lessons on Zoom

The art world may be on lockdown, but it certainly does not
stop. During this unprecedented time, we’re checking in with
art-world professionals, collectors, and artists to get a glimpse
into how they are working from home.

Laurie Simmons rose to fame alongside the Pictures Generation
artists of the 1980s with her intricately staged photographs of
dolls, ventriloquist dummies, and other toys. She later evolved
into filmmaking, with her musical starring Meryl Streep and a
cast of Alvin Ailey dancers, The Music of Regret,
debuting in 2006.

In recent years, Simmons had shifted her focus to photographing
people, including her two children, Lena Dunham and Cyrus Grace
Dunham—until the lockdown hit and she retreated into isolation with
her husband, the painter Carroll Dunham.

We spoke with the artist from her home in rural Connecticut
about how the shutdown has changed the direction of her art, what
she’s enjoying most in her voracious cultural diet, and how she
makes her favorite peanut butter cookies.

Where is your new “office”? Has the location
changed over the course of the pandemic?

I’ve always worked at home. Around a decade ago, my husband,
Carroll Dunham, moved his studio to a vacant school in rural
Connecticut. I maintained I could only work in New York
City, but a couple years ago I finally moved my studio too… books,
props, and print archives. I keep my originals and slide books in a
small apartment in New York. I go to New York City to see friends
and go to galleries, museums, and openings. I hadn’t really
admitted to myself that I live in Connecticut but now it’s
abundantly clear that I live where my work is.


What are you working on right now and has your work
changed now that you are doing it from home?

Six years ago, I started shooting people (as opposed to
inanimate objects). I was in the midst of a bunch of shoots with
models, which of course are all cancelled. Now, I’m back to
shooting tabletop, which is where I began in the late ’70s. It’s
definitely a quieter, more focused and peaceful way to work—which
is helpful now. All my props are here and completely over-organized
because that’s what I do when I’m procrastinating. I have time now
to circle back to objects I’ve never used. I just pulled out my
nurse puppets from my 2006 movie The Music of Regret. Like
everyone, I’m thinking a lot about doctors, nurses, and healthcare
workers, especially as my sister Bonnie is a frontline ER
doctor.

There’s still not enough time for me to figure out if my work is
changing, apart from scale—that could take another 20 years. I
understand that people are working overtime to fill the sudden void
and to stay connected online—which for a lot of artists means daily
requests from institutions, galleries, and online magazines for
material: Q&As, Instagram takeovers, IGTV, Zoom
conversations.

I think this will level out in some way. We’re really in the
nascent stages of all of this.

Were any projects of yours interrupted by the
lockdown?

“All of Them Witches,” a show I co-organized with my friend,
curator and writer Dan Nadel, closed early at Jeffrey Deitch in Los
Angeles.

Two shows I was excited to be included in—both connected to
ventriloquism—are postponed. One is at the Walker Art Center, “The
Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance,” and the other
at LACMA, “NOT I: Throwing Voices (1500 BCE–2020 CE).”

The Jimmy DeSana retrospective (I oversee the estate) has been
postponed as well. I’ve been working with the Museum of
Contemporary Art and the Brooklyn Museum on this show, which is so
vibrant and critical right now. DeSana’s late work focused on the
AIDS epidemic and his facing his own mortality. 


What are you reading, both online and off?

I mostly read fiction and I just read most of Jennifer Egan’s
books. I liked Look at Me because I think a lot about
masking (especially now) and Manhattan Beach, which was
mostly set in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. It was
great to read while we watched The Plot Against America on
HBO, which was adapted from the Philip Roth novel that imagines
Charles Lindbergh as a celebrity demagogue president who has no
political experience, who plays to bigotry and fear, and ran on the
slogan of America First… sound familiar?

I just finished My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth
Russell and am now trying to read about (and understand) some of
the controversy surrounding it. I’m also rereading my friend Lynne
Tillman’s book Men and Apparitions because it feels
relevant.

What do I read online? Too much. I’m determined to vanquish my
inner news junkie.


Have you taken up any new hobbies?

I’m doing dog training classes on Zoom, which is a great
distraction for me and my three-year-old collie, Penny. She can
ring a variety of buzzers with her paw in exchange for bits of hot
dog.

I ran into a neighbor on a walk and told him I was trying to
learn more about classical music. He recommended Haruki Murakami’s
“Absolutely On Music” conversations with [conductor] Seiji Ozawa.
The back-and-forth between them is sweet and a good roadmap for a
classical music novice like me.

Oh, and I got some tap shoes for my last birthday…


Where is the first place you want to travel once this
is over?

I miss New York a lot. I just want to sit in the Hollywood Diner
at 16th Street and Sixth Avenue, order a grilled cheese, and
watch people who are not socially distancing.


If you are feeling stuck while self-isolating, what’s
your best method for getting un-stuck?

If you mean “stuck” as in making artwork, I’m finding it more
difficult to work than I normally do. I get up every day, make a
to-do list, and then do maybe half of it. Everything takes longer,
from getting and making food to sending packages. The usual rhythms
are completely upended. I’m impressed with artists who see this as
endless uninterrupted studio time—or so they say (LOL). Maybe I’ll
get there eventually. A lot of time is taken up with staying
connected to friends and family, especially those who are alone,
and keeping up with fundraising stuff from before we all went to
ground. There is an election coming right up, which is now a truly
life-and-death matter.

If I’m “stuck” in ruminative thoughts about the pandemic, the
disgusting and abhorrent response from the federal government, the
inequities, pain, suffering, and losses on a global and personal
level, then I listen to music, walk the dog, or do both at
once.

I’ve never felt so lucky to be able to take a solitary walk in a
green place.


What was the last TV show, movie, or YouTube video you
watched?

We watched 16 hours of Ken Burns’s Country Music. I
like [narrator] Peter Coyote’s voice. When we were on the part
about music of the Great Depression, the facts jumped out: In 1933,
15 million people were unemployed out of a population of 125.5
million. Right now, 36 million people are seeking unemployment out
of a population of 330 million. Even I can get those numbers.

We found a Danish series called The Legacy, which is
like a Scandinavian Succession. The matriarch is a Danish
woman artist whose death leaves her family scrambling for artworks,
money, property—a very plausible mess. I love the art world
details.

YouTube video? If it’s your birthday, I send you Dolly Parton
and Willie Nelson singing “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby,” and I
listen to it every time.

What are you most looking forward to doing once social
distancing has been lifted? 

Hugging my kids Cyrus and Lena, who are each 3,000 miles away in
opposite directions.


Favorite recipe to cook at home? 

The artist Mary Simpson, along with her husband and her baby,
Dale, is quarantining in a building across the yard. She gave me
this recipe. It’s a three-ingredient peanut butter cookie sprinkled
with coarse salt.

Salted Peanut Butter
Cookies

Barely adapted, with a bunch of extra notes, from the
Ovenly cookbook

Yields 26 to 28 cookies with a 1 2/3 tablespoon or #40 scoop. (I
halved the recipe and regret it so much.)

1 3/4 cups (335 grams) packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups (450 grams) smooth peanut butter (see note at end)
Coarse-grained sea salt, to finish

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with
parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the light brown sugar and eggs
until smooth. Whisk in the vanilla extract, then the peanut butter
until smooth and completely incorporated; you shouldn’t be able to
see any ribbons of peanut butter. Ovenly says you know the dough is
ready when it has the consistency of Play-Doh, but I can tell you
as the mom of a Play-Doh fanatic that mine was thinner, softer.

If you’d like to get those pretty striations across the top of
the cookies, chill the dough by freezing it in its bowl for 15
minutes, stirring it once (so the edges don’t freeze first) before
scooping it. If you’re not obsessed with these markings, you can
scoop it right away. Scoop or spoon the dough into balls—Ovenly
uses about a 1/4-cup scoop (probably #16); I use a 1 2/3
tablespoons or #40 scoop. Place on prepared pan. For the tallest
final shape, place the tray in the freezer for 15 minutes before
baking.

Sprinkle the dough balls lightly with coarse-grained sea salt
just before baking. Bake smaller cookies for 14 to 15 minutes and
larger for 18 to 20. When finished, cookies should be golden at
edges. They’ll need to set on the sheet for a minute or two before
they can be lifted intact to a cooling sheet. Trust me, you should
let these cool completely before eating so the different textures
(crisp outside, soft inside) can set up.

Do ahead: You can definitely make the dough in advance
and either refrigerate it for a couple days or freeze it longer.
However, if I were going to freeze it, I’d probably go ahead and
scoop it first. You can bake them right from the freezer.

About chilling the dough: The Ovenly recipe says you
can scoop and bake the cookies right away, but they keep their
shape better if you chill them in the freezer for 15 minutes first.
I tried it with and without and did find a better dome and final
shape with the 15 minutes after. However, I was incredibly charmed
by the striated marks from the cookie scoop on top of the cookie I
bought last weekend, as well as in the photo in their book, and I
realized that I couldn’t get it at home with just-mixed dough;
you’ll get more of a blob shape from your
scoop. So, I also chilled the dough for 15 minutes before
scooping it and was then satisfied with the shape. It’s not
necessary unless you’re as taken with top pattern as I am.

Two questions I suspect someone will ask very soon: Can
you make this with all-natural peanut butter and can you make this
with almond or a nut butter? The answer to both is yes, however,
the authors themselves warn that you’ll get the best final shape
and texture from a smooth, thick, processed peanut butter like
Skippy (their recommendation; updated to note, thanks to a
commenter suggestion, that the 16.3-ounce jar of Skippy is
estimated to contain 1 3/4 cups, saving you some measuring). I
suspect an almond or cashew butter will have a similar effect as
natural peanut butter.

The post The Art World Works From Home: Laurie Simmons Is
Now Photographing Props Instead of People and Taking Dog-Training
Lessons on Zoom appeared first on artnet News.