Discussion with Edith Abeyta

Edith Abeyta is a Los Angeles multimedia artist who makes work out of the detritus of consumer culture. By combining trash she's gleaned off the streets of downtown Los Angeles into sculpture, quilts and extensive, community base collaboration, she exposes the ugly side of abundance in the beautiful objects she makes. In her collaborative "assignment" based projects, she undermines the traditional role of the gallery by reinventing curatorial notions.

Q:Accumulate uses the discards of our disposable lifestyles, and yet your medium is an archetype of women's craft--the quilt. In this culture, women's work is underpaid and undervalued. Our clothing and household textiles are made in sweatshops, and the art of women's handiwork is also seen as disposable. Mike Kelly's sculptural avalanche of crocheted animals titled "Hundreds of Love Hours Never to Be Repaid" conceptualizes women's labor as pathetic, its abundance claustrophobic, yet your work asks us to look at our own wasteful attitude toward women's skills and talents. And the quilts are very visually satisfying, harmonious in composition. They reference Rauschenberg, but seem to say: think again! Women have been re-using the scraps of production for years. This is nothing new, though to be asked to accept this tradition of women's innovation is indeed new. How were you inspired to do this particular "recycling" project? Where did you learn these skills not normally taught in art school?

A: I can follow the thread in my work that led me to the quilts made from scavenged materials. I won't start at the beginning but a little history seems appropriate. My favorite past time is reading in a bed. It is a luxury that I relish more than anything else. At one point in my life I was living in Portland, Oregon, feeling extremely blue and spending a large amount of time reading. During this time I had a job at a warehouse of a very large bookstore. Thousands and thousands of used books were recycled every month. I started thinking about how I could use these books as a source for art. I had previously been making artist's books and zines so I was somewhat familiar with book construction. Initially, I began by retrieving heavily illustrated books from the large bins and deconstructing them. Tearing the pages from the books brought attention to the bindings, the thread that held all the pages together. I realized I could use a needle and thread to reconnect the pages in a way that was satisfying to me. I could rewrite a book or multiple books and turn them into the comfort they offered me by piecing the pages into a quilt. I began looking at other quilts by artists. I went to a show of work by an african american artist whose name I cannot recall and was inspired by the energy of her quilts. Walking home from the gallery I noticed all the trash in the street - candy wrappers, snack bags, homework, utility bills, and clothing. I had discovered a new source. I had already been attracted to the streets, randomly throwing small books i had made into the gutter with hopes that someone might pick them up. I became and still am amused by the thought of my work being trash, picked up from the gutter, being totally worthless, priceless, and not precious. I began to look at trash in a new way as a form of archeology, as signs of culture, hints and clues to the geography of neighborhoods which is what inspired me to create Accumulate. It is a microscopic documentation of Los Angeles neighborhoods. Currently, my view of the quilts I am making focus on excess and waste. How the affluence of a few leads to the suffering for many and the ability, resources, skills, and desperation that is necessary to survive off the waste of the privileged. Blankets made of newspaper, houses constructed from cardboard.

Most of my skills are learned from life experiences, observations, reading, and others. I try to be involved and have relationships with people who are generous with their knowledge and are not threatened by sharing it. It is important for me that there is an exchange in my work. There are references and subtle clues in my work to many of the people who have inspired me and who have taught me.

Q:The mail art project is based in collaboration, which you use to great effect. What role does community play in your work? Do you feel the traditional, anonymous medium of women's needle arts, like quilting, amplify these notions of community?

A: I am extremely interested in others. I have often felt a sense of alienation and isolation, an inability to find a community where I fit in. In addition, I am somewhat of a loner, not necessarily anti-social but I spend a great deal of time huddled away making art which makes it difficult to be part of a community or group. Part of the impetus for my participatory projects was to create temporary communities that people voluntarily entered and did not necessarily have to commit a large amount of effort or time to. A fluid community where people could enter and depart easily- participating on levels that were suitable for each individual. The participatory projects are meant to foster an exchange for all involved. We all become loosely connected - a voluntary community of autonomous individuals. I certainly feel like quilting in my work references women's communities that once existed and probably still exist somewhere. I know of women creating contemporary sewing and craft circles that mimic the quilting bees that women in their seventies are familiar with. The quilts themselves become communities because of my source materials whether I am asking others to contribute their art to a quilt or scavenging paper and cloth objects from the street. These used objects bring another person and their story to the work. A collection of gum wrappers retrieved from the streets contain all the people who dropped them.

Q:Limb(it), an installation at the Walled City Gallery, seemed a subversion of sentimentality--I'm reminded of the Patsy Cline Song, "Seven Lonely Days" she sings, "Seven hankies blue/I have filled with my tears." In many ways, you seem to be calling into question the "romantic" notion of women's masochism, while baring witness to those women who have stepped outside this role by killing their abusers. The hanging hankies and the elaborate thread network that keeps them suspended is a metaphor for many things-- one being the tenuous bonds women form with one another. You also involved other women in this installation. Can you talk about the dismantled Romance novels also displayed in the show, and how that collaborative work was handled?

A:I saw Lim(b)it as a partial spectrum that illustrated some intimate relationships. On one end there is a violent abusive relationship, unhealthy for all those involved. Within that relationship various outcomes occur. Common ones being survival and death which are illustrated by the images of the two women in the quilting hoops. Then there is the relationship where the woman kills her abuser which is represented by the suspended handkerchiefs. The romance novels were on the other extreme - examples of unreal, fantastical relationships that are as equally unhealthy as the abusive relationship. Of course, they are fictitious relationships but some women are thriving off these fictions. I have always despised romance novels and have never read one. I was happy to cut them up and offer them to others to re-write. I emailed out a call asking for participants to create a catalog for the show out of romance novels. Five people responded. They were mailed romance novels that I found in a thrift store and cut into squares. The only instructions they were given were they could not alter the front and back covers. The responses were diverse and unpredictable which is one of the many benefits of involving others as well as them expanding my view.

A: Currently, I am in the process of making quilts for the Beauty of Need show that opens November 1 - 30, 2003 at Ojala Gallery. The show is a collection of quilts and quilt-like objects made from discarded books, salvaged paper ephemera, scavenged mattress fabric, and other post-consumer detritus that strikes my fancy. I am also collecting photographs of women that are missed for a collaborative sculpture, "I Miss You," that will preview at the Action Committee for Women in Prison's fundraiser, on November 1.

Edith Abeyta

A Discussion With the Artist