Home Suite: Art Professor Traci Tullius on Her Solo Exhibit

Professor Traci Tullius is currently an Associate Professor at Stern College for Women and has a solo show entitled Home Suite on view from March 27- May 4 at the Yeshiva University Museum. The exhibit includes a video and ten drawings. The drawings, which were rendered in silverpoint, have begun to fade with time. She sat down with the Observer to discuss the exhibit, her inspirations, and advice for a career in art.

You currently have a show on view at the Yeshiva University Museum entitled “Home Suite.” Can you give us some details about the series and what inspired you? 

The project started when I found out my family would be tearing down my great grandparents’ farmhouse in Oklahoma. That house was a pivotal part of my artistic development and familial history. I remember as a child, when my great-grandparents were alive, playing there. But for most of my adolescent and adult life the house was vacant and my grandparents didn’t mind if I went over there to take photographs, videos and scrounged around. There was unused jurassic farming stuff from the depression era all over and my grandparents didn’t mind if I scavenged things. Aesthetically, I feel like that house really helped form what I am attracted to in the visual world, like things that are a little broken. I didn’t want the passing of the house to go unremarked. I wanted to go home and film the demolition as one last artistic act there. That footage sat around for two years and I never watched it and I put the film in storage because it was sad. But as I was going through all my tapes to back them up and I played the recording backwards and I knew what I had to do with the video. With the reversing of the tape I kind of wanted to reverse time; it was a wish fulfillment of going back in time and putting it back together again. The sound, however, runs forward so to the viewer it is not just reversed footage, but an actual time machine. And at the end of the video, I painted the house back because I couldn’t rewind far enough and it just wasn’t enough, I wanted to take it farther back in time. I used my own hand to fix the house up at the end.

The exhibition Home Suite also has a series of silverpoint drawings. How did those come into fruition and why use silverpoint?

Through the video and the video stills came the drawings. The video was done and I just wanted to keep working on it – there was something about the surfaces and debris that I wanted to work with more. I decided to do the drawings in silverpoint because I was learning silverpoint for a class I was teaching and it is one of the most archival materials, so those drawings will last forever. The imagery of the house was the perfect subject matter.

You said that silverpoint is archival and the drawings will last forever, but previously you had mentioned that the drawings over time are disappearing. How is that so?

Yeah, because I don’t do it the right way. Which was done on purpose. The silverpoint is archival if you work with precious metals on the right surface. I mix precious metals such as gold and silver with baser metals like brass, copper and nickel. And I used paper which accepts silverpoint, but isn’t intended for it so it is less predictable. You painstakingly make this drawing and there may be parts of it which the next day are gone, and I liked that. It was like how I felt about the whole subject of leaving home and generations moving on: you can’t hold on to everything.

Have you ever felt intimidated by the New York art scene?

No! It is not as sophisticated as it looks from the outside. Artists are artists and things get put on clean white walls and it seems glamorous and unattainable, but it is just artists making art. The rest is just a distraction.

Do you have any advice for students interested in pursuing a career as an artist?

No half measures… If you are serious about being a professional artist, you cannot do it halfway.  That is not to mean you will not have doubts; there will always be doubts, and a nagging feeling of insecurity or unworthiness.  But pursuing a career in art, or a life of making art (and we’re not talking about as a hobby, or dilettantism) demands rigorous commitment to your craft.

Momentum is also important. Every artist starts somewhere (usually at the bottom), and this might sound like a cliché, but you have to keep pushing your work and making personal breakthroughs.  A strong studio work ethic leads to finished/resolved projects; one project feeds the next project; one group show leads to another group show leads to a solo show.  Momentum is the artist’s best defense against falling into a rut creatively, plateauing, “hitting the wall.”  The best and most useful skill an art student can develop while in school is a strong work ethic, and the ability to initiate creativity without an instructor’s prompt.