Lighting the Way: An Interview with Artist Carol Salmanson

Artist Carol Salmanson began her career in the visual arts as a painter, but her recent exhibition at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey showcases her ability to harness the power of light in the installation Step Lightly, sculpture Lot’s Ex-Wife (Pass the Salt), and wall pieces called Gesture Drawings. Over the past decade, Salmanson has worked with light and reflective sheeting as a formal art-making element. In a recent interview, we discussed her process of creating art with light and her straight forward advice for rising artists.

Was there a particular experience or process that inspired you to start “drawing” with light forms?

I made All That's Left in 2010, which consists of ten boxes that can be put together in various configurations to resemble brick fragments or rubble made of light and reflective road sign material. I was very happy with the way it came out but completely burnt out by the process of making it. It was extremely difficult to make for many reasons, including the facts that I soldered 2,660 LEDs (light-emitting diodes), and that the boxes had many unusual technical requirements. I was determined to find a more spontaneous way to work with light, especially since I had been a gestural painter. I wanted to somehow bring my hand and the calligraphic brush strokes I had used in my painting into the work with light.

During this process, I discovered that if a wire inside got too close to the diffused surface, it cast a beautiful shadow. I started playing with the wire shadows and diffused Plexiglas, and that led me to play with wires as both blurred and hard-edge lines that you see come to life in my Gesture Drawings installation at the Art Center in Studio X. I also started playing with different kinds of LEDs and I found a variety of sizes and shapes that I started collecting on eBay.

The sculpture Lot’s Ex-Wife (Pass the Salt), currently on view on the grounds here at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, has been showcased in other public art projects. Can you tell us a bit about the creative process and what reactions you have witnessed to the sculpture? 

Lot's Ex-Wife, was really fun to make. I started by developing models out of Bristol board, a kind of thick white paper. I did 15 or 20 of them with different proportions, until I came up with one that I felt worked and used Photoshop to check proportions. My neighbor, Raouf, is a plastics fabricator and together we worked out the best way to build it, especially since I wanted to be able to dismantle it for storage. When it was completely assembled, my first reaction was similar to what most people have, that it looks like it was dropped from outer space. It was a surprise to me and I love that it looks that way.

Many Art Center visitors don’t realize that your piece hanging outside Studio X was actually a working template for your Step Lightly installation on the stairs. What is your most important tool as an artist? What would we be surprised to find in your studio?

I'd have to say that it's my computer. While the majority of the installation work is done by hand, all of the design work for the Step Lightly was done on a computer. I took a series of photographs of the wall, downloaded them and made a drawing in Photoshop, which took a few days.  I then printed out a model on paper that I could hold against the concrete wall at the Art Center to match up the LEDs correctly. Step Lightly has something like 800 uniquely shaped LEDs that are only held together by fine wire. That's the same wire that's also conducting the electricity that turns them on so every single connection had to be securely soldered and in the right place.

You have taken some risks with your art work in terms of stepping outside the boundaries with using light mediums. What would you tell other up and coming artists about learning to expand their artwork and the process of experimentation?

It's OK to be scared of something; the trick is to not give in to the fear.  

What are you presently inspired by?

Right now I'm mesmerized by the Soviet concrete architecture that I discovered while participating in the show “Space Invaders” at Lehman College in the Bronx in 2012.  I made Hercules Lite, a fluorescent-edged green Plexiglas piece that mimicked the central column holding up the art gallery in a beautiful building by the Brutalist architect, Marcel Breuer. He was originally from Eastern Europe, and that got me interested in Soviet concrete architecture. I've become completely fascinated with it. I’m also interested in the constructivist art of the mid-twentieth century, especially the work done in South America. So much of what they did is unknown here, and a lot of similar work is being done now, almost sixty years later, by artists who don't even realize it was done then and there. It’s a much neglected area of art history.

Where and when are your upcoming projects and shows? 

In January, I'll be doing a window installation in Greenwich Village, at 223 West 10th Street, through the Time Equities' Art in Buildings program. I'll be using the same vocabulary that I developed to make Step Lightly, so I'm very grateful to the Art Center for giving me the opportunity to work it out. Next May, I'll be completing a large public art commission in New Britain, Connecticut, with the sculpture Spiral Exchange. In the late spring, I'll be participating in a two-person show at Brian Morris Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and I'll also be in a group exhibition "Color Formed" at the Brooklyn non-profit, Five Myles, curated by Jim Osman.

You can see more of Carol’s work and find out more about her creative philosophy and process on her website, www.carolsalmanson.com. Catch her show Light Lines at the Art Center until November 24.