Risa Question: How do you typically work: what is the relationship between making and doing, in your practice. Which comes first (do you fancy yourself a materialist, who develops ideas through making; a conceptualist, who develops ideas for making through reading (gardening, singing, walking, talking, looking etc.). How has this evolved over your years of practice, and how do you see this evolving at this early stage of your MFA?

For the last five years, I’ve been attached to clay. It’s been in me and on me and all that I wanted to do. I’m still in love with clay: I love its sensuality, and how the silky sensation of wet spinning porcelain on a potter’s wheel can bring me to my “happy place”: the silty beds of glacial-fed rivers and lakes of the Rocky Mountains.

I’d love to work with clay again, but what I need more than that right now is a project that will allow me to say something about climate change that I feel the need to say. The “something” is up in the air right now, as is everything about my art-making at the moment, but I just feel that there is something I want to share regarding this catastrophe we’re facing.

Under the very broad (I’m just learning) definition of “art,” I will do anything necessary to get my point across: I guess this means I fancy myself a conceptualist. I’m game to using any material, or non-material, as the concept requires.

In a series of photos The Guardian published in 2014, “When nature calls: 12 artists answering back to climate change – in pictures,” the piece that made me “wow” the most was “Vatnajökull” (the sound of) in which Katie Paterson “left a gallery empty apart from a telephone number on the wall. Visitors calling the number were connected to a microphone embedded in Europe’s largest glacier, which has been eroding since 1930. All callers could hear was the creak of ice and the trickle of melting water.”

This is a neat idea. I don’t know if I’d do it, but it does show me that there are infinite ways to “think outside the box,” and I’m looking forward to doing more of that for this degree.

My concern right now is twofold — understanding what I want my point to be, and then learning how to get it across most effectively using any materials or means necessary.