Annette Lemieux By Robert Birnbaum | Published: September 18, 2002 Conceptual mixed media artist Annette Lemieux‘s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Decordova Museum; and numerous museums around the world. She has received numerous grants and fellowships and exhibits regularly at the McKee Gallery, New York, and was included in the Whitney Biennial 2000. Annette Lemieux lives in Brookline, Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard University. Robert Birnbaum: You were born in Norfolk, Virginia. Annette Lemieux: Yes. RB: Is there a story behind that, or was it an ordinary circumstance? AL: My father was in the military. RB: Navy? AL: No, Marines. So I guess that’s why I was born there. We lived in Virginia, North and South Carolina when I was young and then when I was 3 1/2 or 4 we moved up to Torrington, Connecticut. Then my mother decided that she didn’t want to go on the Marine tour anymore and said, “I’m staying here.” So then my father took off to wherever and I grew up in Torrington. It was also my mother’s hometown, which probably made it easier for her to say, “See ya.” RB: Did he come back? AL: Oh no. He wasn’t invited back. RB: How long did your father serve in the Marines? AL: He was a lifer. 22 years. He served in Korea and Viet Nam. RB: Torrington, Connecticut sounds normal. AL: (laughs) It’s an old mill town. After the war, the factories went downhill because they weren’t producing ball bearings. So the whole place was—and still is—disintegrating. There are many empty storefronts. RB: What’s the population? AL: I have no idea. I honestly don’t know. I’m bad with numbers. RB: How big was your high school? AL: I don’t remember, but it was pretty big. It wasn’t like a small cow town. RB: You went to art school directly after high school? AL: No, I went to a community college my first 2 years, in Winsted, Connecticut. And then I had plans to go to Syracuse University, but I couldn’t afford it. It couldn’t afford me, in terms of giving me money. So then, I followed a friend, stupidly, to Flagstaff, Arizona and once I was in Flagstaff, Arizona, I felt like I was on a deserted island. Void of civilization. So I went back to Connecticut that next year and didn’t go to school. Then I returned to school half time at the University of Hartford. RB: How did you end up in Flagstaff? AL: I went to visit my father and he drove me from San Diego to Flagstaff. I hated every minute of it. RB: The drive or the company? AL: With him. He was strange. He was a Jesus freak at that moment in his life. It was like I was on a different planet. The landscape was strange. RB: Was he out of the military at that point? AL: Yes. I think he needed another club to join. He needed a larger-than-life support system. RB: Why did you go to art school? AL: The natural thing to do I think. RB: I didn’t go to art school. (Both laugh) AL: For me it was very natural. I remember going into my guidance counselor’s office in high school, saying, "I want to be an artist." And he burst out Lily (2000) by Annette Lemieux laughing and talked me into applying to secretarial school. (laughs) Then I went to my art teacher and said, “I guess I’m going to secretarial school.” He burst out laughing. He said, “No, no, you have to go to art school. We’ll find a way and the money to get you there.” So I got a scholarship and then Basic Educational Opportunity Grants. But I always made work. I remember my first painting in kindergarten. RB: You said, “I always made ‘work’.” Instead of saying, “I always made ‘art.” AL: Is that what I just said? Yeah, I don’t want to be presumptuous. (laughs) RB: Do you remember the first thing you made? AL: Yes. RB: Do you still have it? AL: No. I didn’t have the kind of parents that kept things. RB: What was it? AL: I think it was a background under the water seascape for a shadow box. I remember there were three things: blue water, a brown rock and probably an orange fish. I remember wanting to make the fish feel real. So I put the head of the fish on the right side of the rock and the tail of the fish on the left side of the rock and I created 3 dimensional space. I couldn’t believe it. So for me it was a very exciting moment. RB: Was being an artist synonymous with being a painter? Was painting the same as art, in the minds of children? AL: Probably because it’s the most immediate material. Everyone has a piece of paper and watercolors or pencils. As opposed to paper maiche or pottery. Back then, any ways. I studied painting in Art school but now I am mixed media. RB: Let’s jump ahead 30 years. Now, you are teaching at Harvard University. AL: (Long pause, both laugh) Next question. (laughs) RB: Here you are, having left high school with ambitions to be an artist. One teacher tells you to go to secretarial school and another encourages you. 30 years later you are at the world’s greatest university, teaching art. AL: Yeah, kind of a big coup. RB: Does the past reverberate in your life as you move forward? Do you carry with you the memories of these things? AL: Constantly. RB: You have been teaching at Harvard for a while? AL: On and off since ’96. You want me to say this; they made me a Professor of the Practice. I knew that’s what you were fishing for. I taught at Brown from ’92 to ’96 and then at Harvard. At one point I was teaching at both places. Which was too much: it was all teaching and no making art in my studio. I’m really lucky and hopefully they’re lucky having me there. Professor of the Practice—they try to bring people in from an industry—that point of view as opposed to an academic point of view, that’s what I’m there for. I’ll be teaching conceptual mixed media based work. We created a new track for the kids so that the kids can do theses with a conceptual thesis. It’s always been there since I’ve been there but never formalized. Instead of doing a thesis on painting or sculpture or photo there is now also conceptual mixed media. RB: Is Harvard interested in teaching artists art or creating artists? AL: Both, probably both. RB: Do you want to talk about the brouhaha surrounding the last director of the program? AL: Well, no. I’ll say Ellen Phelan created a great program. There were many reasons why she was asked to leave. We were told some. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what’s true or not true. She created a terrific program and there are a number of us that are still there working with the new Chair and trying to keep the program as good as Ellen made it. RB: I want to indulge my own interest here. I am more interested in understanding what’s involved in living as an artist than what the product—the art—of that life is. AL: How you survive as an artist. RB: Right. I find talking about art—art theory and criticism has this language that I find opaque. I understand that every discipline and life form has its own language games… AL: A lot of artists feel that way too. About Artspeak, that’s a very common feeling. RB: You left school in that late ’70s, early ’80s? AL: I graduated in the fall of ’79 or ’80 and I went to New York City. Luckily while I was at Hartford Art School, Jack Goldstein and David Salle were teaching there. Big names in the ’80s in the New York art world. So I got to New York and I sort of had a job lined up with Goldstein, and that didn’t work out, and when that fell through I called up David Salle and I started assisting him and artists in his same gallery, The Mary Boone Gallery. So I supported myself by working as a studio artist, as an assistant, as a bookkeeper—that didn’t last—as a receptionist—that didn’t last, as a waitress—that didn’t last. RB: How long did each of those jobs that didn’t work out last? AL: About a half year each. I also did demolition. I did window dressing. RB: Demolition? AL: You go in a place with an ax and you start whacking away. RB: Great training. Walking on Water Revisited (2000) AL: Yeah. I remember walking home—I was in by Annette Lemieux lower Manhattan—in Soho and I would have to walk to the West Village, covered in white dust. People looked at me kind of funny, but I thought walking covered with white dust was kind of normal. RB: Maybe they thought you were from New Guinea.