MOLLY SCHIOT: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUCCULENTS

lar_import — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:23:50 +0000

dan monick

Molly Schiot’s art includes a little bit of everything—videos for Mika Miko and Wal-Mart, comics about Stevie Wonder and kamikazes and now an art show of all her unseen paintings. She speaks now to Chris Ziegler about plundering succulents at midnight.

How did you meet the dog whisperer and how did he help you?
I met Caesar because I sent him a comic strip of how I found my dog, and he gave me the option of either being on the show or spending $2,000 to meet with him. So I opted for the show, thinking no one watches the National Geographic channel, and it turns out Dog Whisperer is American Idol. Maddy gets recognized on the street sometimes.
What was the key to dog harmony?
Humans are the only animals that listen to unruly leaders. That’s what he said and I kind of just had to be very authoritative.
Is that your favorite piece of art dedicated to Maddy?
It’s definitely not my favorite. I don’t really draw her that much. Someone delivered a piece of coconut cream pie in a beautiful pink box because it really reminded them of her, so I took a really pretty picture of Maddy sitting next to the pie, and then she got to have a little bite.
What’s the best thing ever to unexpectedly show up on your doorstep?
Live sea urchins. And I got a bar of soap. Not all the same day. And the typical apology flowers.
Those aren’t as typical as they might need to be.
Yeah, they aren’t so typical.
What charms you the most about stop-motion animation?
It’s so much work—it takes fucking forever and it’s the worst thing in the world to be pigeonholed as an animator. I’m sure when Meatloaf sung ‘Everything For Love,’ he was probably really into all the other songs on the record. But that’s the only song he’s known for. Or when other bands have some major hit and everything else gets forgotten.
Tommy James and the Shondells syndrome?
And then Joan Jett comes along and makes it way bigger. Animation is like so over. It really ran its course in the past couple years. Great analogy: ‘Crimson and Clover,’ Tommy James, and Joan Jett capitalizes on it. Now it’s the last thing I wanna stare at. Other people have taken over. Now it’s mostly AfterEffects and computer-generated.
Was yours all by hand?
Yeah.
What’s the next project you have to finish?
I have this show coming up. People haven’t really seen me with just paintings. All new content and large format. Pretty arbitrary—that’s the theme.
Do your captions come from you or from the outside world?
They come out of nowhere. Today I was just cleaning out the shed and I found this box of two hundred dolls that my dad had given to me for Christmas last year, so I started working on a little painting of two hundred dolls that says MY DAD GAVE ME TWO HUNDRED DOLLS AND A PACKET OF MISO SOUP FOR CHRISTMAS. Or the one WHY THE HELL DO KAMIKAZE PILOTS WEAR HELMETS? I don’t know why—I’ll think about things like that for a whole day.
Have you ever had your questions answered?
A lot of people empathize with me about how much they hate their friends and their family.
Is there that much hate in these?
Some of them have some hate. They are dark, I think. I guess pretty personal, too. The one about LITTLE SISTER is purely drawn from a relationship and it’s definitely really real, and people relate to it. I have had an answer to WHAT THE HELL DO BLIND PEOPLE DREAM ABOUT? I guess they dream texture, shapes and movements.
Who told you?
Stevie Wonder.
Did he show up on your doorstep?
It was my friend at medical school. That’s more boring.
Where do you think you can do your best work? Video art or visual art?
My drawings or illustrations or ‘works on paper’—I feel as if those are really honest representations of the way I approach day-to-day stuff, whether it’s telephone conversations with my mom who’s in tears because she moved to Ohio and she’s on the bike trail and waving at all the Amish people who won’t wave to her—things like that. I can really see it and it’s so lucid and so I write a little blurb about it. This visual ongoing journal that I’ve had—I feel I can be most funny and most serious and most honest in that ongoing thing I have with myself and my art supplies. It’s kind of a side thing where I just do it and I don’t take it that seriously. That’s why I think people respond so well. I don’t take it seriously and that’s why it works. But every piece I’ve done is incredibly intimate and personal. Even the piece about Stevie Wonder.
That says EAT SHIT AND DIE?
I’ve never ever ever been able to connect to his music, and I’ve tried so hard because all my friends who I really respect their taste—they just adore him. And I’ve gone through life resenting him. I can’t understand why I can’t really get it.
What are you most excited about in L.A. right now?
I recently took clippings from a planaria plant—those Hawaiian plants that produce those beautiful flowers. I’ve been transplanting them and doing succulents all over town. Like take a clipping of a succulent, let it callous over, and then let it grow.
So you’re hijacking plants?
I’m letting other people do it for me. That’s what’s exciting for me. My friend went to the Getty and took a succulent and put it in my garden.
So you’re making a mini-Los Angeles?
Exactly. I have Main, I have Wonderland Avenue, Mission Hills—I have Covina and the Getty.
Where is the next harvest?
There are these little black cactuses that I call ‘rock ‘n’ roll succulents.’ They’re really really skinny and they have this little black head on top that’s kind of spiky and cool, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. They are at the very tippity-top of Laurel Canyon. I have to go up there with a little blade. At night when no one can see me.
Did you know this was what would happen to you the day you graduated college?
No. I didn’t know what the hell I was gonna do. I bought a Cadillac and I just drove to L.A., but I sold it and got an old Chevy Nova. And now I have a lame-ass Prius. From a Cadillac to a Nova to a Prius—ugh!

MOLLY SCHIOT ON THUR., OCT. 9, AT PHYLLIS STEIN GALLERY, 207 W. 5TH ST., DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. 7 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. PHYLLISSTEINART.COM. VISIT MOLLY SCHIOT AT MOLLYSCHIOT.COM.

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MOLLY SCHIOT: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL SUCCULENTS