Landscapes and Interiors: The Two Sisters-in-law

In this color lithograph by Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868-1940), two women lean against a table with their faces hidden from view. The woman on the left, Misia Natanson – the wife of one of Vuillard’s most important patrons – is shown in intimate conversation with her sister-in-law, Marthe Mellot. This print is one in a series of thirteen lithographs (twelve plates and one cover sheet) titled Paysages et Intérieurs, which Vuillard printed in 1899 with help from the skilled color printer, Auguste Clot. Clot assisted with the intricacies of color lithography, a printing process based on the principle that water and oil repel each other.

To make a lithograph, an artist draws with an oil-based material (such as a greasy crayon or liquid tusche) on a slab of limestone or metal plate. The stone is then chemically treated with a series of solutions that secure the drawing and fix it to the stone’s surface. After these treatments are erased with turpentine or paint thinner, the stone is moistened with water, which settles on the surface everywhere except on the oil-based drawing. A greasy printing ink is then applied with a roller, adhering to the design and resisting the dampened blank areas of the stone’s surface. A sheet of paper is then pushed against the inked drawing through a lithographic press, which applies pressure evenly. Generally, each color requires its own stone. For a print like Vuillard’s, the same sheet of paper is pressed on multiple stones in order to develop a colorful composition.

This print is composed of four colors: yellow, green, red, and black, which were printed on the paper in that order. The effect of this process in the final print is striking. Through a masterful exercise of lithographic technique, Vuillard and Clot overlapped and superimposed colors to create a seamless surface in which background and foreground merge and the figures in the print become little more than extensions of Vuillard’s experimentation with color and pattern. Likewise, any sense of line is minimized as the figures and objects are instead defined by the layering and interaction of colors. Marthe Mellot appears essentially as a silhouette – her figure composed of a dense field of black ink, almost indistinguishable from the table on which she leans. This image, in which planes that typically define depth and distinctions like front and back are flattened, provides an interesting contrast to many of the other works presented in Backstories.

By Camran Mani

For a long time, the process of creating Backstories was all about projection. I did my best to predict what the installation would look like by using a dollhouse-sized model of the gallery and, later, by working with life-sized models in the actual gallery. But when the works of art themselves took their places in the installation, it became clear that they wouldn’t just make the points I wanted them to make; they have a life of their own (thank goodness), and they say things to each other I couldn’t have predicted. Discovering these surprises has been, for me, one of the most exciting parts of being involved with this show. Let me point out a couple examples.

Early on, I knew I wanted to put Winslow Homer’s The Dinner Horn alongside St. Michael Fighting the Dragon, a woodcut from Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse series. Both works have versos printed with text, making it clear that they come from literary contexts (a magazine in one case, a book in the other). I thought, “The dates of these works are more than three centuries apart; it will be striking to reveal that the treatment of the verso has been consistent over such a long period of time.” But, faced with the actual works, I was equally struck by an inconsistency.

The Dürer features a typeface that is visually akin to the image on the front. This suggests the artist coordinated his efforts with those of the typographer. The typeface on the Homer, however, has a severe, mechanical quality that is alien to the (hand-drawn) image. This announces that it was produced under more modern conditions: the artist and the typographer seem to have worked independently on their contributions to the magazine, almost like people on an assembly line. I take away from this “announcement” a heightened sense that Homer’s modernity, relative to his predecessors, is not simply a matter of imagery or style; it is also rooted in the way he relates recto to verso.

The Rodin Man with a Broken Nose also caught me by surprise. I knew, of course, that the head is incomplete. The back part is broken off so viewers can see the sculpture’s hollow interior. I also knew that the sculpture is supposed to be an early example of Rodin’s interest in the aesthetics of fragments, such as Greek and Roman sculptures ravaged by time. But I don’t think I appreciated the strangeness of the sculpture until I was able to consider the back from head on, both at a distance and up close, as one can in this installation. The break doesn’t evoke the “natural” fragmentation of Greek and Roman sculptures. It’s too clean. Also, the break calls our attention to an attribute that appears all along the break: a headband or fillet, such as those that appear in ancient sculptures of victorious athletes.

A number of questions follow from these observations (at least if we assume the break was deliberate). Why would Rodin welcome an allusion to antique sculptures of athletes but not an allusion to antique fragmentation? Why would he evoke ancient sculpture at all when his motif—a day laborer with a broken nose—seems designed to flout the canon of good taste that ancient sculpture embodied? Furthermore, should we understand the smoothness of the break to imply that the back of the sculpture belongs against a wall, or did Rodin want viewers to see that the sculpture was hollow? What would have been at stake in acknowledging this hollowness?

I don’t know if anyone else will be surprised or perplexed by these sorts of things, but I would like other visitors to be surprised and perplexed, too. My hope is that the questions Backstories raises will contain the seeds of future projects shedding even more light on the “hidden” sides of art.

By Michael Cassin
Director, Center for Education in the Visual Arts

An image labeled The Dinner Horn appears on Page 377 of Harper’s Weekly, dated June 11th, 1870, printed from a drawing by Winslow Homer. The picture is a kind of rural idyll of nineteenth-century, post-Civil War America: a young woman blows her horn to let the people working in the distant fields know it’s time to eat. Ivy grows around the farmhouse door, and a contented-looking cat scratches itself against the door jamb; you can almost hear it purring with delight. A large cooking-pot hangs over the fire in the kitchen grate, steam rising from its contents, and the table is laid with neat place settings. The people who live here may not be rich; their food may be simple and they may have to work hard for what they receive, but the war is over. Their lives have returned to normal after its upheavals, and the farm laborers can look forward in safety to a hearty meal at the end of a working day. If we turn the page, however, we will encounter a story of a very different kind.

Most of this page is printed with text from the beginning of chapter forty-six of a novel called Man and Wife, by the English writer Wilkie Collins. Collins worked with Charles Dickens during the 1850s and ’60s, contributing chapters of what were called at the time “sensation” novels, for serial publication in Dickens’s journals Household Words and All the Year Round. This episodic format lent itself to scenes of high melodrama, with a cliff-hanger at the end of each chapter to keep readers on the edges of their seats, eagerly awaiting the next exciting installment. The son of a professional painter, Collins was highly adept at telling a good yarn in graphic prose. Novels like The Woman in White and The Moonstone are among the earliest examples of the classic mystery, with fantastic descriptions (a ghostly female appearing out of the darkness on a quiet Hampstead street; an unbalanced maidservant who drowns herself in a stretch of quicksand ominously called “the shivering sands”—you get the general idea), and with astute investigators who predate Sherlock Holmes by about 20 years.

But—like Dickens—Collins also wrote about current social issues, often choosing legal anomalies with which to prick the conscience of his Victorian readers. My favorite of Collins’s novels, No Name, revolves around the plight of two genteelly brought-up young women who discover, after their parents’ tragic and unexpected deaths, that they had not in fact been married at the time of their daughters’ births. This leaves the girls not only alone in the world, but without legal status, unable to inherit their parents’ possessions and, through no fault of their own, literally with no name.

Man and Wife, though not perhaps as gripping as some of Collins’s earlier tales, challenges the inconsistency, the inequity, and the iniquity of the marriage laws in different parts of Victorian Britain. Chapter forty-six brings many of the novel’s protagonists together in a chilly formal room in London to present arguments and evidence to determine the legality of a betrothal and a marriage. The text drops us into the middle of a convoluted plot. Unfortunately—and tantalizingly—we know neither the story so far nor what happens next. The text ends not just in mid-chapter, it ends in mid-question: “From the moment when you entered the inn to the moment when you left it, were you also…”??? How’s THAT for a cliff-hanger? Presumably, the rest of the question and its answer would appear on subsequent pages, but we don’t have any other pages. Oh, the suspense…

Well, I could tell you what happens next, but where’s the fun in that?  Maybe seeing this ‘midstory’ in the Backstories exhibition will encourage some of you to look up Man and Wife and Collins’s other novels in your local library or bookstore. Many of them are as intriguing as the backstories revealed in the show.

Getting feedback from everyone at the opening was really helpful, and it put me in an even better mood than I was in before. Watching people look at my exhibit made me feel amazing, and when people came up to me, I was so happy. It made me realize that everyone interprets the paintings and the pieces I selected in their own ways. One woman, for example, came up to me and said, “I love all of the French art that you put in your exhibit, because I love French art, too.” I guess I do like French art, but I certainly never thought about my exhibit that way!

I can’t wait to bring my friends to Williamstown to see the exhibit over winter break. I hope that they’ll like it and maybe even “curate” a room of their own during the visit.

Giselle

Ads for Giselle’s Remix appeared in the Boston Globe and New York Times … billboards will begin later this month

The Clark is preparing to open Giselle’s Remix, the first exhibition we will install based on a submission to our uCurate interactive program (check it out at clarkart.edu/remix). The first exhibition was created by 11-year-old Giselle Ciulla, who shared the post below as she anticipates the transformation of her exhibition from virtual to actual. As part of her work as a Clark curator, Giselle has worked closely with our marketing team as they’ve developed a campaign to promote the show. Recent ads in the Boston Globe and New York Times launched the marketing effort, which will soon be supplemented with billboards throughout the Berkshires region. Not surprisingly, Giselle has some thoughts on the media efforts.

Hi everyone! This week has been a tough one, because I live right outside of New York City, which got very hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. My town lost power and some houses, but not most, flooded. The wind was crazy, and the morning after the storm hit, there were so many trees and power lines down! It has been a long week, because all school was cancelled, my power was out, and the lack of gas means it’s hard for us to drive places.

But before this huge storm hit my town, I was home with my grandparents who were watching us for the week. They had brought the ad from the Boston Globe that had my picture in it, and showed it to my friends who were over. They started screaming with me and they all called their parents who asked to talk to me. I was so happy and embarrassed by them, because they went walking down the street singing, “My best friend’s a celebrity! She’s in the newspaper and is going to be on a billboard!”

I was so excited at that point, and whenever the ad catches my eye now, my heart starts pounding and I get so anxious. I can’t wait until the exhibit opens!

Giselle

Similar to a good book, a photograph tells a story; moreover, a photograph forever captures a particular moment in time, and conveys that moment to all who view it.

The Arthur de Carle Sowerby Papers, 1904-1954 and undated, include stunning photographs taken by Sowerby during his career as a naturalist, explorer, artist, and editor. The son of a British missionary to China, Arthur de Carle Sowerby (8 July 1885-16 August 1954) was born in Tai-yuan Fu, Shansi province. In 1908, Sowerby was invited by Robert Stirling Clark, (adventurer, art collector, and heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) to serve as naturalist during Clark’s 1908 scientific expedition into Shansi and Kansu provinces of north China.

The expedition, which lasted more than a year and produced the first known map of the region, is recounted in Through Shên-kan : The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908-9, by Robert Sterling Clark and Arthur de C. Sowerby, ed. by Major C. H. Chepmell. This volume may be reviewed online through the digital collections of The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The images from the Clark Expedition include landscapes, staged portraits, and impromptu local scenes. It is the latter which I find most intriguing, as such images document the people of a particular area merely going about their lives. There is, for instance, an image of a man spinning silk, perhaps his occupation, perhaps a hobby.

Spinning silk at Sanyuan, Shaanxi, by Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Record Unit 7263, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image #2008-3003

One of my personal favorites is an image of men pulling rickshaws through the streets in what appears to be a competitive manner.

Chinese men pulling rickshaws down the street, by Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Record Unit 7263, Smithsonian Institution Archive, Image # 2008-2938

There is also an image of a street food vendor, a common site evident in many towns and cities still, and a testament that although many years may pass, some things remain unchanged.

The introduction of the digital camera and its incorporation into smart phones, tablets, and laptops permit us to freeze time almost without thought. Such technology is remarkable, as it permits us to click away without the limit of numbered frames on a roll of film. Our digital devices are, in most cases, lightweight, discreet, and require little in the way of formal training to operate; simply point and shoot. I wonder what future generations will think of our moments, frozen, somewhere, on a cloud.

One final item of note, in 2009, Li Ju, a Chinese freelance photographer, retraced the path of the Clark Expedition to mark its centennial. Using original images from the expedition as a guide, Li Ju digitally photographed many of the sites visited by Clark and Sowerby in 1908-1909. The resulting images may be viewed in Through Shen-Kan: Revisiting Loess Plateau, China Intercontinental Press, 2012, a truly beautiful book in which original images from the Clark Expedition are displayed adjacent to the modern images Li Ju captured during his journey. These contrasting images are striking, for they show the changes that have occurred across a century, as well as the resilience of the landscape and the people who inhabit the region. The volume serves as an intriguing view into the past, through modern eyes.

Related Resources

• Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908-1909, Robert Sterling Clark and Arthur De C. Sowerby, London T. Fisher Unwin 1912.
• Through Shên-kan: Sterling Clark in China Online Exhibition, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Related Collections

• Record Unit 7263 – Arthur de Carle Sowerby Papers, 1904-1954 and undated, Smithsonian Institution Archives

The dog days of summer—all things considered, we don’t have it so bad here in the Berkshires. Sun-dappled hills roll beneath blue skies, yielding to brilliant stars once the cool evening closes in. A late-afternoon walk past the Clark’s lily pond is accompanied by a serenade of twittering birds and gulping frogs. It really doesn’t get much better.

View of the Clark’s original 1955 building from the lily pond.

Our galleries, however, conjure up visions of a completely different landscape.

Ruin with horse and rider in foreground, possibly Clark expedition member Arthur de Carle Sowerby, summer 1909 (Smithsonian Institution Archives, image #2008-3086)

This mural greets visitors in the introductory gallery of Unearthed, our special exhibition on view in the Manton Research Center. At the base of a craggy rise, a lone rider, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, slouches atop his pony. A white cloth is tucked under the brim of his hat to reflect the blazing sun. The overgrown ruins of a massive, stone tower loom over man and steed, dominating the rough, light-blasted terrain. In the distance, unfocused peaks rise through the haze into the stark sky. Heat seems to quiver over the scene and radiate into the gallery.

The photograph was taken in northwestern China, probably during the summer of 1909. The rider appears to be Arthur de Carle Sowerby, one member of a team of explorers led by our founder Sterling Clark across the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu. Our shows this summer transport visitors to this remote terrain, commemorating the Clark expedition and the centennial of Clark and Sowerby’s joint publication of Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908–9 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).

Zhenmushou (Tomb Guardian Beast), Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). Lingtai County Museum, Pingliang.

Members of the Clark expedition at Yulin, Shaanxi province, December 1908 (from left to right: Sowerby, Clark, Cobb, Grant, Douglas) (Smithsonian Institution Archives, image #2008-3140

Ten Thousand Buddhas caves, Yan’an, Shaanxi province, January 2009 (top) and December 1908 (bottom) (2009 photo courtesy of Li Ju; 1908 photo Smithsonian Institution Archives, image #2008-3130)

(Learn more about each show—and the Clark expedition—from our special exhibition websites, accessed via clarkart.edu.)

Detail of Arthur de Carle Sowerby on horseback.

Sowerby, no doubt sweaty, grimy, and exhausted, gamely poses for the camera. His posture is uncannily similar to that of the silhouetted miniature rider who enlivens the front cover of Through Shên-kan.

Through Shên-kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in North China, 1908–9 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912)

Detail from the cover of “Through Shên-kan”

This same figure sits squarely in the center of the “official” Clark expedition flag designed by artist Mark Dion for his installation Phantoms of the Clark Expedition.

Mark Dion (American, b. 1961), Shên-kan Expedition Flag—Clark Expedition, 2012. Felt and grommets, 36 x 48 in. © Mark Dion Studio, courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Photo by Art Evans © 2012 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts and Mark Dion

Meant to mimic the official flag of The Explorers Club in New York City—where the Phantoms installation, commissioned by the Clark, is installed—Dion’s monochrome pennant is the ghostly double of the Through Shên-kan cover and, perhaps, of the photo of Sowerby. For his project, Dion recreated the material remnants of the Clark expedition in papier-mâché; it is as though the artist has summoned these pale “phantoms” from the mists of time to haunt the halls of the Club.

Mark Dion (American, b. 1961), Campfire—Clark Expedition, 2012. Papier-mâché, dimensions variable. © Mark Dion Studio, courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Photo by Art Evans © 2012 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts and Mark Dion

Mark Dion (American, b. 1961), Provisions and Equipment—Clark Expedition (rear left) and Equipment—Clark Expedition (on table), 2012. Papier-mâché, dimensions variable. © Mark Dion Studio, courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Photo by Art Evans © 2012 Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts and Mark Dion

These “sun-bleached bones of . . . expeditions past,” as Dion calls them, act as relics of the expedition, encouraging us to investigate and interrogate Sterling Clark’s reasons for organizing such an ambitious journey, and to consider the expedition’s lasting legacy.

During these dog days of summer, we can contemplate these burning questions—from the luxury of the Clark’s cool galleries!

Surveying equipment from the expedition (including a scale and weights, survey’s transit and tripod, precision stopwatches, measuring tape, trunks, and a level rod), displayed at Stone Hill Center, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., summer 2012. © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., photo by Michael Agee.

I’d like to offer another possible answer to the question “when are copies useful?” which Copycat co-curator Alexis Goodin posed in the wall text for her exhibition and in an accompanying blog post.

In the Fall of 2011, I took a seminar on the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). The professor, Marc Simpson, had each of the students in the class choose one of Sargent’s pictures in the Clark collection to study over the course of the semester. I chose Blonde Model of circa 1877—a modestly sized oil painting (roughly eighteen inches tall by fifteen inches wide) that depicts the head and shoulders of a nude female model.

For our first assignment of the semester, Professor Simpson had each of us make a pencil drawing of the painting we had chosen. It’s worth noting that the quality of our drawings was, in this case, of little importance. The point of Professor Simpson’s assignment was not for each of us to produce great works of art—as you can see below, such a project would be beyond my artistic capabilities! The emphasis here was on the process of drawing, which requires careful looking over a long period of time. Whereas I might have spent five or ten minutes in front of Blonde Model had I not been asked to draw it, I stood in front of the painting for upwards of an hour.

Copying a work of art may help you observe things you previously hadn’t noticed. In the case of Blonde Model, I had barely considered the manner in which Sargent applied paint to canvas until I set out to draw it. I noticed that the model’s hair, for instance, was merely suggested by several exuberant strokes of the brush; the background and the model’s chest were similarly painted with little concern for detail. This loose handling of the paint was, for me, a strong indication that Blonde Model was conceived of as a studio exercise, and not a commissioned painting.

In the subject’s face, I observed Sargent’s method of applying color in “patches,” as opposed to blending the paint to create a completely smooth or homogenous surface. After a bit of research, I learned that Sargent’s technique here was consistent with the instruction he’d received in the atelier of the Parisian artist Carolus Duran. Sargent’s early training under Duran was ultimately a major component of my seminar paper.

In an age where high-quality digital reproductions are easily accessible, it may seem unnecessary for someone studying a work of art to spend time drawing it. But I have found that any activity that prolongs my engagement with an original art object is worth doing. By fixing my attention on Sargent’s painting, I was able to see things I wouldn’t have noticed if I had only looked at it briefly or in reproduction.

So I’d say that copying Blonde Model was useful for me in that it opened up multiple avenues for research.

Image credit:

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925), Blonde Model, c. 1877. Oil on canvas © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.574

The Clark’s Copycat exhibit displayed a wide range of drawing, printmaking, and photographic techniques used for reproduction. Artistic creativity and intention vary depending on the artist and the work being copied. The works being displayed demonstrated the possibilities and limitations of past methods of reproducing art.

The computer application Adobe Photoshop has expanded the ways in which reproductions can be used to expand a work’s subject matter or to add comedy. Bouguereau’s  Nymphs and Satyr is popularly used as source material that is manipulated and expanded upon. We have found examples of his Satyr replaced with subjects like Spider-Man—and the entire painting being re-imagined as a Manga animation. We have also seen great works of art being incorporated into advertisements and creative responses to older works.

Nothing is safe.

Many works in the Clark’s collection have been appropriated by artists, advertisers, and copycats around the globe. I have collected a wide range of reproductions ranging from the artistic study to fantastic manipulations.

Degas remains as a source of artistic inspiration and study. Here a fellow artist has chosen to do a study of one of Degas’s ballerina paintings using oil pastel and charcoal. He does not cite a specific source of inspiration for this copy, but we can see clear similarities with the Clark’s Dancers in a Classroom. The artist uses a similar subject matter as Degas’s painting, paying attention to the ballerina’s scale and the way in which the frills of her tutu are rendered. Also the light rose-pink color unites the two paintings, though the artist uses a more vibrant color palette than the earth tones that Degas employs.

This artist employs Degas’s ballerina sculptures as a starting point to create a unique interpretation.  This work by Flickr user “Citybumpkin” modifies the Old Master’s work by using a light painting photography technique. We see the sculpture’s negative shape surrounded by crackling light and energy through the use of long exposure settings and L.E.D.  lights. Improvements in modern technology has given the artist new and exciting tools with which to reproduce and create unique works based works by artists like Degas.

Examples of reproduced images do not need to remain tied to their source imagery. This artist from DeviantArt.com completely re-imagines Bouguereau’s painting Nymphs and Satyr into an anime animation. The artist keeps the original work’s composition and general subject matter, but adds his own unique spin to the original work. It looks as if the drawing is placed somewhere in the future or on a different planet where people can fly!

This reproduction preserves Bouguereau’s painting completely, but reapplies it into advertising. Creative use of an image is not only limited to reproducing a new work of art based on a previous work. Instead, advertisers can use a work of art like Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr to add additional attributes to their product. Hoffman Cigars sought to attract potential customers’ attention by adding what they saw as a provocative image to their cigar packaging. This use of the image reinserts Bouguereau’s painting into the popular vocabulary in a new and reworked way.

Tampax’s creative ad for their product is inspired by the classic example of Jean-Leon Gerome’s The Snake Charmer. We can see how Gerome inspired the creation of this advertisement by looking at its subject matter, context, and painting style. In both we are given a snake charmer who is manipulating their own respective “snakes.” Tampax replaces the snake from the original painting to one of their own products. The similarities continue as each work is situated in similar location, indicated by the subject sitting on the floor and the ornamentation on the walls. Though this ad is not a direct appropriation of the previous work , we can see how a painting made a hundred years ago can influence culture today.

Image credits:

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Dancers in the Classroom, c. 1880 © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, 1955.562

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1879-81 © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, 1955.45

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French), Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, 1955.658

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824–1904), The Snake Charmer, c. 1879. Oil on canvas, 82.2 x 121 cm. © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, 1955.51

THE CLARK: In a conversation with NPR’s Robert Siegel, you said that the attention you received for your first song, “Society’s Child,” was a tough way to start your musical career—“with a song that everyone hates you for.” You received hate mail and death threats. How did this affect you, at such a young age?

JANIS IAN: Well, of course, it was terribly frightening. For years, I was scared of the audience every time I walked on stage. But it also taught me a huge lesson—that music is the most powerful of all the arts, because you need nothing more than a human being and a voice to change hearts and minds.

TC: About “At Seventeen,” you have said, “I’d never sing it in public. It was just too humiliating.” How so? And how have your feelings about this song changed through the years?

 JI: “At Seventeen” is about me. It’s about as personal a song as you can get. To unzip like that, in front of strangers…? Pretty scary. Pretty embarrassing.

My feelings began to change the first time I looked out over the audience and realized all of them felt the same way. That amazed me!

TC: You wrote your first song, “Hair of Spun Gold,” when you were twelve. Do you remember what drew you to songwriting, and what inspired this first song?

JI: I honestly don’t. There was always music in our home, and I’d been playing guitar for a couple of years. I think it was just a natural progression.

TC: What advice would you give your twelve-year-old self, if you could take her out for lunch?

JI: Don’t trust anyone with your money!

TC: You wrote a piece called “Tiny Mouse” for The Boat Project, “a 30ft boat crafted by an adventurous team of boat builders and volunteers from wood donated by the public. Each piece of wood has a moving, memorable or extraordinary story behind it,” which have become the inspiration for songs by selected singer-songwriters and musicians from different genres. What was the story that inspired “Tiny Mouse”?

JI: A young woman was going through her father’s things in the attic after he died. She ran across a jack-in-the-box clown with a little drawer at bottom, and found a tiny wooden mouse there. She remembered playing with it as a child. For me, the mouse inspired a song that could take things to the max, no holds barred. I kept thinking of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz as I wrote it.

TC: You have said that Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Mike Resnick is responsible for your first foray into science fiction writing. Why did he sign you up to write an anthology, and what did you learn from writing it?

JI: Mike kept saying he thought I could be a great short story writer and novelist, and I kept telling him I didn’t write stories or novels. He signed me up to force me into writing. I learned that I love to write, and it doesn’t matter what genre!

TC: You have built a successful writing career in many genres, including songwriting, autobiography, science fiction, essays, and poetry. Is there a genre that you would love to try, in which you have not yet experimented?

JI: I really haven’t begun to scratch the surface of writing fiction. I’ve finished exactly nine stories, and it’s going to take a lot more time than I’ve got to ever be good at it. I’m waiting until someone hands me enough money to stay home all the time, at which point I’m going to totally devote myself to that!

TC: You were the musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live. What do you remember from this performance?

JI: I had a fever of 104 and strep throat, so not much…I remember seeing Jim Henson with The Muppets and laughing my face off. Everyone was incredibly nervous because the show was live. Billy Preston was terrific. All the cast were really nice. No one knew it would be legendary!

TC: In 1983, you took a break from the music business that lasted nine years. What did you do during that time, and what brought you back to music?

JI: I learned not to be monochromatic—I studied a lot of forms besides my own, forms I could fail in, like classical ballet. Forms that led me to new things in my own work, like script analysis and acting. I never left music, though. I wrote all that time. I just didn’t record.

TC: How long did it take you to write Society’s Child: A Life in Song, and what was your process for writing the book?

JI: It took about five months, though I took a lot of time off during that period. I didn’t really have a process beyond the advice [fantasy writer] Mercedes Lackey gave me, which was “Sit butt in chair. Write.” Good advice!

TC: Of Society’s Child: A Life in Song, the ALA Booklist wrote, “She writes casually and conversationally about her ups and downs and the life lessons she learned. Even recounting decisions that were stupid (quite often) and bad things that happened to her (many), she keeps us on her side, hoping things eventually turn out well. Fans will love the book, of course, but many nonfans, too, should find this painfully candid memoir hard to put down.” Could you tell us how you felt during the release of such a “painfully candid” book?

JI: I tried not to think about it, really. I had a group of seven or eight “dedicated readers,” old and new friends and writers who read chapters as I finished and offered criticisms and comments, particularly if they felt I wasn’t putting enough heart into something. When I finished, before I turned it in, I contacted a number of people who are in the book and sent them copies, asking if they felt anything needed correction. (Several asked that I change their names in fact!) But for myself, I wasn’t nervous—I’ve always been pretty open about my life.