Chicago Artist Deirdre Fox on Turning Plastic Waste into Environmental Art & Visual Poetry

Before we start, this episode was recorded live at 105.5 FM LumpenRadio, where Nosy AF goes live on the air every second and fourth Saturday of the month. What you're hearing is the conversation as it happened. No edits, no retakes. Still curious and very fun, but honestly, sort of scary.So settle in and enjoy this conversation on Nosy af. Gotta get up, get up to the whole world.You a winner, winner Vision of a star with a mission in the cause what you doing, how you doing, what you're doing and who you are. Flex yourself and press yourself Check yourself, don't wreck yourself if you know me then you know that I be knowing what's up.Hey, Stephanie Graham is nosy as WLPNLP Chicago 105.5 FM Lumpenradio. Hi, Chicago. Happy New Year. I know this is. I'll be the last person to say Happy New Year to you. We are here with Deirdre Fox. Hi, Deirdre.

Hi, Stephanie.

I'm so excited. Let me introduce Deirdre. So, Deirdre is a Chicago based artist and someone I've known and admired for over 10 years.Can you believe it's been so long?

I cannot believe it's. It's a quick 10 years.

Yes, it certainly is.And Deirdre's work transforms plastic consumer packaging, things like single use bags and containers into drawings, fiber works and sculptural installations that asks us to slow down and reconsider what we throw away. Her practice sits right at the intersection.

Of.

Material, time and environmental awareness, questioning permanence, disposability and the systems that make waste feel.Deirdre has exhibited widely, received multiple grants from the City of Chicago and the Illinois Arts Council, and maintains her studio at Manna Contemporary Chicago. So happy you're here, Deirdre.

So happy to be here, Stephanie.

I'm so excited.

Welcome.

How do you feel today? How has your 2026 gone so far?

Well, I ended last week. I ended last year with a cold and it's seen me through this year. So I've spent the first week of it with my cold and sleeping a lot.

Oh my goodness. Something's going.

It is.

I hate that. Well, Deirdre, let's talk about your wonderful work. Now, you have described your work as visual poems.

Visual poetry.

Visual poetry. Can you like, talk us through what that means to you?

So from my perspective, I mean, we think of poems as being in writing and words and how words interact with each other. And the sounds, more sounds. And I do something along that Lines, but with the visual language.So I'm always thinking about the visual representation of something and how that impacts the next mark that I'm making. The next quasi mark that I'm making in the work that I'm doing and what that communicates overall. And I try to have.I often have a little story in my head that is a little poem that I tell myself that I'm kind of writing at the same time that I'm making the piece of work. And those visual poems sometimes just go out the window.But there's something for how I think about the work and what I'm doing while I'm making the work. And at the end of the day, the title derives from those poems that's like, think of it as a gesture, poetic gesture, a poetic moment.

Oh, I really like that. And you do this with like plastic bags and bottles. Single use plastic bottles.

Plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, a lot of plastic recently.And most recently I've been doing a lot more that's more singularly focused on the plastic bags and using them in integration with some actually hand, hand dyed fabrics and materials.To look at that interaction between the two, sort of the organic, the non organic, the more quasi thought of being permanent to the thing that's never thought of as being permanent, but is because those plastic bags last forever.

Right. Wait, but can you dye the plastic bags?

I don't dye the plastic bags. You can dye. You can dye yarn.

Okay, sure.

You know, other. Other fiber. Other kinds of fiber. You can dye those. So I'm combining the two of them into my pieces.

Yeah. What drew your interest to plastic bags?

So funny story. Okay. Or maybe not so funny, maybe a little sad. I was doing, I think of all my work as being doing drawing.And I was doing a lot of drawings once upon a time, years ago, with pigments, with dry pigments and all of that. And one of the things that I have a bad habit and worse habit than I do now is drinking soda. Okay.So the empty bottles would just sort of pile up and you'd look over, you'd say, what are all those bottles doing over there in the meantime?You know, you hear things about the landfill, the Pacific Ocean, all the bottles floating around, plastic bags and everything floating in the Pacific Ocean. I thought, well, I ought to at least have a little bit of responsibility for my own consumption.

Yeah.

So I thought I should start to try to use some of those in my work. And my work wasn't really sculptural at the time, but when I started working with the plastic Bottles, which is really what I started with.And I used the plastic connectors between them. Really, it was more sculptural than it is now.But it was just started off as a way of kind of repurposing and trying to realize myself, like, have myself slow down and think, what are you gonna do with that? You can't just let that pile up or just get tossed out. And then I think it becomes a mechanism to communicate or have that conversation with others.And. Yeah, I mean, so I just really started doing that. And I had a.A piece in the show at the High Park Art center that was kind of maybe one of the first big pieces that I did that was all essentially woven plastic bags. And there was a big installation across the hallway. When you first came up to it, most people couldn't tell it was plastic bags, except the kids.The kids would go up and say, mommy, it's plastic. And then they'd start playing with it and moving it around, which I thought was both frustrating and adorable.

Hey, don't touch the art, kid.

You're not supposed to touch the art. But it is an art center.

Yeah.

And if you put it down low enough, I mean, it's fair. It's fair game. I think you gotta be mind. You gotta. Gotta be mindful of both. But they would. I don't know, it added to it. It's kind of fun.Somebody would go and put it back the way it was originally. Yeah.

It becomes interactive in that way.

But kids see right away, I think, is what I was trying to say is kids look at really what they see. And we, as adults, at least myself, I tend to look at what I expect to see.

Yeah.

So I think it's thinking about that as well, in connection with how do we think. Because I think those ideas are connected. Everything, if you're.If you're attentive, I think you're going to be more mindful and less, you know, less wasteful, I guess.

Do you think that, like, the work, like, has, like, your own, like, relationship to waste improved or, like, while you're working with these materials, you think, or is it about the same, or.

No, it's improved. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely improved. First of all, I repurpose a lot of what I have.

Sure.

So that definitely improves it already. I don't drink as much soda anymore, so I don't have as much of that anymore. But, yeah, I think it has made me. It does make me more mindful.

Yeah, that's good. We should all be more mindful. Around waste and everything.And can you, like, just for the listener to sort of be able to visualize your work, can you, like, pick a piece and describe it? Nobody can talk about that, but maybe it might be. Might be helpful.

I'll give it a shot. Okay.

Like, it's like braided bags.

I think it's braided or knitted. They're crochet. So I use various bastic techniques that I learned from my mom once upon a time. But by that, I just mean crocheting, weaving.Now weaving, I have studied a little bit more recently.I didn't actually learn that from my mom, but weaving and knitting and just, you know, braiding, tying, those kinds of things as a construction tool to make the forms. So it's just like, you know, it's just like weaving with yarn.It's just like weaving with or crocheting with yarn or what have you, except that you're making the yarn out of the plastic, essentially, and then working with it.And then I. I do some work on the loom, but a lot of what I do, I do on makeshift looms that I just sort of put together up on the wall or with sticks or however I do it. And I construct it as it go. As I go, the whole process. You asked me to describe one, and so I'm not really doing that right now, I realize.But if you were to see a piece, it would. And you could see them on Instagram or online or what have you. It's a textile. It'll look like a textile. Now, they didn't always look like textiles.They used to look like string drawings or line drawings. And they would fill up a whole space, and the space itself was part of the work. Okay.So how the lines interacted and made forms with the corners in the wall, you know, you can get a dimensional aspect with how you arrange things on a wall in the room and how it all connects together. And that was part of the work. Cause that's a bit immersive at that point in time, and very. It requires you to. With the work.The work that I'm doing most immediately right now will look like a textile. It'll look like a shape textile. So they'll have different shapes and format that they're not like, just pure rectangles or anything like that.So you can have parts sticking out.You can have some parts coming out from the wall, and it will have different colors or what have you in there, and have a spatial effect, but kind of like a weird cross between a painting and a sculpture.

Yeah.

And I use a lot of painting and drawing construction ideas in my work. Cause I do consider them all to be drawing.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if that was a helpful description.

No, I think it was helpful. It's interesting that you see them as drawings. How come?

Because they are.

Yeah. I just feel like they're like. I think when I think of drawing, I just feel.And this is maybe because I don't have that much experience with drawing, but I just think of, like, on the paper, like 2D, you know? But these you can, like, touch. They're like, off the wall. So.

So you can think of drawing as, you know, the actual process of making a line on a piece of paper, which is kind of what you're thinking. Or the result. The result of that. But it's also a way of how you see in the hand.Eye coordination thing and what you're trying to do with how other people see space. Cause the line's gonna sit in space in a certain.And you can play with how that happens both on a surface, when you put something on a surface, but then you can make the surface itself an element of the.

Okay.

And I think of these lines that I make as being the elements of the drawing. And I build them from there.

Yeah.

So I do actually think, even though you wouldn't necessarily look at all of the pieces and think it's line drawing, they all are kind of constructed from the idea of line drawing.

I see. Cause do you think of it before you start? Do you, like, know what you're gonna do, or is it sort of improvisational?

It's improvisational through process and looking. So I'm looking for different visual effects that I'm targeting when I'm making the work the same way.You might think of somebody who's actually drawing thinking about where they're putting the marks on the piece of paper to create a different effect between where those mark, how those marks relate to each other, or paint, or even how the colors relate to each other. So that's what I'm thinking about. At the same time, there's a poetic aspect in them.So I'm thinking, how is it playing into what I'm trying to do poetically? And then I'll stop and I'll study them for a while, and then I'll come back and go at them again.A lot of my work actually is just sitting and staring at my own work, which I find hysterical. But they. So they build, and then they reach a point where they're done.

Okay.

I learned this line when I was in school, when I was in art school at the Art Institute. School at the Art Institute that Cezanne used to say, every mark finishes. Should finish the drawing, should finish the painting, should finish it.Each one, from the beginning to the end. Wow. And I kind of. I really believe that I don't think it works perfectly.But from a way of how you make work and how you think about what you're putting down or in the space or whatever you call your canvas, I think that kind of really works. I mean, I think everything is being completed by each thing. But because I'm weaving or crocheting, you know, that would be very small things.So I do have to expand it out into a bigger. Into a bigger something.

It's funny that you say that, you know, a piece of your process is, like, just staring at the work.

Oh, loud.

Yeah. A writer was. There was a writing teacher I had who was like, you know, I want to see how I write.And then he, like, just went and stood in the corner with his arms folded.

He was like, a lot of times.

This is really how I write. He, like, had his arms folded and was, like, just looking around, like, thinking. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. But that's so true.

Right.

Because you have to think about what you're gonna do and you wanna be intentional.

Yeah. And you gotta look at it. I mean, I guess it's a great. Making art is a great meditation.

Yeah.

I mean, you are very much present, I feel, when you're making art. You're very present with your work and the space in which you're working and the whole thing.And there could be a lot going on in your head somewhere around here, but you are very present in that moment.

Yeah.

And so I do think it's funny. I did.I did a residency at Ragdale, and I was doing different work at the time, and nobody thought I was doing anything except going out to look at the prairie and doing my crossword puzzles and chit chatting with people. But at the end of the residency, I had all this work to display for when we had people come through. Like, when did you make all this?I'm like, well, I do a little, and then I go out and walk around the prairie.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's just my process is to take those thinking spaces. So staring at the wall or staring at the blank space. I love white walls.And, you know, and an artist shouldn't say that because we should encourage people to put art on their wall. Sure. But But I love art. I love white walls.

Yeah.

It's all there, ready to.

And there is that thought with, like, you know, folks are like, oh, you know, like the white cube gallery, like, blah, blah, blah. Like, it gets poo pooed sometimes. If you could say that word, you know, like. But I like it.

I like it.

You know, I think it looks slick.

I mean, I like rough spaces, too. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think anything. Like just looking at things.

Yeah, just.

Just looking is. Can be pretty amazing.

I like. You know, we did a residency together in Pooch Cove.

Cove. I love Pooch Cove.

Yes. You worked. You worked similarly that way, too. You sort of did a little bit. And then you were always.

I was always gone.

You were always gone. I'm like, deirdre, where are you? And you were like, I'm on a walk. I'm on a walk. I just came back from a walk. Pooch Cove was a breakthrough for you.

It was.

Tell us about that. Tell us about that.

So prior to Pooch Cove, well, first of all, I had. For a little while, I had been sick, so I was getting. I was getting back into things.But putting that aside, I had been thinking and working towards how do I. One of the problems I had with my artwork. So one of the issues. Not a problem.One of the issues I had is that it was very installation based, and it kind of required me to install it or to provide very detailed instructions and deal and live with that space where somebody's translating your instructions to put it up.And you got to be okay with that space because it's not going to be the same as what you're expecting or what have you, because everything's going to be a little bit different with somebody else doing it. So I was trying to think of how can I make some more object, like, work, which is kind of how we get to the textiles.And when we were out in Pooch Cove and all my walking and everything, one of the things you may remember, we went and looked at the icebergs.

Sure.

And they are so beautiful. I was almost like, I took all these pictures of the icebergs. I came back to the studio. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna make an iceberg.

Okay.

Big, giant, abstract iceberg.

Yeah.

Which I think is about the only thing I worked on while I was there that got it finished. But it was all out of plastic bags.It was all woven, and the whole process of construction, constructing it and working a lot with different whites, white this kind of white, that kind of white, a little bit of blue and green here. But this, putting all of that together just made. It just opened up a whole world to me. It really did. So my work has been building off of that.

Okay. Oh, very cool. Off of the iceberg.

Off of the iceberg. Well, and the way of doing it, the way I was looking at doing it.

Okay. Very cool.

So a process. Kind of a process.

Do you have a name for your process? You know, sometimes people coin their process. Is that your style?

I don't. Yeah, I don't. I just think of them as drawings. Someone once told me it wasn't me. Someone once said my work was, quote, mild cubism.

Okay.

And that's because it is used as cubist techniques or analytical cubist techniques of thinking about space and working with it. But I always smooth everything out. I don't like everything to be. I don't like things to be sharp. So he's. Well, it's mild. So it's mild cubism.Okay, I'll go with it. I don't know.

You know, thinking of mild cubism, do you feel like more aligned with art history traditions or with contemporary artists that are like, working today and material based?

Kind of both, I think. I mean, I do still look a lot at Cezanne and Cubism. I look at Robert Reidman a lot because of the white on white.I just love the white on white right now. But then I also look at Sheila Hicks and Sheila Pepe and I love Judy Pfaff. So I think it's a combination of them.

Do you go out and look at work a lot?

Not as much as I should.

Okay, I try.

I try. I do go out and look at work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What other, like, besides the icebergs, like, where you might draw inspiration from?

Oh, you mean besides, like. Oh, well, I do draw a lot from nature.

Yeah.

And not just nature, but even just architectural, like just spaces.Like just even walking down a street, a city street, you can see how the bricks and the walls and how everything orients towards itself and what you can see through spaces. One of my favorite thing to do is just kind of drive and you watch the land going through the poles and stuff like that.And you can see the views changing and it's going through the poles.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that is fun.

And a little bit like trying to capture that sense, I guess, walking around. So that's one thing I read a lot and I read it, you know, I love poetry, so I do read a lot of poetry.I love the sound of Words, which is part of why I like poetry. But I'm not a good poet myself, so that's kind of why the visual aspect of it is, I think, in many ways, better suited to me.

When you say you like the sound of poetry, do you like to listen to poetry, too? Like, be recited?

I do, but I just like how words work with each other. So I can do it in my. So I can do it in my own head. I can't actually recite. Just like. I mean, I can play the piano, but I can't actually hear it.Right. Kind of tone deaf, actually, which I think is a weird contradiction. But I like the way words work with each other. And rhythm. The rhythm of words.

Yeah. Words are really cool in that way for people who can put it together. I don't have that skill, but I am impressed with writers and poets.

But I can't recite a poem to save myself.

Okay.

I really can't because I think I'm very flat when I do it. I can't get the. I can't externalize the rhythm when I'm saying it, I guess, is what I'm saying.

I see. Yeah. I've gone to poetry readings and all of that, and I'm always like, wow.I'm pretty sure the poets have practiced, but some of them, it just feels like they're just reading off of. Just like picking a page out of a book and reading it, and they're just. It just feels like it just flows so easily.

I think for some of them it does.

Yeah.

But I'm sure that people do practice.

Christa Franklin comes to mind, the artist. Krista Franklin. Hearing her read from her work, and I'm always. I'm just like, wow. You said that your mother taught you to knit.

She taught me or to crochet? She taught me the crochet.

What's the difference between. I always get them mixed up.

Crocheting is one needle.

Yeah.

And you do everything on one needle, and you're kind of hooking it around the fabric. Knitting's the two needles, and you're working between the fabric from one needle to the other. They're just different methodologies of doing it.

Okay.

Some people like one versus the other better. I actually like crocheting better, I think probably because I have small hands and it's a little bit easier for me to control.

I wondered if there was, like, a gang. If there's like, the knitting gang and the crochet gang and they, like, battle.

Each other, you know, I think, yeah, I can just See that? Let's do that. Let's set that up.

Yeah.

The battle.

Yeah.

The battle of. The battle of the needle. Make ahead. Let's go.

Yeah.

Now, I don't actually tend to make real things because that takes more. I'm not good at seeing something through that way. I would start to want to turn it into an art project.

It's just cool that your mother taught you that.

Yeah, yeah, she used to. My mom was really good. She used to make these. She could make all these little animals, these wild, fantastical creatures. Oh, wow.I mean, she was all over the place in what she could make crocheting and knitting. And she also sewed a lot. I can't really sew that well, but she sold a lot and all that. She could make amazing things.

And you grew up one of six kids.

I did.

Right. How has that, like, shaped your perspective as an artist?

Well, you always have to be vocal.

Okay.

To be seen.

Where's your order in the six?

I'm second oldest.

Oh, okay.

And we were all basically a year apart. There's one gap of. There's an extra year in between one of them.

Okay.

But we're very close. We're very close together in age. So you're kind of like a little gang of six. Yeah, Yeah. I think it's. I think it's just that. That. That appreciate.Well, partly appreciation for getting your own quiet time. You have to make your own quiet space because it wasn't going to occur unless you made your own quiet space.And drawing was one of the ways that I did that. Drawing and reading was one of the ways I did that. So I think that was part of it.And also I think just the general exuberance and boisterousness of being around a lot of kids. When you're growing up, you always had that little group.

Yeah.

So I think that too. I don't know if that affected my art. It probably did because everything about you affects your art.

Yeah. And you like to. Well, you'll be, like, out and about with folks or you'll have your own private studio time. Right. It'll be quiet.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think being an only child, I'm really used to the quiet.But then also I've noticed that there's been times I, like, try to make sound around me, you know, but, like, as I've gotten older, I'm like, oh, there's nothing on TV I wanna watch. I just turn the TV off versus, like, trying to keep on something in the background, you know?

I do that too. I used to keep things, I think, because I was used to noise, so I used to keep things on in the background.Now I just like to turn it off and be okay with the quiet.

Right. And enjoy the quiet.

I think the quiet's okay. Like, enjoy the quiet.

Yeah. Right.

You know, it's weird. I don't listen. I mean, Sheri, my studio mate, listens, and you know, Sheri. Yes. She listens to music as she works or a podcast or something.I don't, for the most part, I. I work in quiet, which I find funny, but it just is.

I do, too. I feel like even when I'm, like, setting up, like, a lighting setup or whatever, like, if people request it, like, oh, can we have music?I'm always like, oh, sure. Otherwise, yeah, it's just like, I don't think about it. Like, they're probably like, what is wrong with this person?Like, she has no music on, no podcast. But, yeah, I like the quiet, too.

I mean, I think it's nice to listen to music. But that's what you're doing then, is listening to the music.

Yes.

You know.

Yeah, we're not multitasking here.

Yeah, I'm not a good multitasker. Yeah, there you go.

I love that. Well, you know, sometimes, like, wait, in your work, do you see, like, a line between object and art?Or, like, does that exist when you were, like, trying to make the more object work?

Yeah. So I think art describes them all.

Yeah.

But I do think some work is more object based in that you. You create a painting. The painting is an object. It's a physical object up and down the wall or what have you.Assuming you've, you know, put it on canvas or something, or you've put it on aluminum or whatever you put it on. You haven't put it directly on the wall. If you put it. If you paint directly on the wall, now it's a painting, but it's not an object per se.

Yeah.

So I think there's that. And I think objects are movable. You can put them more easily from one place to another. But they also.Then in that way, it's kind of interesting with how they adapt to new spaces. And I kind of struggle with that a little bit. I, like, resist the objects. So this is why I tried to make objects, because I always want to play with.Is it an object? Is it on the wall? Is it off the wall? What's going to, you know, I don't know, weird that way.

Yeah. Can you move things around?

Can you move things around? And I do make my work out of.I mean, it's funny, I would make, quote, objects, but they would be part of the larger work, and they wouldn't be an object in and of themselves, because I'm working with physical material. So by definition, they're going to be some kind of object. A bottle is a bottle.

Yeah.

You know, it is an object.So it's just kind of like, is it an object that somebody else can just take and put in place and say, okay, now that's still the same art that it was before. Right. And I was trying to make work that was more like, okay, this is this in this space, and you can just move it. And it is that in another space.It's still somewhere else. It'll be a little bit different. But I'm not making any sense.

No, it is making perfect sense. It makes me think of, like, a mural in your home, and then if you move, you can't take that mural.And then the new homeowners, what if they paint over it?

And they will. A lot of times. That's why a lot of. That's why a lot of mural are just make a false wall or put it on canvas. Yeah. A lot of it's not directly.

It's just so scary. Yeah. I just. I just think about that.I have a friend who's been during these murals, and I'm like, oh, yeah, you should come and, you know, do a mural at my place. You know, she's just looking for wall space. And I'm like, I hope, you know, if I was to leave this place, the people would keep this up.Because it's a lot of work, you know, and it's very pretty. So it just. Yeah, yeah. Objects and murals and. But so, like, let me ask you a fun question.If you weren't making art, what else could you see yourself doing?

I could be a space. I could be an astronaut.

You could be an astronaut.

An astronaut.

I would love that.

I always wanted to be an astronaut.

So when everyone recently, like Katy Perry and everyone went to space.

Oh, I'd love to go. I can't afford that. Yeah. But somebody else would pay and take me up.

Oh, of course.

I would do it in the heartbeat.

Yeah.

I think it'd be so amazing to look back, to be able to look out and look out at space and look out at the Earth.

Yeah.

Like you looking. Not pictures of it. I think it'd be stunning.

I remember in grade school, we had space ice cream. Have you ever had the astronaut ice cream?

I have Not.

Oh, my gosh, Deirdre, I'll have to find some for you.It's like the freeze dried ice cream that the astronauts could eat and they would give it to us, and it was Neapolitan, and I feel like they had some other ones, but it's like, why would you want to have, like, astronaut pizza when you can have astronaut ice cream? It was very, very good.

I'm sure the astronauts felt the same way, too. Why would they have the pizza if they could have the ice cream?

That's what I was thinking. You know, it's like. Yeah. So we had like maybe about two minutes before we had to take a break.But I was curious, like you said, your work references oral storytelling traditions. I don't know where I got that from. Is that true or did I make that up?

I think you might have made that up.

I might have made it up or.

I might have said it once upon a time about something I was doing.

Yeah. Well, then what was the moment you realized you couldn't let drawing go? You know, like, as you were coming up as an artist.

Yeah.

And then you were taking it seriously.

So that's kind of a long story. I don't know if your two minutes is gonna hold it, but I'll start it.

Okay.

So I, as I think you might have mentioned earlier, I have an engineering background, a legal background, and I do the art. When I was a kid, my parents were really focused on education. That got you jobs. Okay. Like, reliable, steady, whatever. Hence.Hence engineering and law. Yeah. And so I did that for a while, but I always did the drawing, kind of. I was just drawing. I just wasn't doing it.I wasn't doing it to do anything with it. And I reached a certain point in time where I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? I like it.At that point in time, my dad, who was a lawyer, was getting older, and I tried to get him to go back to his hobbies. Yeah, I'm gonna have to, you know, continue after the break.

Okay. Let's just take a quick break and then we'll be right there. It's a cliffhanger.

I think it's a cliffhanger.

I think it's good to do. Okay, Real talk. How many opportunities have you bookmarked and never applied to? I know I have. And you know what? It happens.The admin part of the work we're doing is understandably boring and tedious, but when you neglect it, it can cost you real quick opportunities. That's why I Created Artist Admin Hour. Because behind every exhibition is a clear budget submitted. That makes sense. Admin is the flex.It's the work that makes the work work. But you don't have to do it alone. Every Wednesday, 7 to 9pm Central Artists show up on Zoom to tackle what we've been avoiding.Residency applications, grant apps, budgets, invoices, whatever's on your list. Two hours of body doubling with structure, no shame and real community. 25 to 45amonth gets you in.But if that's not doable, email me, because getting this done is very important. We will make it work. Stop letting admins sabotage your practice. Join us today at artist admin hour.com. WLPNLP Chicago 105.5 FM Lumpenradio.Okay, we are back. And listener. Before we left, we were left with a cliffhanger. As Deirdre was telling us, when you started to take drawing seriously.

Yes. So my dad was also a lawyer, but somewhere along the way he had stopped doing things that he was good at in art photography, drawing. And he was also.He was really good. His old work was fantastic. So we were trying to get him to go back, to start doing it. And it was so hard to get him to go back.And I think it was because he let so much. Part of it was because he let so much time and space go between when he had been doing it or doing anything with it.And here he was at a point in time in his life where he ought to be able to enjoy going back and starting to do some of that and just couldn't get him to do it. He passed away. And I think I was like, wow, okay, you know, I need to do something.

Yeah. So it made you say, take the time.

It made me take the time to do it. So I took time away from law and I went and took classes at the School of the Art Institute.And I was really focused on trying to find my voice, which I managed to do now.

Okay, nice. How long did that take?

Oh, it's still working on it. Okay. Well, in the beginning, in the beginning, it was funny when I first took the time to do work, I was doing just a lot of representational.I could draw a good likeness.I was doing a lot of representational work and I had some light bulb moments along the way, some of of which was cubism, some of which was a couple of really good teachers that kind of opened my eyes to abstraction and connection with representation and all of that. And I don't know, I had some mind shifts in the Middle of that and ended up where I am.

Yeah. That's also like, really nice. Like a tribute, Right. To your father, maybe. Like, look, I'm doing it.

Yeah.

They are taking it seriously. And yeah. I feel like. Yeah. It's wild how moments like that will, like, make folks do stuff where they're like, look and be like, you know what?I'm just gonna start doing things.

Yeah.

You know, a reality show I was watching, the woman thought that she was like, you know, she was being a stay at home mom, which she was enjoying, but she knew she wanted to pursue real estate. And she's like, you know what? And she just got up. She's like, I just need to go and enroll in school. You know? She's like, and I'll figure it out. So.Yeah. But it was like a jump like that. Just like you to just go ahead and get started. Yeah.Did you do like a bachelor's program or master's program then at that point?

So I ended up doing. I think it was two years of class and other things, and I got a bachelor's from it.

Okay.

But it was more about getting. Getting just the time and the space and learning different ways of doing things. I did a lot of animation.

Okay.

So I had time to explore that. I did some printmaking.

Would you go back to animation? I could see your work going into that. Yeah.

I've done it a few times. I haven't managed to get it to do what I want it to do.

Okay.

Yeah. But there was a little while where I was doing more animation.

Okay. I think animation is really cool. I went to a film screening with a young lady who had just. I wish I could think of her name, but I can't. Sorry, y'.

All.

But she had just learned animation. It was like documentary animation. And I was like, wow, I'd never even heard of that. And she was new and had made a short, and I thought it was cool.But I think your work could be really cool in animation.

Yeah. I liked. I mean, I did try for a little while. I like the fluidity that you can get with animation. But animation is a slow process in the making.Cause you're going shift by shift by shift, you know, cell by cell or what have you. It's. It's so it's both drawn out and shrunken down when you're doing it.

Yeah.

And I haven't figured quite figured that out yet in terms of what I want to do, the process of doing that and what comes out the other side.

What does like Going to the studio look like for you? Like a day in the studio.

Okay.

Besides. Oh, is it sitting? I guess we talked about it.

A lot of it's sitting. Yeah. Or standing. I actually, I don't always sit. I stand a lot. I do stand a lot, but. Okay, so I will arrive at the studio, and I.Well, first, before I arrive at the studio, I'll go and get a soda.

Okay.

I do have. For your.

For your materials. You have to get one.

Not for my materials, for me to drink. I'll have my soda and I'll sit down, and then I'll look at my work.When I get in the studio, I'll spend a lot of time looking at my work and look around the studio, look at my work. Look out. We have a beautiful view. I'm at Mana Contemporary up on the sixth floor, and we have an amazing. Oops. Oops, sorry. Hitting the mic.

You're all good.

But we have an absolutely amazing view across the way. There's, like, an electrical. An old electrical facility, and it's got all these wiring, all these lines.The electrical wiring lines across and everything.

Yeah.

And I will oftentimes spend a lot of time just staring at those. Because they're lines. Yeah. They break up space.And then I will gear myself up to go and work on a piece, and I'll start to work on it and for a little bit, and then I'll step back from it and there'll again be time and space with myself and looking. I might get up and walk around. Get up, walk around, walk around, come back to it. It's kind of a back and forth like that.

Back and forth.

Sherry will come in, we'll talk for a while.

I love that.

I don't know. It's kind of meditative.

Yeah, no, it sounds meditative. Sounds relaxing.

And every once in a while, I'll clean up the studio. But my studio's not the neatest. But.

But you know what? It is what it is. It is, right? As long as you can get through. Yeah, that's right. Lived in period. That sounds good to me.And you don't ever, like, make a journal. I know. I've seen artists make a journal of what they've done or where they'll start, where they pick up when next.

Yeah, I don't do that. I do write down things I think about either after I've done a little bit of work or before I go to sleep that night or something.I'll put some stuff in my phone or something, or I'll write Scribbly little notes. And I do take pictures.I was gonna say, I'll take pictures as I'm working, and at the end of the day, I'll unplug the lights and I'll unplug the heater, and I will just sort of sort myself time to go. And then I'll go around and I'll take pictures.

Okay.

Which will require me to plug the lamp back in, which I'll do, But I always like to. I don't like to leave things plugged in, but I. I take a lot of pictures from different angles.And I do videos too, but I take a lot of pictures from different angles. So then I might not look at those pictures for a while, but that capturing the picture sort of captures that moment for me.And then I have more than one piece going on at a time. So sometimes it's just going back and forth between them.

Do you ever take a time lapse of you working? Have you ever done that?

The only time when I had a show at Adds Donna, the person who curated Yoon Shin, she took a time lapse of me installing. It was installation kind of work. And so I was kind of making it as I was putting it up, and she took a time lapse of that.

Did you like it?

I did like it.

Yeah. I feel like that could be, like, sort of form of animation in a way, you know, just like, do, do, do, do, do. I'm making robot hands.

I saw that, but nobody else did.

What do you think has, like, surprised you most about where your art has taken you?

Oh, I don't know. I think. I think.I guess for all practical purposes, it does kind of surprise me that I don't make anything that's particularly representational anymore, other than the iceberg, is representational, but. But it's still very abstracted. So I think it's that I like representational work, but I just. I got away from doing that, and I don't do that anymore.Yeah. Have you thought why?

Yeah, I don't know why either. Maybe a challenge, an exercise. I was gonna ask, like, if you're interested in any other mediums like photography or. Well, I mean, I know poetry, but.

Yeah, I do. I mean, I do like anime. I do like animation.

Sure.

I like photography. I like taking pictures. I'm not a good photographer, but I like taking pictures. I did glass. I did glass work.I would go back and do more glass work, I guess. I like blowing glass.

You've done that?

Yeah.

Wow.

It's a lot of fun.

It seems like it is, but it's.

Also something that takes a lot of doing it to get good at it. So you have to have that focus to do it, I think, for a period of time.And it's also something that depends on other people's schedules, because it's just not. I mean, at least the way I was doing it. You were putting it in the factory. You were putting the.Doing the blown glass, putting it to the hot furnace, the glory hole or what have you. You needed other people to help you. It was a group. It was a group kind of effort.

There was that recent news story of that woman who, like, swallowed a piece of her that. Like, that glass straw.

I didn't see that.

Yeah. So now I'm afraid to. I was watching, like, a. I was, like, down a rabbit hole of, like, watching people throw away glass straws.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, it was. It was scary, but.

Yeah.

But I'm still interested in blowing glass. I'm sure that.

So I did it with. I did it with Oxbow. I highly recommend Oxbow.

Okay.

For any of these. It was up in Michigan. I think they actually just opened up Chicago. Local. Chicago, at least. Place where work will be shown or something.

Oh, okay.

I thought I saw that. But anyhow, I did a glass blowing class up there. I thought it was a blast. I loved it.It is a little scary because you are walking around with molten glass hanging off the end.

Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely a little bit scary to do it from that perspective, but it's also really neat.

It is really neat. I've gone down many a rabbit hole watching folks make ornaments for the holidays.And also in October, there was a glassblowing company making pumpkins for people. And those were really.

That's a beautiful material too.

Yeah.

And I've done clay. I would do more ceramics. Okay. Yeah, I really enjoyed doing ceramics.

Yeah.

But. But you have to divide your time up between your time and energy's up. So.

Yeah. How do you, like, balance your time out?Do you have any tips for us all trying to manage our time as artists and makers and parents and people out here?

I'd like to say keeping a schedule.

Yeah.

I'm not necessarily that good. So I would say keeping a schedule for periods at a time. So I'd be, say keeping a schedule, but being flexible to. To be able to adjust that schedule.

Yeah.

So lacking a schedule, you know, at least a month or a couple months at a time for when you're actually just gonna go in. Because I do think it's important to go to make work, even when you don't feel like making the work. So I think that's a piece of it.

Yeah.

And I think the hard thing is you're balancing that against your day job, your life, your family, and then all the administrative things that come along with being an artist.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, you're doing a lot of writing and applications and going and seeing work, and there's a lot of administrative kind of things that come along with it. Yes.And I think that's part of the hard thing about doing the balance is you're also trying to balance that in with the time that you spend in the studio.

I've said this before, but the hardest thing for me is social media. Are you into social media?

I do some. You know, and it is hard. It's hard to keep it going, and it's hard to have enough content. Like, where do you get your content?

I know. I'm so sick of that word content. Oh, my gosh.

Or what you're gonna say.

I don't know what. I don't know what. I guess that is what you call it.

But I mean. And I think I only post. Maybe I post once a week or once every two weeks or something like that.It's really good because my work is also very slow to make. That is actually, you asked me what was really surprising. I used to be. My work used to be a lot faster to make.

Yeah.

But I mean, it was really fast to make. But now when I've gotten into more of the weaving kind of work and it's all really slowed down and it takes me forever to make work now.And in the beginning, that was very painful. I was like, this is going nowhere. Like, you go in the studio and you work and you've got, oh, I've gotten this, you know, 2 by 2 inch square done.

Yeah.

That you're like, okay, this will never get finished. That, I think, is a challenge. But I do think it helps again, still to block the time to go in there and to have the time set up to do it.

Do you work on one piece at a time or do you have, like a few going at a time?

I work on more than one at a time.

Oh, you do?

Yeah, I have. I'll have two or three things going. I also have stuff hanging in my studio for a long.So I will have a piece up that I will have started in 20, 23 or 24, and it'll be up there. I'm like, I'll do something to that. And I might do something.

Oh, really? Okay.

And I think my work can change. So I think both my individual pieces can change. And I like how they work together. So sometimes it's like making connectors between them.

I sort of admire that. I think that that's sort of cool that you can like keep going back to that.I think like with a photograph, especially if it's like a portrait, it's like, boom, you're done. And once that your subject has left, there's no.I mean, I guess I could try to call him back, but you know, schedules and stuff, it's like you get it right then and there.

Once you've taken all your images, you could play a lot with it in Lightroom, I guess. But I'm not a photographer.

No. Yeah, no, it's done, it's over. You know, it's like, that's it, you.

Know, I can't sketch. So it's funny. Like I make my pieces as I'm making them. I can't. I'm not very good.I do, occasionally I do it, but I'm not very good at doing a sketch of what a piece might be.

Okay.

Because all the work that goes into making the sketch, the piece is made. It's come out of me.

Yeah.

It's not there to make. Put it into the piece.

It's like one of one.

It's one of one.

You can't repeat it. Yes. Once it's done, it's done.

Yes.

Well, that's sort of nice. I guess everyone knows who takes home a Deirdre Fox piece, knows that they have a one of one.

That's the piece that they copied.

That's really good, even by me.

Right. You can't.

Yeah, that's it.

Cause I wanna do something else with it.

Right. I was gonna ask because of your interest in, you know, using the single use bags and the plastic bottles and whatnot. Like just what.Like what you might want to see for just how we. As like a world, I guess, is better with waste.

I think in a perfect world, I wouldn't have any of those materials to use and I'd have to adjust because people wouldn't be using those materials anymore. You know, some of these things we need containers and there are trade offs in different kinds of materials. I mean, you can use glass.Glass, if it doesn't break, lasts longer. But glass is heavy.So when it has to be transported around, like lots of bottles of glass, that's gonna be more of a carbon footprint than the plastic is. So there are definitely trade Offs, I think in all of these things.And so think it's just important to be thinking about it and mindful about it as you're going through. But yeah, I mean, I think there'd be less. Ideally there'd be less single use items or ideal people would be aware that they're single use.So they'd be more mindful about what other purposes can they put it to. I mean, you can take a lot of, you know, plastic containers, like the yogurt containers or whatever. You can use those to store things. Things.

Yeah.

Even as simple as that. Clean them out, use them for storage. Now plenty of people do that, but I think it's always worth repeating that. Recycle. It does recycle.Doesn't mean you can reuse too. I think recycling is hard because you don't necessarily know where your recycling's going. So.

Yeah, I know I've been thinking about that as I pull out the recycle can every week. Like, is this good? Like, and always I'm trying to.I'm always trying to reduce my own waste, you know, and I do that too with the yogurt and all of that. And I'll send people home with food and all of that in them.And I had a friend in their apartment building, they have a table where people will give things up.

Things up. Take up.

Yeah. And then he had a bunch of those containers from like taking food home. And he's like, should I recycle these?I'm like, you should put those on that table. And he didn't think that they were gonna be taken, but they were taken. I'm like, yeah. Cause people always need containers of where to put things.And I think about the plastic bags. I'll use those as like, like garbage bags and my bathrooms and whatnot. But I'm like, is that good? Because I don't know.Because then I'm still throwing it away. Waste. I don't know.

Well, yeah, I think plastic bags are. The plastic bags are harder because the single use plastic bags are hard because if you use it to put the garbage in, then it's now in a landfill.

Yeah.

So. And it. Now they're much better. I mean, they're. They're making more compo. Compostable. Compostable. Compostable. Compostable bags.Now, I mean, I've seen now that, for example, you have the bags that you use to scoop up after your dog. I think a lot of those are now biodegradable, you know, bio compostable or biodegradable. Or whatever. So I think that's also another thing to look at.

Yeah.

You know, in terms of what. In terms of what you're using and this. You have the single use bags, then you also have the produce bags in stores.So there's the bags you use to carry the stuff, and then there's the produce bags to protect the. The food. Independently or separately? Protect the food.

Sure.

And so I think all of these things are just being mindful and trying to look for other ways. Do you have to put the produce into the little bag or can you just, you know, have a separate little bag you put.And just put the produce in there when you ring it up or something?

Yeah.

You know, so I think there's things that you can think about from that perspective.

Yeah.

I mean, you can't be a complete idealist, but in a perfect world, you know, some of this stuff wouldn't be here for me.

Yeah.

The plastic bags are bad. The single use ones are bad because they gum up the machine. If they get into the recycling places, they gum up the rollers.

Oh, man.

And so it slows down the actual recycling process for plastic recycling because then they're so thin, they have to get them out of. They have to get them out of there. They jam things up.

That's why they always want you to return the plastic bags to the grocery store.

Yes, to the grocery store. Which you can. Which is great.

Yeah.

When I started doing this, when I started doing work with plastic bags and plastic bottles, that wasn't a thing. You didn't have a place to Grocery store.

Oh, really?

So those, those bins where you can just go and put all your plastic bags at the store. Yeah, do that.

Yeah, I need to make sure I do that more.

And the, you know, the, the. A lot of the plastic has numbers on it.

Oh, it does.

And the city of Chicago, you know, number one and number two, you'll look, there's like a little arrows going around.

Oh, right. They're little recycle things.

One and two are recyclable. Five is not. Not. So if you have a five on there, don't put that in the recycle.

Yeah.

You know, reuse that. That's your yoga things. Just reuse those. Clean them out and reuse them.

They should make. That might be a fun, like, little gorilla street sticker project. Just like gentle reminders for people. Yeah, I know.One time we goofed off, you know, you and I talking that, like grocery bags is a merch for you. Like a reusable Tote bag or something. Yeah, that would be good.Not to make you a consultant for me or anything like that, but, you know, it's always just like. I'm always just curious how people think about this stuff. Cause I'm always trying to think of it for myself, you know, just to be a better.Just to be a better person.

Yes, me, too.

Yes. Well, like, what else do you want to work on next? You know, like, what else are you thinking about in your work?

Well, I'm actually. I'm pretty excited with how my work's going in the studio now. So I'm doing a lot of work to try to. I had the object work.I figured I got the object thing down. Now I'm really trying to bring the work off the wall, out off the wall and dimensionalize it more. So I've started to do that.And that's kind of exciting.

When you say off the wall, do you mean, like, if it was pinned to the wall, like, it's, like, hanging off or, like, standalone, like in the center of a room?

No, I still like it. Having a wall thing it comes off of. I mean, I've hung work before, too. Yeah, I like it. Having the wall.The wall situates it in a certain space, so I like that. But just kind of physically kind of coming out from the wall more.

I like that. And you did say you like white. White walls.

I love white walls.

Would you ever paint a wall of color and experiment that way? Like a bright red?

Yeah, I thought about it. I keep thinking about it. I keep doing it. It's like. I don't know. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, you could. I haven't. Yeah.I think about it from time to time that, oh, I should do that, and then I don't do it.

That might be a pain, though, in your studio, right? Cause now you have to paint it, the wall, to see if it works.

I mean, I think you could put something up and paint that and then just work off of that. But I've also. I mean, I've played. Last year, I played a lot with lights and incorporating lights and writing into it, and I didn't reach.I still haven't reached a satisfying conclusion with that. So that's still in the works.

Okay, I like that. Would they be like marching lights? Like the marching ant lights, or.

Well, they'd just be. I was just more. They could be marching, they could be moving, but it's just, like, adding that extra dimension.And because of the way my work is, the light will make it project different shadows and I've always used shadows in my work, but actually putting the lights into the work I've been working.

On, I really like that idea.For some reason, when I think of adding lights to your work, it just makes me think of like those little, like at Christmas time, those villages that people would put, like the little cottages that would light up. I don't know why. I don't know why that comes to mind, but maybe because the lights, when we were talking about them, they were so little.

Well, they were. I was looking at the little fairy lights. Fairy lights. I. Working with. With little fairy lights. But I remember, and I didn't like the colors.

Right.

You and I had this whole conversation about that. Yeah. I don't like the colors.

Yeah. Because they were giving that, like, yellowy.

Yes.

It wasn't like a white light.

Yes. And. But there are a lot of. There are different colors.

Yeah.

So I just haven't. I just haven't finished with that.

It's a whole exploration.

So it's a whole. It's a whole thing. But then once you get the light, once you get the color, then it's like, okay, what are you doing with the light?

Yeah.

Because I always. I can't just put something there. I have to be doing something with it.

Right. It all has to be intentional.

Yes.

There has to be a reason for everything.

So I made some pieces that I liked. I made other pieces I didn't like.

Yeah.

And I have not resolved where that is going. So, you know, stay tuned.

Yeah. I love that. You have to. Something else to stand. To stand thinking about. Something else to take a walk and think about.

Yes. Something else to walk and think about.

I just think that that is so fun, Deirdre. Well, where can we find your work? I'm trying to think, like, what else you have going on. What other kind of fun questions I have about your work.Because I feel like I've just known your work for so long. 10 years. We met at Creative Capital, a Creative Capital event down in Spring.

Was it Springfield or Champaign? It was Champaign.

Yeah. We met there and, you know, they said we were both downtown at the time. We had to have an accountability partner.And you and I, we've been accountability partners that long. You know, that's. That's pretty. That's pretty impressive.

It's pretty impressive. And we're still talking.

Yes. Because people, they can be, like, flighty, you know, like, people won't always want to meet up and talk about work all the time. But I love art.I can nerd out about it all the time.

Well, you're very good about talking about your work. I try.

You know, I like talking about just work, period. You know, art and culture and stuff.

It's just.

It's a hobby, you know, It's a hobby and. Well, no, it's not a hobby. Art. I'm an artist. We're artists.

It's a profession. A profession.

Thank you.

It's a profession, and it's. And it's a. It's a. Well, it's a profession, and hobby's not the right word, but it is a passion.

Passion. That's what it is. Thank you.

Hobby's not the right word because. But, I mean, for some people, it is a hobby. Yeah, but it's a profession for us. But it's a passion, too.

I mean, I can nerd out about it all the time.

Me, too.

Yeah. It's my favorite thing. One of your other favorite artists, too, before we go. Well, maybe they're not your favorite, but. Eva Hesse. Eva Hesse.

Eva Hess. I just. I say Hess. I say Hesse. Maybe it's Hesse. Say H E S S E. Yes. I love her. I love her work. She's got. She made one of my.There are two of my most favorite pieces. One was by hers and one was Clyfford. Still are in the Art school of the Art Institute. Not school, in the Art Institute, the Chicago Art Institute.But she has that one piece. I think it's called Hang. Hang Something or other. Hangover, I think it's called. And it's basically a. Like a square, you know, rectangular shape.Square, like you would put a stretcher, Stretch painting on. And then she has this big wire thing coming out from around it. So the painting. It's like a painting going out into space and taking the space.I could look at that forever. You walk it down and down. You look at it from different angles, and it puts you in different spaces.And I think it's kind of an instrumental, iconic piece for me in terms of how I think about my work.As I was saying, I look at my work from different directions, and I think about what my work's gonna look like from different directions and how it's gonna shift in those directions as I'm making it. And that's a lot of what I'm trying to do in the work. So that piece is pretty seminal.

That was the question I was gonna bring up. Do you ever do, like, collaborations? Like collaborations with other artists?

I have a couple times, but not a lot.

Not a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. You.

I do Yeah, I feel like in filmmaking it sort of becomes collaborative because you can do everything yourself. Though I am interested in trying to do it myself because I do know that there's filmmakers that will make work by themselves. But it seems tough.But I do like collaborating, even though it could be challenging. Just because you're always working with. With you're making work, but then you're also working with another person.So it's like other schedules and other personalities, other things that come up.

But I did an exquisite corpse project, and that was with. I mean, I had two partners in that.And you were doing a piece, and then they were doing a piece, and then you were doing a piece and reacting to each other's work. And that was interesting and fun, but it was a very controlled way of doing it. So.So your schedule is like, okay, you had a week to do whatever you were doing to somebody else's piece to integrate it or what have you. So I think it's a little different because you're still on your own time.

Yeah, yeah.

You're responding to it, but it's not actually a collaborative piece in the. You know, so it. I don't know.

No sense. Yeah. Well, Deirdre, thanks so much for being. Where can we, you know, find more information about your work?

So I have my Instagram.

Okay.

Deirdre Foxart on Instagram. I have my website. My website's kind of under construction right now. Being repaired, refixed, readjusted. Gotta blast out again.

Another thing on the artist list to do.

It's on the administrative list. Yes, that's art by Dato. A R T B Y d a d o.com Dotto being a horrible nickname my brothers used to call me.And I owned it back and put it as part of my art name, my art pen name. And I have my studio at Mana Contemporary in Pilsen. And, you know, anybody's welcome to come visit, just send me a DM through Instagram.Would love to have you out there to see, actually see the work.

Okay, that'd be great. Well, listener, we're at 3 o' clock and thank you so much for being here, Deirdre, and thank you, listener, for listening. Nosia.

Yes, thank you for having me.

That's a wrap on another episode of Nosy AF conversations about art, activism and social change. I'm your host, Stephanie Graham. If you enjoy today's conversation, please leave a five star rating and review.Wherever you are listening to the show, it helps new listeners discover it and say, hey, if these folks like this show, maybe I would love it too.Do check out full show notes and transcripts@nosy af.com and while you're there, sign up for Nosy AF Dispatch, a newsletter where every month I send a roundup of episodes, behind the scenes stories, studio tales and interesting finds straight to your inbox. Thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for listening and as always, stay curious and take care. Bye.