Interview with Anika Carpenter
Anika Carpenter is…
a flash fiction author, artist and workshop facilitator based in Brighton, UK. She pretty much hated art college, but that didn’t stop her from going on to work for a couple of famous artists, stage exhibitions in an orchard, and fall into artistic obscurity. Good intentions got her tangled up in poetry and lured her into flash. Now entering her ‘crone years’, all the above is falling nicely into place.
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It’s a funny question that one, isn’t it? Should I say, since I was eight when I was drawing every day and announcing my intention to go to art college? Or twenty-two when I graduated? Or thirty-six when I had my first solo exhibition? Or forty-seven when I stopped caring about whether I was an artist or not and started making collages because I found it interesting? Am I an artist?
I had a quick look online to see if there’s an ‘Am I an Artist?’ quiz. The closest I could find was the Tate’s ‘Which Art Movement are You?’ quiz. As of today, I’m Dada!
https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/games-quizzes/quiz-which-art-movement-are-you
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As soon as you gave me the title of issue 1, ‘What Scares You?’ I pictured a pair, perhaps a couple, one asking this question of the other. I knew I wanted them sitting in chairs. To suggest either a therapy session, or a date. A situation that they are temporarily stuck in. The stairs and the cloudlike form, the shell, the fur coat, the nod to instability and power play all came together during the making of the piece.
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Collage, because unless I’m working on a commission, I start without a plan of how I want a piece to look. It’s playful - arranging things, moving things around, seeing what emerges. It’s like getting to snatch hold of a dream just before it’s forgotten
Do you have themes and motifs that recur in your work?
Beads and lace feature repeatedly in my collages and my writing. They both possess delicacies and dark pasts. They feel horribly contemporary in that way. Pairs are prominent in my collages. I think of them as lovers, friends or siblings on some wild adventure or grand rebellion.
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I started making collages during lockdown as a kind of escape from domestic confinement. There remains an element of escapism, but also, now, a release - these figures clothed in scraps of haute couture, strutting about on their knife-life legs, doing as they please, saying whatever they want, I’d like to do that sometimes.
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Oh, definitely two stomachs. Maybe two different eateries in fact. One serves to die for negronis and has a strict dress code. The other is more than happy for you to turn up in your slippers and eat nothing but roasted sweet potato and beetroot, so long as you have something interesting to say.
How I write flash and how I make collages are quite different. Titles for example; the last thing I’ll do to a collage is give it a title, but a flash will have had multiple titles during the drafting process, with each new title making it clearer what a story is actually about. I tend to be much more stubborn with fiction, clinging on to an idea, or a scene, for way too long before finally admitting that it’s not right for the narrative. -
I’m in the tedious process of making a fancy new website especially for my collages. But for now you can find them here, alongside my fiction - https://www.anikacarpenter.com/collages.html
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Email: anikadowdeswell@gmail.com
WRITER & WORKSHOP FACILITATOR
