ICP Projected: Witchoria (Victoria Siemer)
Wesley Verhoeve: What does this series mean to you as an artist? Was it sparked by a real life event or was it inspired by something else?
Victoria Siemer: Generally, my work is intertwined with my emotional state. It’s a pretty direct expression what's happening in my life, and typically that’s a disaster, so voila, you get a series like Hue Don’t Own Me. I just tap right into that adult teen angst that we’ve all got in some way, shape, or form, and I channel it into my artwork.
WV: For this series, your creative process appears to be a combination of photography and post-shoot manipulation. Can you describe how you came to your method?
VS: This series is an evolution of a previous series called “Illuminated,” where I used day-to-night photo manipulations to create glowing statements. Those pieces were done completely in post-production. In this series I’m stepping out of that process and using gelled long exposures to artificially stain landscapes, then adding in the letterforms in post-production.
Steal My (He)art © Witchoria
WV: Do you have phrases or words in mind when you are shooting the landscapes, or do they come to you at a later time in editing?
VS: As I go through my day I keep little notes of statements that pop into my head. I have long lists of these fragmented stories that I work from. I like to think them in a similar vein as Hemingway’s micro novels, but rather than flash fiction it’s flash autobiography.
As you look through the messages that are being illuminated it begins to become clear the series is bringing light to darker subject matters. I always love a good visual pun.
WV: Is this an ongoing series? If so, do you have an end destination in mind, like a book, or are you just going to see where it takes you?
VS: I’ve been taking classes in the art of neon sign making, so my intention for the next leg of this exploration is to create and install these statements in the wild and shoot them with no post-production. Then study those photographs against the previous digital pieces so that I create more realistic manipulations in the future.
It’s all cyclical. URL to IRL to URL to IRL.
Images from Victoria Siemer’s “Hue Don’t Own Me” will be literally “projected” onto the windows of the ICP Museum from June 12 to 25 as part of ICP’s Projected series. They will be visible from the sidewalk outside the museum and will be most apparent after sunset.