Beauty and the Baby Art
Original Art by Women Artists Around the World
BeautyandtheBabyArt.com's
"Woman Artist of the Year-2009" is...
Marie Cartier!
Ms. Cartier is a respected and admired Artist, Activist, Writer, Poet, Playwright and all around Phenomenal Woman!
Here is my recent interview with Marie...
Who is Marie Cartier?
Me!…That’s a good question right now, because I’m in a graduate program getting my Ph.D. in religion and writing theology…People in school say that the theologians are the poets of the department... Who I’ve been is…many things…a woman trying to live my life with as much integrity as possible. I guess that’s who I am. And then I’m a lot of other things that came along the path as I’ve been living it.
I’m an artist, a visual artist, an installation artist, a poet, a playwright. I’ve written a lot of screen plays…and then I’ve been in graduate school getting my Ph.D. for the last decade. At the same time I did installation art and did Morgasm and also am still doing Dandelion Warrior. I’m a professor at two schools. I teach screenwriting and women’s studies. And I’m a wife. I got married to my girlfriend…
I’m a black belt. I’m the founder of the Dandelion Warrior movement. A movement for survivors of incest who make the decision not to kill themselves. All of those identities and all of those accomplishments are inside of me and some of them take different shapes depending on what’s happening along the path.
With my women’s studies students, I talk about a woman’s path is often a spiral path rather than a straight line path. I think that it’s been not easy, but easier for men to say “Here’s where I am and that’s where I want to go. And if I do X, Y and Z, the chances are really good that I’ll get there.”
I don’t think that’s as easy for women…It’s like women often start one place and they spiral to another place because different things happen along the way. They get pregnant. They get married. They hit the glass ceiling…you know, sexual harassment. Again, I’m not saying that’s an easy trajectory for men…I think for women we have to look at success differently than we look at it for men.
Dandelion Warrior button.
(To read Ms. Cartier's poem, "Dandelion Children," please click the following link: http://www.beautyandthebabyart.com/dandelionchildrenpoem.htm)
How has art changed your life or impacted your life?
Art saved my life…Deciding that I was an artist and that I make art, that’s what made me want to not wake up hung over in my twenties…That’s the thing that channels my feelings, like my raging feelings for so many things. My first poem about incest survival was…I write about it in the introduction of I am Your Daughter, Not Your Lover, but my first poem about incest survival was, I want to say forty pages but I can’t remember, and it’s like this huge long thing that ended up being, like ten pages…
When I went into healing as an incest survivor, many people find art as a way to heal. I lost my art for a while…and I really had to find my way back to who I was through finding art. For me, art is so…wound up with who I am and how I saved myself. And the horrible things that happened to me, most of it has been transformed into art. They’re still horrible things, but there’s also something between me and that horrible event, which is an art piece. So I have a different way of remembering a lot of things that happened because I’m an artist…
This is My L.A. 48" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas with Plastic Beads,
Part of the CITY SCAPE series, by Marie Cartier
Do you have a favorite medium?
I probably like writing the best and right now I’m very attached to writing this novel…So right now I guess I like that…I love installation (though). I loved my show “Morgasm.” I loved that show and I would love to live in that museum…I just kind of like whatever I’m involved in (at the moment), but writing…I started out as a poet…I still primarily think of myself as a poet even though I’m not really writing poetry a lot right now…I love art making, the physical making of art.
What inspires you in your artistic life?
I think the majority of my life I’ve been inspired by social justice issues, and my own desire to make the world a better place, and my own need (in a selfish way) to make my world a better place and to do something with the feelings I had about injustice…I think that my life was made more tolerable by writing about social justice issues and feeling like somehow I was making a difference…
What advice do you have for artists of any medium who are struggling in today’s economy?
Well, I’m an artist struggling today so…I think it’s really hard and I don’t think it’s easy at all. I don’t think that what’s in you will come out no matter what. I don’t believe that. I think that’s a really middle and upper-class fallacy that’s foisted on people and it makes the poor and the working class feel like “Well, I guess I’m not really that because if I have it in me (then) it would come out no matter what” and that’s not true. I really love Tillie Olsen’s book, Silences. It discusses how poverty grinds people down and if you’re working two jobs…you probably won’t be creative. So I think it’s a real delicate balance between…and I wouldn’t even call it selling out…surviving and making sure you have time to write or paint or whatever. I think that I would read, for men or women, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. I’d read Tillie Olsen’s Silences…
And I wouldn’t feel like you’re not an artist or feel bad if you go through a period where you can’t make art. I mean, that’s real life…you have to sleep, you have to feed your kids, you have to have a car and insurance and try to stay relatively healthy…at the same time, if you find yourself not hanging out with artists, not going to art things, not making those little windows, you’re probably not going to make art…
I teach Screenwriting and in the spring, I teach advanced writers and one of the things we talk about, because they’ve been with me all year, is how they’re going to go forth and be writers now that they don’t have a class…I talk about this idea called “the artist’s path”…and there’s a lot of things that I encourage them to do to feel like artists even when you’re not…It’s going to be very rare for you to get a paycheck as an artist on a regular basis…and you get paid in this country for work you do if you’re lucky and oftentimes you just get to do the work…it’s kind of like you’re a success if the work doesn’t put you in the red…
You can get a job that pays your bills and that’s usually teaching, as an artist, if you’re lucky enough to get that, or some other job that allows you to make art kind of on the side slash full-time while you’re doing this other job that pays the bills. That’s a pretty good gig, but what I tell my students is to create a life that has some things in it that are non-negotiable. And those things you do whether you feel like doing them or not…
Like a two-hour block once a week devoted to your creative life. If you want to be an artist…you can probably find some two hour block. And maybe that’s going to a bookstore and just roaming around and seeing what’s new. Maybe that’s writing in a journal, maybe that’s going to a film by yourself and trying to analyze it. Maybe those are the things you do for a while just to keep…the burner on low. So you keep your (artistic) identity…
There’s a difference between keeping your identity as an artist and not losing that identity, and then being able to make art as an artist, and then being able to make a living as an artist. And I think we cycle between those three opportunities…and it’s sometimes really hard to keep that identity…or that place where you’re just trying to have your identity as an artist not be washed away…
Something’s happened where…the life of an artist is…hard…If you make a lucky break and sell something, that’s great. But for most of us that’s not (what happens)…There’s a reason why people say “Art is a really jealous mistress.” It’s really hard to have anything else in your life…
Final Thoughts...
I certainly think that there’s immense value in having art friends who you meet with once a week…I think there’s immense value in going to events…whatever your medium is. And I think there’s immense value in getting a book like The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and just deciding you’re going to work...
One of the best ways to be an artist while you’re not making art is to be an artist who supports other artists, because there’s really nothing as supportive as another artist supporting you…We need each other and we work so much in isolation…I try to go to my friends’ shows. I try to go to my friends’ signings. Those are really good ways too, to have your community…
The question is “How do you get to that point where you can make art?” And if you’re making art, you’re…doing it…If you need to make art and you can’t do it, it’s really hard. You have to…soothe that feeling by doing whatever you can to feel like you’re still an artist who wants to make art and will make art when you have the opportunity. So it’s really for me all about being able to get the windows where you can make art and fulfill that need…
And finally, about winning Woman Artist of the Year:
It’s just a really, really wonderful honor…for you all to have recognized me. I feel very honored.
Marie Cartier is an artist and writer currently based in Long Beach, California. She is finishing her dissertation in Religion, writing Theology at
And she makes art...
Copyright 2009 N.E. Francis. All Rights Reserved.
All Photos Courtesy of Marie Cartier.
For more information on Marie, please visit www.MarieCartier.com or www.MorgasmOnline.com
Also, please visit www.SpousesForLifeProject.com
