Walk into Liz Nielsen's apartment-studio, and you'll immediately be overwhelmed by fiber optic-filled photos that look like they came from inside of black holes, giant photographs of wispy white kitties and childlike drawings of animals. With interests ranging from quantum physics to how-to-draw books, Nielsen captures both the otherworldly and the downright elementary in her work. When she's not making art or working at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, you can find Liz at Swimming Pool Project Space, which she runs with fellow artist Josh Kozuh.
You've been called a photographer's photographer. Do you agree?
I do love photography and it's the easiest medium for me and I feel it, but I think about photography as sculpture and photography as drawing, and I think about things I see in space that could be captured as drawings and as sculptures. So in some ways I'm painting with photos or drawing with photos or sculpting with photos. There's a constant push-pull between photo, drawing, sculpture, all those things. I'm very interested in making the subjective objective.
Tell me about what you're working on now.
Right now I'm going through this book about how to draw animals, like different sharks, sea animals, etc. Basically I'm looking at them and drawing them freehand. Then, I'm going to go back into them and make them part of my doodle drawings, which are just made-up drawings. I draw all the time. I'm also very interested in made-up creatures like the Loch Ness Monster, by the way. I started a paper-mache sculpture of Nessie, and I want to put it in the baby pool. If Nessie would still be alive, this would be Nessie's grandbaby. I love Betty Paige. I'm also interested in crafts, especially playing with things you can get at Michael's like Shrinky Dinks. I love all the designs that come with the package of what you should do. But I just do my own doodles and shrink them.
What interests you about animals? They appear in your work a lot, whether they're in sticker form or doodles.
I like animals in general because I feel like they're neutral ground. They can say a lot on their own, or they can just be fun, but they're not aggressive; they're easy to digest, but they're also loved, in general, usually, by a lot of people. And they can hold messages.
What's up with this photo of the kitty?
That kitty is in heaven. It's supposed to be looking down from heaven onto Earth. I shot three cats and two of them were supposed to be in Heaven and two of the cats died after I shot them. It was a young cat. Supposed to be on a floating cloud looking down. It died randomly; I don't know how. Its name was Q.
How about this other cat?
That cat shimmies on the wall. Its name is Milky, from the Milky Way. It's an intergalactic space kitty. It's supposed to be like the Buddha, but from the Milky Way. So you look at Milky on the wall and you worship Milky because Milky is like the Buddha. And it shimmies;it's on springs. So just the idea of worshipping something from somewhere else. But what about worshipping something from somewhere else, like the Milky Way, like Milky, and it's a cat. It's also poking fun in a weird way at religion, but also finding it important. The fact that it shimmies is almost like it vibrates.
If I were to come to your neighborhood, where would you insist I visit?
I would suggest you visit Hopleaf. My favorite drink at Hopleaf is either the Dogfish, which I get often, or this beer called the Kwak. It has special container like a lab test tube. You can't even set it down; it has its own holder.
What other artists are you looking at right now?
Pipilotti Rist. She's a video artist, and I like her work because I feel like she uses video in the way that I use photography. She uses video for her ideas, and I use photography for my ideas.
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