Anne Kingsbury sits before a wooden frame that holds a taut deerskin painstakingly beaded in a mishmash of colors, words and images. If “deerskin with beads” is an uncommon designation on art museum labels, that’s because Kingsbury comfortably creates outside institutional boundaries. Since 1979, Kingsbury has been the executive director of Woodland Pattern Book Center, one of the nation’s largest non-profit purveyors of small-press poetry and a frequent venue for Milwaukee’s admirably active avant-garde improvisational music scene. On the heels of an exhibition of her work at INOVA, Off the Cuff spoke with Kingsbury about recurrent themes in her art, receiving a 2014 Mary Nohl Fellowship and, of course, her beaded deerskin.
Routine seems to be an important component in your art.
Much of my art draws upon the journals that I’ve been keeping for decades. Journaling is my preferred way of documenting the things I do on a daily basis. Plotting out my day in a journal also functions as a timer of sorts. The beading process is so laborious and repetitive that my mind inevitably wanders. Not only does journaling help organize my tasks, it gives me permission to stop.
Your work with beads appears to be quite time demanding.
Yes, very time demanding. It’s like making a soup or a stew—you have to wait for the favors to melt together. Recently I’ve thought of my process as a form of slow improvisation. Each action takes a long time, builds incrementally on its predecessor and points the way to its successor. Although the idea of making it right is more important than just making it, I try to be open to indeterminacy and to let the work show me where it wants to go. Some folks have the gift of seeing in advance what their completed work will look like. My gift is to plod along and see what happens. It’s like putting a puzzle together.
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You received a prestigious Mary Nohl Fellowship in 2014, what did the award allow you to accomplish?
Well, the publicity is really nice. Your ego gets lovely strokes. People seem to think, “Well, you must be good because you got this.” Many more people have seen my work because of the fellowship, including a number of curators; who knows what may happen? The funding also allowed me to build a humble working studio. My living room is no longer nearly so cluttered.
When did you begin the deerskin project?
You can see the first addition right here—Sept. 2, 1996. But since then I’ve added entries dating back at least to 1981. I am beading journal entries on the deerskin, one from each year. One entry includes “debone turkey.” People love that. Here’s a phrase I heard in 2003 that has stuck with me: “Honey I can’t find my mind.” I allow the space between entries to suggest figures and patterns to bridge the gaps. Here, for instance, one of the spaces suggested a bird. I’ve made a lot of progress on the deerskin recently. The end is in sight.
