Expanded Landscapes
Kiernan Lofland
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Kiernan Lofland’s work accentuates the object-ness of photography and sculpture. Balancing happenstance and careful composition, both call attention to physical experience, to existence and its end.
Our interview with Lofland explores his process, journey, and relationship to the places he loves.
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COURTNEY SIMCHAK: How did you get started as an artist? Was there a fixed moment when you decided to make art for a living, or did it happen gradually?
KIERNAN LOFLAND: I was always drawn to art growing up, and that’s continued into the present. Serious commitment really started at the end of high school, and then through college. I was fortunate to have mentors that really cared, one in high school, and a few in undergrad and grad school. I can say my formal education was a positive experience.
So, I finished my MFA and the reality following seems typical of many in higher education—the gig economy or something resembling it, academic or otherwise. I have sanded many surfaces, painted many walls, cooked too many steaks, crated a lot of art, been a preparator/art handler for galleries and museums, and currently adjunct into the future. I’d say my experience runs in line with problems endemic to higher education and how society undervalues art and other modes of cultural production.
SIMCHAK: You work in sculpture and photography, in a mainly installation sense, is that correct? What do you find each of these mediums provide to each other, when you use them collectively? What drew you to work with these mediums?
LOFLAND: I came to photography and installation through objects and object-making. I was and continue to make object-based work that at times points to something else. Plaster constructions that, while being an interesting material spectacle, resemble geology, architecture, ruins, organic structures, things ancient, forms discovered. For me, physical associations are kept through impressions of images, memories of images. So, photography grew out of this space to find/make sense of where these objects were coming from. The space between what is physically there and association is the space where the really interesting stuff happens.
I do think about sculpture and photography through an installation sense, of objects and images working together. Installation is a term of multiplicity; it’s a hot word. Here I’m thinking about combining photo-based projects and object-making in a way that expands the mileage of both.
It’s a consuming task to grapple with the death of the world. So right now, I’m making sense of that. My work is changing and will change towards those ends.
SIMCHAK: Where is one of your favorite places to spend time in?
LOFLAND: My mother is from the Blackfoot Nation in Montana, though I was raised in a very southern Virginia. Both of these places are beautiful in a natural splendor sense and both have complicated, traumatic histories. I’ve been really lucky to have grown up with this sort of weird multiple awareness. So, I do love the landscapes of the East—there is a sense of closeness—and also the expanses of the West. The Nebraska Sandhills and Nebraska Badlands are incredible. Everyone, go to Toad Stool Geologic Monument.
New Mexico is a personal fascination for its complicated history, and after all, it is the “land of enchantment.”
The MET in New York City—6000 years of artifact is magical.
SIMCHAK: Tell us a little more about your photograph series, “Expanded Landscapes,” and what process you go through?
LOFLAND: Here it is, I will be honest. This series was discovered by mistake, at least the first photograph. Previous to it, I’d spent a few years building a sort of Atlas, a collection of photographs, a map of interests. This was happening concurrently with an object-based studio practice. One dawn when shooting in polaroid, because it’s already very physical, some alchemical development things happened. The surface was marred, and the image torn open. After many spent polaroids, the results became a balance between finding a scene and setting up a circumstance where the material can take direction. The polaroids are then digitally scanned and enlarged. The photograph of the landscape is not high resolution, the extent of it is hidden. At the same time, the surface is high resolution, all of the intricacies of deliberate mistake in focus.
I have sanded many surfaces, painted many walls, cooked too many steaks, crated a lot of art, been a preparator/art handler for galleries and museums, and currently adjunct into the future. I’d say my experience runs in line with problems endemic to higher education and how society undervalues art and other modes of cultural production.
SIMCHAK: Are you reading anything good right now?
LOFLAND: I recently finished Roy Scranton’s recent essay collections, “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene” and “We’re Doomed, Now What.” It’s a consuming task to grapple with the death of the world. So right now, I’m making sense of that. My work is changing and will change towards those ends.
Kiernan Lofland is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the perception and expanding imagination concerning landscape and images of nature. Lofland is a co-founder of 100W Corsicana, a residency hosting national and international artists and writers in Corsicana, TX. He lives and works in Lincoln, NE, making money as an artist, a teacher, and experienced odd-job expert.