Arabella Paner: Artist, Writer, Photographer [TCL 15]
The Creative Life is a mini series where I sit with emerging creatives and seasoned professionals to know and share their stories. They show a side of the creative life that we don’t often see: vulnerability, mistakes made, questions about the way their industries work, and lessons they’ve learned, both the painful and the eureka moments.
I’ve always admired Arabella “Abbey” Paner for her keen eye for beauty captured in either her poetry or her photographs. The softness of tone bears the power of her thoughts and dreams that you can’t help but to stop and listen. Her works have been published by local publications and projects, including that of our own, The Experiment (2014).
Let’s begin with your journey. How did you arrive at where you are today?
Ah. I don’t know exactly where this is but this is a trying space as always. I am trying to fill the gaps and straighten certain creases. It takes a lot of trying which means failure figures into the work.
Reality is construed and misconstrued. I’m here because it takes a lot of confusion. I remember taking poetry classes with you years back and I always felt I came in late to be doing what we were doing, verses. And so I just read a lot of people to overcome that belatedness and figured slowly what kind of writing and/or sentiment I had to be writing back then.
Still, now I wouldn’t be sure what I want to write but it’s always been the uncertainty that keeps me doing.
Who or what inspires you and/or influences your work?
In terms of writing I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit. Kim Dana Kupperman’s “I just lately started buying my wings” is a bedside fixture, and by that I mean it hasn’t left my side for two years now. Both writers fueled me in writing my undergraduate thesis.
Visually, Rinko Kawauchi and Geir Moseid. A lot of discarded things inspire me too. I tend to romanticize those things. The sea.
On your creative process: What goes into each piece of writing, art, or photograph?
A few months ago, a mentor told me upon seeing my photographs that I worked sensually. I think a lot of my work is done by my impulse towards the things I experience.
When it comes to creating a work finally, either it be a poem or a photograph, I tend to string some logic into them. I want a feeling but also I want some reasoning. Feelings fade after a while. I want to be able to grasp a structure after some time, so even when I forget I can trace my way back into that sense of “feeling”. Much like Hansel leaving breadcrumbs along the way, although I’d like to think those crumbs won’t disappear by the time I’m abandoned on the trail. So that I’ll be able to come home to a feeling.
As you are currently traveling, have the places you’ve been to or the people you’ve met made an impact on your overall style or creative consciousness?
I think I haven’t been travelling as much as I’d like to, but I’m always grateful for the times I’ve been away.
I love being in another place. It gives me a lot of freedom, which in a way affects my work. I get to do more because I don’t have the tendencies I have back home and the responsibilities as well.
Being away anchors you without you knowing to this truth that you are always where you are supposed to be. A lot of strangers get to me and a lot of their anecdotes figure into my work. Even being away with friends gives me this excitement.
A week ago a friend of mine said something that stunned me because I knew it was being at sea that made him say that, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard that beautiful line.
Relationships as a theme. How does one translate something as complex into art or poetry?
I don’t know if I can even answer this well. I don’t really know. I think I just create things that baffle me and I think it’s the relationships I dissect in the work because I don’t have much of that freedom in reality. It’s a second chance of sorts (hahahaha) and I don’t get much of that most of the time.
Do you have a piece of work that you consider particularly significant, that you have an emotional relationship with?
I’ve been working on this project Maman and Eve and it’s in it’s early stage but I’ve been working on it for a year now and I don’t think it’ll be done anytime soon. Some of the photographs in it come from four years back and it’s nice to be able to tie your past consciousness with the current.
What is your biggest struggle or fear as an artist? More importantly, how are you able to manage such challenges?
Knowing I’m not in the right place emotionally and geographically. I lie flat on my back. I drink coffee. I sleep. I forget.
One of the biggest challenges creatives struggle with is finishing what they’ve started. We get so caught up with an idea, only to realize that it’s a lot harder than it seems. What are your best tips to starting and finishing a project?
You start with a personal intent. You start and you finish with that.
Self-reflexivity is important sometimes because things can get stripped away and what matters to you will stay.
Some of your works have been featured and published by publications like PLURAL. How were you able to gain such exposure and build an audience around your work?
I did collage for fun, really. I had this photograph of myself and a boy I no longer wanted to keep. Very teenage angst kind of thing and I cut our bodies out of the frame and pasted it into another image of a sea. That was my first collage. I’m not proud of it and yet it started me.
I think this medium is something I enjoy because it’s the one that gives me most control. I started collaborating with Wina Puangco, a friend and brilliant fictionist from our collaborations came in PLURAL. I don’t think there’s an exposure to mention but our collaborations got me doing some work.
What is the most important thing people should know about you as a creative?
Nothing. I also think I change a lot. Don’t take me seriously.
What advice can you give to the young creative starting out?
Your hunger should keep you going.
Figure what it is you want to do, saturation is normal too.
Read a lot! Read poetry. Everything is a poem. I’m telling you now.
What book would you recommend to fellow creatives?
I’ll give you writers instead: Conchitina Cruz, Mabi David, Karen Green, Rebecca Solnit, Dana Kupperman, Rivka Galchen, Aimee Bender, Amelia Grey, Jeanette Winterson, Patti Smith, and Lydia Davis.
What is your favorite tool to use when creating work?
My cutting knife, my Violette Pensee Ink, and Gerda, my oldest camera.
How can the community best support you and your work as an artist and photographer?
If they look at it closely, that’s good enough for me.
