Jamie Swick
what’s your craft / what’s your art
[JS]. I’m a film photographer. My work is predominantly made using expired and new era Polaroid stock, or 35mm. And I’m a writer, which is sort of a secret, for now. My cameras have been with me my whole life but in all the years after art school I’ve worn the hat of illustrator, printmaker, reluctant seamstress, and shipwright (even more reluctantly). In most recent years, poet, and miniature landscape and set artist at Laika animation studio. In my maternal family are these phenomenally talented people – sculptors, painters, textile artists – and by proxy I learned from them to embrace multiplicity. Even though so many things I am working on take ages to finish, I get restless without lots of hands in lots of pots. Speaking of, one day I hope to fulfill my daydreams of becoming a potter and thus buying luxurious hand cream.
how does nature speak to you
[JS]. Nature informs almost everything that I do; how I feel, the joy I know, what I am motivated by, where to be, why I make. It may just be what I think about most. I grew up on a quiet lake in the woods watching fox and deer and beaver, an occasional otter and the never ending autumn geese. Back then there weren’t any people around; it was all trees and wildness with our little house on the edge. Thanks to that, it bore the most sincere and longest communion I have ever known. Nature feels like my safest and most ardent companion, which is obvious and abundant throughout my work. Usually I am looking for water, unobstructed wild looking places akin to that childhood. Water bellies all, is us, makes us possible. And I am always looking for light. Seeking it. Doing light research. Waiting for it or the lack thereof.
how do you use your art to speak
[JS]. In so many ways the art I make is a direct representation of my deepest desires for quietude, for calm, for a lack of glossy modernism. I like exploring isolation and self-sufficiency. There is a vacancy or stillness I hope to discover when photographing, something of a memory. It aligns with many personal experiences. People often comment that there are almost never people in the images I make, as if images of bodies are the only way for a place to have value or hold interest. It’s deliberate, not to mention an intentional self portrait. The natural world does not need us, but we need it. Now that we live in this vapid constant state of expectancy – social media creating a 24 hour demand for instant gratification - a crowding has infiltrated everything across the American landscape. That doesn’t sit well with me; it’s unsustainable and pedestrian, and worst of all it has diluted what it is to be human, to have come from earth and remain part of it.
I like making people see what many perceive as a lack, especially in my use of dilapidated structures or the gloomy looking northwestern skies, something uncomfortable or solemn yet equally pretty that doesn’t just spell it all out. It’s important to show people how the world without us holds this potent glory and unavoidable change that is being missed in favor of… what, narcissism?
I want people to pump the brakes when they see what I do and to be totally honest, I want people to shut up when they’re outside because to stand in what looks like nothing would show them the abundance of life around them, humming underneath and above with immense interconnectedness. My hope is that giving one person pause, to think with more reverence about their surroundings and our planet at large, could have a domino effect, could inspire change, could be a tool to fight for the fragility of our home as this climate crisis makes haste on us.
what’s something that doesn’t appear in your bio, and why
[JS]. When I was a child I was suddenly and mysteriously crippled and nearly died. It was 23 years ago when a surgeon saved my life but it has been with me every day since as a voice of reason. Getting a second chance to live and walk has unsurprisingly profound psychological influence. The isolation of that time is processed to this day through literally everything I make, regardless of medium. The observant and deliberate approach I try to live with and make art from is directly because of that trauma knowledge, because I have known too well how swiftly we can be toppled.
All my life’s movement (which at times has created immense uncertainty) is in pursuit of fulfilling methods that may reclaim years of joy I lost in my childhood and as a therapy to my post-traumatic stress disorder. The knowledge can be a double-edged sword and I would never wish the excruciation I went through on anyone, but the clarity I move with because of living through that is something I wouldn’t change for anything.
““Usually I am looking for water, unobstructed wild looking places akin to that childhood. Water bellies all, is us, makes us possible. And I am always looking for light. Seeking it. Doing light research. Waiting for it or the lack thereof.””
what are you afraid of
[JS]. Capitalism ruining the chances of “getting ahead” and thus never getting to try certain things on that I have long dreamed of. Climate change. Americans. Becoming old without children (I’ve never wanted any). Being back in a wheelchair. This colony of enormous spiders who have decided to join forces in an army above my back door. I’m certain they’re plotting something.
what is your current obsession
[JS]. Paying attention to morning. Watching the stellar jays strategically obliterate the birdfeeders I fill out back. Lying outside with the long shadows to watch the bugs and clouds. Walking hills in town under fog. Nitpicking the book I am working on. The way Cormac McCarthy wrote All the Pretty Horses. Vintage paintings of portraits left unfinished. The way the air smells right now, telling and anticipating. Becoming friends with a crow. Finding someone to make a daily photo project with. Light. Always light.
in the year 2020, what of your life have you let go
[JS]. Oh boy, so much. I’ve been unemployed this entire year which has allowed me to strip most conditions of identity under capitalism away. It has been a lesson in self worth, confidence, fear, and questioning as much as it has been a gift because I’ve never felt more confident or content in my being, all while living on and with very, very little. We are not made up of job titles. Any ideas I had about the future are gone, projects had to be released from my grasp, daydreams that would be possible dissolved in most cases. I’ve let go of people, of places. Those were the best to rid the weight of. Most of all though, adios to self-scrutiny; I am doing my best.
