In this interview, Adele Smejkal speaks to Volume 11 cover artist, Erin Wright about her artistic practice. Erin Wright is a designer, painter, and curator living in Los Angeles, California and is currently an adjunct professor of Architecture at Woodbury University. She also is co-founder of Binder Projects, a curatorial project based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Adele Smejkal works for Sotheby’s London, is a freelance journalist, and is the founder of @as_artjournal, an Instagram based page about art. She is also co-founder of The Art/choke, which connects people within the art world through curated events.

Adele: How did you first begin your artistic practice? And what was your initial source of inspiration to develop such a unique artistic style?

Erin: I’m an architectural designer by trade - I design and execute things of all scales from books to buildings and my painting practice just exists at one of those scales. As I begin a painting, I use conventional architectural methods of model building - physically and digitally - to work out potential ‘figures’.

Adele: Your works are very graphical, almost like architectural drawings but there is an element of surrealism, how would you define your style?

Erin: I understand these paintings as proposals for an almost possible construction - everything at first glance looks legitimate but there are a few things slightly off. Isometric projection is very important in architecture, at least academically, and I lean heavily on that to ground the work in some sort of drawing tradition. I would define the style as post-digital? Using the hand tool (paintbrush, colored pencil, spray-paint) to make the work look as if it was digitally rendered.

Adele: Would you say your practice has change since you first started? Do you find new sources of inspiration?

Erin: I have tried to become a more organized painter - I only paint at night or on weekends or on holidays - and I was making one at a time. I now work on three or four paintings, all in the same phase with similar themes. I also try to keep my brushes in better shape and be more efficient about paint mixing - keeping records and measuring out what I need.

Adele: What would you say was your biggest achievement and challenge as an artist?

Erin: The biggest challenge for me is parsing through the large amount of content that passes through our brains daily. Whether it be Instagram or living in Los Angeles, I absorb a large amount of images and many of those things inspire me. If I’m still thinking about it a week later, I usually try and incorporate it into the work. The biggest achievement for me is that I feel like I have made a career out of doing something different. After graduating with my Masters in Architecture, I felt the pressure to work in a corporate environment and I took a risk by giving myself the time and space to make something else work.

Adele: If you could meet one non-living artist/architect/designer for a coffee who would it be?

Erin: Luis Barragan. I have visited several of his buildings and his house in Mexico City - his work has a real quietness and sobriety about it. My own art collection has a lot of folk art in it, so I think we would talk about that. I am planning a trip back there in June.

Adele: What are your visions for 2020? Do you have any exciting projects/exhibitions coming up?

Erin: The beginning of the year has been full of archiving last year’s work. I try to keep organized records of all sketches, models, and unused work. I am currently in the process of moving into a new studio. I will get back to work pretty soon - I have a lot of new ideas I want to explore. Let's see if we will finish by the time the exhibition opens.

The second exhibition is in Cologne this October. There I show current artworks. Mainly canvas from my "Arctic" series and a whole series of my latest drawings.

Adele Smejkal in Conversation with Erin Wright