I am grateful for this day.

I am so glad this one baby was born.

[Holga I did not take, by aiisuki & rachel a.k.]

Some things just never get old.  Also, I wish these people were my friends.  (The dancing ones and the singing ones.)

[Mates of State image thanks to Santos]

Sometimes it’s good for your heart to change the scenery a bit.  Next stop: Portland –> Spokane –> Seattle

[Holga, I did not take, by katherine lynn]

1. Order 55 fish tacos for you and some friends.

2. Wave at a clown on 6th street.

3. Drive with all the windows down to the coffee shop.

4. Watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” projected on your living room wall.

5. Enjoy some Belgian beer.

6. Receive a small floral arrangement which resembles your family’s fluffy white bichon frise…seated in a cupcake.  (Some might call this a “pupcake”).

7. Go to the Oinkster.

8. Call your Grandma.  Learn that she is praying fervently for you to “meet a wonderful man like Grandpa was.”

9. Send your Mama flowers.  (She labored a lot to birth you, you know.)

10. Slow cook some chili.

11. Play some music.  Loud.

12. Talk to Jesus.

13. Cry some secret happy tears.

14. Get wonderful transcontinental phone calls from those who’ve known you since you were 17.

15. Eat flan with your neighbors.

It’s going to be a good year.  There will be some arcs of triumph.

[images by Adrian Nier and Joshua Heineman, respectively]

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Question (to Justin Goll): How many iterations did you go through in developing this story in re-drafting it?

Justin’s Answer: I really only did 2 drafts. I came into the interview knowing a bit about Linnea. I’d done some research on fractals and such. I was curious where the interview would take us.

We took 4 hours of interviews and boiled it down to 20 minutes in the film.

I wanted to leave the audience with some knowledge of Linnea’s philosophy. It was such a delight to learn about her life–her growing up in an intentional community in Oregon with a common purse, to then being a student at Yale, to starting her own community, and back to her own art.

I wanted to show how the patterns and systems in her art was perhaps reflected in her intentional community and through her life.

I organized the whole of her interviews, had it transcribed, and then organized it around her themes. It’s not chronological, but it deals with things themes Fractals and Cataclysms and Patterns.

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Linnea: ”Part of the artist’s job is to keep you alert.”

Another job an artist has is to communicate. That doesn’t mean we have to communicate to everyone. In attempting to communicate, it is incumbent on artists that we do our best to do so.

I feel like I always have to say this:

Art that truly does matter is a manifestation of the inner meditation of the heart and mind of the artist.

That’s why you don’t have to do paintings of Jesus on the cross at all times. When you are committed to him, all of your life is saturated with it, and to search your inner self you can see something new and real: you can literally smell the Kingdom of God. Once communicated, people will either love it or hate it.

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Question: The last line in the film deals with God and his discovery. Can you talk more about that?

Linnea’s Answer: Sometimes I’m doing something dangerous and am wading into that age-old argument of free-will. I’m just doing it in a shrink-a-dink version! I’m in my studio with pencils.

I’m proposing and experiencing through my work this creative tension between knowng almost everything about what i’m doing, but still experiencing newness. I’m experiencing, as far as I can tell, a certain degree, a very small degree of omniscience!

In omniscience, perhaps it means that you can also experience newness.

I know this is theologically-frought with troubles. But this is part of what art can do. It has given us experiences that are beyond definitions and still stand there and say: Here I am.

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Question: Can you talk about systems colliding and how this plays out in your work?

Linnea’s answers: I have different categories of systems. Some are based off of grids, some are linear, some are organic. They are very rigorous, but have different appearances. Sometimes in the same canvas I’ll have different systems interact or collide.

They compete for the same resources of space. There is layering. Then I’ll sit back and watch them interact.

Sometimes it is really awkward, sometimes it’s really wonderful.

(It often takes 2 months to finish a piece, and I work on them one at at time.)

The truth is, artists love their limits. They create them for themselves. Often the most powerful work is severely limited by the problem solving you create for yourself.

Some artists use physical restraints. It becomes a sport. Performance art has its own love affair with limit. Painters accidentally or very intentionally have limits, and the power of our work comes from that.

The truth is, if we don’t have limits of some kind, we paralyze ourselves.

There is this American myth which prevents us from settling into an identity and hold all options open, and not many people talk about that.

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Question: What’s the emotional process like for you in getting your artistic work done?

Linnea’s Answer:
“Artists are notoriously emotional.”

I really don’t believe in an emotional-inspirational force that we can lean on primarily to lead productive lives.  There must be more.

This is in part what I mean by there being “Freedom through limits.”

In my work and my life, I commit myself to a pattern and give myself to it. There is a sense of apprehension as it grows.

In my art, there is the “middle territory” of just going in and seeing it grow. Towards the last third of the process, I am legitimately taken aback at what I’ve made. It’s a discovery.

Note: These questions and answers will not be directly transcripted word-for-word but more idea-for-idea.

Question: What was the question at the Hollywood premiere that stumped you?

Linnea’s Answer: A woman there who was a mathmetician. When professional scientists and mathmeticians say they look at my work and understand it, it’s very gratifying to me.

Many scientists are very humble people. You get down to the smallest particles and we smash atoms and just find more mystery.

The woman last night asked, “Do you feel like you’re making discoveries or creating things? Mathmeticians ask themselves these things all the time.”

The reality is, how can you “create the question” via your art, and still find yourself in wonder at its discovery? It’s very synergistic. You move around a problem with these realities.

“This is true with our relationship with the Lord, too. At least it has been with mine.”