How sticks, stones and bits of glass became my artistic language

Hi everyone! Welcome to issue 25 of our #ourstudents series, a run of interviews where our students talk about themselves and their art.

For this issue I sat down with the artist Gerda Vaas, who tells the story of her path in art — from her first steps at art school to falling for contemporary art.

Tell us about your background in art. How did you arrive at contemporary art?

I went to art school in Oryol and finished it at the same time as regular school. When I was 12 I was lucky enough to visit Tate Modern, and it turned my understanding of art upside down. The sheer range of methods, materials, subjects and styles struck me to the core.
After I graduated, everyone around me, art school teachers included, said that if I did not want to be broke I should stay away from art 🙂. So I tried a few things and ended up in graphic design. But I became more and more certain that I needed to speak through art. Otherwise nothing feels meaningful to me. I started looking and found several courses, Maria’s among them. I realized I was not crazy after all, and that contemporary art was exactly my path 😅.

What subject do you work with?

Right now I work with human psychology from different angles. What matters most to me is childhood: how to give the inner child the love it missed, how and why to grow up and separate, how to build communication inside yourself and with the world.

Lately deeply existential questions have been joining in. I hope my work helps someone the way it has helped and still helps me.

Was it hard to find your subject? Is it a personal one for you? How important is it for an artist to be sincere?

My subject comes from my childhood, and I think that in one way or another everything I come up with now was already born back then. I had no one to discuss many things with, let alone convey what I was feeling. So it all lived inside me, because I knew that one day I would be able to talk about it and put it out there, I just did not know how. Now I do 🙂. At last I can convey THAT THING alongside the thoughts and the words.

The psychological issues I work with in art are, of course, ones I have gone through and am still going through myself. So the subject could not be more personal.
Most of the time I feel like a transmitter, and in that sense my job is to become as good an instrument as I can. Finding my subjects was hard in terms of making contact with myself and with that “something” art comes from.

Tell us more about where the little figure came from.

When I was about three I had a small toy, a soft red soldier in a pointed cap. When my mother went into the next room to do something, I was convinced this soldier was in fact a grown-up who was watching me and would tell my mother if I misbehaved. I remembered that toy during hypnotherapy, and what had once been an outside presence had long since become an inner one. The image has gone through many visual changes since then, and right now my little figures are at the child stage. I am sure that one day they will grow up, and that will be a new chapter in my art. What has stayed is the name and the essence: the Observer. An observer of the outer and inner world, of time and space, of other children.

How do you choose your materials, and why sticks?

For my objects I use found things — stones, bits of glass, sticks, small bones and much more. I call them “shards of reality”. To me they are a real language, the one I want to speak.

What is essential to art for you, both as an artist and as a viewer — the thing without which it does not work?

For me it is more important that art asks questions rather than gives answers. And sometimes you see a painting or an object that does not seem to be your thing at all, and later you realize it has moved into your head and is talking to you whether you like it or not. One of these criteria, or some combination of them, is what makes art for me.

Name the artists who inspired or influenced you.

Tracey Emin (her bed, which I have had three dates with at different points in my life, was a catharsis for me. Such a simple, direct idea in such a simple, direct execution — I think that work is brilliant in the plainest, most direct sense of the word).
Cy Twombly (no words needed here, none at all).

Where do you find inspiration?

In absolutely everything, honestly. But what inspires me most are the details of city walls, those same “shards of reality”, mythology, and art materials 🙂.

Do you have moments of creative crisis, and how do you handle them?

Of course! I think that comes with any kind of work. I have developed my own method: I announce to my family and friends that I have changed my mind about being an artist and will not make anything ever again. It probably works as a release of tension and of my own expectations, because I never keep it up for long.

If you had to put it in one line, what would you want to tell the viewer through your art?

“Everything was, is and will be all right.”

Was studying on our program useful to you?