Renee Lai
I was first connected with Renee Lai through Glasstire when she wrote a wonderful essay about her time in an artist residency in Maine. The essay was full of vulnerability and honesty, and she revealed her own biases and fears as they were slowly deconstructed over the course of the residency. This honesty carried over when we first met in person and through a studio visit in Austin that I frantically postponed when my beloved old car just died at a gas pump on Airport Boulevard.
Renee is an artist who is also a thinker, someone who is wholly thoughtful and caring, and her practice is as reflective as it is self-critical and even vulnerable. She’s an artist who seems to lean into the imperfections, challenging herself as much as possible, over and over in perpetuity. Renee is also a reader — a quality I always admire — and I imagine we will spend much time in the future talking about books.
Leslie Moody Castro (LMC): Where do you live currently, and where are you from?
Renee Lai (RL): I currently live in Austin, TX, and I grew up in the suburbs of Houston.
LMC: What is your favorite book?
RL: My favorite book is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
LMC: I love this book, and my perspective of it really changed when I reread it as an adult (I first read it in high school). Why is it your favorite book?
RL: The first time I read it was in college, and I’ve re-read it multiple times since then. Every time I pick it up, I fall into the story and become immersed very quickly. I like the sweeping length of the time it takes, from childhood to adulthood, the vivid descriptions, the overall mood, Jane’s resilience, and of course, the drama of Mrs. Rochester and the ultimate end to the story. It gives me something new every time I read it, a sort of feeling and mood. I was just thinking of taking it out and reading it again today, actually — something about the isolation of winter and the upcoming cold makes it feel appropriate! It also has a little bit of everything — gothic, horror, romance, coming of age.
LMC: Aside from Jane Eyre, what are you reading currently?
RL: A Swim In A Pond In The Rain by George Saunders
LMC: Did you study journalism and/or writing? If so, where? If not, what did you study?
RL: I studied English and Studio Art at Dartmouth College. I have always loved reading, so studying novels, thinking about them, and then writing about them was perfect. I still read a lot, and absorbing the voices of other writers helps me notice things as I go about my day. The book I’m reading right now by George Saunders is actually about the craft of writing stories.
LMC: I love reading too, and often read 2-3 books at a time. When you read, do you stay focused on one book at a time?
RL: A lot of times, I have an “intellectual” book, which I think of as a book I want to be awake and pay attention to, one that is important in the cultural dialogue, or might somehow relate to my practice. This tends to be something I read in the morning or when I first go to the studio to focus my mind. At the same time, I also have a trashy book. This I tend to read before going to bed, so it doesn’t matter if I’m sleepy and not giving it my full attention. It’s rare for me to read more than two books at once.
Renee Lai
LMC: Do you have a preference for book genres? (I’ve been really into mysteries and have slowly been reading Agatha Christie, which I took a recent break from to start the Anne Rice series about the Mayfair witches. I love a good witch story, and I love a good vampire story too!)
RL: I confess to a love of the romance novel — the predictability of it can be so comforting, but some can also be interesting and well written! In general, I love fiction. I’m interested in immersing myself into another person’s narrative, and in that way, becoming someone else temporarily or transporting myself somewhere else. If the book is really evocative, the mood of the character or story can stay with me for a while. I do dip into non-fiction at times, but when I do, it tends to be related to themes that I’m thinking about in my work.
LMC: Can you elaborate on how some of the words of other writers resonate with you?
RL: I notice little phrases that can contain the seed of a story. These can be things that have been said directly to me or have been told to me by another person. Patterns, water, light, reflection, sometimes a beautiful gesture — these are things that I notice that relate to my art making.
The words, or really, overall thoughts of writers, come back to me at random points in my process. Sometimes, I’ll look at a work and remember a theme from a book I’ve read, or I might want to re-read a book whose subject relates to my work or whoever’s work I’m looking at. I don’t often remember specific turns of phrases; I’m afraid my memory just isn’t that good!
LMC: What is your favorite thing to write about?
RL: I really enjoy writing artist interviews. Formulating questions to ask is more challenging than I expected — I have to really engage with the work, think about the artist’s ideas, and balance my own viewpoint. I try to keep the questions relatively open-ended. In a good interview, the questions can give rise to an organic conversation. I also think it’s important to give a platform for artists to talk in depth about their work, outside of the traditional artist talk.
LMC: Speaking of artist interviews, you are also an artist. Can you tell our readers a little bit about your practice?
RL: Sure! I think of myself as a painter but I also make drawings and videos and do some writing. In general, I’m interested in ideas of assimilation and generational transfer of culture and language. I’ve been using my body in my work, whether it is drawn, painted, traced, or filmed. I am very interested in repetition as a way to practice making a mark over and over again and in the different flaws that happen in the process of repeating something.
LMC: What is it about the flaws that attract you?
RL: I think there’s something beautiful about the contrast between uniformity (my lines tend to be measured out precisely, with a ruler) and variation. In art making and life in general, there’s the impulse to try for perfection, but it never really turns out that way. I find it soothing to have a concrete plan for the painting and to just focus on the miniscule weight changes in the line as my hand moves. It is meditative for me.
LMC: Do you have any upcoming projects you are excited about?
RL: I’m currently working on a series of self-portraits and also playing with repeating shapes in a pattern. I am secretly terrible at portraits, and the last time I seriously attempted one was back in undergrad. It’s been very fun to work from observation and to get into the nitty gritty of color mixing — as a painter, I just love that type of thing. A lot of my other painting work is more abstract and conceptual, so it’s just a nice change! There’s been so much political change that it feels important to think about who an American is and how I fit — or don’t fit — into that idea.
