Your mom is also an artist, through both you and your mother’s experiences in the DC art scene, what major shifts or changes have you observed?
Growing up with my mother, artist Dorothy Fall, I was exposed to the DC art scene from the 1960s onward ( my childhood). I would be taken to DC museums and art galleries as well as meeting artists socially in a variety of settings. I remember as a child meeting Lois Maillou Jones at Howard University (my father taught there) and Sam Gilliam because my mother had an Artists Equity meeting at our house.
I remember participating in a “Happening” at the Art Barn ( in Rock Creek Park) where artists did goofy participatory work. My mom made an edible painting. Others made a giant ice cream sundae and we laid down on a treated canvas to make a giant photogram.
I’d say the scene was focused on Dupont Circle and then also 7th and G streets . Nowadays the DC scene exists in a number of different places all over the city. I’m guessing that that has something to do with the price of real estate as galleries move away from the center of the city. I have lived in the Baltimore area all my adult life ( though I was represented by Gallery K in DC for about 20 years) so I do not have a clear idea about the DC art scene now. It has always been robust and seems to be more so now.
Do you believe that your unique world view has increased or affected your exploration of human relationships in your work?
As human beings our world view plays out in whatever we do, we are each unique. Absolutely my worldview, that there is great trauma in the human condition but also great hope, is reflected in my work. It is not a deliberate effort. Making the work is a combination of responding intuitively to the material along with aesthetic decision making and the flow that comes from much thought, research, and just plain living one’s life.
What inspired you to explore the relationship between humans and nature?
I found in undergraduate school at MICA that I was very interested in natural form and as a ceramics major, clay lent itself to that organic imagery-making. It wasn’t until I was about 10 years into this form of working that I realized that I was considering forces in our lives and relationships. My process of working is also a relationship with the media and the process. I negotiate with the material to make something, I am open to learning from the material and what it naturally wants to do. Sometimes I set up situations knowing that the material will surprise me. For example casting something solid in bronze which can morph the original form because of uneven thickness, thus uneven cooling. Or finding frozen clay in my studio (the studio was unheated) and working with the shale like pieces it fell apart into when it defrosted.
How has experience in a variety of media influenced how you implemented steel and clay in recent pieces?
This show represents about 3 years worth of working. I work in welded steel, clay, and cast bronze so I shift back and forth between the three. It naturally occurs( after years of working this way) that I work in a combination of media. I know which characteristics I get from each of the media. It is intentional too the play between what is considered a fragile medium (clay) and what is considered a very strong one ( steel). I am working with fabric and steel this time. I have worked with fabric doing costumes and props for theatre but have never used it in my own work before.
You and your husband are both artists and share a studio. Does your work influence one another’s others work or do you ever collaborate on projects?
I think we have influenced each others work in terms of an interest in nature but our work processes are completely different. Blake (Conroy)’s work process is very deliberate and planned out. He now does laser cut drawings that are incredibly intricate and take months worth of preparation drawing into the computer. Before that he would hand cut drawings in brass with a jeweler’s saw (which has a quarter inch wide blade). I work completely intuitively. He does do the physical casting of my bronze work ( as he works at New Arts Foundry in Baltimore) . I act as his assistant when he is installing work. We also seek each others’ input on our work, not that we listen.
Our adult children are artists too. Our son, Blake Fall-Conroy is a self-taught engineer (for International Climbing Machines) and a conceptual artist whose Minimum Wage Machine has been shown in DC. Our daughter Lisette Fall-Conroy is a designer for the group Fictiv in San Francisco.
