Interview with DebiLynn Fendley
Debilynn Fendley has lived all her life in rural Arkansas. She works within cultural subgroups to produce both documentary and conceptual realism pieces in photography, printmaking, drawing, and painting. As a visual storyteller, she strives to make work that crosses boundaries between subgroups and mainstream norms. Of her work, Steve Anchell, author of The Darkroom Cookbook and contributor to multiple major photography magazines, writes, “[H]er background as an artist working with subcultures and people living on the margin places her in the same league as the great photodocumentarians, Donna Ferrato and Susan Meiselas; perhaps even the great photographer of the dispossesed, Diane Arbus.” DebiLynn holds advanced degrees in art and English and a terminal MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College. She is a founding member of and active exhibitor with the Arkansas Society of Printmakers and holds membership in the Southern Graphics Council, and the Hot Springs Art & Film Institute. She has been published in multiple national publications on photography, printmaking, and painting, including works from North Light Books, and recently completed her first IMBd credit as still photographer on the film Ride Hard, Live Free. DebiLynn most currently served with the Hot Springs Arts and Film Institute as an educator, exhibition curator, film judge, and photography festival producer.
STATEMENT
My work comes from the premise that I can — and do — use my art as a means of social and spiritual exploration. I dedicate myself to fostering communication and sharing the compassion and grace that has been extended to me. My hope is to build bridges and confront isolation, loneliness, human darkness, and mental illness not just through art but through honest dialogue about the inner self and the spiritual. In addition, I strive to make art that fosters cultural understanding between groups who are visually underrepresented and those who are part of the cultural norm. I want to make art easily accessible to a wide variety of cultural groups, including those who consider art viewing and making as a luxury with which only those in the upper echelons of society can engage. Teaching art making and being invited to speak about my own inner faith is an important part of that. So is field research and the quiet solitude of study and inner reflection.
I most often work with individuals from cultural subgroups and with others like myself who suffer from mental illnesses, and the process of forming bonds with them and of listening to their stories and ideas is as much a part of my art as the end product. I endeavor to make work that inspires questions and dialogue in ways that brings the stigma of mental illness and loneliness and isolation into the light of day; anything, anything, that allows us as artists, creators, models, and individuals to reveal our worthiness and importance in society. We are more than numbers or “others;” we are valuable as contributors, and we are deserving of love.
Q&A
What concept or narrative is behind your work?
It’s more concept than narrative, I think. It’s the concept that I can use my work as a means of social and spiritual exploration. It happens. And it happens even more so when I have my camera around my neck. I’m not afraid of anything as long as I’ve got a camera in my hands. It makes me superwoman. I can tackle anything, go into any situation, document any moment. I once had a trans friend of mine, a Vietnam navy vet, mind you, say to me that she’d watched me take that camera into places she wouldn’t go with an AK. And it’s true. I have a panic disorder, a bad one. I see a psychologist every week. I can barely walk to the mailbox to get my mail because mundane, everyday things terrify me. But I can walk into a biker bar in the worst damn neighborhood in my biker boots carrying that camera and a great big smile and have absolutely no fear. It bothers me not in the least.
What role does your art have in society?
Bridging gaps, I think. Starting dialogues. Attempting healing. Exploring spirituality and human nature. Love. Loving people and loving my God. I choose my models because of who they are as people as much as for what they look like, and the process of forming bonds with them is very healing for both of us. I have models who cling to me and I to them. A long time ago, I had a gallery owner who told me to stop that. She told me models were just bodies. I told her rather politely to fuck off. I was thinking about the photographer Joyce Tenneson and her work in Light Warriors, how she said her models were so inspirational to her, and mine were to me. Watch my work and you’ll see a repetitive use of models because I have a little group who likes to work with me and I with them. We have a very symbiotic relationship, and my goals of communication become their goals in working with me. I want to help people understand the struggles of being “other,” of being unwanted, of having deep spiritual faith in a world where people often reject that premise. It’s not often overt in the art itself, but strike up a conversation with me or ask one of my models about me, and it will be. Hopefully by the end of my life and the end of the body of work I produce over my lifetime, those things will be evident.
What is your ultimate goal for your artwork? Oh, heavens. To be good. To be solid. To say something. To in the end be a cohesive body of work. Alan Howarth, God bless him, took a look at part of my portfolio one day and said something about my work being a bit scattered and I wanted to throw up because he’s so brilliant and so much more than a composer, and many people don’t know that about him, you know, how brilliant the man is. Please, no. I want a cohesive body of work if I have to make my soul bleed to get there.
How true are you to your artist’s statement?
I take stock of my artist’s statement on a regular basis, which means I’m taking stock of my work as well. I tend to take the time to contextualize my work as shifts happen in my personal life, and as those things happen, I’ll revisit and rewrite my artist’s statement, so I’d say I do stay true to it, or rather, it stays true to my work. I’ve never really had the problem some artists seem to have had with writing an artist statement. I’ve always been very aware of the things that inform my work.
Who is your art crush and why?
Michael Bergt. I mean, there are a ton of artists and photographers I admire, but Michael Bergt, I’ll tell you, his work is sexy and so is he. I first learned about him thirty years ago when I was a young pup and absolutely in love with an artist by the name of Will Wilson who, at the time, was a friend of mine and whom I’ve since sadly lost track of, and Will sent me his copy of a little book Michael had done on tempera painting because he thought my work lent itself to tempera. I was hooked, just hooked. Now, years later, I keep watching what Michael Bergt does, and his work is all so thematically sensual, and I’m drawn by his use of mythology and narration. I love bothering him from time to time to talk to him about his process and what I see in his themes. The other thing about Michael is he reminds of a time in my life when everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was about art and promise and studio, and I had a whole life in front of me that I just knew was going to be nothing but painting. This was back before cell phones, and I would call Will and pay horrible long distance charges just so I could be in my studio painting while he was in his studio painting and we could paint “together,” and it was the most awesome thing in the world being in love with paint and another painter at the same time. Oh, you know, not in love like romantic love, but in love because of the art. The good stuff. We talked about other painters, and Michael was one of them. So yeah, Michael Bergt. Big crush. Sorry, Michael.