How can you maximize your time as a resident artist? For Saya Woolfalk, the key is to choose the brains of those around you

Saya Woolfalk’s artistic universe is built on a unique blend of science fiction and fantasy, inhabited by a race of time-traveling “empaths” who are able to communicate with the natural world.

So when Woolfalk was invited to attend an artist residency at the Newark Museum of Art, the institution became herbaria the collection was a natural source of inspiration. These plant specimens, as well as the museum’s landscape paintings, became artifacts to be reinterpreted from an empathic perspective.

The resulting show, “Saya Woolfalk: Field Notes From the Empathic Universe,” features more than 20 works in a variety of media, including a kaleidoscopic video installation, colorful collages, and textile works. She has even transformed the elevator by installing digital murals that set the stage for her supernatural vision.

We spoke with the Japan-born, New York-based artist about life in her studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and how she adapted her practice during her stay at the museum.

What are the most indispensable tools in your study and why?

My study time takes place inside and outside the study. In either case, the element I need most is a welcome creative collaborator. I am a big supporter of collaboration, as I believe that different people – and different energies working together – trigger creativity. A few weeks ago, I headed up the Catskills to the Olana State Historic Site and the Thomas Cole National Historical Site to visit curators Amy Hausmann and Kate Menconeri. My spatial memory of the two houses, the conversation I had with the curators, and the land itself are all things I took back to the studio and work on now.

Saya Woolfalk’s study at Brooklyn Navy Yard. Photo lent by the artist.

What are you most looking forward to doing in the studio tomorrow?

I’m really excited to prepare for a meeting with the mayor’s office from the city of Los Angeles to discuss a multi-site monument project that I have been working on for two years to honor the late Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I look forward to spending the day tomorrow thinking of Justice Ginsberg, Coretta Scott King and Marjory Stoneman Douglas – the three incredible American women whose monuments will be created this year as part of Hulu’s Made by Her: Monuments campaign.

How did your study practice change during your stay at the museum?

I spent my time as an artist-in-residence thinking about how the Hudson River School paintings continue to shape our vision of what America is. We believe in the Hudson River School paintings as historical documents about American land and life. I want to change the museum audience’s understanding of these paintings. These Hudson River School paintings contain the wishes, hopes, fears and love of a particular population in a beginning country. They present America as a kind of Eden that naturalizes the displacement of indigenous peoples, celebrates agrarianism without acknowledging the constant uncertainty in the lives of tenant farmers, while erasing the enslaved Africans who worked with farms across the country to produce unprecedented wealth to America.

This basic sense of Americanity was built to leave certain people and stories outside of its narrative, and that’s what I’ve been trying to struggle with.

What atmosphere do you like when you work? Are you listening to music or podcasts, or do you prefer to work in silence?

When I’m in the studio, I spend a lot of time discussing current events, inequality and what’s going on on social media with my brilliant study leader, Isabel Sakura. Spending my days with her is a pleasure.

Saya Woolfalk’s dog, Mr. Mochi, in her studio at Brooklyn Navy Yard. Photo lent by the artist.

Which features do you admire most in a work of art and which features do you admire the most despise?

The Newark Museum of Art has recently acquired a Bisa Butler quilt, and that piece represents a lot about what I love. Bisa is so clearly dedicated to the craft, is generous to the audience in terms of physical and historical material. and reinforces stories outside the ordinary art world.

I really like the quote “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” by Ralph Waldo Emerson – it expresses my antipathies quite well.

What’s the one snack you can not live without in the studio?

As an artist who is also a mother, I am often in the studio with my 10-year-old daughter, Aya. She is a big fan of string cheese and popcorn. These are two things that my studio can never do without!

Installation view of “Saya Woolfalk: Field Notes From the Empathic Universe” at the Newark Museum of Art. Photo by Richard Goodbody, on loan from the Newark Museum of Art.

When you feel stuck in the studio, what do you do to get loose?

I have a group of female artists who are my go-to people. Wendy Red Star, Heather Hart, Natalia Nakazawa, Nyeema Morgan, Kira Nam Greene, Valerie Hagerty, Lauren Kelly, Paula Wilson and Vadis Turner are bad women I call, text or zoom in when I’m stuck. I’m pretty lucky to have them all in my life.

What was the last exhibition you saw that impressed you?

I’ve spent a lot of time at the Newark Museum of Art. I love the way American art curator Tricia Bloom hung out with the historical galleries to incorporate the story of women representing themselves. I was also just at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) for a site visit and saw the incredible Joan Semmel study curated by Jodi Throckmorton [on view through April 3, 2022]. In that show, you can really see how Semmel has been experimenting with representations of the female body and sexuality ambitiously for so many years.

If you were to make a moodboard, what would it say right now?

I usually make intuitive dreamboards instead of moodboards. The last one I made had lots of animals with human bodies and a picture of me in nature, surrounded by friends wearing white and practicing yoga.

“Saya Woolfalk: Field Notes From the Empathic Universe” can be viewed at the Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington Street, Newark, New Jersey, October 21 – December 31, 2021.

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