Chronicle 006—Martha Tuttle

When Martha Tuttle compares a painting to a human body—“the stretchers, the bones, and then the canvas of the skin”—it’s not just a turn of phrase. Her newest works use the minerals in her sweat as painting material, only her latest exploration in a career concerned with erasing the line between body and medium, human and environment. And like her paintings, which often stretch shards of fabric across a canvas frame, Martha herself is poetic, tending, in this interview, towards the subtle quip and casual profundity.

For a few months earlier this year, Martha set up her studio in Placed while waiting for her home studio to be complete. With her daughter in arm, we had an intimate conversation about motherhood, mothers, and Agnes Martin. 

Photographs by Colin Frazer

Placed: When you two [Martha and her husband Brian, an art historian] were at my place last time, you were talking about the art world: what's happening in the art world, how one gets attention in an attention economy, reliance on social media, how housing prices and tech firms are shifting local economies that affect artists. What has been your take on this? 

Martha Tuttle: I can only speak from my own experience, of course, but I think how one sets up their professional practice is not separate from the studio. Brian’s research engages with artists who have directly used professional practice in creative ways; or in ways that have subverted the systems they existed in. His research has taught me that the way we answer these tricky questions of how one’s art meets the world can become a part of one’s larger expression. 

Art is often wrapped up in systems that at least on the surface seem the opposite of supporting creativity and ultimately, people. That's not unique to this moment, and in each time, artists probably have needed to find ways to deal.  There are so many examples of people who’ve chosen a different path, like Charlotte Posenenske or Lygia Clark or even Alan Shields.  Artists who are like: you know what, I need to find some other way to coexist with this world and my work.

I imagine that similarly, at this moment, many other artists are also feeling a hope of reinvention, a hope of another structure that isn’t so utterly dependent on capitalism. 

PL:   This is something that I am contending with a lot in my own attention-economy affected self around making work without outside influences.

MT: The project I’m developing right now is—well, I'm a distance runner and it's been a big part of how I understand the world. I've been making outfits to do these long runs in, using the sweat and minerals from my body to mordant the fabric, then I dye them to eventually become painting material.  I’m excited about this because it directly relates the minerals that my body excretes to the minerals of the ground I’m running on.

A painting to me is always a body. I think that's part of the reason why we're so interested in paintings. They have the stretchers which are like bones, and a canvas that is like skin. Being able to further collapse that relationship is something that's exciting for me.

After starting this project, it’s obvious to me that running is a part of my broader practice.  But for the longest time I had a division in my head between body practices and studio making, because I haven’t seen much of this enacted (outside of the legacy of dance). There’s little I love more than looking at other people’s art.  Yet at the same time, I needed to be in Montana away from constant influence to see what was right in front of me.

PL: You grew up in Sante Fe but New York-adjacent, right?

MT: Yeah.

PL: Then you lived in New York as a working artist with that hustle, and then you got to experience this whole shift in coming to Montana.

MT: I grew up in a small town north of Santa Fe, called Abiquiu. My mom moved there in the 1970’s.  Growing up in the desert with a lot of solitude was really influential. 

But my dad was spending a lot of time in New York, and so I spent a lot of time in New York also. Then after graduate school I moved to New York and lived there for 10 years. For me, it is a perfect trash city. Like it's so special, and it will always be a home for me. But it feels right at this moment to spend more time in the mountains.

PL: I’m curious how motherhood has affected your practice.

MT: I don't know if being a mom has made me a better artist, but it's made me a better person or at least a person I like more. For most artists, I think a big part of your job is being present and paying attention.  And parenthood is an interesting parallel to this.

One of the things I've noticed about having my daughter is that the things that feel monumentally special are also often common experiences.  Like giving birth felt colossal to me, but at the same time, obviously every single person you meet was once born.  Or Brian and I are awestruck by the sentences Ursula is producing, but she’s just following the path of her development. 

Especially in the arts there’s a lot of pressure to think of people as individuals. Perhaps it can be just as beautiful to focus on how much of our experience of being is shared with other people. We all have these kinds of trajectories, these stages of life. I've been trying to think of myself in that way too, especially postpartum. There’s just a process; and you can try and speed it up, you can try and slow it down, but really, it's probably just going to follow its flow. And that is life.

In my twenties I had a much stronger idea that I could control everything around me. Being in the process of letting that go is much more fun.

MT: Such a metaphor for practice.  Whenever I'm pushing or trying to force something in the studio, the work is inevitably already unsalvageable.

MT: That makes sense. I like to take inspiration from what other people are doing, and then kind of forget about it and let my work lead me to its form.

MT: Artists often think emotionally and sensitively and can articulate the wonder of the world to children in meaningful ways, and this was definitely my experience. 

My parents, I think organically, were extremely encouraging of my exploration of the world when I was young.  The world was full of ghosts and fairies and felt very big and very magical. They also had no trouble telling me they needed to work and letting me entertain myself, which in retrospect helped me develop a lot of imagination and resilience. 

I still think there is some stigma about motherhood in the arts, but this was truer in the 80’s. There's a lot of hard stuff with that, but my parents always made sure that I knew that I was loved and wanted. That provided me with a structure and a confidence that I think can help a kid get through the trickier bits. I am trying to bring many of these same qualities to my daughter’s childhood.

MT: Sure!

Writing has always been a parallel practice for me. It’s almost sculptural to write a good research paper. I also think my brain needs writing in order not to overly put conceptual pressure onto my physical work.

I am writing a series of essays that look at industries and land practices through the eyes of twentieth-century abstraction. 

This year I’m writing, with the support of Tippet Rise, an essay on their Louise Nevelson sculpture Trilogy, which was originally installed in Detroit and then brought to Fishtail in 2023.  Obviously, Montana is a hugely different setting than urban Detroit, and I’m writing about what it means to change the setting of a sculpture, as well as the shifting role of ranchland. 

The other essay I’ve been working on this year is an expanded Agnes Martin essay that was initially published with Radius Books about grids in 1960’s abstraction and the grids developed by the Public Land Survey to subdivide stolen lands for colonial settlement and agriculture. 

These essays will eventually become a book with photographs.

 

 

PL: In one of her essays, [Martin] talks about how if you want to be an artist, do not have children, do not have pets, do not have partners, and stay hungry.

 

 

MT: I've thought about this a lot over the years. I think many people associate Martin with mysticism, and maybe it’s more palatable to understand statements like these within a tradition of the female mystics, such the focus and communion described by Simone Weil, or Teresa of Ávila.  Thinkers who needed to be sometimes outside of the world. 

At the same time, in the arts, statements like these can be associated with a problematic lineage: the idea that you need to be solely focused and go to the studio every day, or you are not a serious artist. This is what I was taught in school. 

But as our societal conversation makes some headway into the biases that have excluded many from the arts, hopefully we are learning that this depiction of the artist is limited.  I’m much more interested in being in an art world that encourages the inclusion of artists living many different lives.

In part, I’m interested in textile practices because they developed in large part as activities that can be done while watching and raising children. Millions upon millions have been makers and contributed to the vast creativity of humanity while caring for pets, children, parents, community. In my opinion, the idea that good work can only come out of one version of focus is bullshit. Nowhere is it written that the distraction of a caretaking life can't also become fuel for making good art.

 

 

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Two of Martha’s paintings are part of our current exhibition That Was Now, closing September 27. A solo show of her work will open in November at Timothy Taylor gallery in London.