MEGAN WINEGARDNER SHORT BIO
M. Winegardner is an installation and sculpture artist, born and raised in north Texas, where she began her habitual collections on the banks of the Brazos river along-side her father, gathering hag-stones.
Podcoat by Designer Kitty Taube, Milano
Interview with Megan Winegardner
FM: Where are you from? How did you arrive in Reno?
Megan: I’m from North Central Texas, but my alma mater was in the Southeast near Chattanooga, Tennessee. After spending a few years in that area I’ve moved west to Reno to make art and pursue my MFA degree, and am very happy to be reacquainted with the huge western sky that I missed when living in the Southeast.
FM: What was your childhood like, what were your interests as a young girl?
Megan: Because I was homeschooled (which is common for evangelical families), I was very isolated, with just my two younger sisters and a large library of books, mostly classics, to read. We lived in a 1,500 acre pecan orchard on the Brazos River and so I spent most of my time wandering the orchard and riverbanks. There were a lot of hours spent staring out of the window with a deep sense of inner silence. Maybe it was loneliness, but it definitely made my sisters and me introspective people. I used to drag huge fallen branches from the orchard together and built large, intricate forts and hideaways. My father, who has an engineering mind, always helped me problem solve on how to make these structures’ strength and longevity, so at some point I was only held back by the size and weight of the branches I could carry myself.
FM: What was the first image you remember drawing as a child?
Megan: Although I don’t remember the first image I drew, I do remember that at one point, I was maybe 9 or 10, I drew a picture of a waterfall in some hidden forest glade, and was convinced that I could project myself into that place if I had enough determined focus. I don’t have a picture of it, though.
FM: What was your favorite book growing up?
Megan: Because we (my sisters and I) had no other forms of entertainment or company we essentially read non-stop, everything we could get our hands on, and my poor mother had to fight to find enough for us to read. As a child I loved the Táin Bó Cúailnge, a Gaelic-language text from ancient Ireland, likely because it was heavy with sexuality and violence and featured an incredibly strong female protagonist. My discovery of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass around middle school changed a lot for me. Then, and now, I see it as a sort of holy-book, and continue to follow Whitman’s own advice concerning his own book: to read it “every season of every year of your life.”
FM: What was your favorite thing to do or eat as a child?
Megan: Collection has always been a part of my experiences. My father, my dog and I used to collect hag-stones, which are stones with holes through them, on the banks of the Brazos. Fossils, abandoned birds nests, quartz and chert, and, of course, bones, which my mother made me leave on the back porch.
FM: What made you choose the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno?
Megan: The themes and questions I investigate in my work have always come before the specific mediums that I use, and so I am very interested in multiple disciplines. UNR’s interdisciplinary focus is incredibly important to me. I was surprised when I was applying to graduate programs by how many MFA programs ask you to choose one area to focus on.
FM: Can you discuss growing up in the SDA community?
Megan: I often think about how at odds fundamentalist homeschooling culture was with the freedom of access to literature we (my sisters and I) had growing up. SDAs often choose homeschooling for their children to avoid secular influences, and this form of schooling often emphasizes women’s roles in society and the home, behavior, modesty and purity, and our futures as mothers and homemakers. This type of information conflicted with the broad array of perspectives we found in other literature, and I credit this influence with giving us the tools to process and critique fundamentalist beliefs later on.
I went to a small SDA university for my BFA, so many students and nearly all faculty were very conservative, especially in regards to sexuality. I believe strongly that suppression breeds dysfunction psychologically, and sadly, this culture intensified issues that many universities face in terms of sexual assault and abuse. Assault was so common; I didn’t know more than three or four women who were not assaulted during their time at the school. Aside from their resistance to cooperating with Title IX, members of administration publicly condemn victims of assault for any openness on the subject. The aftermath of my own encounter with sexual assault and abuse took place within this uncooperative and hostile community, and this type of experience continues to be common, met with community rejection, condemnation, disbelief, and even the threat of continued violence.
FM: How does this affect your art practice now?
Megan: The stories and suffering of the women I have known are with me always. Trauma exists in all communities, but my direct experience with the way individuals encounter and experience trauma within fundamentalist communities has deeply shaped the concepts in my practice. These women’s narratives are lost and hidden; they live in the aftermath of trauma, often noiselessly. The internal loud reverberations of trauma contrasted with external silence or suppression is a profound influence in all my work.
FM: Do you have advice for anyone experiencing this type of trauma on a restrictive campus of this type?
Megan: If you are in a culture or environment like this you are not alone in your experience, and finding others who are sharing that experience is incredibly confirming. Most importantly, find a non-religious therapist to talk to who specializes in trauma. This type of therapist can be a resource, protective figure, guide, and voice of reason in the midst of chaos and pain. It was years before I sought out a therapist and I only did this after having an emotional and physical breakdown; I wish I had found her sooner.
FM: What are the ideas and concepts you are investigating through your MFA post grad program?
Megan: I am considering how memory is held within the body and the mind through the concept of temenos, or container for the Self. My pursuit of questions surrounding this topic has led me through themes such as interiorness, shelter, self-protection, and imprisonment. I’m interested in women’s experience with memory, particularly memory of trauma, but feel strongly that it is a theme with broad human and ecological implications.
FM: Your work is incredibly fragile, containing natural elements and transparent skin-like elements. Would you talk a little about these aesthetic choices?
Megan: In memory formation we encounter an experience, and then our mind constructs a memory around that experience. The experience is concrete and unchanging, and sometimes encounters or involves other people; the memory we build around this experience or event is constructed and subjective. It can fade, alter, become peripheral or obscured, or conversely become intrusive and constantly present (for instance, in the case of post-traumatic stress). I see the framework of our constructions of memory as fragile, and through them we re-experience the events that they are formed around.
FM: How, or is the color palette and landscape of Nevada affecting your aesthetic? Or Have you noticed any influences in your latest work that tie to Nevadan landscape or its Wild West philosophy.
Megan: I really enjoyed the lush diversity of plant life in the Southeast, but after living there for several years, I have longed for the subtlety and range of colors in the desert. The spectrum of color here is thrilling and certainly drives many of my aesthetic choices.
Since moving here pioneer women have been on my mind. As far as I know, I am the first woman in my family to move this far West. I think about the women of the past that undertook this, yet did it without secure methods of communication and provisions and security of health and safety. Seeking out documentation or information about their experiences is becoming a part of my research, definitely.
FM: When we were talking earlier you mentioned that each time you recall a memory it changes, would you elaborate on that?
Megan: Memory is a very fragile mechanism. Each time we recall an event our memory of that event weakens and can even alter. Its been described as similar to the game of telephone: each time you recall a memory you are actually recalling your memory of that memory. Additionally, there are many factors that can subtly alter details of the memory each time you recall it, and, like the game of telephone, this compounds over time and frequency of recall to alter the memory in more dramatic ways.
(This information is based on a study someone sent me by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine… here’s the link to that. Your Memory is like the Telephone Game
FM: How are the pods tying in to the earlier work?
Megan: These podlike forms are how I am investigating traumatic memory held within the body. Our bodies are containers for our Selves and are the only real home that we have. We live inside them as they carry us through all of our experiences. On the other hand, we are trapped within them; they are inescapable prisons. With these sculptures I reference the viewer’s body in scale and proximity. Materially I am experimenting with wax, which visually references our own skin, as well as paper, in reference to wasp nests.
FM: Do you see any crossovers or analogies between the pods and the way we live our lives in cars in America each traveling in our own bubble? Less and less face to face experience with other humans….etc
Megan: That’s a really interesting connection. With the container-like structures I am thinking about trauma, fear, and self-protection or isolation. I suppose in a way within our digital capitalist society many people are increasingly isolated from each other; psychological stress is rising, connection to physicality, loved ones, and the earth is increasingly inaccessible. There is a possible connection with the threat-to-self and physical isolation of trauma that my pod-like structures explore and the financial, governmental, international, societal threat individuals experience in capitalist society.
FM: Can you explain the relevance of the wasp nest references in your recent work?
Megan: Giant wasp nests are containers for the wasps that live inside them, and they often elicit an instinctual sense of repulsion and horror in human viewers. We associate wasp nests with danger, and frequently the nests are found in decaying houses and other locations that we have negative associations with. It is more than a sense of revulsion, which one might experience when viewing something grotesque; repulsion is combined with an active fear — the threat of Other (the dangerous inhabitants of the nests). There is a growing body of evidence in scientific fields focusing on the ties between trauma and physical illness or dysfunction. When we go through trauma, particularly sexual trauma, or severe illness or chronic pain, the sense of imprisonment within our bodies can be heightened, and a sense of repulsion and of Otherness can develop. The wasp nest is the reification of the gaze of our traumatized Selfs toward their own containers: our bodies.
FM: What are you currently researching?
Megan: In the future I am interested in delving deeper into the semantics and psychology of memory. I have been thinking about shrines and memorials, how our development of a memory is an organic, psychological shrine to a dead event, which keeps the event present for us after its passing. I have yet to see where this line of thought will take me, but it may take the form of more site-specific work.
FM: It seems you have an endless supply of the most interesting potential research topics, I am so looking forward to seeing the development of your work in the future!
Where can readers see what you are up to?
Megan: My website is mwinegardner.com and my Instagram is @m.winegardner
FM: Megan thank you so much for being so honest and thoughtful in your responses to this interview!!!
