INTERVIEW - SARAH STURGIS

Your name?
My name is Sarah Sturgis.

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Where do you hail from, Sarah?
I grew up in Upland, California.

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What is your current location?
I live in Los Angeles, in the Miracle Mile.

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How are you doing today? On the most basic level.
I’m great! Yeah, I’m great.  It’s a killer day.  I woke up early, and happy. 

So Sarah Sturgis wakes up early, happy…then what? What’s a day for you looking like?
Well today I was just like, smiling for a while. (Laughs) Most mornings, I’ll exercise.  Sometimes just going for a walk.  I live right by the tar pits and I love them, and I love the smell.  I try and see those multiple times a week, or I’ll take a class at the ballet bar, and that’s about an hour.  Then I’ll have breakfast, shower, get my shit together. If it’s a stellar day, like high energy, then I’ll have time to work on a painting and write before work.  I don’t work my day job until 3:30, which is nannying, and I’ll do that from 3:30 till 8:30.  I try and get a lot done but I also heed doing something all the way and really well instead of cramming a bunch in.  Everyday I’m working on something.  Sometimes on the weekend, I don’t, and it makes me a little crazy, or at the least restless.

What do you find rewarding about nannying?
It’s really cool to build relationships with kids and the parents I’m working with. It’s really cool to see such young minds gravitate towards things that are going to be rewarding for them later on. We have a good time, we laugh a lot.  It’s pretty grounding, and it makes me think about how I’m communicating to almost everyone.  Kids can ask the most simple questions, and in the pause before I answer, I’m reflecting on so much. Like, oh my god, how do I tell this 6 year old person why everybody hates Donald Trump?  Such a crazy question, and it makes me think about it and how do I break it down?  Kids are deep.  They’re really deep. 

Do you feel like it keeps you young?
I think so.  It’s hard to say though because I can’t really imagine being myself without a childish nature, or at least a youthful one.  Perhaps thats because I’ve been working with kids for the past 4 years in one way or another.

How would you classify your art?
Well, it’s abstract.  It’s emotional.  It’s expressionist.  It’s uh...I think it’s getting better, but I’m never quite happy with it.  That’s not true. Sometimes, when I finish something, I’ll be happy with it, but after a day, I’m feeling like that wasn’t it. 

Would you say it’s hard to find that end point, to be able to call something “done”?
Depends.  Probably like half and half, I know when to quit it and sometimes I’m left feeling like, should I go back in?  Then I kind of talk to myself about the fact that I’m going to work on something else tomorrow and just to leave it.  I think I’m scared of overworking things, so I don’t too frequently.

What would you say is your approach to creating your work?
Basically, if I’m mulling over something, like a lot of times it will be a relationship, or a conversation, or a memory.  I pull a lot of colors from those experiences.  A lot of it has to do with memory actually. A lot of it.  I know I’m sensitive, and I think I’m really sensitive to color in general.  Just the other day, I passed a man on the street and he was wearing denim on denim with a mustard tee shirt, and I was like, I’m using that.  It was so striking, and it really made me feel something.  That’s how I start with a palette.  Then, I try to turn all the way off and just respond to each stroke. 

All of your siblings are creative as well, what do they all do?
I’ll start from the top.  Britt and I have the same dad, but not the same mom. Her mom and stepdad are artists, and her dad does a lot of like, found art? Kind of like Rauschenberg.  They’re insane. I remember going over there being very young and thinking like, these are artists.  These are working, living artists.  She (Britt) just has a knack for everything.  She knows how everything comes to be.  She didn’t study art, but it’s just been a part of her.  She’s killing it in law school though. 

Matt, he’s right under me, he’s 25 and he’s a brilliant musician. He plays everything, and I’m not just saying that.  He’s probably the best though, or at least the most studied at drumming. He’s literally been drumming since he was 2. My dad drummed, so Matt always had drum sticks.  He had a lot of anger as a kid and I think my mom was like, “Alright good, let him pound it out.”  It’s gotten him far.  He’s really great, and he makes it look easy. And he makes it look fun.   He’s actually on tour right now with the band he plays with. 

Michael’s the youngest and he lives in Echo Park.  He and I are closest, at least in proximity.  He’s also one of my closest friends.  He is an actor, and he is insane. He has this really crazy capacity, like any fine actor, to become the role.  It would be really strange to try and quantify how many hours he’s been on stage.

Do you feel like growing near an area like Claremont lent itself to all of you guys pursuing the arts?
I think I saw more art in school.  That’s where I was first exposed to say Picasso, or M.C. Escher.  I wasn’t like, a gallery kid, going to a lot of shows.  Probably the biggest inspiration to me was from books.  I remember reading books early on that were going to move me, aesthetically.  Tomie dePaola, or like Shel Silverstein.  Colors from dePaola and lines from Shel. 

When did you decide to start living a sober lifestyle and what were some of the factors that went into that?
Well, I stopped drinking, smoking weed, all drugs like right after I turned 24.  When I just turned 21 my Mom died, and that was insane.  Still insane.  I didn’t receive the right support, I don’t think.  Drinking was easy, and I mean, I was already a drinker.  It was kind of like how they explain it in DARE, gateway drugs and everything. It just went from one thing to the next.  When I was living up in San Francisco, it was a lot of partying. I remember one day meeting up with my friend at his house being like, “I feel crazy, what’s wrong with me?”  It was 11 in the morning, and I was like, “Oh, I’m sober, that’s what it is.”  At the time, it was like, let’s just go get a drink. Looking back, that’s so scary. But at the time, that’s what was getting me by, because emotionally, I could not hang.  It got to be too much, and I had a ton of anxiety.  I was still painting, and I was doing pretty good shit! (Laughs) But I remember having a deep seeded fear of not being able to create unless I was under the influence of something. That to me, was the ultimate deal breaker.  But yeah, I had a ton of anxiety, a ton of stress, strong relationships of mine were weak, so those were all alarming, alarming, alarming. Then I kind of went nuts, and had a mental breakdown. I was super paranoid and had to come back home.  My sister flew up and got me and we came back to Claremont, and I was like, I have to straighten out. I remember also being like, “I’m so wacked right now that people aren’t going to take me for my word unless I am sober.  They have to know that its coming from actually Sarah, and not, oh Sarah’s been drinking and she’s saying something, you know? So I was like, alright, I’m not drinking.  And shit, it’s been 3 and half years this week. Crazy. 

After you made the choice to quit everything and get back to square one, how long would you say you were consciously making the effort to be sober, to where you are now where it’s just a natural thing, and it’s just a part of you?
I lived with my aunt and uncle for the year following my coming back south, and I made a bunch of friends who didn’t know me before I got sober. It was weird because I would say, “Oh yeah, I don’t drink”, but in my head, I was like “Yeah, I do.” (Laughs)  I felt like a phony.  I remember when I turned 25, I had a big birthday party and everyone was celebrating, and I was having such a good time and I didn’t want anything.  It was really incredible. I don’t know if there was a certain point, or an exact length of time. I recently went through a breakup and in the beginning of it I had thought a couple times, it sucks not drinking; I am feeling too much. Then I always go back to like, I am so lucky that I get to feel this much. So, maybe I’m addicted to feelings. (Laughs)

You were mentioning a fear of not being able to create without depending on something else. Do you feel like your style now is more defined being clear minded and maybe having a very solid approach to a painting or your writing on a daily basis?
Yeah, I think it’s definitely sharpened.  I think more than anything, it’s honest. That’s something I always wanted to come across in my art work.  When I first started painting abstract, it was when a lot was going on.  My mom had just died.  I was like, I can’t really talk about all these things, but I still want this to exemplify what’s going on inside.  I feel like it’s just my own hyper critical, maybe perfectionism to be like, okay, but I was super stoned when I painted this, so this isn’t really me. Now looking back, it was.  It still stands, and I don’t dismiss any of my older works just because, you know, the night before I was doing a lot of coke or something. 

Nowadays, this is completely me.  I’m the most me that I’ve ever been.  It’s good, and it keeps getting better.

Would you say that gallery work is an ambition of yours?
Yeah.  I’m actually trying to figure what it is I want to do next with art.  I’ve sold the most paintings this year, than any other year and I attribute that completely to having a website.  It’s nice, it looks clean. People will hit me up and be like, I want this one. I’m like, damn! Thats dope, what’s your address? (Laughs) So that’s cool. I think a lot of my paintings respond to each other so I think it would be cool to see them all in a room interacting. I’m also applying to grad school this month for writing.  Can I do both right now? I don’t know.  I haven’t really developed a precise goal, which is something that needs to be done. 

Who are some of your influences?
My siblings for sure.  My friends, all the time. Music.  Seeing live music feeds me in a lot of ways.  I’m really lucky to live right across the street from LACMA, so if I’m ever feeling a little bit dull I can just go in there and be like, what is up? I think any person should really see as much art as possible because it just reinforces your interaction with the same painting, or brings back a memory that maybe you suppressed, or you get to experience something completely new.  It makes you think and feel. 

What’s your favorite piece in LACMA?
My favorite painting is “East 9th Street”, by Joan Mitchell.  I went there in June, just to go look at it, and it was gone! I started panicking, and I was like, what the fuck is going on? Who is playing a trick on me? So I went to the box office and was like, “Who do I talk to about Joan? Where is she?” They give me an email address, and they said it was on loan to Denver.  She said its part of their (LACMA) permanent collection, and I was just there last week, and it was back. 

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What’s next for you? The hardest question of them all.
Well, I’m going to work in, I don’t know, 20 minutes. I have to pack tonight for New York, so that’s going to be kind of stressful.  I have a pile of clothes that are not going to fit in a suitcase.  I don’t know whats next, but I’m happy for it.