Senior Leila Kola, an art studio major focusing on painting and drawing, has a death wish, artistically speaking. Her upcoming senior thesis show revolves around roadkill. Her latest art show was made up of more than 100 "exquisite corpse" drawings, based on an art game the surrealists in Paris used to play in the early 1900s. One person draws something and then covers the drawing, leaving only a sliver of the drawing revealed, off of which the next artist extends the drawing.
And she modeled for photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, whose photographs are fit for an art show for the underworld.
Daily Lobo: Why would you choose this path in life?
Leila Kola: Practical things are boring and because I like to make it hard on myself. Because it's kind of fun. And I expect there are creative ways to make a BFA useful to me.
DL: Like how?
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LK: No idea. I'll get there when I get there.
DL: What's your thesis on?
LK: Painting. I call them, casually, "The Roadkill Series." They do all include roadkill in them. Literally? Well, no.
DL: You didn't literally rub roadkill all over the paintings?
LK: Like, using a photograph. I don't really like to have rotting dead animals in my home. My studio's my home, too.
DL: You go out and take photographs of roadkill? Where do you find them all?
LK: I always see a dead pigeon under every freeway overpass. I don't know.
DL: I guess I was thinking of deer.
LK: Other people, because they know of my interest in dead things, they photograph or give me dead things.
DL: So, why is your thesis on roadkill?
LK: There isn't really a bigger idea. It's hard to explain in a few words. You could say they're about humans taking over the world and harming other creatures around them but, in the end, harming themselves. The last is a human roadkill. I'll leave it at that.
DL: And you said you grew up in Michigan?
LK: No, not Michigan. I'm a Berkeley one. I was born there.
DL: And how long were you there for?
LK: My family and I lived in the Bay Area until I was 9. We mostly lived in Oakland. I was probably in Berkeley for the first year of my life. We moved straight to Edgewood, N.M., when I was near 10 years old.
DL: You were in a Joel-Peter Witkin photograph.
LK: My painting II teacher was painting backdrops for Joel-Peter Witkin on a project or probably on multiple projects.
DL: What became of the photograph?
LK: It was a commission by the New York Times, and they have a magazine in the Sunday paper. They commissioned him to do this piece on hats. And he was specifically requested to do it because he does so many photographs that are very loosely modeled after master paintings or well-known pieces of art in history. They wanted that for this project, so it was printed in that magazine in November of 2006. About a year ago they were all printed at something like 20 inches tall and hanging somewhere in Paris for a show.
DL: So did you learn anything artistically from him, through osmosis or directly from him saying something inspirational or practical?
LK: I would say more by osmosis. I guess one thing I learned from him is to be more respectful of history behind the work that I do as an artist, and I can use it rather than think of it as something that's holding me back or bringing me down.
