Grad student May Goldman Shaltiel makes dichotomous, disharmonious video art. She got her BFA in photography 10 years ago in New York, where she also grew up with her hippie parents traveling from commune to commune. Since a family tragedy struck last summer, she has kept busy teaching and studying in the electronic arts program, making work, and maintaining an internship for a culture center. She has work displayed in the UNM Art Museum entrance and another piece in an upcoming juried grad student art show in the spring in Jonson Gallery.
DL: You keep yourself pretty busy with these projects. Are you always like that?
MG: No, there's this certain kind of momentum I feel I've created. I don't feel like I can relax yet. I think right now, while things are happening, I want to take full advantage of everything that's coming my way.
DL: So what made you come here?
MG: I don't know. It was an impulse. After the city, instead of getting a job right out of school, I don't think I was ready for that then. I ended up coming to New Mexico, ran out of money, got a job, stayed.
DL: This is a good place to run out of money.
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MG: Yeah. I was in Taos. It was good. It was fine.
DL: Can you tell me about the themes and stuff you're working with now?
MG: The piece that's in the museum window. Two black boxes with a white spinning figure - it's one spinning figure on the left and he's right-side up and the figure on the right is upside down and spinning in the opposite direction. The title is "Downward Spiral/Upward Spiral." Then there's another piece, "Gravity/Anti-gravity." It's a really jumbled view of the fall from the Gorge Bridge in Taos, all the way down through the canyon into the water. I let the camera fall.
DL: You dropped the camera?
MG: I dropped it on a fishing line. And spinning. All my pieces are (about) spinning and falling and ascension right now. And, like, bad and good.
DL: Do you ever psychoanalyze yourself with all this spinning and falling and stuff?
MG: Yeah. Definitely. I have really obsessive-compulsive tendencies about my visual world. I organize my visual world and I know exactly how things should look and I frame things. Maybe that's coming from a photographer's background. I don't think I do that in the rest of my life. I'm pretty laid-back, and I don't mind a mess, and I have a couple of screaming boys all the time and I can still work. I just think that's where I put all my need for order, so I have minimal stuff in my space. I'm really into boxes and squares and splitting them in half. And I have knowledge in basic physics.. I organize my visual world and then I ruin it. I let everything go out of control. I don't control the camera. I let it spin and I use a really low-res kind of toy camera right now. Then I organize it just enough so that it makes sense.
DL: Can you talk again about dropping the camera with the fishing line?
MG: I actually went through a whole series of technical problems with that project. Then I found these small, consumer products called the flip video camera and they sell a $20 watertight plastic case for it. It was a fun project for me because I got to go to the fishing supply store and talk to all the men there. They're so nice and they're always interested in someone who's not just getting gear to fish with. They helped me solve my problems and learn how to tie knots. I'm going to invite them to the show this piece is going to be on.
DL: Did you put the camera on the fishing hook?
MG: I tied a knot.
DL: That's such a cool image. Like, someone just fishing with this camera.
MG: OK. It was funny and all but, everyone walking by me, they were like, "Catch anything?" It's like a tourist spot. It's huge and amazing. But it's kind of a sore spot for me.
DL: Oh, so it's not that clever and funny to you.
MG: It's not clever and funny, but all that exists because it's clever and funny to other people. What it is to me doesn't completely matter once the piece is out in the world. It's for other people to look at. What I mean is that it might have started out for me about one thing, it's personal and cathartic for me. But it has to transform into something public and accessible. It reads for the viewer without the back-story.
DL: Well, you don't need to include the backstory, but it sounds like it has some sort of emotional backlash impact for you.
MG: I don't know if it's too much.
DL: You seemed a little upset by it, so we don't have to talk about this project.
MG: Honestly, I'm just struggling with how much I should tell because it's intense. The thing about artists is you don't always want to be like, "Oh, these poor tortured people," but I had a life-changing experience last summer when my husband jumped off the Gorge Bridge and died.
DL: Oh. Wow.
MG: So I'm kind of working through that. This project gave me an excuse to go there and spend time in that place. And then for me it was about seeing every inch and imagining what that was and coming to terms with that really as a physical fact.
DL: Man, I'm sorry.
MG: I feel like I'm calm and still and empty, and that everything is spinning and a lot of my pieces are, like, orientated in a directional way - down or up, falling or ascension, or east or west.
DL: So is that, like, a searching thing or more of an ambiguous, either-way thing?
MG: I think it's more of an ambiguous, either-way thing. I feel that's part of my belief system, that randomness seems to rule more than some sort of order.
DL: How did that affect your work?
MG: I wasn't like, "I'm never going to do work again." I was like, "I'm not going to let this stop me," but for a while it stopped me, and that was OK. Last semester - that was only last summer. So, last semester I pretty much made that one "Gravity/Anti-gravity" piece, and I taught my class. I was accountable to my students and it was the first time I taught. I did a good job but there wasn't all of me to give, for sure. And that was good to be teaching, and sometimes the students have great moments and sometimes they give you lame excuses and you just have to deal and it's kind of interesting.
DL: What are some lame excuses?
MG: Well, students give all kinds of lame excuses that really aren't well-thought-out. I can think of many ways that they could have foreseen that this would be a problem and how they could have not had that problem. Like, how they manage their time or they skip out on class and tell you everything's all in order and they're leaving. I'm not there to manage their lives, but I say OK - attendance matters and this project is due then, and they work all through the critique and come back at the end and say, "I have my project, half-done."
DL: Are you generally a hard-working, see-it-all-through type of person?
MG: I was the type of person who could do everything at the last minute but always get it done. And now I (get started) a few days before.
DL: The pressure helps fuel your creativity in a panicky way.
MG: I'm constantly thinking about my work, and its kind of conceptual, so I have to - most of the time I have to think and sleep on things and sit there and stare at my reflection in the mirror. Four in the morning, just think and figure things out. Why am I doing this, you know?
DL: Sounds like philosophy stuff. I think good artists are philosophers with artistic ability.
MG: Yeah, without the language ability, maybe, but more visual ability of some kind.
DL: Yeah. Because you do a lot of work just staring at stuff. If you're painting, you just stare at the painting a long time. It's not all action.
MG: Time has to go by.
