Caui Lofgren
Kailua, Hawaii
Website
cauilofgren.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
Although my work spans various mediums, and might be described as mixed- media, I approach composition and color as a landscape painter. While I am sometimes referred to as a collage artist, my work is more like collage paintings where I place bits of paper the way a painter might apply brushstrokes. Furthermore, I work interchangeably between painting back into collages and applying collage on top of paintings.
What inspires you?
I am interested in the American landscape, especially as experienced from a road trip. My parents are immigrants from Sweden who arrived on the East Coast in the early 1960’s and travelled by car to the West Coast. My father is half Filipino and had experienced racism in Sweden, a country far more homogenous at the time. My parents were beatnik hippies who had travelled extensively around Europe inspired by beat writers like Kerouac. Their goal was to see America, explore the US and participate in the civil rights and free speech movements in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Currently, my family and I also take road trips and I think about the changes in perception on the American landscape. While Baudrillard’s assertion that America is built to be seen through a car window holds true, there is a new frame from which we perceive the American landscape- the screen. Having an authentic experience and finding the “real” America, if there ever was such a thing, seems ever more elusive these days with an overabundance of information and misinformation. Mixed-media collage seemed the best medium for conveying the tension between the actual environment and the surreal juxtapositions, simulations, and popular folklore that now populate our relationship with the land. Dividing my time between Florida and Hawaii, my interest in travel and leisure has been furthered by how the natural beauty and resources of these subtropical environments have been impacted by tourism.
Can you speak about your process?
I start all works of art playfully. Having taught art at an international sport academy, I find parallels with sport where the canvas, or whatever substrate you happen to be working on, is like a field where you impose rules and conventions anticipating much improvisation will take place. I grew up as a skateboarder and when I reflect on the hours spent completely absorbed and thoroughly amused by inanimate objects such as benches and curbs, I realized the inherent imagination and creativity required to reach that flow state. I am looking for that same feeling and flow in art. Collage painting does this for me as there is always something that needs to be done, cutting, pasting, painting, or just contemplating, always approaching it from new angle.
How did you become interested in art?
My father was an artist and the first tool he gave me was a pair of scissors, which he said would help me see positive and negative space. This holds true even more today as I cut with an X-acto knife. My drawing technique has changed because of my recent cutting as I am now even more conscious of the line as a cut that creates two shapes on each side. My pressure has changed as well, pressing harder the way one might press when using an X-acto knife.
While I always enjoyed making art, it was during high school when I learned I could pursue a career in art that I got more serious about it, looking for patterns of interest to create a body of work and applying to college. Once I learned I could study art in college, my grades improved across all subjects and my education became a far more meaningful endeavor.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
As mentioned above, Kerouac was an early influence tied into my family history and got me thinking about the beauty of the American landscape. During my more recent cross-country road trips, I read Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, a brutal account of our violent history that persists to this day in newly emerging forms. It helped me see how some of the mythology around personal liberty, freedom, and Manifest Destiny have been used historically to keep an elite few in power. My favorite fiction authors are Don Delillo and Jonathan Franzen who with character driven plots paint portraits of the psychology of living in postmodern America with its constant contradictions and disjointed experiences.
In high school, I spent my weekends going to punk rock shows, writing graffiti, and making zines with friends. I think this low-fi, grassroots approach to culture carries into my work today. While I am adept at working in Photoshop, I still prefer the analog version of cutting and pasting. Indie rock’s Robert Pollard’s collaged lyrics in the band Guided By Voices and the lyrical poetry of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Aeroplane over the Sea where loosely based surreal imagery emerge from the historically rooted Diary of Anne Frank helped shape my aesthetic and general practice.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Follow your interest wherever it takes you and do your research. There is so much freedom in the art world. Nothing is off limits. It’s a great time to be an artist.
