(1977; 16mm film, sound; 82 minutes; Laura Lehrer, dir.; unreleased)
Jess sits in the middle of her studio, her wooden chair angled slightly toward the windows, the source of the image’s clean white light. She faces the camera, waiting. Then, suddenly self-conscious or aware of a returned gaze, she looks away.
She is thin and pale. Her face is drawn, and her prominent features—the high cheekbones, the bump halfway down the bridge of her nose—appear here as raw vulnerabilities or past injuries newly surfaced. Her hands move restlessly in her lap; the index finger of her right worries at a patch of paint on her left. She wears the sleeveless T-shirt and white painter’s pants. Her hair is a dark swoop framing her face. The image would seem black-and-white except for her eyes, flashes of vivid green between anxious blinks.
It is a late summer afternoon, a month after the events at Zero Zone, just a few hours before the gallery attack, before the scar that will mark her face with a thin white line.
- To be honest, I’m surprised you agreed to speak with me. I know you’re not talking to reporters.
Jess looks toward the voice, the director, Laura Lehrer, speaking off-frame just over the camera’s right shoulder. Laura’s voice is a surprise in the room, accented, a cool, liquid Australian.
Jess gives a paper-thin smile.
- You’re not a reporter. And I think it’ll be good to talk about early work, about others’ work. When you called you said you were interested in what’s been happening in L.A. over the last ten years or so?
- Yes. Artists working with light and space.
- Have you spoken with anyone else?
- Not yet.
Jess takes a deep breath.
- I don’t want to talk about anything recent.
- I understand. So let’s go back to the beginning. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
- I was a late bloomer. I was in high school, I think.
- Is that late?
- It felt late. Everyone I met in college made it seem like they had always known, that they had never entertained any other possibilities.
- But you didn’t grow up thinking of yourself that way?
- No. My brother was the artist.
- Does he still make art?
Jess shakes her head and closes her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her lids. When she opens them again she seems slightly disoriented, as if she has just returned from some other place. It takes her a moment to refocus, first on the windows, then back on the woman behind the camera.
- That’s not entirely true, what I said about not knowing. I did some things early on, I painted on these big sheets of paper my father brought home from work. So maybe I had my suspicions. But it felt like a very private activity, something I shouldn’t have been doing.
- How so?
- Zack was the artist. My parents introduced him that way. This is our son, Zachary. He’s an artist. And this is our daughter, Jessica.
Jess leans forward, folding at the waist, reaching out of frame. When she sits back up she’s holding a pack of Pall Malls, the bold red label another disturbance in the nearly monochromatic image. She taps a cigarette, places it between her lips.
- So your first paintings were made in secret. As acts of rebellion?
- A rebellion against expectations. Or a lack of expectation.
Digging into her pants pocket, she comes up with a silver flip-top lighter. The metal catches the light, a quick glint, and then the small flame appears. She leans in until the cigarette catches.
- I was never told not to paint. It wasn’t forbidden. It just wasn’t anything that anyone considered.
- What did you paint?
- Dreams, memories. I had discovered Joan Mitchell’s paintings, Barnett Newman, Rothko. Zack had a subscription to ARTnews and in every issue they printed a few color reproductions. I snuck into his room and turned the pages and stared.
The first hint of a real smile here, at the memory.
- Did you understand then what you were trying to do?
Jess seems about to answer, but then stops herself, reconsiders.
- I was trying to re-create a place. I had this experience once, when I was younger. The world around me disappeared. A new space opened up—a possibility beyond what I thought of as everyday life. Or within everyday life.
She has regained some confidence now. She sits a little taller in the chair.
- I wanted to find that space again. I wanted to share it.