Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Struble.
Eva, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I grew up in rural Ohio and Baltimore to an engineer father and artist mother as an only child- I got used to entertaining myself much of the time. I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, and still enjoy hiking, camping and gardening a lot (now, if I only had a garden!) At this point, with a one-year old, I think outdoor time is the most important thing for my son, beyond other activities stressing “developmental milestones.”
My interests were varied through my life (at one point my focus in college was the study of developing countries, and I ended up studying abroad in Senegal) but eventually I got an MFA in 2006. I went to Yale School of Art, where I had a great experience and which also provided a good bridge into a career in New York as an artist. This was incredible to pay off college by working as an artist, something I had never imagined. I had a good stint in New York before ending up doing some residencies in Spain that kept me there more than a year. Barely back in New York a year, I was offered a job at SDSU in 2011, where I’ve been since. It’s been great both to teach at SDSU and also to do special projects like murals on and off campus with students, and teach study abroad in Morocco and France.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
My paintings and installations deal with landscape through the lens of social and environmental histories in cities where I’ve lived. I’ve done bodies of work dealing with Superfund (heavily polluted) sites in Baltimore, the wrought environmental story of Newtown Creek in Brooklyn and in relation to labor and stories of farms around San Diego. My work is colorful, and plays with traditional viewpoints and modes of depth using oil, acrylic, screen-printing and more recently three-dimensional media. In recent years I began using materials like painted bamboo (for an exhibit at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park) and hand-sewn and layered fabric for a 16′ tall hanging work I’m showing soon at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego this fall. I enjoy exploring new and strange places as research for my work and finding out relatively unknown histories of place. This joins a studio practice that is more intuitively oriented around color and texture.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
As far as creating and maintaining a community as an artist, both for your own personal benefit and for your career, use college as a time to form connections with other student artists and your teachers, and work to maintain those ties later. This community will likely be the one to support you and help you continue a studio practice once you’re out of school and working more. I notice some students in my classes are hesitant to get to know each other in art classes, but they’ll really be each other’s network in a few short years.
I would say, if you’re a young person looking to do an MFA program, don’t wait too long to do it (especially if you’d like to later have a career and family) and if you’re short on cash, either find one that is funded, inexpensive, or one that is so stellar that you’ll have good job prospects afterwards to pay off those loans!
Practical lessons I wish I had learned earlier? Don’t ignore any bills, those will come back to haunt you. Only buy what you need in order to pay off your (one) credit card in full every month. It may seem normal in the U.S. to have a lot of credit card debt but you’re really just giving your life and time away to big corporate banks.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I’m excited have work in the upcoming exhibit, “Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo,” at the MCASD downtown, and just had a painting in the exhibit “High-Key Color in Southern California” at SDAI. That work was based off a farm in City Heights called Earthlab. I’m working on an installation for the New Children’s Museum for this fall which will be an interesting new direction using folded, sewn vinyl on a large scale. You can also see a large mural I made for the San Diego Airport up on Admiral Boland Way until 2019. The piece reveals weird details if you get a chance to actually walk up to it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.evastruble.com
- Email: eva.struble@gmail.com
Image Credit:
Eva Struble and Alex Kershaw with Elastic Lens Photography.
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