Evie Altman has attended four ArtOMatics, participated in one other than this year’s, and is currently on the leadership team for 2012.  “ArtOMatic’s democratic ideal first caught my attention – this was before I was even making art!  It Reminded me of college or alternative radio where you could hear a punk song, followed by Robert Johnson blues, followed by Radiohead, Charles Mingus, Bob Marley, Tuvan throat singing, etc.  I love that you can walk through a room and see erotic photos of nakes mean next to an abstract fiber artist and landscape paintings.  Here, it’s easier to listen to my own inner critic, instead of being shown what I’m supposed to like.”

Self taught, Evie exhibited for the first time anywhere at ArtOMatic 2009.  “ArtOMatic reminds me of The Gift, a book by Lewis Hyde about creativity in the modern world.  Yeah, a lot of people exhibit at ArtOMatic to sell their work and find gallery representation, but it seems that the spirit is more toward creating art for beauty’s sake instead of commerce, sharing and community instead of self-promotion.”

TransUtero, Evie’s installation, is on the fourth floor on the north side of the elevators.  The room bridges the east and west corridors there (the best experience of it, according to Evie, is to enter from the West side and exit on the Carl Cordell Theater side.).

Describe what you’ll be showing this year.

TransUtero is my first attempt at an installation, and it’s been a doozy!  Around six months ago, when I first heard about ArtOMatic being held in 2012, I started collecting wine and liquor bottles from recycling bins around my nighborhood.  Didn’t know what to do with the bottles, but I knew bottle would be involved.  I went back and forth and back and forth and whatever I envisioned, it always included walking through a corridor of bottles.  So I started drilling a hole in the bottom of each bottle so I could hang them some way or another.  I scoured the internet for a diamond-tip drill bit that would last more than eight or so bottles, and I found this great supplier out of Oklahoma.  Really nice guys.  Anyway, I kept collecting bottles every Tuesday night, soaking each bottle for a few hours to get the labels off, and then drilling holes, still not sure of my direction.

Virginia’s General Assembly helped make up my mind.  Their completely barbaric law requiring trans-vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion provoked anger and feelings of helplessness:  I decided to create a giant uterus and demonstrate Virginia’s ultra-paternalistic invasiveness.

By the time it was April I was drilling bottles like crazy.  At some point, one of my daughters counted up all the bottles now overtaking my bedroom and came up with more than 500.  So I stopped collecting bottles (although people kept dropping them on the front porch) and started painting.  Using a mixture of found latex house paint, I coated each bottle twice and also painted the bottom.  The base coat was fast and furious but the second coat I took some time with, swirling paint around and trying to produce a more visceral effect. It took three truckloads to get all the bottles here.  Then we had to build the framework to hold them all up, drop a faux ceiling, string the bottles, hang them, etc.  It was definitely the most involved art piece I’ve ever completed!

Why should a visitor make a special trip to visit your space?

I give tangible representation to a sad, retro ideal of punishing women.  Some people love the installatio  – some people have found it ‘evocative’ (what they’ve said to avoid hurting my feelings!).  Inside the room, it’s actually very peaceful and warm and calm, like a uterus.  I also think it’s fairly beautiful.  We may feel helpless against this and other similar laws, but we still are allowed our forms of expression.

Evie has been making art for about six years.  Before that, writing was her primary form of expression, stunted by lack of time between working and raising her three daughters.

“I was going crazy (literally) not being able to express myself.  I’ve always thought visually, so I started cutting and painting wood, which I could do in short bursts of time.  In fact, for the first few years, I melded the written word and visual perception by creating treatises on particular word’s meanings, such as ‘Deserve,’ ‘Weight,’ ‘Religio,’ and ‘Grounded’ among the rest.”

Before TransUtero Evie worked in wood.  She says she enjoyed the freedom of power tools and using them to frame her visions – which seemed to get bigger and bigger.  She starts by sketching out her idea, then cuts and sands the wood.  After that comes priming, painting, decorating with glitter, beads, LED lighting and found objects and then varnishing and mounting or hanging the piece.  “Although I look forward to working with wood again, I have a bunch of bottles still calling my name, and I’m thinking of a piece for our front porch.”  Evie notes she can’t do the same thing twice as she gets too bored!

Evie says that she’s actually checked out all the floors of ArtOMatic this year because she wants to be prepared to show her favorites to her parents who are visiting from California.  Her favorite list includes:  “really cool, airbrushed, cut wood pieces by Drew Graham (03-136); the colors of  Julia D’Ambrosi (04-353); the fabric, multi-colored wall piece by Sarah Murphy (04-290); all those photographs so cleverly presented in a wall of boxes by Devonne Ross (08-140); Jennifer Lambert’s folded paper on fabric (08-288); the wood spine-like table by Nate Lucas (08-303) and Christian Tribastone’s pen/ink pieces on cardboard (09-159).  “If I had money, I would so buy something from each of these artists!  I also really love what Barry Schmetter came up with (on the 11th floor) with all the security cameras and wire we found throughout the building while we were getting it ready for installation!”

You can find more of Evie’s work on her website, http://www.eviealtman.com, her Facebook page, and at her home.  She’s already sold an 8-foot bottle tree!

To read more interviews and see more photographs from ArtOMatic 2012 and earlier ArtOMatics, go here.