her drawings can be found on the sleeve of the ethyl meatplow single 'queenie' (sftri) and on the cover of the self titled lp (12" vinyl = large artwork!) by one of carla's first bands... invisible chains (new alliance). i will be hanging scans of these covers soon.
(transcribed from fiz magazine vol 1 #3 / september/october 1992) (jennifer also took the photos that accompany this article.)
Carla Bozulich started making art when she was 13 years old and has been in bands since she was 16. She has had no formal training in music and very little in art. She is part of the band Ethyl Meatplow which has recently been signed to Chameleon/Elektra Records. The importance of Carla's personal history recurs constantly when talking about her work. She refers back to when she first started making art to describe what it means to her now. "Visual art is something that came to me before music; it came to me really early. When I was about 13 things started to pretty much fall apart for me, and you could pretty much say I started vomiting out artwork. It was a really serious time for me and [art] was one of my only solaces."
"I had stopped going to school and everybody was very up in arms about that so they had me going with these written pieces of paper to each class that got signed by each teacher because I was ditching school constantly."
'After a while, since the only class I would attend is art class, as a last ditch effort they gave me [art class] six periods a day. That worked for awhile and then it stopped working."
She gets inspiration from her music and her art from "my own history and things that I find funny or absurd or interesting."
"Right now the painting that I want to do has to do with that time in life when I first started painting. I know exactly what it is, but I don't want to say because I don't want to jinx it."
"My ideas have gone through a lot of transitions but now what I think comes out when I do my artwork..." She pauses to think. "I would like to say that it's not based in some kind of pain, but I think it usually is. Pain or discomfort. But I'm in a much better state in my head nowadays, so it's almost more of an itch than a pain. I can feel that itch and I have to do something.
"There has been a big difference in my work since I have become [a little more balanced emotionally]. Mostly it's in the process of what I'm doing. I don't think that my subject matter or my inspiration is any less intense, but I think that the process is a lot more relaxed."
"Carla as a person--I've been one of those people who's been through too much craziness to ever feel like I'm a balanced person. I really want that very much, and I pretty much have it now, but I still go through pretty radical mood swings."
Lately, Carla's two media have intersected, as her paintings are on the recent Ethyl Meatplow single "Queenie"/"Whore."
"Queenie" the song definitely connects with the painting [of the girl] very well, Carla says. "The painting is just a girl that's masturbating. She's alone. When I do art, it's not like I'm trying to express something that I consciously think of, but I get more of an idea after it's done what I'm driving at. The girl, she's really isolated and she's masturbating. She's just in a void and she's masturbating."
"I did the horse to expand the idea of the girl. I think that in an ideal situation, the horse would be facing the girl.
"It's like the striped horse." [A small stuffed animal that Carla sleeps with.] "It's my buddy. The horse painting is a horse that I draw a lot. That horse comes up all the time. It's always sticking out its tongue. I think the horse represents a lecherous, mischievous kind of person or personality. I don't think it's threatening, it's more funny I think."
Asked about another way visual art and music can intersect, in he presentation of songs onstage, she says, "I don't think of [Ethyl Meatplow's live shows] at all as performance art. I don't at all. Maybe with the dancers a bit. We've never just sat down and thought about how to present the music. Well, John [Napier of Ethyl Meatplow] is just such a freak anyway; you just wind him up and let him go. He's wonderful to watch. With me, pretty much all I'm doing is singing, and I get so high from doing that you could probably stick a pin in me and I wouldn't feel it. It's really fun. You gotta try it.
"What I get a lot, with Ethyl Meatplow is people misunderstand--they must just be misunderstanding, because they're just totally off the mark. They think that we're just some kind of sex act thing, and they're totally wrong. It's like wrong, wrong, wrong. What I'm doing is making music the way I want to."
Do music and art compete for space and time in her life? "One benefit I get from doing [visual] work is that when I get something finished I have a very clean feeling and that's really nice. I have a really, really self-satisfied feeling."
"Music is different. What runs through my conscious mind all the time is music. I'm always thinking about writing music. My process with art is that an idea will strike me and it will go in my list of things to do. Like right now I have this painting I want to do in my head, and it's just in my head, but it's done. But with music, I'm always thinking about music or melody."
For now, she has a specific goal for the content of both types of work. "Right now, I'm very interested in art and music, in finding the humor in the absurdity. That's sort of my goal in the next year or two. At least have it have that dimension to it, because otherwise I get very frustrated with my work."
back issues of fiz are available for $3
fiz 1509 queen anne ave north #276, seattle wa 98109
their web page disappeared around the first of the year so i can't offer you a direct link... but to obtain copies of the magazine you can contact bananafish via tedium house productions po box 424762 san francisco sf 94142-4762 or try the mailorder arm of revolver distribution midheaven mailorder.
...is there a reason not to be looking forward to the nels cline solo lp which father yod promises to release sometime before the turn of the century? you say you don't have a turntable to play it on? wellllll... why not plan on getting a copy just so you can gaze at the special drawing which carla has made for the insert/liner notes?
email lord_ouch@aol.com