Artist, writer and performer Janis Butler Holm was forced inside by the Covid pandemic. We spoke to her about the impact of lockdown on her creative practice and how she has learnt to find beauty in the smallest and most familiar of places, as we share her photo series 'Studies of Light'.
You work across a whole range of creative disciplines. Tell us about what you create.
I've worked in poetry, prose, drama, and, more recently, illustration. Given that I've not had a writing class since high school--or an art class ever--all my efforts are experimental. I've moved between genres frequently because I like differing challenges.
You’ve shared that you are immunocompromised so the pandemic forced you into personal lockdown for the duration. Can you talk about the impact this had on your work, both through lockdown and since coming out of lockdown?
I'm actually still in personal lockdown. Though we're all tired of Covid, evidently it's not yet tired of us.
The pandemic has affected me negatively when it comes to language. Given the combination of a raging deadly disease, the assault on Ukraine, war in the Middle East, and the threats to American democracy from a would-be dictator, I have found myself without words--something I attribute to mental overload. There's been too much bad news to process effectively.
Though I've not been isolated from vaccinated friends and family, I've spent most of the pandemic within my apartment. Working first with AI and then with photography, images have been my chief means of experimentation and self-expression.
How do you trigger inspiration for yourself when you can’t find it from outside stimuli?
What has happened is that I've found myself looking for inside stimuli.
This photo series is created by light entering your room. How did you begin taking these photos? When did you first notice beauty in this light?
A friend of mine who lived in New York City composed some beautiful abstracts by taking photos of the visual intersections of buildings when one is gazing upward. During Covid lockdown, it occurred to me that it might be possible to find some interesting intersections deep within one's surroundings, as well as outside. I began looking more closely at walls, doorways, windows--structures that intersect with other structures inside my home. In this context, the beauty of light coming through blinds could not be overlooked.
Your work finds beauty in the familiar, the close to home. What have you discovered about beauty, looking at it and for it in this new way?
That we take for granted much that is beautiful in our world--however small that world might be.
Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems, art, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and the U.K.
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