Interview with Jaime Knight

1. What does a typical week look like for you? How do you balance art making with other responsibilities in your life?

I'm very lucky to teach at an Art and Design college that supports the creative research of it's faculty, and to live in a space that includes my studio. I generally have one or two fully dedicated days in the studio per week. That said, I'm not a "make everyday" kind of artist. I work more in fits and bursts. I try to spend free time on teaching days doing the administrative work of being an artist, and I often am at school working on research that sort of crosses the boundary of teaching and creative practice, where I am using the facilities at the college. Aside from that, I also try and exercise several days a week, and my partner and I like to spend time cooking and eating together. I'm a bit of an introvert/extrovert, so love to be at home/in the studio but have an awesome community of friends and colleagues I like to spend time with.

2. Your work appears to involve quite a bit of research, what does your research process look like?

A lot of the research is done online at the moment, and for past projects I have spent time physically in the archive (either at ONE in LA or the LGBT Historical Society here in SF). A big part of research for me is material research and that just takes place in the studio or at school in the paper making studio, print studio or rapid prototyping studio.

3. What is your best advice for getting work out into the world?

Go to everything, talk to everyone, apply, apply, apply. It's the hardest part of being an artist but it truly comes down to who you know in a lot of ways. Also make work that YOU like and don't worry about making work for anyone else or trying to please your audience. Getting shown is in someways about how much people like you over how much they like your work. If it's genuine, people will respond to it.

4. I see that you work in a variety of media, how do you decide what medium or media you use for each work?

It really just depends on the project. Right now I'm working on drawings, but using the laser cutter to do much of the work because the surface I'm creating is fairly indelible. I see them as hybrid drawing/prints. I'm continually moving back and forth between drawing, prints and sculptures, and depending on if I'm working collaboratively or not some other kind of media. Sometimes I wonder about being one of those artists who sticks with one medium for the entirety of their career, but I think I would just get bored. When I was in undergrad I wanted to learn as many skills as I could so I could make anything I wanted to. I like to use all those skills, they work different parts of the brain.

5. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your college age self?

WORK HARDER AT BEING MORE AMBITIOUS