“Oh, look at that. I’ve been impaled.” - Olaf (Frozen)

 INTERVIEW:

Simon Tosky: Your show captures how a lot of people currently feel, that we are either running on thin ice or that we've already plunged into a hellscape.  Your work addresses this with a nuanced humor. 

What do you think about reality and how does it play out as a lens in your work?

Aaron Lockhart: There are many realities. Those “realities,” or how we understand ourselves as being “in the world,” are increasingly manipulated by images. I love them, but I’m also quite suspicious of them because they can tell any story we want them to. An image’s meaning shifts and changes depending on what other images and language it butts up against. I often think about memes and how one singular image can become many different punch-lines to many different jokes. That’s fascinating and terrifying.

For me, drawing has become a way to slow things down and ask, “Is this worth looking at?” It’s a cheap trick to make people pay attention as we swipe through Instagram at an incomprehensible pace.

Simon Tosky: I loved how the images in your show reference different levels of culture. Olaf from Frozen, a sign you can find at any Home Goods store, a still from the Vice Presidential debates, and the occult etc. It is interesting how you've wrangled them together to create your story.

How do you navigate through these levels of culture? What inspires you in particular images and what are things you dislike?

Aaron Lockhart: My subjects tend to come about pretty organically, like following a train of thought. If I think something might work well as a drawing, I snag it and file it away.

For instance, I began thinking about this exhibition while visiting my family in Alabama. My mom has a “rustic” wooden sign hanging above the kitchen table that reads “Gather” (which I found particularly paradoxical midst the pandemic), so I started shopping around for similar decor. I thought I might make a drawing my mom likes for once.

I had to quarantine for 14 days when I returned from Alabama. During that time, I watched Frozen 2 and couldn’t help but see Olaf as the perfect embodiment of a climate change denier. He’s this buffoon of a snowman that refuses to melt in the light of day. Fortunately, magic is on his side. 

I don’t really think about likes and dislikes when mining source material. I dislike many things, but those things are part of the world we live in. It’s only fair I give them attention and try to understand their power.

Simon Tosky: America is such a large place, that I have almost no reference point for what Alabama is or what the American South is like. What was it like growing up in Alabama?

Aaron Lockhart: Growing up in Alabama was both wonderful and awful. I knew by kindergarten or 1st grade that I was gay, which veiled my experience of the South and made growing up in a Southern Baptist church particularly confusing. When I was about 10 years old, our church hosted a “Fall Festival Talent Show.” At the time, I was obsessed with Celine Dion’s album, “Let’s Talk About Love.” With mom cheering me on, I performed “Treat Her Like A Lady” in front of our congregation in full drag… and I won. Not long after that, the teasing started at school, self-consciousness crept in, and it seemed that everything I liked was taken away from me. After coming out in high school, I had to attend a “conversion conference” at a mega-church in Atlanta and even drove several hours away to see a Christian counselor in Tennessee every two weeks because my parents didn’t want people in town to know I was gay. Those were tough times, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Any feelings of “otherness” I had in my youth have allowed me to empathize with those who feel different and marginalized today. I’ll always have a complicated relationship with my home state, but there really is nothing like the South. Flip-flops on red dirt roads, the color of the sky before tornados touch down, cicadas screeching from trees, organs accompanying congregations, raucous crowds chanting in unison… and my precious family, always knowing how to have a laugh.

Simon Tosky: Your technical abilities in your medium are clearly very beefy. I don't think I've ever in my entire life span have made a graphite drawing as rendered as what you do. What is it like to make your drawings? How did you arrive at this medium of choice?

Aaron Lockhart: I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. I was good at it, and it impressed people, so I just kept doing it. I remember, in 4th grade, making pencil drawings on lined notebook paper of the fake topiary we had on our front porch at home. My classmates all wanted one to slide into the front cover of their three-ringed binders.

I think I’ve always been interested in art that makes the most out of the least stuff. I like that all you need to make a drawing is a pencil and paper. I guess I keep making drawings today because they are a way for me to have the things I can’t have. They are a way for me to hold someone’s attention. They are a way for me to think. A drawing is the one thing I know I can control in this increasingly complicated, polarizing, and outrageous world we live in.

Simon Tosky: What do you cherish most about being gay?

Aaron Lockhart: I think I spent so much time hiding who I was when I was young. I’m 31 years old now, and I’m still dealing with my own internalized homophobia, but I’ve learned to love myself, mostly. I’ve allowed myself to be vulnerable, and that vulnerability has led me to love. I have the most beautiful partner in the world (he’s dancing in a wig and high waisted trousers downstairs as I type this). I hold his hand walking down the street in Kingston. My parents have invited him to Christmas the last few years, and they send us care packages in the mail year-round. I never thought I could have this for myself. I feel so very fortunate to be gay.