An Interview with Alexa Dunham
Interviewer: Monica Magtoto
MM: Tell us a little bit about what you do.
AD: Honestly I’m still growing into my style, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my work. Right now I really enjoy portraiture. I see beauty in the subtleties of people’s faces that most people I know overlook, and I like to depict people in a blunt, colorful way that accentuates those.
MM: What was the worst critique/review/feedback you were ever given and
how did it make you feel?
AD: At the 2009 Otis internship fair when I was showing my portfolio around I could tell when people were giving me the “that’s cute, but we can’t use someone like you” goodbye smile. I’d hear things along the lines of my work not being cohesive enough, my style not being what anyone was looking for. My work didn’t have enough broken buildings and zombies and wasn’t concept-y enough for any of the game companies to get excited about it, and it wasn’t cartoony or kid-friendly enough for any of the big childrens’ TV networks to take a second look. I just didn’t fit into what employers were looking for. With the economy tanking that year and Otis banging into my head every day that I needed to get a job, I already felt like a failure because I knew I’d never be able to cramp my style into what the movie or game industry wanted, and I didn’t have enough of a sense of self to keep my head above the water after basically being told that my work looked alright but wasn’t useful to anyone.
MM: How did that experience change or not change the way you feel/felt
about your art?
AD: It made me wonder if I even wanted to DO art for a living if what I was seeing was what the rest of my life would look like.
MM: What did you do about it?
AD: What I’d always wanted to do—I disappeared. Ran off, what have you. I just got away and pressed a big fat pause button on my art life and worked on myself and who I thought I was.
MM: What has your time at Otis taught you about yourself/ your work?
AD: Not a lot of people at Otis know this, but as I approached college, I struggled with choosing either art or academia, because both are dear to me. I spent my childhood reading encyclopedias, collecting and breeding bugs, going to nerd camp (Duke TIP represent!), studying space and animals and ecosystems, and just being a geeky little kid. Being at Otis was hard because there were not a lot of people I could identify with in that sense—it really is an art school. I had trouble getting along with people at first, and at times I truly wished that I gave more of a shit about badly recorded indie music or Halo 2 or America’s Next Top Model or whatever else people were talking about, just so I wouldn’t feel like such an island. Eventually, though, I did find like-minded people and teachers who put brainpower into their work and you could see how strong of an impact it made. I realized that my backdoor love affair with science and constant munchies for information would be my greatest assets as an artist. I became wildly interested in the physical properties of light, the anatomy of the eye, the structure of the human body, how people see other people, how facial recognition works in the brain, to name a few subjects. Science rules.
MM: What was it like going home? How did it affect your work? What did you learn?
AD: Home. That’s a funny word. I don’t really feel like I have one, truthfully. I left Otis after an overly exhausting sophomore year that left me not knowing who I was. I felt like Otis ate me. I lived at my grandma’s house until about September in a peaceful, tiny town in the Midwest, and it was nice in that it really made me stare myself down in every possible way and confront things I didn’t want to look at. However, I had nobody to relate to and the environment quickly became inhibiting and boring, so I ran away to a college town in Indiana that was home to a high profile engineering school and I lived with two computer engineering students and a bio-med for the rest of the year. Those people became my home. I was only there for eight months but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like a giraffe in a pasture of horses. One of the students I lived with was a friend I had met at nerd camp in 2005 and we began dating. I drew him endlessly and after memorizing and drawing all of the subtleties in his face over and over again, I got a lot sharper with portraiture in general.
I couldn’t find a job, so I DJed at the school radio station for the last quarter and just enjoyed being under the radar and living my own life. The station got this fan letter from this prison nearby where Timothy McVeigh was executed(apparently the prison really enjoyed the station), and this guy named Edward who was serving life wrote my name in it and said that he liked my show. All I did was play songs I liked off of my laptop. I even let facebook and AIM noises slip over the air more than a few times. But this guy! I can’t explain it, but it changed how I looked at things. I also experienced my first real winter. I learned how to live off of NO money, how to stay warm, how to bake the tastiest bread ever for less than three bucks, and how to love everything from baby leaves to people better than I knew how to before.
MM: What are your plans now that you’re back in LA?
AD: I interned all summer with Columbia Records at Sony, which was a blast, and I might go back there in the fall. I’m also going back to Otis to finish my degree, so most of my life for the next two years will belong to the DGMD.
MM: What is your favorite medium?
AD: Oil paint, oil paint, oil paint forever. Give me my cancer right now!
MM: What is your favorite subject matter to paint/draw?
AD: Beautiful, interesting people that make you stop thinking about whatever you’re thinking about and just stare.
MM: What do you do when you’re not doing art?
AD: I read comic books and I internet. I also like looking for new music—I’m a sucker for house and drum and bass, and most things electronic. I also love nature and I love taking spontaneous trips into Santa Barbara or just into the mountains on random nights. I have also become a bit of a foodie in the last year so I really like looking for new things to cook and new restaurants to go to.
MM: What’s your next project? Any secret projects to look forward to??
AD: Yeeesssss. I’m doing a series of parody portraits, but I’m going to keep the theme a surprise!
MM: What would you like to say to the underdogs?
AD: Don’t waste time being too serious, be as raw as you can, and don’t limit your dreams by defining them as just dreams. They will happen if you make them happen and you will be blown away.
To see more of Alexa’s work visit:
