My name is Linda Hall. I am a multimedia artist. I live in Tallahassee and I have a studio in Smoky Hollow.
I find the south a very comfortable place to live and I got a taste of many other places when I was growing up.
And I've decided to return to the south because I feel at home here. The literature and the art that comes from the south, I'm very attracted to the narratives.
I feel like my work sort of fits into that narrative. My sculptures and my paintings sort of suggest a narrative that something is about to happen or has just happened.
Quilting came to me with objects that I got from my great grandmother and my grandmother. My great grandmother made beautiful dresses and quilts.
And it was never taught formally how to do it. I haven't been blessed with having a lot of money so usually I make art with just what I have.
And I like that because there's a certain intimacy with the materials anyways.
I surround myself with materials that I love. Again, intuitively I'll just pick something up because it sparks something and I'll bring it in and perhaps put it under glass and add it to my curiosity cabinet that I use for inspiration and sometimes materials.
If you look around my studio you'll see a wide variety of materials such as deer antlers, deer skulls, a variety of papers and of course fabrics.
And I'll glean from these materials and put together my puppets.
I also use human hair. I have a wide variety of bags of hair that people have given me through the years and to me that kind of gives my sculptures a little bit more resonance.
My latest body of work has been making animals and wild animals in particular out of materials such as handmade quilts and tatting and lace work that are made by hand.
And I think a lot of these works that I've inherited from my grandmother and great grandmother you can't really make much use of in your daily life.
So I thought I would put them to use and sort of give them a second life.
There's that famous Chinese proverb, a man who does not have enemies as a donkey.
Not that I'm out there trying to make enemies, but you certainly can't please all the people all the time.
When I make work, I'm not trying to make people happy. I'm not trying to temper my work in order to make it easier to look at. Like I said, it's more of something that I'm doing for myself.
And of course it's wonderful when there's somebody there that gets it.
And I do have enough of that to know that there's an aspect of my work that is a universal aspect to it.
But that's not why I make it. And I do have people that will say, you know, this looks like voodoo.
Why do you make things that aren't pretty? I feel nauseated. I feel uncomfortable when I look at that.
And I sort of hope that it does have that quality. I don't want it to be just pretty. I want it to be more than pretty.
I want it to come from the gut and talk about what's really like to be a human and have a body and what it's like to be here.
I'm not going to say that I'm going to be here, but I'm going to be here.
I'm going to be here.
I'm going to be here.
