MSW Interviews: Elizabeth Briel – Global Artist, Travel Writer, Perpetual Nomad

Extraordinary people are doing extraordinary things all over the world. This month, MSW brings you a series of interviews with three nomadic artists, all from very different backgrounds. Global artist, published author and art educator, Elizabeth Briel, demonstrates that following your dreams and living a nomadic lifestyle is completely within reach if you have the determination and ambition to make it happen. Read on to find out how she did it.

MSW: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

EB: I paint sharp-witted women, print creepy-looking photographs of disappearing places, and write with an Asian focus. I prefer old techniques – like 19th century cyanotype blueprints – to make my images with a modern edge. You can see what I’m talking about here in my gallery. Frequently I’m told, “You’re quiet for an American.” Though I may speak politely, my attitude is anything but sweet.

MSW: You’re an artist and a writer. Have these two passions been enough to sustain your way of living over the past decade?

EB: It is a very different mentality to being something ["I'm an Artist"] vs. actually doing it ["I paint"]. I make art and I write – that’s my work. Has been ever since I can remember. In the past, I wasn’t paid for it; now I am. Frequently when people refer to their “passions” or things they “love to do,” they relegate them to the dustbin of dreams or hobbies. It can be a barrier to professionalism.

Previously, I often worked at day-jobs that added to my art/writing skills and offered travel opportunities. A selection: I designed portfolios for photographers and artists in New York; translated for antiques dealers in Paris and Avignon; painted and sandblasted art glass; wrote personal ads for lonely-hearts agencies around the US; gave painting workshops in Hong Kong; and assisted preferred passengers at the largest travel tour company in the US. When I worked at day-jobs, my focus was always on writing and art rather than the task at hand, as any former colleagues would agree.

MSW: Could you give us a breakdown of how you make an income?

EB: I sell work to collectors via my website and also do many projects with ThingsAsian Press. They have been gracious enough to give me full rein with my many interests. Projects have included illustration, travel-writing and -photography, and recent explorations in China. My bank account charts go up and down as sharply as Himalayan peaks, which scares the heck out of most sensible people. It’s a good thing I’m not sensible.

MSW: How did you get started on your Blueprint series?

EB: This is why I started working with Blueprints:

Beijing train station, Christmas Day 2004.

I’m in the midst of moving from Korea to Cambodia, and taking in sights along the way. It’s the journey of a lifetime, zipping through landscapes on high-speed trains, ferries, and planes. The only hitch? I’ve got 25 kilos of badly-packed baggage slowing me down every step of the way. In Beijing I’ve just lugged it across a crowded concourse, cursing the paints weighing me down. A significant portion of my bags are stuffed with heavy art supplies that I won’t be able to find in my final destination of Cambodia. Shivering in the unheated station, I’m trying to stuff the entire bag into the last big locker available. It won’t fit. Paint tubes tumble to the floor.

This is evidently not the way to travel.

There’s no way to fit it all in, and I lose what little composure I had left – hot tears roll down my red cheeks. A station-master sees me staring helplessly at my overflowing bag, and saves the day when he opens up the staff storage room. Soon afterwards I switch from painting to blueprints, one of the earliest forms of photography. Blueprints just require a couple of powders and sunlight – much easier to carry than the wax and oils I’d dragged through Beijing.

A year later, after a harrowing ride up unpaved roads on a 250cc dirtbike in southern Cambodia, I took hundreds of photos of decaying houses built by French colonists and Cambodian royalty. Princely drawing rooms, scarred with bullet-holes from battles between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese. These became my first blueprint series called Bokor in Blue.

MSW: Can you tell us about your Calendar Girls series?

EB: One afternoon I was on the ferry to Central, Hong Kong. As we pulled into Victoria Harbor, I noticed a skyscraper with letters that shouted: “Your Ad Here!” That evening I did an ink study for the first Calendar Girl, with “Your Ad Here” painted onto her left breast.

Advertising is Hong Kong’s greatest artform, and one of America’s too. It’s the art of seduction with words and images. Typical calendar girls smile silently while they advertise products like beer and cars, airlines and electric shops, to male clients. Naturally there is some variety depending on local tastes. BeerLao girls, for example, wear traditional Lao clothing, whereas the Pirelli tire girls wear nothing at all. My Calendar Girls usually wear the Chinese qipao.  They speak to the pressures in Asia and the West for pale skin, the compulsive slavery to work and fashion, and conformity to a demure feminine ideal. Their retro style refers to their timelessness and persistence. I’ve completed dozens of studies for this series, and will have many full-size works for an exhibition next year.

MSW: You published a children’s book with Things Asian in 2008. Can you tell us about it? Where did you find the inspiration for your book?

EB: At a deceptively simple request from my publisher – “What are your favorite parts of Hong Kong? Do some pictures and we’ll make a book about it.” – I roamed all over the territory for a few months on weekdays, camera in hand. I imagined taking my niece and nephew with me, and saw the wonders of the city through their eyes. Then I printed hundreds of images in the hot summer sun, and painted a few dozen of the best with translucent watercolors. You can see those that made the cut here.  There is only one full-color and one monochrome available of each image.

MSW: How have people responded to it?

EB: The response has been fantastic. It’s on sale around the world, both through distributors and online bookstores like the usual suspects (IndieBound, Amazon, etc). The illustrations have an ethereal effect, accentuated by the page design of ThingsAsian’s Janet McKelpin. After receiving requests from bookstores, the company has printed posters with selected images from the book, alongside the Chinese characters and English. I was very happy to have total freedom with this project; contrary to conventional practice, Tricia Morrissey wrote the text based on my images, rather than the other way round. The text is also bilingual: Traditional Chinese & Pinyin, as well as English.

MSW: You have another book set to be published in 2010. Would you like to explain what it will be about?

EB: It’s my journey through the back roads and rivers of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, on a quest to find the perfect paper. Along the way I scare a few librarians, am reprimanded by an eccentric for making assumptions about paper bleaching, speak with different hilltribes, and make friends with a motorbike smuggler. And fall a little in love with the peripatetic papermaker Dard Hunter, one of the very first American backpackers to come to Southeast Asia in the early 20th century.

The book [title TBD] is scheduled to come out late next year, and there will be two versions: one will be a limited edition Boutique Book, with some extra-special features, and the other will be your standard trade paperback.

MSW: You’ve got some incredible journeys coming up in the next year. What do you hope to accomplish?

EB: Next year looks like it could be one of the more exciting I’ve experienced on the planet so far. From February -> April I’ll be on the loose again, traveling in Europe and Asia. Plans are to sign the final papers for my studio in Sicily; revisit western China to check out opportunities there, take my sisters around Thailand, and a few other possibilities still up in the air.

Then, sometime between September-December next year, I’ll roam the East and West coasts of North America, talking about my book, art and travels to art students, book-lovers, Asiaphiles, and anyone else who will listen. Plans are to show some artwork during the tour as well. If you know of any organizations that would be interested in having me give a talk, they can get in touch with me here.

MSW: In addition to showcasing your artwork on your web site, you also feature travel ideas for artists. Can you expound on this a bit?

EB: I aim to inspire by example, for instance posting about my recent mobile studio in Lijiang and the artists I meet along the way. On Twitter, I frequently present specific art and travel opportunities, particularly those with an Asian focus. One of the most valuable aspects of travel is direct exposure to other assumptions than those we have in our home countries. Each culture in which I’ve spent significant time has shifted my perspective, and opened up new possibilities for my life and career.

MSW: Can you tell us a little more about what your goals are with your web site?

EB: My website is primarily an online portfolio of my writing and images. I have gotten most of my writing projects and met some of my collectors this way: it’s an easy-to-access repository of my projects and experiences. Recently I have integrated the blog with my website gallery, via Wordpress. Life, art, and my website are all in perpetual beta. Thanks to the very creative Nguyet Vuong, we are getting closer to a site that showcases my artwork as well as my writing.

MSW: We’d love to hear about how you got started teaching photography to Cambodian street kids during the Angkor Photo Festival.

EB: Now there you’ve got a case of being the right person in the right place at the right time. Some might call it luck; I call it a combination of my naivete, flexibility, and having the right qualifications.

In 2005 I started a project called Cameras for Cambodia, teaching photography to kids in Siem Reap, the town nearest Angkor Wat: that now-overrun World Heritage site. This was just as many people were finally getting rid of their last film cameras, so my project provided a convenient way for these cameras to have a second life. I didn’t ask for a dime from anyone. The call went out from my blog and spread to others; people from Holland to England to New Jersey sent me their film cameras. I’d travelled to Cambodia several times previously and had contacted several NGOs (non-governmental organizations) interested in having me teach their kids.

I showed up with a dozen of the best film cameras, and then interviewed a number of NGOs. Long story short, I chose the wrong NGO. After several months of working with them, I realized the organizers were helping themselves with the donations, not the kids. So when the opportunity came up to work with the Angkor Photo Festival, I was very happy to continue teaching photography, but with more resources and long-term continuity than possible with a solo project.

The festival is unusual in that it links very influential photojournalists and the international media directly to some of the most impoverished kids in Asia.

MSW: Was the project a success?

EB: Yes! Many of the kids I worked with have become fully integrated with the amazing programs over at Green Gecko Project,  and are doing fantastically well. Others are now continuing under the Festival’s Anjali project.

While there will be no city-wide festival this year, there will be workshops for Asian photographers. This has been an important opportunity for Southeast Asian photographers, particularly those from the Philippines.

MSW: What advice would you offer to others who are thinking of leading a nomadic lifestyle?

EB: There are many online resources available, depending on your country of choice, and your career. Geoexpat.com is one, they cover many countries. If you’re interested in Asia – where the best opportunities are, in my opinion — Asia Expat is good.

In any country, there are many factors that affect cost of living, and it doesn’t have to be as expensive as you think. There are many more choices than are available to the casual visitor. By researching in depth, you’ll get an idea of what could be just around the corner from your expensive hotel. For example, most people believe that Hong Kong is costly. But I paid US$625/month for a two bedroom apartment next to the sea. More here.

If you have an idea of what your career goals are and have a Bachelor’s degree, you have a ridiculous number of choices available to you. Living in a country is a very different experience from travelling through it.

Travelling for years on end can lead to a real sense of dislocation; friends and lovers on the road are transient, and it can be hard to connect with those back home. Eventually, most nomads slow down their travelling to focus on building a life connected to a place where they’ve chosen to live. My goal is to split my time between two studio bases that offer interesting travel opportunities nearby, and create a well-connected life in each place. Rather than a home, I’m happy having a home base or two. This is all possible thanks to opportunities offered by the internet.

MSW: What’s next for Elizabeth Briel?

EB: My Sicilian studio will demand as much attention and infusion of cash as a new child, but hopefully the $2 bottles of local wine will ease the pain when I visit. It’s a long-term goal: I aim to create an affordable, creative retreat for selected artists and writers to work on their projects, while they enjoy the best of what the region has to offer.

Printing a series of large-scale Vietnamese Blueprints from my travels there last year.

Getting beyond newbie Mandarin (any advice re. online resources?) and Italian.

Designing products with the Calendar Girls images, on some of the unique handmade paper I’ve discovered this year. The Girls have been very popular with worldly women from Asia to North America.

I’m also exploring possibilities for a long-term Asian studio base in China/Hong Kong. We’re living in the Asian century: that’s where the world’s economic growth is, where some of the most exciting art is being produced, and where there’s the most room for cultural exchange. I’m very happy to be a part of it.

Thanks for your insightful questions, Carrie, and I look forward to staying in touch as we move forward in our careers and travels! It’s likely that we’ll cross paths sometime.

MSW: Thanks very much, Elizabeth, for taking the time to answer my questions.

Links

Gallery/Blog

Twitter

Facebook fan page

Elizabeth on Things Asian