Interview: Dorothy Annette

The Artist as Cultural Force: Dorothy Annette Interview by David Boyne 2003 writersmonthly.com All Rights Reserved All Art/Images Copyright Protected All Rights Reserved Dorothy Annette is a working artist, teacher and publisher. She is the driving force behind the Ray at Night art walks, a member of the The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, where she chairs the Neighborhood Arts program, and owner of artgallery999, at 3822 Ray Street.(Open by appointment only.) Dorothy and her husband Jim own Jugbelly Printing, providing graphic design and printing services to San Diego's small businesses. Dorothy and Jim also edit and print The Publication, a magazine of, by and for San Diego’s artists and supporters of the arts.

Let me start with a confession.

More than anything, I want to be an artist.

But I can’t. Because I’m not.

Earth Woman Nude, by Dorothy Annette

As I drive my car or walk my dog I often daydream of being an artist. (This explains why my insurance is so high and I’m always stepping on mushy, smelly things that fill the treads of my sneakers.)

One of my daydreams is recurring. I’m standing before a god-like battery of seven surgeons, all in scrubs and gloves and surgical masks. They say nothing, just staring down at me, smug in their collective assumption that they know that I am about to beg, to plead—as so many before me have begged and pleaded—for them to perform a miracle of medical technology. And I do. But I do not beg them to make me a woman, or flatten my gut, or enlarge my penis. I plead, "Please make me an artist!"

And I see seven sets of eyebrows arch in unison.

Why on earth would I want to be an artist—in a society enthralled by unearned wealth and television prostitution?

Because artists don't really live where the rest of us do. Sure, they all keep a pied-à-terre here, but they really live somewhere else, somwhere better, somewhere exciting and satisfying and wholly independent. Somewhere I can only imagine.

When I asked Dorothy Annette, "So, um... Why do you paint pictures of teapots?" she tilted her head, causing her short dreadlocks to bounce. She looked directly at me, smiled, and simply said, "I had a desire to."

See? Dorothy Annette is an artist.

Her studio is a high-ceiling, industrial space large enough to hold a two-color printing press, hand and automated bindery equipment, Macintosh computers, painting easels and tools, chairs on platforms for posing models, her husband Jim’s tools to make hand-made and bound books—and paintings, paintings paintings.

One of the White Series paintings, by Dorothy Annette

There are paintings on the walls, life-sized paintings leaned against walls, smaller paintings propped on chairs, paintings of teapots and of people, paintings stacked in corners, tiny paintings hung on the walls in unlikely places but still, your eyes always see them first, as you enter a room...

WM: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Dorothy: A doctor. Way back in junior high school, I was attracted to the science of being a doctor, but the most I could afford was to become a respiratory therapist. Art was not a practical career and never a consideration. At best art was a hobby of painting ceramics.

WM: When did you know, really know, that you were an artist?

Paintings by Dorothy Annette

Dorothy: When I was laid off from my last job. I was happy about it and I wasn’t scared. I put my severance pay on a studio loft in the Candy Factory and started taking painting classes. It was the leap of faith that confirmed it for me.

WM: When did you know that you had made it?

Dorothy: I haven’t "made it" yet. One day at a time, I get by.

WM: About those teapots...

Dorothy: The desire to paint teapots was just so, a desire. Coming out of a need to nurture my spirits, maybe. Since old enough to make my own choices, tea has been my drink of choice and has at times escalated to an addiction...hot tea and toast. Isn’t there a saying called Tea and Sympathy? Since color thrills me, and my boyfriend at the time, Jim, had a small collection of antique teapots in many colors; it was easy to paint my heart out.

WM: You stopped publishing your art magazine, The Publication, after the events of September 11, 2001. Why?

Dorothy: September 11th...that day... like so many, many people, something changed in me...is still changing. I can’t describe it, but I see it. Something became clear, but also...shifted. My personal work turned toward the figurative, to portraits.

WM: So you began doing portraits?

Dorothy: I feel this need to celebrate humanity. Many of the portraits I do are of elderly folks but certainly not all. The subjects are part of a series I call the Urban Chieftain series. These are people who would be chiefs—by my selection—if San Diego were a village.

WM: How else have the events of September 11th changed you?

Dorothy: I can’t really say, maybe I don’t even know. I feel the change, the shift in me, and I see some differences, how I need to paint people.

Dorothy Annette's portrait of one of her daughters

Also, I am a colorist and always have been. Lately, for a while now, I have been on an exploration of the colors of white. I’ve done a few successful paintings in this series but not enough to show yet.

Maybe I’m ready now to start The Publication again. I’d like to get people back together. It’s really the only artist’s magazine in San Diego. We’ve kept the website (http:thepublication.net) going. And now I have some new writers, and I want to find more. Maybe we're ready.

WM: You’ve always had a strong sense of community. In fact, it seems you have a gift, or a need, for creating communities wherever you go.

Dorothy: Jim and I were in the downtown area for a long time. For years, we had these monthly dinners, and everyone, everyone was welcome. It just got so big! We would have 70 people! The stories and connections, people still tell us how much those dinners meant to them.

When we had to relocate the studio, I missed that. But also, it was a rest for awhile. I kind of enjoyed that, too!

WM: But eventually you felt a need to build community here, in the North Park area that you had come to?

Dorothy Annette and Jim

Dorothy: My gallery is on Ray Street and one thing lead to another. I wanted a way for people to come together. An honest, easy way. Not just to sell art, but to invite everyone to share the work so many talented people were creating

WM: And this evolved into the Ray At Night open gallery idea?

Dorothy: Yes, and it grew, it's still growing. I think because it was something that people felt a part of. It was about people, about art, about laughing and singing. We had some wonderful opera singers involved. Children would be there. Even I could sing.

WM: You're a singer?

Dorothy: Not professionally. I study voice with Jack Lasher. My first solo concert was in February at Galleria Del’Aria. I just love to sing.

WM: You have some paintings of other artists in your studio.

Dorothy: I collect my friend’s work. Some are gifts, too. I’ve started to collect teapots from regional artists.

WM: And you teach?

Dorothy Annette with student

Dorothy: Whenever I am asked. I teach in my studio, private and small groups of people, of children. For many Friday afternoons, several women have come and we all draw and paint. There are kids around. It’s wonderful. I mentor as well for other organizations and I give talks in the city schools.

WM: You were recently featured in a KPBS television series of influential San Diegans.

Dorothy: It was all done live on camera. I painted a teapot for the County Board of Education on camera, answering telephone and studio audience questions while I painted. Everything seems a cakewalk after that!

WM: Does watching television, or films, influence you and your work?

Dorothy: As far as film, Jim and I are film addicts.

From 1993 until Sept 11, 2001 Jim and I watched only videos. We almost never watched television. But, waking up to the news on that morning, we were compelled to turn on the television and see what was happening. Since then, I am a news hound and I’m re-united with Law and Order, and Meet the Press on Sunday mornings. I am not sure how it is effecting my work. Too soon to tell.

WM: You seem to work with an idea, or in a certain direction, for a while, producing a series of paintings.

Dorothy: I don’t plan it that way. I still paint teapots once in a while, but

most happened in one period, like a Teapot series. I did what I now call the Walk a Mile series, exploring shoes.

WM: What are some of your current projects, or directions?

Dorothy: Dresses have caught me, and the Dress series gives me the opportunity to examine many wedding dresses.

I’m also working with the Family Justice Center to create work that communicates how enormous the problem of domestic violence is today. The first piece 1 n 3 was completed in October. Stairway to Freedom is a mural in the planning stages.

While I’ve been exploring the color white for months now, I just finished a portrait of the sculptor, Warren Blakely, but I was as surprised as anyone that it started as a work in my white series, but by the end, as you can see, it wasn’t. Maybe that is over, something in me is changing.

WM: Do you know what’s coming?

Dorothy Annette with her portrait of the sculptor Warren Blakely

Dorothy: (laughing) I’ve no idea. I let things like that happen. Or not happen.

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The Ray At Night Art Walk and Open Galleries happens the Second Saturday of each month, all along Ray Street, in North Park, from 6pm to 10pm

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