Emma Kohlmann
Interview (2020)

How have you spent your time during quarantine/lockdown?

During quarantine I spent a lot of time writing postcards to friends. I would try to write to as many people as possible daily. I would wake up early and spend the first several hours drawing on postcards. I live in a small town and being isolated is part of my life. I really want to feel close to friends and I thought sending mail was a nice way to stay connected. I also spent a lot of time climbing a nearby mountain with my sister. We climbed for entire month straight.

Please tell us what candidly what your thoughts were when PAM contacted you to be a part of Positive Messages.

I really appreciated PAM when they contacted me about Positive Messages. I really loved the idea of creating something just to have something to do besides giving myself tasks. I thought it was a nice way to send thoughtful and helpful sentiments in a time when things are so dark. Being able to try to uplift people is so important, sometimes having someone to tell you to make something is a nice distraction.

Please tell us the thoughts and background behind the work that you provided for this project.

I really love Ursula Le Guin. Though I was late learning about her work until after her death in 2018. I feel so akin to the words she speaks in the writing that PAM prompted me to read. The essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, is in some ways a beautiful metaphor for creativity, through the lens of intuition and accumulation. A carrier bag speaks to a collection of things we hold precious, a symbol of abundance, and the things that hold truth. I love the beauty in this writing as pacification versus the history of technology through violence, in Le Guin’s words “killing tools” and “outward energy”, like swords and sticks. The idea that history works in the divine feminine, a vessel to hold things that are important and sacred to humanity. The artworks I connected to Le Guin’s writings were works that I made several months before the pandemic. I work mostly in watercolor and sumi ink. For the most part I have similar inspirations as Ursula Le Guin, such as Carl Jung, science fiction, alternative realities, intersectionality and primordial civilizations. I rely on my intuition when I paint. I conjure up ideas through the things I read and see, but rarely have planned these conceptual ideas out. It was actually an interesting job finding artworks that mirror the same metaphors that she was speaking to. I kinda preferred it that way because I feel like I relate to this writing way more on a subconscious level. I found that there were unintended connections, and Le Guin gave me the language to understand what I was making.