Meet the Artist // Carly Ostler
Carly Ostler is a multidisciplinary artist interested in the intersections of art and psychology. Having studied trauma in the field of psychotherapy, Carly uses the same practices of embodiment, presence, curiosity, play and non-judgement in their art practice to allow material to draw out meaning. With practices ranging from photo, video, sculpture and documentation of site-specific ritual work, she uses her own body, personally significant environments and natural materials to encapsulate moments of transmutation.
Do you want to start by telling me a bit about yourself and your practice?
I’m Carly, a visual artist from the US. My practice has always been pretty personal. It explores themes that I’m working on within myself or with other people as a part of my therapeutic process.
In trauma work, kink work, performance, relationships, etc., the nervous system has to feel safe enough to play. So in my art, I work with my own somatic rituals, grounding and going into different places within myself. I connect with internal and external resources to regulate my nervous system, then I play with different materials, ideas and environments to see what they want to become.
What materials are you working with?
I’ve worked in photography, video, performance, sculpture, etc. I took weekly ceramics classes for the past eight years, and now I’m combining everything.
I like interweaving materials. I like combining things and thinking about what is similar or supportive between mediums. What speaks to what I’m thinking about and what doesn’t? What is the relationship between materials? Sometimes I can’t tell until I try things out. I have to play, and do things, and see what the work will look like. It starts from the concept, and then I play with whatever feels fun and accessible. I like to experiment and move things around daily.
A lot of the objects I use are collected from around town. I found the clay I’m using in the basement. I have a pile of decomposing bits that gets renewed. I feel like found objects take the pressure off and make it easier for me to let things go when I need to.
What are you working on while you’re at GlogauAIR?
I’m working on a project that I started at the end of last year. It’s about the concept of home – examining the home inside the self, my internal and external resources – and renovation – how can I change, what needs changing? I’m using this concept as well as research on attachment to explore what a secure attachment with nature would look like.
Secure attachment is about feeling safe enough to explore, trusting that you have this secure base you can come back to. In relationships, that means feeling like you’re safe enough that you can go away and explore the world and then come back and still feel held and understood. I feel very held by nature in ways that I haven’t felt with a lot of humans. I feel held by trees and mud and clay and mountains. And I want to take that with me into relationships. Nature is kind of a model for how I want to relate to other humans.
What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want people to examine themselves in a way that doesn’t feel so heavy, so brain-based.
Self actualization, or working with the self concept, doesn’t have to be so serious. It can be playful. It can be private. It can be shared. It can be all kinds of things. But I want people to think about themselves and what they’re doing. I want people to feel like they’re inside themselves, and connected to themselves. This actualizing work, ideally allows us to connect to others from that place of self-awareness and resourceness.
Interview Jo Birdsell (jobirdsell.com)
Photos Raviva Nsiama (@raviva.ziama)
