Journey as an Artist: Interview with Christie Blizzard

Christie Blizzard was my painting professor multiple semesters throughout my education at University of Texas at San Antonio. Christie’s philosophy has been influential and changed my art making practice. This interview explores her journey as an artist that has developed her unique point of view on art and teaching art.

Elena Benavides (EB): Would you say that making art is a spiritual journey, or how would you describe your relationship to your craft?

Christie Blizzard (CB): It's definitely a process of simultaneously getting to know myself and deciding what is most necessary to me in my life, and in what ways can I most share that with others. So it's been a huge experimentation. Nothing's ever really done. 

EB: Would you say that's why you shift between fine arts and music because you feel like you can communicate uniquely with different mediums? 

CB: Yeah, that's been absolutely life changing.  I didn’t take art in high school because I wanted to be a writer or an English teacher. Then when I was 17, I thought I was the reincarnation of Van Gogh, and I taught myself how to paint like Van Gogh. Then I decided to go to art school.

I entered art through other people. I would mediate through Van Gogh, then go through an Arshile Gorky phase. After that, I painted like Philip Guston and drew like Louise Bourgeois. I would also get tattoos of their style on me afterwards.

I thought learning all these different styles and approaches would eventually lead me somewhere. But my teachers always told me, “Just do this one thing. Just stay here.” I could never do that. Nothing ever felt completely right. It would feel right for a while, but then I’d be called to something else when it didn’t fully feel mine anymore. I didn’t want to repress that feeling. I wanted to stay true to it.

I went from painting to drawing to sculpture to installation and collaborating. I eventually worked my way to performance and sound because I just fell in love with the textures of sound, and I couldn't deny it. 

Christie Blizzard performing at the Brave Human World Tour in 2018. Image courtesy of Christie Blizzard. 

I was not taught music as a child, but the longer I'm an artist, the closer I get to my birth, like I'm going backwards. With how far I made it as an artist, I feel like I'm like maybe a five year old. As I try to find what is most necessary, it's like, what is my life? What am I meant to do? Or what is the thing I'm closest to?

It seems like my interest in music came before art. I had a desire to play music early on, but I either wasn’t nurtured in learning it, didn’t have good teachers, or maybe just didn’t have the natural talent.

I think part of why I connect with sound and music now is because I’m self-taught. I’ve had mentors, but no one else’s voice is really in there. Not studying music as a child actually ended up being a benefit. My learning process included working with sound, chaos, and noise first, and then applied structure as I wanted and needed it. That freedom meant music never felt ingrained in a way that limited how it could be created.

When I was doing my first Buddhist class, I saw who I was in my last life and saw myself die. I knew all these things about my past self and I think she wanted to be an artist, so a lot of my life was like fulfilling that urge. But I think music is gonna be my next life because this whole life I really wanted to be a musician. 

EB: So what is it like to navigate that journey of somewhat fulfilling the life of your past, but also fulfilling the life of your future? How do you navigate your past, present and future time? 

CB:  I radically go to performance or I radically go to sound or sculpture and I disown the previous medium. I would go all in and decide I am only doing this forever as opposed to a more healthy kind of balance and understanding that's part of my process. I would committed career suicide and tell my friends who were like curators that I'm not making art anymore. While I still draw, ultimately I just have to follow what feels right.

EB: How did it feel to combine your interests with music and your background in visual arts in your work exhibited in Mosh Now Cry Later?

CB:  Those works were created in a really haphazard way. I originally made a bunch of collages from the posters that I found on the streets while living in Berlin, and then I ended up not liking them. When I got back, I cut them all up, and I kind of just tossed the little bedazzled bits that I liked onto three paintings which opened it up and caused it to become much more interesting. Whether it's in sound or music or art, I'm always trying to open things back up. Whenever I'm feeling constricted, I realize that it’s not a good direction for me, and I have to radically change it. Whether that's opening it up, collaging it, changing the rhythm, structure, and I can't just do that through finesse and technique.

Christie Blizzard, “Snake Head”, 2024. Mixed media on paper. Image courtesy of Christie Blizzard.   

EB: Can you describe your creative process from the moment you come up with an idea to your finished piece? 

CB: I get super excited and am all in, going as far as I can, and then I end up extremely dissatisfied. I realized that the less I do things in a traditional sense, the stronger they are. I talked with Mark McCoin, who's in the band with me, and he said something that really affected me. He's said instead of doing this kind of standard rock thing, just throw the 4/4 thing out the window and just work on phrasing that feels natural. 

It really opened everything up, and as a result, my sense of rhythm and pitch got better. It’s kind of not feeling an obligation, even the obligation of my original idea. I have to, again, let it grow in its own way. And often that's like giving up the possession of my intention. 

Christie Blizzard, “Double Face”, 2024. Mixed media on paper. Image courtesy of Christie Blizzard.   

EB: With the art that you create, do you think it has a role that it plays in society? In the sense of what it does for you and what it can do for others? Or do you feel responsibility as an artist? Or is it more of your own individual thing?

CB: I think there's a big responsibility. I mean, it's both ways, right? 

When I did operas and things that were more performance based, I would intentionally try to shock people to disarm them. I would try to present them with a radical otherness. They would lose a sense of where they were and be bewildered. They didn't have to like what I did, but it was confronting something radically different. That’s how I view my responsibility as an artist. To present something radically different as much as I could. 

EB: Do you have any other artworks that you would like to talk about? 

CB: I've been working for the last three and a half years on an album that is hopefully going to be finished and I'd like to go on tour. Which means I’m living my five year old dream and it's amazing. I cried in my studio over the weekend because it's surreal to finally be able to do something that I've been working for literally my entire life.

It's kind of hard to accept, but it's the most rewarding. It's something I haven't shared yet with the world so I’ve been preparing myself.

EB: It's kind of like your magnum opus. Something that's actually a part of yourself. 

CB: Yeah. It's the most vulnerable and stripped down because I have no costumes or props, nothing. Which is typical in my arts performances.

EB: Do you feel that the costumes, props, and theatrics included in your previous performances shielded you from showing that vulnerable side? 

CB: Originally, no, I think it was really important in channeling the energies I needed and it was the only way I could represent it.  Although, the more I did it, it became something I'm hiding behind. 

EB: The genre of music you create is psychedelic folk. Does your album explore any specific themes for you? 

CB: I was asked that question on Saturday and I don't know. I said insects and angels. 

Music helped me with teaching. I was always good at art, even as a child. I understood color and I had a decent sense of proportion. But with music, I was not. But I realized as a teacher that some of the best talents are the hidden ones. Some of the best students are the ones that actually can't create art in the traditional sense so it's really reframed. 

It's like the thing I do, is the thing that is hardest and I’m least good at. But it's the thing that I'm most interested in. 

EB: It’s like you said in class, you like impossible goals. 

CB: Yeah, it has to be slightly possible, I'll take 1%. If it's 1% and if I have enough time I will whittle my way there or I'll try my best. I'll be like, okay, there’s hope. There's light.