Illuminating Nature: Artist Interview with Joni Gruber

Erica Crabtree Mossholder

A sincere smile came across Joni Gruber’s face the first time we spoke. We were at a meeting where local artists were invited to apply for grants from the Cultural Alliance foundation to complete a specific project or to further their careers as professional artists. Joni’s warm personality and dedication to her art were evident during the meeting and afterwards, when we began the first talks of having a show of her work. It didn’t happen right away but I saved her business card and we recently reconnected earlier this month. I am proud to announce that she will be presenting her work in an opening at One Night Only on September 4, 2008. I interviewed her in anticipation of her show.

ECM: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

JG: My name is Joni Gruber.  I was born and raised in Ohio, but my parents are natives of North Carolina and that’s where most of my folks live.  I received my BFA from The Ohio State University in Drawing and Painting, minoring in Anthropology.   I have been creating and selling my artwork since college and have worked in a variety of jobs with the most recent being Assistant Photographer at the Birmingham Museum of Art.  I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa since 1995.

ECM: I know that you love photography. Tell me a little about the kind of work you do.

JG: Since 2005, I have been working primarily in digital photography using an Olympus Camedia C-2100 UZ camera.  In my current body of work, called “Illumination,” I manipulate my digital images in Photoshop to create a transparent light box within the image which elevates it into a more existential experience for the viewer.  The majority of my work is based upon my travels and includes landscapes, gardens and cultural subject matter.

ECM: With a focus travel, tell me how you go about creating your work.

JG: I usually choose a subject or travel destination and take as many as hundreds of photographs in the field.  Then, back at the computer I narrow it down to the best compositions and begin manipulating them into my Illumination style.  I also do a lot of research reading about most of my subjects.

ECM: How do you find inspiration? Is it always based on a location?

JG: Well there are the obvious things like nature itself and the way the light falls upon things.  I’m drawn to sacred sites like archaeological sites, botanical gardens, cultural events.  Sometimes the best ideas come from really mundane things so I try to be open to inspiration anywhere and anytime as much as possible.

ECM: Where is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled?

JG: It’s really difficult to choose a favorite between Alaska and the Big Island of Hawaii. Alaska was the most unspoiled, raw, powerful display of Mother Nature that I have ever witnessed.  But watching the sun set while standing in freezing temps and four foot snowdrifts on the Mauna Kea volcano after walking on a beach at 85 degrees just a few hours earlier was pretty amazing.  I would have to say my best travel memory is that of flying over the Alaskan landscape in a floatplane, seeing how incredibly vast the glaciers stretch out to the horizon and how gorgeous the sapphire blue old ice is when revealed as the glaciers calve into the waters.

ECM: That sounds so amazing. You capture these images with your camera, but you also express them so well with words. What do you enjoy about art and expressing your ideas?

JG: Everything!  What’s not to love?  Art is about having an open mind.  It can be beautiful or scary or hard to understand or comforting or educational. It can be so many things, but it is a universal human endeavor and through it, artists can convey their emotions or thoughts or cultural beliefs in a way that comes naturally to us and perhaps cannot be conveyed by other means.

ECM: I completely agree. You told me about the glaciers, but when I see samples of your work, I can understand their beauty even more. Since travel is so important to your work, I sense that travel and the act of venturing out is also a statement your work makes. Why do you feel travel is an important part of our lives?

JG: Growing up in Ohio, our family would take summer vacations to visit family in North Carolina.  I was always excited about traveling and seeing things so different from Ohio, like the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Carolina beaches, or the farms where my parents grew up.  That wanderlust continued when I worked at the Honda motorcycle plant and took business trips to Toronto and California. I have been very, very fortunate to be able to travel to so many exotic places around the world and for me this need to see new places helped fuel my creativity.  As an artist, travel became more of a spiritual inspiration than just experiencing a new place when I visited Chichen Itza, the ancient Mayan city in Mexico, in 2005.  Climbing to the top of the Kukulkan Pyramid is another favorite travel memory. Other than inspiring a new direction in art-making (focusing on photography), learning first hand about the ancient Mayan people I had studied in college and meeting their descendants created a sense of mission, if you will, for me.  Sacred sites around the world, both natural and man-made, are disappearing extremely fast due to pollution, modernization, overpopulation and climate change.  By creating and exhibiting my artwork of these faraway places, I hope to provide cultural awareness as well as the beauty to those who may never have the chance to see such places first hand.

ECM: Travel is definitely a spiritual experience for me, too, as is the viewing and participation in art. How do you feel art shapes lives and builds communities?

JG: I believe it brings people and communities balance.  By combining an art and science curriculum in college, I experienced first hand how we utilize both the left and right sides of our brains.  Artists tend to be right-brained people who deal with concepts and see the big picture not the details, while scientists tend to be left-brained people who process things in a linear manner, from details to the whole. Some people are born with innate talents leaning one way or the other and both should be equally encouraged.  I think a community lacking art and culture is unhealthy.

ECM: How can we challenge those artistic tendencies we all have at some level?

JG: I think you need to break out of your comfort zone and mix it up with a new media or a new subject or a new color or simply follow that desire (or fear) to learn or attempt something completely new.

ECM: If you were to give Tuscaloosa a progress report on its arts community, what would you say?

JG: Tuscaloosa has a huge number of artists working in a variety of mediums but there are so few venues for these artists to share their work with the public or each other. There seems to be a splintering of groups that could benefit from one overall arts organization that would include both the non-profit side as well as the for-profit art businesses. I think CHOM, The Arts Council and Kentuck all provide great art programs for children.

ECM: Who are some of your all-time favorite artists?

JG: It’s impossible to name only one.  The late 19th century Japanese photographer Kimbei produced incredibly lush work.  I have always admired Georgia O’Keefe as much for her unconventional personality as her paintings.

ECM: To end, I can see that art is your passion and bliss. Do you think one is truly happy by following his or her bliss?

JG: I think “truly happy” is a very relative term.  Many artists, like me, feel the drive to follow our bliss and create art or music or whatever art form it may take throughout our lives despite difficult times where we might not be considered by others to be “happy.”   But there is an inner need that gets fulfilled by following this bliss and that does create a sense of inner peace and contentment.

ECM: Thank you so much for speaking with me. Where can we find your work?

JG: The show at One Night Only on September 4, 2008 at 6pm. Also, you can visit my website, illumination.imagekind.com, or contact me through my e-mail address,