Interview: Rochelle Voyles
Rochelle Voyles (b. 1989, Toledo, Ohio) is a Brooklyn based artist whose practice is centered in collage and our collective relationship to photographs. Her work is a visual exploration into history and meaning, a collection of evidence compiled and reconfigured onto sculptural, glyph-like forms. By re-purposing the beautiful, weird, and horrifying found images humanity has captured and left behind, her work challenges viewers to formulate their own conclusions.
She received her BFA in Fine Arts/Printmaking from Pratt Institute in 2012. She was a February 2023 resident at The Peter Bullough Foundation Residency in Winchester, VA, a September 2022 resident at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY, and an April 2021 resident at the ChaNorth ChaShama Artist Residency in Pine Plains, NY. She has shown at galleries in New York such as Below Grand, 81 Leonard Gallery, Trestle Gallery, Peninsula Art Space, Field of Play Gallery, and Collarworks. Her recent shows include “Channels”, curated by Marco Tulio de la Sierra at Below Grand Gallery, “Warp and Weft”, with 81 Leonard Gallery at The Satellite Art Show, “Art of Collage” at Second Street Gallery, and “Trading Cards; The Reshuffle”, at Field of Play Gallery.
Read our interview with Rochelle below!
Installation view at Satellite Art Show, 2024
PP: Walk us through a typical day in your studio or generally through your process to make new work.
RV: Every studio session is different for me, and it depends on what step in production I’m currently in. I work with wood, paint, and found photographs to make large scale sculptural cut outs that I collage onto the surface of.
If I’m in the midst of a substrate making phase, that means I’m using a jigsaw or other cutting tool as an extension of my hand to draw my shapes out. Production includes gluing and clamping multiple layers together, sanding, painting, and reshaping my forms until they’re ready to be collaged onto.
If I’m in a collaging phase, that means I’m sorting through my boxes of source material intuitively searching for images that speak to me, and can live in dialogue with the other images I’ve found. I shuffle my found images into piles, tape them to the walls, and shift them into associated groupings.
I almost always listen to music to amp me up or slow me down. Music helps me get in touch with ways of feeling and ways of viewing the images I sort through.
Cowpokes and Ribbons, Paper collage, 10 x 13.25 inches, 2022
Self-Replicating Fear (side view), Wood, collage, and paint, 57 x 43 inches, 2024
PP: What motivates you to make art?
RV: Perception and truth seeking. I want to understand what motivates people to do what they do, and what motivates them to capture a moment with a photograph.
I like exploring the tension between what an image claims to document and what it conceals. Every time someone decides to take a picture their intentions vary, and every time a picture is looked at its understanding differs.
It used to be that when an image was taken and then printed it became an undisputed piece of evidence proving that something happened. Now millions of people take pictures on their cellphones, upload them online, and augment them using image editing software, so the possibility of altering reality is so much greater.
I’m lucky I grew up with the paper trail of found printed physical images, but I like to remind myself when I use them that the world of photography has always gone hand in hand with artifice and set up scenes. I’m keenly aware that images don’t always tell the whole story, just a fragment.
PP: Is community something you value in your practice? Why or why not?
RV: Community is everything. I’ve spent the better part of 10 years finding my people and continuing to grow my network. I grew up in a home that often felt unsafe. Most of my family members have passed on, suffered from mental health crises, struggled with addiction, or have become estranged.
I see my arts and creative community as a new family. Being strange and queer in the midwest in the late 2000’s started this process of finding chosen kin. Now the people I’ve found show me new ways of seeing art, what radical love looks like, and what it means to be an artist in a deeply troubled time.
Street Apparitions, Paper collage, 10 ¾ x 10 ⅛ inches, 2023
PP: What role do you think artists have in society today? What role should they have?
RV: I think artists are responsible for finding new ways of thinking about reality and about what it means to be human. As we continue to see more AI roll out and as we attempt to nestle ourselves deeper into digital platforms, artists need to respond to the messiness of this experience. We have more tools than we have ever had to learn about the world and help one another, and yet we are more estranged and uninformed than we have ever been.
Using found images in my practice means I am often confronting historical and social issues of what justice, truth, and survival looks like. If I intend to engage with these images it is my responsibility as an artist to be open to tough and unsettling conversations. I have to continually ask myself if what I am seeing is the whole story and continue investigating what I've found. I think now, more than ever, an artist is required to never stop asking questions.
PP: What challenges have you faced as an artist and how do you overcome them?
RV: In the past I’ve gotten stuck in a medium that didn't serve the ultimate purpose of my art practice. I think it’s easy to fall in love with a method like painting, woodworking, or printmaking, but It’s important to remember that all things must serve your personal end goal of expressing what you want to express.
I’ve had to relinquish my love of a material again and again in pursuit of clear communication. This sacrifice, though painful, has lead me down a path of clarity in my practice.
To learn more about Rochelle’s work, see her Instagram and Website