The weight of creation can be paralyzing, especially if you haven’t drawn since Ms. Larson’s fifth grade art class when you stippled stick figures with shadows using
charcoal and stuck it to your parents’ refrigerator. Learning to Love You More wants to change that. The above are
four of over sixty possible assignments to choose from on the web site, a
community based arts project, created five years ago by artists Miranda July,
Harrell Fletcher and Yuri Ono. The site offers the forum for non-artists and
artists alike to respond to assignments like “take a picture of the sun” and post them as part of an ever-evolving collaborative project.
Learning to Love You More began as an effort to provide would-be artists an
opportunity to create without the weight of starting from scratch, or feeling
directionless. Since its inception it has expanded and become a model for the
potential of the arts to draw the attention of people far beyond arts
communities, and to inspire them. It has grown into more than just a forum of
online art; it has become an opportunity for non-artists to receive grants to
create, to be a part of curated galleries, and, now, to take part in the
Learning to Love You More book. Shortly after the publication of their new book
I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with LTLYM’s designer, Yuri Ono, about the collaborative process, community and the
inspiration behind this expansive project.
InDigest: Is LTLYM still a collaborative project for you? Do you work closely
with Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher?
Yuri Ono: Yes, I do. Harrell and Miranda periodically come up with new
assignments. And when we have things like the book or a big exhibition they’ll go through the site and pick out favorites. What I'm mainly responsible for
are the day-to-day goings on of the site. I go through every single submission
and make sure that the instructions were followed. I'll let them know if they need to add anything more or less to what they¹ve sent in. Then I post it to the site.
ID: How many submissions do you deal with in a week?
YO: About sixty.
ID: What was the initial idea behind LTLYM, why was it created?
YO: The idea was to create a place where people could easily make art, where
they didn’t have to feel like they were responsible for coming up with an original idea or
concept; this place would just give them instructions to do something.
ID: So you want to create the box in which to create.
YO: Yeah, the idea is that people can make something, get it posted, and have a
piece that they’re hopefully proud of. Our hope is that through making the thing they get
inspired. You know, by their community, or even by themselves. So generally I
think it’s been successful with that. People are
really pleased with the site, and their involvement.
ID: It feels as though the scope of the site, since I’d first come across it, has expanded. Was this the original intent, did you see
LTLYM becoming what it is now?
YO: I think initially we weren’t really sure how people would take it on, if they would be receptive to
following instructions, making something and sending it in. So, we did a trial
run with the Maine College of Art's summer program. We had about twenty
students and started them off with five assignments, actually the current five
assignments, one through five on the site. We tested the involvement of the
students, to see how they liked it and how easy it was to receive and post
work. It seemed to go pretty well, so we expanded it to ten assignments after
the summer program was over. And the site grew from word of mouth. We didn’t do any kind of advertising or promotion people would just blog about the site
or link to it from message boards. Slowly it grew, and now we’ve gotten almost 7,000 submissions, from all over the world. We were worried at
first, we didn¹t think anyone would do it, so we’re pleased with how it all turned out. Over time we’ve refined the technical aspects of the site, everything is done with PHP to
keep coding to a minimum.
ID: So all of the expansion has been essentially organic? The grants page, the
Oliver family blog, gallery exhibitions and now the book?
YO: Yeah, things have happened very organically over time. The grant thing
happened because Harrell and Miranda apply for a lot of artist grants and they
sort of have a rule, that whenever they receive a grant they devote some of the
money towards LTLYM... it’s mostly a labor of love for me, I
don’t get paid very much. So, from time to time, we’ve been able to have money for grants. If someone does something particularly
amazing we’ll give him/her $500 that they can spend however they want, hopefully towards
making more stuff. Generally we’ll pick five or so people to give grants to.
Then the Oliver family thing happened, I think through Miranda, I'm not really
sure. Somebody from Bumbershoot knew The Olivers and knew they were very
creative. So they set us up, they got in touch with Miranda and Harrell, and
asked if they wanted to collaborate on LTLYM. We asked them if they would do
all of the assignments that we had at the time, which was 63. Then they showed
their work over the festival weekend, in their own exhibition hall.
ID: The addition of the grants seems like a really amazing idea, how did that
materialize?
YO: Harrell does this when he gets a big grant. He has a lot of friends that
make amazing work but aren’t well known, so he puts aside money to give to his friends or people that
really inspire him that wouldn’t otherwise be able to get money. It’s the same idea behind giving grants at LTLYM. These people probably wouldn¹t ever apply for an artists grant, and it’s not likely they’d get free money for being creative. The grant giving, for us, is a way of
encouraging people to not lose hope and to keep creating things.
ID: Are you still posting new assignments? How does that process work?
YO: Yes, we are still posting new assignments. Sometimes we’ll replace an assignment if people aren’t following the instructions very well or if no one is even attempting the
assignment. Putting new ones up there happens once every five or six months.
ID: What don’t people respond well to, in terms of what they are willing to create?
YO: When we ask more from a participant, like grow a garden, and take pictures
of the garden, over time. People just don¹t want to bother with that. They don’t want to spend the time to do it. We go for a happy medium not assignments
where its really easy, but not ones that ask for too much. Generally we like
assignments that try to involve the person in their community, or asks them to
share themselves with us.
ID: You bring up the garden assignment, and that was one of the assignments I
thought had some of the most interesting responses on the site, especially from
the Oliver family.
YO: They’re really honest and creative.
ID: Are there any assignments you’re particularly proud of, that there has been a strong reaction to?
YO: The sun ones are great, [Assignment #27: Take a picture of the sun] because
of the simplicity of the image. I like #55 too, take a picture of a significant
outfit. The scar one turned out well [Assignment #11: Photograph a scar and write about
it] because there are so many stories that happen.
ID: There are some great excerpts from that assignment in the book.
YO: Yeah, there are wonderful life stories too. [Assignment #14: Write your life
story in less than a day] Every one is amazing.
ID: How did the book come about? Why turn the website into a book?
YO: We’ve always wanted to make a book. It was just a matter of time before we had
enough work to curate from. We always pictured the work being shown in book
form, because it’s sort of enveloping. You can really lose yourself in these different images,
and words and stories. So the book form just seemed like a natural extension of
the website, in that you can see things printed, you can hold it, you can keep
it around, you can revisit it.
ID: You mention how engrossing the projects are. The site is dangerous. I lost
myself for hours there, more than once. How did you weed through over 7,000
submissions to come up with just a book’s worth of work? It seems daunting.
YO: It was a daily exercise going through submissions. The thing about the book
was because everything is printed, things needed to be of a certain resolution,
suitable for printing. And because we’d always asked people to send in things for the web, a lot of times we couldn’t get our first picks
because they just didn’t have high enough resolution for printing. That made it pretty challenging, but
it also helped facilitate the process or choosing images. It was a big learning
experience for us.
ID: Were you involved in the book design?
YO: No, Brian Scott did the design.
