This post is an excerpt from my article on Sixty Inches From Center, which supports and promotes art and writing that thrives primarily outside of mainstream historical narratives.
“All portraits are fragments,” says Riva Lehrer, “it’s representing someone through a single moment in their life; so any portrait is an act of reassembly, you get these clues and you try to reassemble them into some view of the person.” In a way, this is what I was doing as I read Lehrer’s new book GOLEM GIRL: a memoir: scouring her words for insight into what makes her the person she is today.
‘Author’ is just one of many hyphens in Lehrer’s well-established artistic career. She teaches at Northwestern University and she curates, but she is perhaps best known for her portraits of people “whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized.” As a Disabled artist herself, Lehrer has a unique ability to capture a person’s form in an honest and expressive way through her evocative works. I had the pleasure of speaking with her to discuss her background as well as current projects.
Lehrer’s artistic talents are familial.
Courtney Graham: [In your memoir,] you talk about your mother, Carole, being an artist — a very creative person who “found outlet in small things, in the permissible, restricted expressions of women with children.” This reminds me so much of my own mother, and even myself in some ways. What was it like to witness your mother’s creativity and how did that translate to your own interest in artistic expression?
Riva Lehrer: Art became the family identity in a way — this is what we do! Both of my brothers can draw, but I’m the only one who really pursued it professionally. Our family takes pleasure in visual things and material beauty.
CG: The school art room is such a solace for so many people, and you describe it as “the only place where [you] could be the leader, not the follower.” What was it about art that has been so transformative for you?
RL: From my earliest memory, I would get praise [for my art]. Nobody expected anything from me, so anything I did well was remarked on. For Disabled kids, your big party trick was surviving. [At the time] many kids like me were institutionalized or didn’t really have a public life. It reflected back on [one’s] parents as well. They invested a lot and if their kid was then praised for talent, it was reassurance.
CG: You and your mother both spent a lot of time in the hospital, that’s a really difficult shared history. Can you talk a bit about how those experiences shaped your relationship?
RL: I don’t think either of us were afraid of the hospital, but afraid of what might happen there. We knew the language and could navigate the power structures. Children’s hospitals and adult hospitals were very different — my brothers were not usually allowed to visit, so it was mostly my parents and grandparents around me. At the children’s hospital, my mother was my conduit to the world, completely. When she was at the adult hospital, I wasn’t in the position to do that for her. It was both a shared and very different experience.
Read the rest of this piece at Sixty Inches From Center.