In the year since I last saw artist, Paula Morales, she has graduated from the Academy of Art, begun a master’s program at San Francisco Art Institute, moved from her antiquated Nob Hill studio to her modern digs in the Mission, and became the blushing bride of a Mr. Alexander Meinke. I sat down with her to catch up on this fast-changing and ever-exciting time in her life. Between wedding albums and vintage children’s books, we discussed freakshows, pet parenthood, and swapped secrets about our favorite obscure art shops in San Francisco.
BT: Tell me about your wedding.
PM: About the wedding? (Laughs)
BT: The dress, everything that went into it…
PM: The dress is a day dress, a tea-length dress. It’s 1950’s inspired.
BT: It was new, not vintage?
PM: Yeah. That was my 3rd wedding dress. (Laughs) I bought a vintage dress, that wasn’t a wedding dress, a gold dress. Then a gown, not a wedding gown. I thought, ‘Eh.’ It’s during the day, it’s a picnic, it can be fun and playful. Thrifting I found these beautiful purple shoes, they’re not that tall, so that was good. They were my size, it just happened. They were that pop in the dress. I had vintage gloves on, from the Alameda flea market. I made my veil that was 1940’s inspired, on a vintage headpiece. There was a lot of mixing and matching. Alex’s outfit is a 1970’s burgundy polyester suit, that fit him from the thrift store perfectly. His handkerchief was my grandfather’s.
My mom, who passed away, always said she wanted to embroider Swarovski crystals on my dress. She used to make jewelry, and at that point I had always told her I didn’t want to get married. One time she was visiting and she had this ring and she gave it to Alex and said, “Put it on her.” It was like uhh, he was not ready at that point. I have all her crystals now, I made a sash with them, and my earrings and my bracelet. I embroidered the gloves with them too.
Everything was do-it-yourself. The bouquet I made entirely myself, with peonies and calla lilies. I put a photo of my mom on it. My sister caught the bouquet, which was hilarious. What were the odds? For the invitations we worked with our friend, she’s a graphic designer, and she made an invitation design. Then we bought a letterpress. Alex was making the invitations, he got really good at it. Our friend Hector, he does cyanotypes and tintypes, so he took tintypes of us. Do you want to see them in the Victorian album? We do look like we’re from another time, super ghostly.
BT: I wondered who did the photography at your wedding, if being a photographer, you would do it yourself.
PM: A whole bunch of people. It was a whole collaboration. My sister married us, she got ordained online. His brother did the translations in German and Spanish for our families. His mom and his aunt made the cake, they brought chocolates from Germany, they made it at the house, so it was all very special.
We stop to dote over Dobby, the bunny, who is eating a strawberry on a tan cowhide (before Paula’s husband, Alexander, brings over a vintage egg cup). His black and white fur make him look like a miniature cowhide.
PM: Our wedding was very unconventional from the start. We wrote our own vows, instead of saying “man and wife,” it was “partners in life.” Instead of saying “kiss the bride,” it was “seal this declaration with a kiss.” There was a whole basket of handkerchiefs that said “Grab One for Tears of Joy.” We rented a whole bunch of vintage furniture, mismatched dishes. There was a bunch of fabric rolled up in a basket that you could pick from. We had candy stations with toys and bubbles. It was all very Alice in Wonderland. There were a lot of bunny inspired things, straws, napkins.
BT: Was Dobby the ring bearer?
PM: No, he gets too stressed leaving the house. My grandmother was.
BT: Changing gears, your series “My Mother’s Absence” made me feel so blue.
PM: I’m sorry
BT: How did it make you feel?
PM: Thankfully, since I have art, I can just get it out in a different way. I’m always trying to find a balance between the analogue and the digital. It’s my way of understanding this whole new digital world. So it’s this idea of where we live and what happens when we die. When you pass away, what you leave behind is kind of who you are, in an essence. Physically. So in a digital way it was very literal, she was taken away from these pictures. It’s the same intangibility in life, she’s not here either. But that doesn’t mean it’s like Men in Black, and your whole memory’s gone, like I never knew this person. It’s just one of the elements that’s gone. The death of my mom also kind of went along with this thing I had been working on that goes back 10 years, with my aunt who disappeared in ’81 during the (Guatemalan) civil war. I kept documenting my home, my life. My grandfather, his passing. Going back to my grandmother’s house 6 months later, what did it look like? Her passing, her absence, we got rid of everything. My mom’s passing, her absence. My father alone, watching the World Cup with half the bed still made. I began using my aunt’s texts, she was a poet, and her images, opening them as audio files, to hear what absence sounded like. Opening the text as images. I started discovering that sound is waves and so is color, that means that sound can be a color, what color would that be? Maybe the sound of this photo is yellow. This led me to look at sonograms and the colors of my voice.
BT: You spoke about your wedding being like a collaboration, would you say the same thing about your artwork?
PM: For the editorial side of photography, I do think it’s more of a collaboration. But in my work now, what I was explaining, I feel like it’s more personal, me alone in my studio experimenting. I like to collaborate when it’s ideal to collaborate, when it’s more natural in a sense. The last girl I shot was at my gallery show, I didn’t know her at the time, and she was wearing this purple jumpsuit, it was just beautiful, breathtaking. I was like I don’t know who she is, but I have to sit her in front of my camera. I have this idea that I want to work with colors and backdrops, that’s my thing right now, and I ask, “Do you have anything you want to wear?” She says she has this and this so I tell her go for it, and that’s collaboration. Now she’s into it, it’s human interaction instead of me telling her what to do.
BT: Do you think in that way she was your muse?
PM: Yeah, to an extent. I feel like there’s threads of my life that I see come alive in people, and they become muses.
BT: What was that photo “Notes on Domesticity“?
PM: I projected a photo of myself onto chair.
BT: Okay, I thought you printed vinyl and upholstered a chair.
PM: No, but that’s a really cool idea. That’s what I like about talking to people, little things like this that are so simple, but I never would’ve thought about that, wow…(Paula’s voice trails off) Sorry I’m writing it down. That’s a cool collaboration idea.
BT: When did you meet John Waters?
PM: At the Nourse theatre, he was going to be reading from his book Carsick. I fell in love with John Waters through Midnite Movies, taking classes with Jesse (Hawthorne-Ficks). I brought a John Waters movie that I had gotten from Amoeba, cause I thought that would be cooler than the book. I said, “Hi John, I love you to death…” some corny shit, and I asked him to sign my movie. But he couldn’t sign it because it was a pirated version. I said “I’m so sorry!” But he’s like “No, it’s not your fault.” So for some reason I had a pink flamingo with me, I have those pink flamingos (pointing to a shelf behind my head, to a figurine no taller than a dime). And I asked him, “Would you sign my tiny pink flamingo?” He put his “JW” on the bottom of it.
BT: The guy who invented the plastic lawn flamingo died recently.
PM: I know. I keep telling Alex he needs to keep one of those pink flamingos with him at all times because John Waters shops where he works. This was the second time, the first time I met him I was wearing a pink flamingo jacket.
BT: So subconsciously he’s never going to forget you.
Bridget Tyrrell Vintage 