Nathalie Miebach: Sculpture was a natural way to investigate questions I had about science. My astronomy professor was instrumental in helping me become an artist. I asked him if I could submit a sculpture instead of a final paper, and he saw that I had a different way of learning.
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Student View
Q&A With Nathalie Miebach
The artist tells Scholastic Art about her working process and why data inspires her.
All photographs by Derek Dudek.
Why does Miebach present data on woven grids?
Scholastic Art: What first made you want to become an artist?
SA: What is your working process?
Miebach keeps detailed notes for months after an extreme weather event. This helps her figure out how to tell the story.
NM: It usually begins with an extreme weather event, like a hurricane. I gather data about what happens during the storm and what happens two months, six months, a year later. How do communities respond? The data collecting takes a long time. While I’m gathering that data, I start to understand the story I want to tell.
SA: Where do you find the data?
NM: I use weather stations, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and ocean buoys. I also use newspaper reports and scientific studies.
Nathalie Miebach, She Casts Her Circles Wide, 2016. Rope, paper, wood, data. ©Nathalie Miebach.
In She Casts Her Circles Wide, Miebach combines weather data with boardwalk rides to represent a narrative about Hurricane Sandy.
SA: How do you translate the data into visual art?
NM: All my sculptures have a timeline in them. The data can sit on a woven timeline or a basket grid that functions like a clock. Or I might build metaphorical structures such as an amusement park ride on which the data sits. I made a sculpture about Hurricane Sandy called She Casts Her Circles Wide, [above]. The little tags and clocks are a timeline of data recorded throughout the storm. It also looks like an amusement park to show the destruction to boardwalks along the coast. The sculpture is visually complex enough to represent the data, and it also tells the story of the hurricane.
SA: Why is weaving such an important part of your work?
NM: Weaving is logical and analytical. It’s a grid that is held together through tension. I then add other elements, such as paper, beads, or tape, showing the data, and I build these rides such as little boats or swings.
SA: What do you aim to say with data?
NM: When I started working with data, I thought the numbers were there to explain something to me. But the more I work with data, the more I realize that these numbers are connected to human experience. We need the messy human responses to these events to understand what’s happening to the planet. I’m always surprised by how much optimism I hear about communities pulling together. Rebuilding doesn’t happen as an individual, it happens as a community.
SA: What advice do you have for student artists?
NM: Staying honest with the work means allowing myself to fail 100,000 times. What you see in the galleries, exhibitions, and museums are the successes. What you don’t see is the 90 percent of the other work that ends up in the garbage—failure that has to be part of the process.
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