CAFE 541: Eugene artist Sal Strom talks about bitcoin, minimalism and living with brain tumors – The Register-Guard

In "LUSH," now showing in Lane Community Colleges Roger Hall Gallery, Lillian Almeida, Milla Oliveira and Sal Strom collectively engage rich material and intense processes to communicate our shared humanity through texture, colors, weight and form. Their pieces are meant to anchor observers in the physical world, expressing the corporality of their existence.

CAFE 541 recently sat down with Strom, a Newport native and multi-decade local artist who has continually used creation and destruction in her work. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

Have you ever taken part in a group kind of presentation like this before?

I've actually done quite a few of those. I used to show at a bunch, but after my brain tumors, I took a break and started doing video for six years. I've made three-minute videos, where when youre at international film festivals and you're onstage, if someone goes to the bathroom or blinks, they miss your work.

In San Francisco, that one was really cool. It was called 20 by 120 and it was 20 different artists and you have 90 seconds to present. Thats really fun because it's just like bam, bam, bam and they have to make their point in 90 seconds. You get that elevator pitch down.

I did video for six years because after my first brain tumor, I was cognitively kind of dead. I just learned video right before it, but after my brain tumor, I didn't remember any of it. So, it's really good for me to have to use that cognitive part of my brain and it's hard. It took me two days to do 10 seconds (of film) because my video is collage and totally experimental. In one, I interviewed over 100 World War II veterans and then I cut down their audio to three minutes. That's the core to me making sure my work involves other people.

And why is that?

I don't just stand in the world alone. I think that art should have a meaning. Before my first brain tumor, I worked in my studio alone all the time with the music on super, super loud and just having a great time, but after, I just felt that it wasn't meaningful. I didn't even want to do art anymore. It seemed like a narcissistic thing to do. Then I got (a Master of Fine Arts) and they teach to you to deal in far more socio-political work and that you can't make money with. So, I'm trying to get back into the selling stuff.

My next show is at a Bitcoin conference at the end of March. And that will be totally different because everything is for sale in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is prominent in ("LUSH"). What prompted that? Can you explain that a little bit more?

Whenever I do a show, I usually do it in a big series. The World War II one was really about my dad and connecting with him. At that time I was not so excited about living and so I wanted to know how other veterans that were in that situation what they thought the next thing that comes after this life. My favorite one was this one guy who said, Do you remember being born? And I said, No. And he goes, What makes you think you remember dying? and I thought that that summed it up.

The night of my opening, the end of 2017, my girlfriend from New Zealand that I met in like, 1981, came down to see it. We went to dinner afterwards and she was talking about her son doing this thing called Bitcoin and she didn't know what it was.

I researched it and ended up loving working with it. You're working with like cyberpunk people and you're working with all this young energy and technology. I love working with young people.

At your show, you used your dress from your daughter's wedding inside a piece. It seems like a lot of your work is about breaking stuff down, deconstructing it and creating something new. Could you tell me a little bit more about what motivates that?

I'm totally a minimalist. I do a lot of art residencies, so I got rid of my apartment and I wasn't really living anywhere. And when you're a minimalist, you don't have a lot of room to store things and I just don't like having stuff. I'm not an obsessive person at all. If I do a show, it's so much about the process. Once its done, I literally tear it up. I love to tear things up. I like (my work) best once it's torn and then it makes all these shadows on the wall and they have a life of their own. It's kind of like its breathing without me.

Why do you think people are so hesitant to interact tactically with art, to touch stuff?

It's what we've always been told not to do. You go to museums and galleries and their signs saying, "Don't touch the art." And so I want people at my shows to actually put their hands on my art and they have a really hard time doing it. I literally have to put their hands on the art to get them to touch it.

To view videos of Strom's work and hear audio of her chatting with CAFE 541, go online to registerguard.com. Follow Matthew on Instagram @CAFE_541. Email him mdenis@registerguard.com.

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CAFE 541: Eugene artist Sal Strom talks about bitcoin, minimalism and living with brain tumors - The Register-Guard