“The Wrong Way”: Embracing Imperfection in Art and Life
By thelaegotist / /
Trash-mâché is an art form that could only be coined by The Many’s head of Programming, Maude Standish. Having recently debuted her glorious pieces of trash-turned-art in Santa Monica at a show titled, “The Wrong Way,” The Many’s People Operations manager, Johanna Penry, invited her to sit down for a conversation about art, work, and perfectionism.
Johanna
Tell us, for those who don’t know about your recent show, what was the theme or concept behind it to start?
Maude
My recent show was basically an installation of sculptures by me that were made out of what I call trash-mâché. I call it trash-mâché because it’s not always papier mâché. Sometimes, it’s made out of recycled paper. But then I’ve also used my neighbor’s recycled cement. I will find little [pieces of] trash and then kind of turn it into stuff. And then sometimes, it’s also trash that is just my own trash that I have made, as well.
Johanna
So, is there a difference between other people’s trash and your trash in terms of what the piece means to you?
Maude
Oh, that’s a great question. Ah, probably not, honestly. Although maybe I guess I have a slight bit more intimacy with my own trash. But the thing is, with papier mâché and trash mâché, you just are working so intimately with it over so much time that you end up feeling that anyway. I would say on a scale level, all the things that are just made with my own trash are usually kind of small. But stuff made with [other] people’s trash is usually like, “Oh, I found a broken chair, or a broken water jug or whatever,” stuff like that. So, the things are usually bigger, because I’m not really getting small stuff out of other people’s trash.
Johanna
More like statement pieces.
Maude
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Statement trash.
Johanna
Okay, and your trash–you know why you threw it out. Whereas, with other people’s trash, you’re looking for a great piece.
Maude
What happened was, I work outside in my yard. And my yard is extremely public. It’s right on the boardwalk, and it’s publicly owned land. You can’t build a fence higher than your waist. The fascinating thing is that I get to talk to all my neighbors and tell them what I’m doing. So, neighbors started dropping off trash. One reason I have many lamps is people were dropping off lamps they didn’t want anymore. Then I would put stuff around them. In many ways, it’s not like I made it from scratch. It’s almost like I was mending a lamp they no longer wanted or using it as a base to create something. Sometimes, they would be slightly broken, sometimes not, but I would try to play with them, basically. Does that make sense?
Johanna
Yeah. And did you come up with a concept behind it in a way that really meant something to you? Or did you think, “I’m just gonna do this with trash”?
Maude
I think it was the latter. I actually started during the pandemic. I was losing my goddamn mind. And so, I thought I gotta be making something. I think that that’s like an attitude we have as an agency. And it’s definitely an attitude that I have as a person. Since my “making” was paused, I tried all these different crafty things. But then, it turned out that I don’t like following instructions. I needed to find something that was incredibly forgiving because I was going to mess up a ton. That was why I started doing papier mâché. The things got bigger and bigger because I thought, “Oh, I wonder if I can make this. I wonder if I can make that.” I kind of grew from there. What’s been interesting, though, as I was going through the process of it, there has been a little bit of a philosophy with it, where it’s all about this idea of uncontrollable things. So, one of the reasons that we called the show “The Wrong Way” was it was sort of based on this idea of “wrong” as a super interesting word in the English language.
Johanna
I identify with that idea already. What is “wrong”? What is “normal”?
Maude
You understand the crux of it. The English language is very factual. It’s super descriptive. In German, all these random words describe an abstract state, right? So, they’ll say, “Oh, this emotion you have when you’re sad because your bed isn’t comfortable enough,” or whatever. It’s a hyper-specific abstract emotion. English doesn’t have a ton of those words, but wrong is one of those words. Wrong can be used as an adverb, an adjective, a noun, a verb, or any of those things. Ultimately, it describes the opposite of what has been deemed “right.” What has been deemed right is an abstract concept. So this idea of being in the wrong and owning the space of the wrong, I just thought it was really fun to combat the sort of perfectionist culture that exists. For me, I spend so much time trying to do things well, or “right.” It gets to a place where you start to feel like the only things you’re allowed to do are those you’re good at, right? But often, it’s really fun to do things you’re not good at. And so, embracing doing it the wrong way was also a way to open up and think, “I don’t have to be talented to be doing this.”
Johanna
Yes. Okay so that actually leads me to my next question, which is, can you share how your art impacts your work, and your work impacts your art?
Maude
I think that my art is honestly, first, a response to the culture of having to sit on the computer. As in, “Please don’t let me do this anymore.” I want to be away from a computer and be physical. I think that the most interesting thing for me is that I am the messiest perfectionist you’ve ever met. And so I have this thing where I hoard stuff. I do this in the workplace, and I do this in my private life, where I try to never reveal what I’m working on to anybody until I feel like it’s absolutely perfect. And what this has done in my life has made me super late on deadlines. It’s made me not have as much feedback integrated into things that I’m working on. It’s also made me not do things that I thought I wasn’t actually good at. It’s made me not share what I’m doing with others, and this was especially when it came to my personal life. At work, you eventually have to know the jig is up, someone has to see it and just pass it on. In my personal life, I was trying to be a writer. I kept on writing but not showing anybody. Three years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution. That was my only New Year’s resolution that year, and it was to practice in public. The idea was to try to change everything to being a practice round and to make that really public so that I wasn’t always hoarding stuff away. I think that that’s something that I’ve tried to bring into my workplace because before I was a little bit more like, “Okay, I want to try to do the things I’m good at and be the best at them.” I think you probably know now that I always say, “Let’s try it out, let’s practice, let’s see what we can do from here.” I think that has been a big influence on expanding my personal abilities in the workplace
Johanna
Yes, and with your art, when you look at it, it just *is* messy. It’s perfect in its own form, in its own way. But it’s not by any means an ode to perfectionism.
Maude
No, it’s perfectly imperfect.
Johanna
Right, so maybe your art has also informed in how you have been working, as a good influence.
Maude
It’s true, I’m a messy thinker too, and so I think that it also has allowed me to embrace that. Whereas before, I tried to kind of hide it. You know, I’m super dyslexic. The way that I put things together is nontraditional. Now, I am very upfront about that in a way that I probably wasn’t before. Honestly, I think it makes me easier to work with because I’m very honest about my flaws when it comes to working.
Johanna
Agreed. Ok–fun question. I think this could be relevant even for one specific piece. Were there any specific campaigns or projects from the agency that inspired or influenced your artwork? I think you had a piece that was made of NOS cans. Am I making that up?
Maude
It was Red Bull!
Johanna
Red Bull! OG work. Was there a part of you that thought, “Oh, Christian (CEO of The Many) worked with Red Bull; this will be funny.”?
Maude
Maybe! Honestly, with me, the reality is that I’m not good at separating my work from my life. I know that there’s this thing called balance.
Johanna
This nebulous idea.
Maude
Yeah, it’s like a mystical thing for me. I think the way that I have sought it out is by actually bringing the two closer together. I’m not saying that everybody should do that. I think probably there’s some really unhealthy boundaries that I have. For me, I am so sure that everything that we do here makes its way into these things. And why I’m sure of it is, it’s often the way that I transcend from the workplace at the end of the day. So, in my typical day, I’ve come home from work, and I will go to a yoga class, I’ll eat dinner, and then I’ll go and I’ll start doing this stuff [art] for a couple of hours. I just think there’s no way that the different clients that we have haven’t ended up in it in some capacity. Does that make sense?
Johanna
Yes. They’re always there in the brain.
Maude
Well, yeah. When I’m on a client problem, I don’t know how to let it drop outside of my brain. So even when I’m sitting there making this stuff, I’ll probably be working through, “What do I think is the best strategy for Panda Express?” So, I know that [with] a lot of these things (art projects), I’ll be physically making them and thinking, “Why are people saying this about Panda Express? How can we utilize that? How do we build that into a more cohesive strategy?” And stuff like that. Does that make sense?
Johanna
Yeah, and actually, I wanted to ask how you approach the creative process differently when working on client projects versus your art?
Maude
Well, my role is so different, right? So, my role in our client projects is to be as thoughtful as possible. I think that my role in the creation of these things [art projects] is to be as thoughtless as possible, if that makes sense.
Johanna
Less strategy for sure. Although, there’s an element of strategy when you’re building something.
Maude
Well, that’s why they’re made the wrong way–I don’t think there was [an element of strategy]. What I have to attest to is a 600-pound cement table that is at my house that I can’t figure out how to move from my yard. And I think I’m just going to take a saw to it this weekend.
Johanna
That is a good example.
Maude
Which I would never build for a client, right? No, I’d say, “This is so not thought through. What was your exit strategy on this?” Literally none.
Johanna
Okay, last question. How do you see your artistic journey evolving in parallel with your career in advertising?
Maude
That’s a great question. I think that the best part about having an artistic practice outside of your work, I think for so many years, is that I tried to combine the two. And I think my sense of self was brought too much into the work, which actually made me worse at it. Does that make sense? It’s like when you are identifying with your output at work, it’s so much harder to have the big questions asked and answered. So, I guess my biggest goal is to continue to have this piece of self be separate from work. In order to continue to have my identity separated so that I’m more able to objectively look at what we’re doing here and hopefully be more helpful internally to the agency, to my co-workers and to the clients we have.
Johanna
Right. So you’re gaining an outside perspective.
Maude
Yes, I hope so.
Johanna
Amazing.
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