Interviews: Caroline Wampole

Caroline Wampole is a bass-player turned painter who has lived in a myriad of locations from Boston, to Buffalo, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and now, Paris, France. She was, or maybe she still is, the bass player for a band called Big Soul, but her love of all things paint have taken her off of the musical road tour and into her painting studio.

Here is an interview we did when I recently visited Caroline's beautiful little studio in Paris, France.

kimba: First things first from an artist-at-large.com perspective! Where have you traveled in the world and have these places influenced either your music or your painting?

caroline: I didn't really start traveling at all, other than within the States, until 10 years ago, when the band went on tour for the first time in France. Since then I've traveled quite a bit around Europe, especially France, Spain, and Italy, as well as a brief stay in Moscow in 1997. But the bulk of my travels were on tour with the band.

I don't know how much it affected our music, because we had a very distinct style by then. But during this time we heard so much French rap and techno and electronic music, it was inevitable that it would seep into our music once we got back to The States.

As far as painting goes, France had a huge influence on my visual thinking in general. I have never been so visually stimulated anywhere -- from the street signs to the buildings to the pastries to the posters in the Metro - everywhere you go there is something delicious and exciting and beautiful to look at. And of course all the French painters who I grew up looking at, and now I can see them just down the street in the museums here.

Having said that, I can't leave out Spain and Italy in the equation. Madrid's El Prado and Sorolla museums are two of my favorite places on earth. Rome and Florence (particularly the Tuscan hills) both had a huge effect on me, and have re-sparked my interest in Italian painters and sculptors. There is a big difference between reading about something in a book and actually experiencing it in the flesh.

Oh -- and London's National Portrait Gallery, the modern portraits. They've had a big impact of my thinking about portraiture in general.

Back to music -- living in Los Angeles definitely influenced our music, but mostly in a reverse psychology way -- the complete lack of support we felt in the culture (and at our early shows, with audiences who stood with their arms folded) forced us to hone our craft and get better.

caroline: Big Soul is what John Lee Hooker was talking about in his song Teachin' the Blues. It's a philosophy of music and life where less is more, feeling is more important than technique or frills: "Throw them fancy chords away." For the band it also meant making a connection with the audience, instead of posing like rock stars waiting to be worshipped. It's about connection, and community, and recognizing that you are just part of a long line of other artists, standing on the shoulders of the greats.

kimba: It's not easy for bands to get discovered. How did that happen for Big Soul?

caroline: A French tourist who attended one of our shows in LA had taken our CD back to France and played it for her DJ friend in Paris. The DJ had a disco that he ran in Paris and also one in Nice in the South of France. He took two of our songs and started playing them in those discos and they became hits. For about two or three years we had two hit singles in the clubs in the disco scene in France ...

caroline: Our first tour was like a dream for us, with only occasional nightmarish moments. After playing in clubs in LA and San Francisco for seven years with a solid but small following, and always having day jobs, it was just overwhelming to finally have full-time work as musicians -- playing to sold-out crowds of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. In January and February 1996 we played thirty-eight shows in thirty-seven different cities and towns in France -- all within seven weeks' time. That doesn't count all the interviews and shows at the local record stores. We were on TV and the radio, were welcomed everywhere by strangers, we were wined and dined in the French tradition ... it was truly an amazing experience.

And yes, the French love their artists and are faithful to them (I wish I could say the same about record companies!)

caroline: Coming to France - part of it was about being free and doing my art. And another part of it was that it was the one place that valued our music more than anyone had in our own country. For that reason alone I feel like I have this giant debt to France. Just this feeling that I could flourish here. I felt a success here that I never felt in The States. And I don't mean success in the outer trappings, I mean it in the way that I was appreciated and valued. For me as an artist that's all I want - to feel appreciated - and to know that what I'm doing is serving some other purpose and that it has some value.

kimba: Does it drive you crazy that you could be famous for your music in France and be, for the most part, unheard of in your own country?

caroline: It used to, it doesn't anymore. Anyway, I'm still expecting Big Soul to resurface someday, like the Velvet Underground, and I'll be getting calls from teenaged fans when I'm in my 80's. Good music almost always eventually finds its listeners.

kimba: Do you find a huge difference in the way Americans and the French think of artists?

caroline: I think that in The States the problem is that we value things related to how much money they make. So we do value art, but it's always connected to that money. When we were in the band, some people thought it was cool. Definitely some people did. Especially in San Francisco more than LA. But there was always a sort of undertone until you've made it.

It's like telling people you're a writer. If you tell people in The States that you're a writer they say, 'Whatever'. If you tell people in Paris that you're a writer, they have so much respect for you. That is taken seriously here. Because people here read. They read all the time. You'll see someone's little tiny apartment here and it's full of bookshelves, full of books. And I can really connect with that. Because my mother was a French teacher and we were always in this academic and intellectual world. We would meet foreigners as well as students. We were always talking about ideas, talking about things other than cars and money.

caroline: I started painting in 1999. I'd always liked drawing but I was afraid of color. Then I started taking classes at Lulu's studio in Emeryville and she introduced me to gouache and acrylic. Fear of color went out the window. Color is now what gets my juices flowing, what gets me out bed in the morning. But I think that as you get older you actually see things differently. I used to see everything in terms of lines. Now i see color everywhere, color and shape.

caroline: I really believe that playing music for so many years actually prepared me perfectly for being a painter. The hand-eye coordination, the performance aspect, the leap of faith in creating something new ... Even the courage it takes to stand in front of a crowd -- a lot like standing in front of a blank canvas. You just have to take a deep breath and do it. Playing music in a band gave me a lot of confidence that I don't think I would have had otherwise. I also learned a lot about the subjectivity of art. Some people will like what you do, others won't, you can't please everyone. I paint to please myself -- and that's plenty challenge enough.

kimba: One of your series of paintings was done entirely around a series of portraits of expat women - where did that idea come from?

caroline: I had just moved to Paris and I was going to museums a lot, looking at Impressionist and post-Impressionist art. I liked the idea of these painters living in Paris and having their friends or lovers coming over and posing for them in their home studios. At the same time I was meeting expat women left and right, mostly younger than me, many single and in a certain romantic/exploratory phase of their lives. They seemed to really like the idea of getting their portraits done. My apartment on rue Daguerre became the setting for all but two of the series -- it has a great light in it and very "Parisian" fixtures, like the windows and the moldings and the fireplace.

caroline: I am drawn now to more abstract figurative work ... but I don't know if I'm ready to paint that way yet. I still have several series that I want to finish; one that I'm working on now is based on medieval paintings I've seen of The Three Ages of Man. This is a strong subject for me as I watch my mother getting older, and my sisters having children, and thinking about my own mortality. I also have a series that is inspired by the religious narrative paintings I saw at the Uffizi this summer. I'm interested in framing things outside of the usual square or rectangular format.

caroline: Yes, almost every day, since I was 11. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the box of them I have ... I might start using them as collage for paintings!

caroline: John Singer Sargent, all the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Dufy, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Alice Neel, my mother M.L. Clark, Lulu Stanley ... and I'm sure there are others I just can't remember right now.

caroline: Well, this isn't artwork exactly, but I just saw the Grand Palais reopened after the roof had been renovated. I saw it at night with music and a light show ... hundreds of people in a huge space ... I really felt the energy and optimism that must have been there for the World's Fair in 1900 (or whenever it was).

kimba: Do you have a favorite restaurant/bar/cafe/club and why do you like it?

caroline: Le Dome du Marais, a restaurant on rue des Blancs Manteaux in the 4th arrondissement . It's just great food, great setting, and unpretentious atmosphere. I rarely go to clubs or bars ... I spent enough time in them with the band!

kimba: Since you live in Paris, can you recommend just one thing (to see or do) to someone visiting Paris for the first time?

caroline: Yes! Go to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement. Of all the parks in Paris (and I've been to almost all of them, big and small), it is hands-down my favorite. It has a little bit of everything -- tennis courts, a bee-keeping school, an art museum, an outdoor cafe, puppet shows and pony rides for kids, old people playing boules, teenagers hanging out smoking and flirting, businessmen on lunch breaks, retired people reading, etc., etc., etc. And all of this going on in such a clean, ordered, calm environment. OK, so it's pretty bourgeois demographically. But there is just no better place to be in the late afternoon after a hectic day in the city -- the light between the trees, the famous green chairs you can position where you want, the statues at every turn, the flower beds, and just the overall atmosphere of beauty and elegance. It also makes a good starting or stopping point when visiting the 5th, 6th, and 7th arrondissements.

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Studio Visit: Caroline Wampole