Coming home from work to a sink piled with last night's dishes is enough to make your stomach drop, but for artist Joan Linder, it's one messy muse. In fact, an unwashed stack of crockery inspires her work, and in her series Sink she's drawn and redrawn her kitchen sink, chronicling her daily life via one overlooked household location.

We got in touch with the creative lady to ask a few questions about her work.

What is your name and how old are you? Joan Linder. Old enough.

Where were you born and where do you live now? I was raised in the suburbs of NYC. Now I live in Buffalo, NY.



How does where you grew up and where you live now affect your art? I am so lucky to have parents that were into art and culture. Growing up, we made frequent visits to New York City museums. With my friends, I learned about Beat and Punk, I took it all in. My mom signed me up for art classes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I drew everything in the galleries, from Greek and African sculptures to Renaissance, Modern and Impressionist paintings. The way I work now, my practice is informed by daily life, I'm always looking at my immediate environment, in the kitchen or a seedy local bar or the landscape that starts at edge of rusted out Buffalo. All the while carrying with me all the painting and drawing I've seen, it grounds me.

Please describe the space where you do most of your creation – whether it's your art studio or kitchen bench! It depends on the project. I often draw on location, like when I drew cadavers in an anatomy lab, or chose a specific tree right at the edge of a forest. When not elsewhere, I hunker down in the studio — formerly the grand living room in my Victorian house — or across the hall at the kitchen table. That's where I spent the past two years, drawing my kitchen sink.



What kind of mediums do you use? Why do you choose to use these mediums? Since 2004, I've used pen and ink on paper to create large-scale and life-size representations of people, places and things. I was trained in school as a painterly painter. Years later, I stumbled upon pen and ink. The medium unexpectedly clicked with me, it exploded the expression of my ideas.

Is there a running theme to the work you create, or do you just make whatever comes to mind? My projects appear to concern wildly diverse subjects. However, they all are about my noticing, then intensely noticing, something particular in my life. For every series or large project, it's the moment for me to really understand...the dishes, or a Monterrey Pine, or a particular kind of bondage...understand it because there's so much contemplative time while I draw. Everything deserves our attention, I'll get to it all eventually, right? I give a lot of thought and do a lot of planning when I develop new project concepts, it's not so straightforward to find the thing, usually right there in front of me, that I'll give all that attention to for months or even years.



What kinds of ideas and things are you working on at the moment? I am just beginning a landscape project about toxic waste sites near my home in Western New York, including the infamous Love Canal. Somehow, it seems perfect immediately following the kitchen sink series I wrapped up this spring.

If you were to teach an art appreciation class, what kind of lessons would you try to teach your students? Funny you should ask! I teach art in the department of Visual Studies at The University of Buffalo. My big goal is to get students to slow down and be patient, to exercise attentive and unmediated looking while they draw.

What is the strangest thing or thought that has inspired a piece of work? I remember hanging out at the "Old Pink," a bar in Buffalo — this was not too long after I'd moved up here — seeing a Howard Zinn bumper sticker on the wall and thinking how great it would be to incorporate it into a drawing. After a few minutes and at least one cocktail, I realised the only way for me to do that was to draw the entire bar. The 50-foot drawing took a year — and I lost track of how many ballpoint pens — to complete.



Which era of art do you appreciate the most? How can I possibly answer that? There's so much I love to look at from all times and places. I tend to respond most to two-dimensional hand-made work, especially drawing and painting.

What other budding artists do you love? Among many budding (and some in full bloom and even dead) favourites I'd include Goya, Vuillard, Saul Steinberg, Miriam Dym, Mark Greenwold, Catherine McCarthy, Rackstraw Downes, Dana Schutz, Alexi Worth, Dawn Clements, Charlie Friedman and the list could go on but I'll stop now.

What do you enjoy doing when not creating art? Because I'm trying to change the wild ideas people have about artists, I usually spend time with my family.



Where can we see more of your work? You can also see some projects in person when you visit Mixed Greens Gallery in NYC or check out their website mixedgreens.com, or go to my website joanlinder.com.