Emily Counts’ imagined worlds invite viewers into a luscious realm of magic and symbolism. Sea of Vapors, Counts’ most recent iteration of this amalgamation of elemental and animal symbolism, exhibited at Oregon Contemporary (Ox) from November 1, 2024 through February 9, 2025. References to the natural world and familiar objects come to light through the use of mirrors, lightboxes, textiles, and ceramics. Atop an octagonal platform, a coven of figures so beautiful and bizarre emanate the power of the female archetype. Scattered at their feet are clay creations in the shape of gold-tipped daggers, uncanny felines, and an assortment of flora in various stages of decay. In an adjoining room, The Grandmother Wizard Queen (2024) is the artist’s largest sculpture to date, melding ceramic, plexiglass, and fabric mediums into one grandiose presentation of tender passion.
Sea of Vapors was part of Ox’s Site initiative, a series of site-specific large-scale solo exhibitions by artists from and/or currently working in the Pacific Northwest. Born from a deficit made glaringly clear during the pandemic, Site attempts to shift the arts ecology and make room for more regional artists to build commanding, multi-sensory work. Artists have included Natalie Ball and Annelia Hillman pue‑leek‑la’, Rick Silva, Willie Little, Fernanda D’Agostino, and Marcus Fischer. Director Blake Shell had previously exhibited Counts in 2017 at the now closed Art Gym at Marylhurst University for an exhibition titled Symmetry Breaking. Seven years later, Sea of Vapors was a meaningful homecoming for the artist and curator alike and an invitation into joy for all who encountered this stirring installation.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my interview with Emily Counts as we chat about all things magical realism, matrilineal heritage, and the whimsy of artistry.—Luiza Lukova
Luiza Lukova: I’ve had the pleasure of following your trajectory as an artist for quite some time now, tell me a bit about how you began developing your characteristically otherworldly style?
Emily Counts: Thank you so much Lusi. Roughly ten years ago I was creating sculptures that were mostly abstract. As I moved out of that phase and started to work again with representation, I began embracing imagery that is dreamlike and surreal and suggests open-ended narratives. I had been playing with facial features for a long time, moving them around and treating the face or head as a site for experimental ornamentation. I think of the facial features like objects in a room that can be rearranged, and I like to search for new configurations that are beautiful to me. It’s a formal exercise, but also a way to express that the experience of being a human is very strange, and always shifting in unexpected ways. I choose colors that are warm and bright and not natural to the subject matter, using vermillion, mauve, lavender, deep yellows, ice blue, and metallic gold. These colors also contribute to the otherworldly quality of the sculptures.
LL: Where does the title Sea of Vapors originate from and what was the process of bringing this large-scale installation to life?
EC: Sea of Vapors is a name for one of the large, dark plains on Earth’s Moon, it’s the English translation from Latin, Mare Vaporum. I always thought these words were so lovely. It describes something that you can’t really touch, something mysterious. And this is how I feel when making or viewing art, there is mystery that I am attracted to.
The first iteration of Sea of Vapors had a nautical theme, as the original ten life-size figures were placed on a long boat-shaped platform. They were on a voyage of sorts. The title Sea of Vapors referred both to this journey by sea and the way that one experiences art through feeling and intuition, sifting through vapors. I originally created these pieces for the wonderful Museum of Museums in Seattle, that has since, unfortunately, closed. They supported the development of this work and redesigned their immersive installation space to fit my vision for the exhibition. I had created installations in the past but hadn’t done so to this extent, so the process was a good challenge for me. Through this experience I learned how my art can take up space dynamically and how the sculptures relate to our bodies. Sea of Vapors has turned into a traveling and evolving exhibition with its third iteration at Oregon Contemporary. With each show some works have been removed, new pieces added, and I have been responding to the exhibition spaces, shifting the narratives and configurations of the figures.
LL: This work was also shown in Seattle at the Museum of Museums in 2023. What creative liberties, if any, did you take that might differentiate this install with the former?
EC: At Oregon Contemporary the Grandmother Wizard Queen was installed in her own space, as she was also at the MoM. But now she was surrounded by many fruits, flowers and other objects that signify abundance. I see these items as gifts both received and given. The installation of life-sized figures in the primary room were oriented very differently in this iteration, standing in a circle, facing outward, on a 20-foot-wide octagonal platform. I wanted these figures to create a powerful but gentle group or coven, with an open space in the middle like a meadow. My work is often maximalist, and I felt that this inner area provided needed breathing room, and perhaps a suggestion of a gathering of collective energy.
This exhibition also included the Familiars sculptures, the supernatural animal companions that were paired with each figure. This animal series has been developing over the past couple years and it was important for me to include them into the evolved version of Sea of Vapors. I have been thinking about animal-human bonds and the consciousness of animals.
LL: Much of your work is figurative. Can you track that impulse back to something in your creative career?
EC: I received my BFA in painting at the California College of the Arts and so I started out as a painter. I was making only self-portraits at that time and for a while working very realistically. Although I moved away from that practice for many years, I think the instinct to use myself as a subject has always been there. It is a habit to look at myself for reference, to my body, and especially my face and hands because they are the most complex to depict. I am interested in exploring how we inhabit our bodies, what that feels like to be to be looked at, to feel insecure or confidant in your body. The current series of power stances help encourage comfort and strength in myself, and hopefully others.
LL: In that vein, who are these powerful female characters? Who is The Grandmother Wizard Queen?
EC: The figures that I create now are composite portraits of myself and very important women in my life like my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and best friend. As surreal figures they are mostly portraits of personality traits, or the energy of a person, but with some physical traits that refer to all of us respectively. I put them in power stances and confident poses, to bring form to a tender power.
The Grandmother Wizard Queen is all three of those descriptors as well as perhaps a ghost, deity, witch, or spirit… I was thinking of this figure as an unseen and magical part of ourselves that we all share. We collectively are this figure. She doesn’t reference any specific spiritual belief and I like to leave her open to interpretation, but I do think that she is more a comforting presence than malicious. I wanted to create a figure that was larger than life-size and so I roughly doubled all my own measurements to get her proportions. There is a looped video situated inside her midsection, of spiders sitting and working in their webs. Spiders for me are symbolic of sculptors and other artists who work with their hands. Spiders are always building and making, but I am also attracted to how they can be poisonous and their beautiful, delicate webs are death traps.
LL: Do you sketch or ideate your figures or let the materials inform you?
EC: My sculptures always start with a sketch. I have a sketchbook and the drawing practice is very important to my whole process. These are usually quick sketches, black ink on white paper. I feel like I can capture something important and unexpected there because there is no pressure on the act of drawing and the sketchbook is not shared. I am trying to either outline an idea that is in my head or discover something that I didn’t realize was in my unconscious mind. Occasionally I will also make sketches with watercolor on paper, if I want to think about color from the start. Once I begin a sculpture there is also discovery along the way as I am physically building it. The materials do lead me to an extent.
LL: Pulling so intimately from personal references, does this work bring with it a sense of nostalgia for you?
EC: Yes, nostalgia is there sometimes. I work from memories of people but also objects and places. I am often trying to incorporate pieces of memories that are exciting, mysterious, beautiful, or emotionally saturated. The pushbutton telephone is an example of an object that I have used often in my work that was really important and wonderful to me as a child. But I also think about the future a lot and aim to create objects that have a quality I haven’t seen before, hoping to surprise myself.
LL: There’s a very delicate balance in your subject matter and materials—the warmth of the velveteen robes and soft sculptures against the harder edge of ceramic gold-tipped daggers and mysterious fruits. Were you referencing any specific symbolism in these groupings?
EC: I love combining materials, textures, and surfaces, and enjoy pairing soft with hard and sharp, or translucent with opaque. All the connections and grouping of disparate objects or materials speak to how I am either looking for balance in the world or enjoying duality. The daggers as symbols are similar to the spiders in my work, both beautiful and dangerous. These knives are useful tools and also symbols of intrigue or violence. My series of fruit and flowers are reflecting on life cycles, growth and decomposition, beginnings, endings, and transformation.
Meaning in my work can be approachable like that, while other choices I make, or subject matter, are direct references to my past. For example, the use of hand-dyed velveteen is specifically for remembrance of my grandmother. She had a little old velveteen bench that I have now, and I always associated that material with things that are incredibly fancy and special because of my childhood perception of it. It’s an emotionally meaningful material for me.
LL: What were some questions or thoughts you were ruminating on when building out this collection?
EC: As I was creating this work, I was following my intuition. I was trusting that it would make sense in the end, and I was going through the process of accepting and embracing the fact that I make personal work. But I wondered how it would translate or appear to others. I was hoping that it wouldn’t come across as confusing or nonsensical. After showing this body of work several times in different iterations I was so happy to see that people often have emotional reactions to the show and are seeing themselves in the figures. Their interpretations are just as important to me as my intentions. I have had the most wonderful conversations with people that expand my understanding of what I am doing and why I make art.
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More information on the Site initiative for Pacific Northwest artists at Oregon Contemporary can be found here.
Emily Counts: Sea of Vapors
Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR
November 1, 2024 to February 9, 2025