Creating an Experience: An Interview with Artist PD Packard

the simple story snake sheds and lizard
Artist PD Packard Present In Her Studio
Interview
Monday, September 4, 2017

Included in the September-Fall Issue of, Anti-Heroin Chic, artist PD Packard talks us through her life's work, and the multifaceted experiences she strives to create, reminding us that "the most sacred aspect of art is the artist’s hand upon their work".

Intro from the interview:

Is there beauty in the bite, something to learn inside each of the things we fear? What more than appearance might the spider contain? What color, what mysterious geometry, what inspiration? PD Packard's artwork explores the complex interweaving of entomology and the parallels with our more human selves, attempting to express the principles of unconditional love, as opposed to conditional romance. "One may find something quite hideous about bugs," PD says, "but I discovered through observation and the causal study of entomology that though there is horror, there is also beauty, even love in a world that parallels our own." Shed skin, shark teeth, sun-bleached fish bones, the pattern of a beetle's shell, ours is not the only world to think about here. What surrounds us, what do we see, what don't we see? What are the almost invisible relationships at work in the air or just beneath our feet, how different are they, how similar? "I am attracted to things that are very different from me and make me feel uncomfortable." PD says of primary influence, "Feeling uncomfortable is a significant part of creativity, causing a curiosity within me to look closer at the subject matter." Packard talks us through her life's work, and the multifaceted experiences she strives to create, reminding us that "the most sacred aspect of art is the artist’s hand upon their work" and the many worlds we stumble into, and out of, along the way.