Welcome to Dot Editions “Artist Spotlight” series, where we’ll be interviewing one artist a month and sharing a little about them with you. The team of artists at DOT Editions have collaborated to bring you a monthly celebration highlighting local artists we’ve had the pleasure of working with through the studio. By these artists sharing a bit about themselves we hope to inspire the artist community to keep pursuing their dreams.

Artist: Anna Gage Norton

Medium: All of my still images since 2005 have been archival pigment prints, but I also have made several video series and installations.

Experience: 30 years

1-Q: Where are you from?

A: I was born in SW Georgia, and my family moved to Vidalia, GA when I was two years old.

2-Q: How did you end up in Asheville,NC?

A: With very short notice, I needed a temporary place to live, and my parents were generous enough to share their vacation place with me. That was in 2013 and I’m still here in Highlands (though long since out of their place).

3-Q: How many cities have you lived in and how hard or easy was it to get into the local artist community?

A: I’ve lived in eight other places, and have found it easiest anywhere when I had a connection to academia with its instant peer group. Outside that environment, I’ve found it to be easier as I age and learn to navigate beyond my introverted nature. The Bascom in town is a great art center, and I’ve also joined a group called Kinship Photography Collective, both of which have made a world of difference.

4-Q: What do you like to listen to when creating? Do you have any suggestions/playlists to share with us?

A: Daughter, Colleen, Phosphorescent, and Rachel’s, are frequent plays, but I shift genres with the seasons, and I also listen to a lot of podcasts (This American Life, On Being, The Extra Klein Show, Radiolab, Anthropocene Reviewed, To the Best of Our Knowledge). I find I need silence more and more, though, I think because we are so connected now. I need more mental processing time and space to be able to create.

5-Q: Do you have any kind of routines that help get your creative juices going and ready to create? Please share with us.

A: A road trip always gets my inner wheels turning, but I have a day job, so I have to fit creative time in when I can. I’ve always liked the perspective expressed by Somerset Maugham: “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.” Consistency isn’t in my nature, though, and I’ve learned to let my practice shift as it needs to over time rather than trying to force things.

6-Q: What’s your best advice on how to not procrastinate and get rid of creative blocks?

A: If time spent not working is coming from a place filled with anxiety over perfectionism that is preventing work, then deadlines help–shows or anything that gives you a reason to get over it and just produce. But if it’s a matter of just needing to process and play, that down time is crucial to our general wellbeing and essential to any creative process. It’s what produces the richness of a work.

7-Q: What does your creative space currently look like? Show us a photo! Tell us what you're working on, if you’d like to share.

A: My space is tight… basically a multi-use living space, so it looks like a bit of a mess right now. The empty vintage frames are for Found, a series of scanned natural objects (many of which are in line to be scanned), and I am also working on an ongoing documentary project about longleaf pine restoration on family property in SW Georgia called “On Nochaway”. Dot Editions printed a selection of those for a recent pop-up show at Slow Exposures.

8-Q: What is one thing that most people don't know about you?

A: I’m a great parallel parker.

9-Q: What advice can you give to the artists that are just starting their creative careers? What can they do to help get their work out there?

A: So much of it is about connections, so talk to people. Find artists who inspire you; most of them–even some of the well known folks–are happy to help. Follow the threads. Form a group with your peers for power in numbers. And apply to things, but look out for the shows that are just money makers for someone else.

10-Q: Did you go to art school or are you self-taught? If you went to school, where? If you didn’t, how did you start and what has helped?

A: My undergraduate degree was in anthropology, and I realized quickly when I was doing the artifact photography for a commercial archaeology firm that I had made the wrong decision, so went to the Maine Photographic Workshops (now Maine Media), and eventually went back for an MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philly.