Mobile Photography Intimate Interview with Susan Detroy from Eugene, Oregon, United States

As a child I loved dancing. I am not sure I felt ambition, yet I was interested in being a dancer. Starting from toddler through my life, I took many types of dance/movement lessons. I learned tap, ballet, ice skating, tumbling, and modern dance. Beginning as an adolescent and into my adult life I took ballroom dancing classes; Foxtrot, Salsa, Swing, East Coast and West Coast, Rumba, Nightclub Two-step and Hustle. I wanted to go to college to be a professional dancer. I was dissuaded and funnelled into more “practical” skill-building career path. In college I continued my dancing as a physical education elective and I danced in a competition. I continued dancing through my life. In retrospect my young girl acquiescence has been a regret. I dance often but differently, as age changes my abilities.

I think my first recollection of recognition would be in grade school making art from my hand. I like drawing and liked the attention from teachers. I also recall performing on stage for grade school contest. I performed a dance. I dressed up as Carmen Miranda. I loved costuming, dressing and dancing. I enjoyed changing from everyday person to a performer.  I did like the attention which I think might have been recognition.

My memory about working as a young person is faint. My family tried to keep my sisters and I out of the work force. They had aspirations of our living wealthy lives and did not want us to work. I believe this may have made my coping later life challenging. I was raised to be taken care of instead of caring for myself. I think I had a part time job in high school working as a cashier at a neighbourhood drug store, well what it was called a drug store. Where I grew up there were stores that had a variety of products including a place to eat and a soda fountain. These were small stores that were part of a line of stores built next to one another. It was small strip of buildings a block from my home.  These were shopping centers, we called them. They existed before covered malls.

I attended public school from kindergarten through high school. I went to a grade school including kindergarten through eighth grade at two schools. The first school I attended through fourth grade and the second school was through eighth grade. This change from one school to another happened because my family moved to a suburban home that was away from my father’s dental office. My parents dreamed of building their own home and this was a step toward that goal. Previously our home was attached to my father’s office through a screened breezeway. I attended two different high schools. Attending two was the result of integration and busing. The first high school was downtown where I was bused for my freshman and sophomore years. The second school was built in the suburbs nearer to where I lived. Now as an adult I believe this suburban school was a mostly successful attempt at that time to keep the schools segregated. All of these schools were in Indiana.

I attended DePauw University in Indiana where I studied Spanish and Psychology. I loved studying language and went to summer school in Mexico during my high school years and lived in Spain as a student in my college years. I studied in Spain my junior year through Vanderbilt University. I lived in Spain during the Franco riots. Franco was a dictator. A few of the students in my class participated in the protests and were deported back to the US. It was a deeply interesting and eye-opening time in my young life. Being out of the US was a life-changing experience. I learned a lot more about my country living outside of it than I had living in it. I did not take any personal political stance at that time. I completed my college studies in Indiana and have a liberal arts degree from DePauw. After college I then worked as high school teacher first in St. Louis, Missouri then in Cincinnati, Ohio. I moved to Oregon in the early 70’s where I worked as a teacher, photographer, artist and art consultant, as well as a long list of in-between jobs, such as landscaper, waitress, security officer, social media consultant and art exhibit designer.

When I think of mentor, I think of Dan Powell, my first photography professor at University of Oregon. I returned to college in the 90’s to start a second undergraduate degree. Originally, I had a goal to secure a masters. I was besotted with photography and I took every photography course possible. I worked in an optics lab for part of my school time. This was a period in my life when I turned my attention to art and expanded my art making. I started to call myself an artist. As an older student I was impressed with people who I felt had substance and saw me as the strong learner I could be. Dan Powell was the first and most impactful professor in my college years at U of O. I continue a connection with him through social media and email. I will always feel his opinion is important. He was a kind and thoughtful instructor and gave me a lot of encouragement to follow my ideas. He supported the idea to create from where I felt the strongest and be ok with making work outside the norm. His understanding of the importance of his role and support of my art continues.

I have always been an active person. Because I was a dancer and active as a child that feeling of liking to move follows me through life. I went from dancing, to running and working out with weights. For many years I studied martial arts and yoga. I have been a hiker and kayaker. Currently I think I am above average in fitness for my age. I bike almost every day and I do yoga. I continue to hike and kayak in my own older person style. I do some kind of physical activity nearly every day.

Gosh both seem important, yet I think I will go with ambition if I must pick one. I think knowing where you want to go and desiring to move forward enhances success. I think talent can give you an edge but if you are not strong in your ability to show who you are you might miss being seen. In my own work I have always been a persistent and strong believer in the significance of dedication which I equate to ambition.

I awoke to the political in my 20’s. When I was living and traveling outside the US, in Spain, my perspective first shifted. With new knowledge and a desire to break from what felt was a restrictive life, I became more political. After pulling myself away from a culture that I believed might ultimately harm me, I moved to and lived in a commune in Indiana. I was living an alternative life to what I had known in my childhood and school days. I lived in a van and moved around the US. When I came to Oregon, I was living a political life. I studied politics and took political action. One of the actions I most proud of was creating a food co-op. I started the co-op market with several other people. That co-op still is operating today. From my 20’s till now in many elections, I do political work. Currently I have strong feelings about US and global politics. I attend some political rallies. I feel most comfortable integrating my beliefs into smaller actions. I go to post-carding events and follow a couple favorite commentators. I attend to what I eat, buy and use and know what I do has impact. I believe my art is political as it is about women ageing and the environment. I am committed politically to my art and to the health and well-being of my world and the planet. I believe, most of the time, that what I do individually and with others makes a difference.

Gosh, that question gave me pause. I am a low-end almost non-consumer, so nothing came to mind initially. Possibly because I use a bike for most of my transport needs, I might like to own a nicer bicycle. Or I would like to upgrade the devices I use to make art. A new iPhone or iPad would be dreamy.

I don’t think I have an extravagance. I live a modest life financially. I spend a fair amount of my budget on supporting and producing my art. I pay for art grant applications and art exhibit submissions. I buy apps and reproduce my pieces before I consider other luxury items. Maybe I don’t have an extravagance.

I am most happy in the natural world or making art. I like to be in my yard, kayaking and hiking. I enjoy going up the local butte to watch the sunset. I use my iPhone there and integrate many of the captures in my “Portrait of a Woman” series as well as manipulating and using them for other series I produce. I love riding my bike. Currently the night-time rides are delicious. I like to be at the ocean making art. There is a bridge near my house that crosses the Willamette River, where I go for viewing the beautiful river. I am creating a series about the view from that bridge.

Currently I have an ambition to increase my success with the art I produce. I want my art to support me financially. I hope the efforts I make in submitting and applying will bring return. I have an ambition to get my art out into the world in a bigger way. I would love to have it reproduced very large, such as a mural or billboard.

Sometimes I wonder how I stay driven, yet I do. I share with other artists our daily experience. Those connections support my drive. I possess a drive to produce, it is just there. And I feel a drive to share. As I age these drives have intensified. I feel I have so much I want to produce and share.

I think my greatest achievement is surviving. Several life experiences almost ended my life. When I consider the question, mentally I went through a few ideas and decided I feel it is an achievement to have lived through what almost ended my life. I am surprised this is my answer, but it is a gift to be alive and able to produce my art.

I can feel disappointed in the lack of self-awareness of humans and I feel injured by mean-spirited behavior. I know that people probably are not trying to irritate me. I believe these behaviours contribute to the demise of humanity. Self-centredness can kill us as a species as well as the rest of the planet.

I think she would be very surprised. I believe she thought she was going someplace quite different that where I ended up. She might think I am unlike her, yet I am the same person but very different.

Oh, funny the object I thought of seems out of character from what I have written, but it is a feeling from the past. I had a raccoon coat I bought when I lived in Cincinnati. This was during my “60’s second-hand shopper” days. When I lived in Cincinnati it was a time before second hand was big business. I bought the raccoon coat in a giant second-hand warehouse. It was beautifully constructed with an embossed cloth interior and deep interior and exterior pockets. I loved how I felt in the coat. It was comfy, snug, warm and sleek. It was stolen at some point in my life. I believe it would be unpopular to own it these days. But I would wear around my house and maybe risk going out in it.

So many possibilities. I think it would be people accepting one another as we are and actively loving our planet. Again, I say we have opportunity to keep the planet alive if we choose. This I think is the greatest challenge.

I do not know. I am thinking about this often as I age. With ageing as part of my art-making, it is a concept I integrate into my art. It does seem odd that there is not something more after living. I do wonder as I have had several recent deaths in my circle. Both my parents died in the last few years. My youngest sister died an untimely death just two years ago. I wonder about them now.

I would give my life a 7. There are some things I might wish to have done differently. I realize some may say live with no regrets. That is not me. I look back and see I could have done things in another say if I had known how. Giving the number 7, I have some places to aspire. With that score maybe I will find ways to up it closer to 10.

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