Elaine has worked for Bookmans for three years now. After doing a couple years in the Book Department at Ina, she’s now the Visual Merchandising Coordinator at the Grant store. For those not in the know, the VM is in charge of creating and maintaining the constantly rotating displays that help make trips to Bookmans fun and surprising.

As we were getting set up, Elaine shared some photos of her work. She apologized for not having a hinted at digital portfolio available, but she was having trouble with her droid - er, computer. My daughter and I looked through the photos, oohing and ahhing, when we recognized something that was definitely a Bookmans interior. What was, in the before picture, a nondescript brown door had become, in the after picture, a knight in armor standing guard over an off-limits passage way. “That’s at Ina,” Elaine told us.

ANDREW COLTRIN: So, you’re an illustrator and an artist. What’s your art background?

ELAINE SUTTON: Basic doodles - there was personal stuff throughout high school. When I graduated high school I decided to get an art degree. It was kind of a toss up between art and music, because I’m really into music theory. I played piano, played the trumpet. But art kind of won out of that and in ‘95 I started my bachelor’s program at Louisiana College in Louisiana. I was there on a scholarship - not an art scholarship, an academic scholarship - and did my four years... I have a BA in studio art, painting and drawing as a concentration. I did a lot of three dimensional work.

For a year after I graduated I was in Americorps. I did an 11-month service term at the Alexandria Museum of Art assisting with their art education programs. I facilitated their Art on Wheels van. I went out to schools within a two hour radius and talked to 4th and 5th graders about printmaking and painting. It's challenging to get 30 4th graders to do a block print, and you’re thinking “don’t get it on your clothes”… I’d say the first month and a half was difficult; of course I was pretty nervous. I had just graduated, I was 22-years old, you know. And then I would do the museum tours. I had a lot of fun with that. Once I moved out here to Tucson, I started at the Art Center Design College and ended up getting an associate’s in animation graphics.

Kind of backwards, I guess. I took the GRE and I did all the looking into MFA programs. And, I don’t know, I didn’t feel like I was as mature an artist as I could be in order to get the most out of an MFA program. Plus an MFA program would have been more painting and drawing and I was more interested in getting my fingers into other pies. So I’d always enjoyed cartooning and I took a web animation class when I was getting my bachelor's, and I got totally hooked. I went and I got my two year degree in animation - that was in 2002 that I graduated. I could have gone to Nickelodeon or Disney, but at that time I wasn’t prepared to relocate.

Shortly after graduated I did some work on a film called “The Bug Queen” with a film student at the U of A. It was her final film for graduation. She wanted an animated sequence for it. There was a bunch of us who got together and put it together and it turned out pretty cool. I did a lot of 2-D animation, but I can do 3-D as well. I learned on Maia, but it’s such an expensive program to get your hands on. I’ve not been able to work in the 3-D computer environment, but it translates really well. If you can do 3-D in the real world, doing it on the computer isn’t very hard. You have to learn the technical side of it.

After “The Bug Queen”... I was working at Barnes and Noble at the time. And I spent four years [there]. I did various supervisory positions there and I got sick of it [laughs]. And I applied to Bookmans.

COLTRIN: There seems to be a lot of Barnes and Noble and Borders refugees at Bookmans.

SUTTON: [laughter] I like the environment of Bookmans a lot. It’s more inspired.

COLTRIN: It is, definitely. There’s room to be more creative.

SUTTON: And then when I got this job, [Grant store manager] Ed was, “I know how it is with creative people.” A boss who understands that sometimes you can’t just 'yoink' it? That sometimes you have to wait and it will come to you while you’re falling asleep or in the shower. Or at a red light. So Ed’s great, being understanding on the whole creativity thing.

All throughout my artistic career - which spans a little over ten years at this point - I’ve done paintings for people, I’ve sold personal paintings to people, I’ve done portraits, I’ve done wood burnings and little things here and there. I worked on a series of greeting cards for a chef in town called Culinary Quirks. It was a series of 12. And we were written up in the Tucson Weekly for that. Her name's Jamie Castro. Some of the cards are kind of funny and cool. It’s a challenge to try to take a caption that might not be that much of a chuckle and try to elaborate and make something more out of it.

It was two years ago that my brother passed away… So my drive towards actually trying to make career moves and decisions kind of dropped off, but my drive to paint increased. I finished ten-plus paintings in the next year. So they were part of the grieving process, I think. I wanted to hide and do something that doesn’t… you know…

COLTRIN: So the creative process is really a core part of yourself.

SUTTON: Definitely. I consider myself a Supressionist. [laughter]

COLTRIN: Can you elaborate on that?

SUTTON: I’m a suppressionist painter. Painting’s a therapy for me. I have a hard time motivating myself to produce work that I could sell in mass. Commissions are much easier. Whenever I’m painting something somebody already wants, that’s much easier. Other than that, whenever I’m using my own of time for something it will be more journal-esque, kind of a “get out the things that I don’t express.” I’m not a writer, I’m a painter, so that’s what I do. So it’s very, very therapeutic for me. And it’s always the challenge. If a piece doesn’t provide a challenge for me, I’m liable to lose interest. It’s hard to motivate yourself to treat it like a second job. Sometimes I do really well. And sometimes I don’t.

Last May I had a show at the Grant store. We had about 35 or 40 people show up. And I just brought a bunch of my paintings in to the community room. I sold one piece that night. That was cool. It was a nice chance to bring all my stuff in. Because you look at the photographs [gesturing toward her stack of photographed work] and you can’t tell if a piece is this big or this big [indicating different sizes with her hands]. It was nice to bring it all in and have people look at it. We had a little reception.

That was something I worked and worked and worked at. And after that I was kind of burned out. So for a couple months I just chilled and worked on my social life. And that’s cool though because that’s when I met my fiancé. And we got to know each other. And then all of a sudden I started to be in the position of -

[Somehow, there is a moment of silence in the recording; half a second in the space of something nonverbal that suggests all the unavoidable complexity that comes about when you become involved with another person.]

Sometimes it’s hard to see your passion get put to the back burner. I need to do this and this and this, but I need to paint. I need to paint. So I’ve been doing little things here and there. Coming up with sketches, just pencil on a piece of paper, but it’s probably something I can use in the future.

I’ve had a lot of fun doing stuff here for the store... I had a big dragon that I put above the "Eragon" table. I’ve got the mural that’s out by where the payphones are - were. The book mountain thing, I painted that last year, around the same time as that little show.

Gradually I’m starting to build up to that push again. But now work is such a creative outlet for me, so it’s like I could do this, but I could also do this for this table. Or this window.

COLTRIN: It provides opportunities.

SUTTON: Oh, yeah. Opportunities to do little things that are cool. It seems like a fine line sometimes. I don’t want to use my position to showboat my talent, you know what I mean? But I want to be able to come up with stuff that will interest our customers and make them go “what’s that?” And walk up to a table and actually look. And ideally they’ll see something they want to buy.

People are so used to the constant information bombardment, you know - signage and titles and media. Sometimes it’s hard to get through those things and present them with something that’s different, that will capture their attention. And that’s where the creativity comes in, thinking outside the box and around their heads. Sometimes you can break through with this strange idea that actually gives you a lot of joy. And people pick up on that and say I want to see what that’s about.

I always try to be active using my talent for something. Because what good is it if I just use it for me? I was the editorial cartoonist at Louisiana College… And I’ve had my various other jobs. I worked for Kinko’s. I worked for the Great American Cookie Company. Worked for the library at school. Books and art, I’d say are my two top passions. Kind of moving over into movies as well.

COLTRIN: So, the animation was pretty fascinating for you.

SUTTON: It is.

COLTRIN: Are you still working on bits?

SUTTON: Given the nature of animation, it’s so… for one, it’s time-consuming. You're talking about 15 frames a second, so it’s very time-consuming and very tough work. But I’ve got an idea for something going. I have a house that I built from a kit, that was at my show. I don’t have any pictures of it right now. I decorated it. It’s a very Elaine-esque piece. I wanted to use it as a 3-D background for 2-D animation over it and my fiancé is trying to come up with a story. Plus my best friend Mario, who has a film degree, he wants to work on something as far as a project goes. So it’s been a while since I’ve actually had the tools to put out an animation.

The animation did a lot more for my art than just allowing me to know how to make a picture move, or how to create a wire frame in Maia and make it move, or add texture. I think that it taught me a different way of seeing life, the world and objects that I didn’t get whenever I was getting my bachelor’s. Because with animation you have to simplify things. You have to break it down to their easiest elements, otherwise it’s going to be overwhelming trying to get everything to work and to move. So I think that it taught me a different way of seeing my environment, my world, and even my work, than what I had whenever I was getting my bachelor’s. And I think it did a lot of really cool things with my art. That was something I was really glad I did.

I’m not a graphic designer. It would be easy if I was. I could make a lot more money. Or if I had the motivation in the right areas I could be making a lot more money. But money’s not everything. Know what I mean?

COLTRIN: You’ve got to respond to your passions.

SUTTON: Exactly. I’m trying to think of how to put it. If the dollar sign ends up being my motivation to do it, it’s lost its meaning to me. It becomes more of a job than a passion.

So I guess I have the best of both worlds. I have my passion in my job, but it’s still a job... It’s hard, because it's very easy to upset that balance and flow. And sometimes that’s what you have to do, you know. Do the nitty gritty exercise. Do a charcoal of a cow skull, just to do something. And that’s the hardest thing for me. Just to get myself to do something everyday. Whether or not it’s good, whether or not it’s something I can use. If it’s just a little doodle. Doing something everyday is a goal. But it’s also not a goal I meet very often.

Louise Nevelson. I have a quote of hers in my studio: “The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within." There’s not only the creative ideas you have to look for within, it’s the gumption to keep going. The ability to look past all the other really great artists out there and say “I don’t care, I’m gonna just keep doing my thing.” And at the same time challenging yourself to develop as an artist. To constantly improve things, to look at things differently.

It can be very daunting comparing yourself to others all the time, going down the list and saying ‘oh, well they were this age when they were doing this’ and ‘what am I doing with my life?’ You've got to remember it’s your own life and it’s got a different time scale than other people’s. And something may happen. I may become famous after I’m dead, but in order to do that, I need to leave behind enough paintings. And where to put them all?