Meet Lindsey Whittle

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lindsey Whittle . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lindsey below.

Lindsey, thank you so much for making time for us today. We’re excited to discuss a handful of topics with you, but perhaps the most important one is around decision making. The ability to make decisions is a key requirement for anyone who wants to make a difference and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your decision-making skills.

I am often explaining to my students as a professor of art that I think artists are professional decision makers. For any exhibition I have to make thousands of decisions. What am I going to make? What am I going to make it from? What is it going to be about? How will I display it? Will I change the walls of the space? Will there be community interaction? What will the lighting be? What will I title it? What will the text blurb say? These are a few examples of some of the questions I have to answer to decide how the exhibition will take shape. I think getting good at making decisions comes from a few different places. The first and maybe obvious one is practice. The more you make decisions and study the outcomes the more you can refine the direction you are hoping to go and get comfortable making decisions towards that outcome. I also think it is very important to trust your gut and make decisions that are authentic to you. I know my character and I know that I try to make choices from a place of kindness and a desire to better the world through artful behavior. Sometimes we have to make a choice that no one else understands, but I know when I am making a choice from the values I intentionally chose for myself and that I have a desire to do good in the world its ok whatever the outcome of my choice is. People are like flowers. If flowers were all exactly the same the world would be quite boring. But we are all unique and different and it’s ok to trust ourselves and make choices unique to our will. Another thing I am very proactive about is being a detective of my own interests and goals in order to build a conceptual foundation to make choices from. I realize this might be a more complicated thing for me to explain – so I appreciate you bearing with me. For example as an artist, I try to get clear with myself about my current most important conceptual goals. For example, for many years I made art around the idea of connection. I spent a lot of time researching and brainstorming connection. So when it came time to make a choice in my art I would defer to that foundation to make a choice from. So when trying to decide what materials to make art from. I would ask myself if there was a material that would best embody the idea of connection? I ended up making art from Velcro, magnets and interlocking acrylic plexiglass etc which were materials that physically connected. I wanted all my choices to point towards my conceptual goal of connection and it made the choices easier to make because instead of there being an infinite amount of choices to pick from, I had narrowed it down to a selection of choices that were central to my goals. Lastly and I think this is the most important thought behind decision making is that its actually quite rare that a choice is perfectly right or wrong. Obviously if you are deciding whether not to commit murder there is a clear right or wrong choice there. But if you are deciding to eat burgers or tacos for dinner either option is fine. Both are have some health values and unhealthy aspects to them. Both probably bring joy and maybe add a fun social component. But whichever one you choose will leave you sated, and fulfill the goal of eating dinner. I explain this to students a lot when they are debating what direction to take an art idea. The issue is that you could come up with 100 ideas for your art project and in reality – none of those ideas are technically wrong. So do you narrow it down? I’d say start with the ideas that feel the most relevant at that time, and especially the ideas you are most excited and curious about in the moment and pick one and then study the results. If you are excited about a direction that curiosity will likely motivate you to follow through on the project. You could also choose to make all 100 ideas and see where the resulting data leads you next. The reality is we learn the most about who we are from the results of our actions. I tell art students that ideas will only get you so far that you will discover who you are as an artist from making stuff. So I encourage people to stop worrying about whether or not their decisions are right or wrong and instead be curious about the options and directions presented to you in your potential choices and make intentional choices based on the person you want to be and directions you want to go in and be open to the results even if they don’t initially go in a direction you planned or expected.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Lindsey Whittle, also known by her art identities Sparklezilla and Future-Lindsey, is a multimedia performance and garment-based artist, textile print designer, art experience facilitator and educator. She uses colorful, transformable objects not only to form shapes, but as a starting point for collaboration.

Whittle is a professor and educator that has developed custom garment and performance art programs for the Art Academy of Cincinnati since 2016, has been a lead teaching Artist for Artworks Cincinnati, lead artist for ProjectArt, program developer for Sew Much More for the Live it Like you Mean it Foundation and even taught English for a year a fashion high school in Gifu Japan. She later received the Greater Cincinnati Collegiate Collection’s (GC3) 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award for teaching at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Whittle co-owns and co-instigates PIQUE, an experience gallery and Airbnb in Covington, KY, with her husband and fellow artist Clint Basinger. Since 2015, PIQUE has hosted two 24-hour performance art festivals with Annie Brown and Noel Maghathe, a Perform-A-thon in 2019, and a Perform-A-rama in 2021 amongst many other community-based events. Basinger and Whittle also regularly perform together in their sound art band “Spikow for Now”and use their marriage as a source for many art projects. Whittle was a 2022 Residency Unlimited resident in Brooklyn, New York funded by the Great Meadows Foundation. PIQUE’s Airbnb has been featured in Architectural Digest and Whittle’s artworks have been featured by Hyperallergic.

Whittle constantly searches for new ways to bring art out of traditional spaces and into everyday life, and her practice is an ongoing conversation involving her past and present work. This is most readily seen in her wearable duration projects and textile prints which are visual dialogues about works from her archive. A single piece of Whittle’s work often has many applications where it can function as a prop, installation, wall work, sculpture, or be worn on a body. Since 2019, she shifted to focus to teamwork, where collaboration is central and these voices contribute to and inform her practice. For example, she rigorously builds her series “Shape Languages” together with her 25 collaborators, and this exchange acts as a foundation for decision-making and creating cohesive communication within her work. Modeling from research of lives of those such as John Cage and Mr. Rogers, Whittle’s current practice focuses on minimizing the gap between art and life. As a Fluxus artist at heart, she adopts the idea that everything has the potential to be an art object and every person has the capability to create and experience art. Whittle and Basinger’s clothing products can be purchased at spikow.com

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I narrowed it down to my top 5.

There is no such thing as talent:
I realize this is a pretty bold statement to make. But I really believe it. Students tell me all the time they wish they knew how to draw. Drawing like any other skill comes from practice. You train the eye and hand to work together. When I was in fashion school they would make us design between 50-100 outfits a weekend. This felt insane especially because they didn’t seem to invested in our design ideas. I realized later they were training us to draw our ideas fast. Now I can draw a body and put my design on it almost with my eyes closed because of the muscle memory. You don’t come out of the womb being able to sing opera. You likely come out with an interest in music, and you spend your time and energy training our voice to become an instrument. Sure some of us are born with physical advantages like height if you want to play a certain sport. But overall I think we discover our dreams and interests and let those guide how we develop our skills and focus. I think what we often call talent is actually the final results of commitment and dedication towards an interest or goal. So if you have the desire to be good at something start committing time and focus towards that desire daily even if all you have to give is 5 minutes. Logging that practice builds and leads you.

You have an infinite amount of chances to change your life and person:
Often, we try something – like starting a new habit or goal and when it doesn’t work out we give up. When in reality it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work out the first time or the tenth time or the 100th time. It doesn’t matter what age you are, how many set backs you’ve had, how impossible it seems sometimes. You get as many chances as you want to become the person you want to be. Never stop dreaming about that and don’t let a set back stop you from continuing to try.

Use intentional thinking to challenge limiting beliefs in ourselves:
I have ADHD and I spent most of my life believing I was “not a reader” because I couldn’t focus and stay with it. My mom had to read me a lot of my school books so I didn’t fail – even up to high school. I maybe read 1-2 books a year after that. Then I read the book “Limitless Mind” by Jim Kwik and I learned that I just hadn’t found the right way to read that worked best for my brain and that my brain wasn’t fixed that I could challenge it and work it out just like I would my muscles at the gym. After that I took a speed reading class and that made it a game for my ADHD trying to read content as fast as I could, that year I read 48 books in 6 months. So the next year I set a goal to read 108 books. I ended up reading 167 books. This year I set a goal of 204 books and I am currently ahead of my goal by 6 books. I can definitively say now that I am a reader. Me believing I was not a reader was holding me back – when I should have been asking myself what aspects of myself do I need to change and challenge to become a reader. What thoughts do I need to think to become the person I need to become to be a reader? Now I have set a goal for myself to start paying attention to and spotting limiting beliefs I hold about myself, so that I can intentionally challenge them.

Fly your freak flag you have something only you can offer:
I do an exercise with students when I have them list all their interests. I don’t let them censor themselves. I want it to be an honest and authentic list. If they love kittens write it down, if they love art genres, favorite books and movies, favorite foods, their families etc I have them write it all down. There are no wrong answers. Then I have them narrow down to their top 5 interests right now and I tell them that is their recipe that makes up who they are at this moment, and that is their starting point for the art they make that semester. Stay true to your interests and see where they lead you even if some of your interests feel like opposites, the tension in trying to understand why they are different can lead you in exciting directions. If I assigned my student the same art project 10 times I can promise you they will all come up with a different solution each time that is unique to them. I used try and sew the proper way that I learned in fashion school. But I had the biggest breakthroughs when I let myself sew the Lindsey way (which is very blobby and sculptural). I was holding myself back by only making the things I thought I was supposed to make, instead of trusting my curiosities and intuition and see where it led me even if it looks nothing like something someone has sewn before. We all have a unique song to sing in this world, trust your gut, even if it doesn’t make sense in the moment see where it leads you. I’ve had art projects that mattered me that took me a decade to understand. Now they are very pivotal to my art archive and it would have been detrimental to my work if I stopped because it didn’t look like “art” and I didn’t have the language yet to understand what I was making. Those things revealed themselves to me later after consistently making the work for many years.

Create the life you want now – don’t wait for your life be easy/perfect to be happy:
I have been dealing with a form of stomach long-Covid since last November. It has been very debilitating. It is easy for me to be quick to temper when I am in a lot of pain and not sleeping. But in the spirit of the late singer, Nightbirde, I remind myself that I don’t have to wait until things are easy to have a happy life. I can make little choices all day long to try and create the life I want to exist. I’m a big believer in the importance of dreaming. We always encourage kids to dream of their future and what they want to be when they grow up. But for some reason we stop asking adults what their dreams are. I hope you dream until your very last breath and that you let those dreams continue to push you forward throughout each day of your life. Let your self dream even when it feels impossible and don’t wait to long to put those dreams in action.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I always tell people my two primary art mediums are collaboration and color. My entire body of work presently is about languages that I build from collaborations with people I frequently collaborate with. Teamwork is the biggest concept that drives my work and I am always open to putting heads together on fun and interesting ideas. I don’t know if I am specifically looking for any type of person to collaborate with. Anyone that has an interesting or crazy idea that wants to put their head together with me. People can connect with me through Instagram @sparklezilla, or email -Lindsey.whittle@sparklezilla.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sparklezilla.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sparklezilla/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sparklezilla
• Youtube: https:// www.youtube.com/@sparklezilla
• Other: My store of clothing/print designs are sold at Spikow.com.Here is a linktree to articles etc: linktr.ee/Sparklezilla

  Here is my shared tiktok with my husband – tiktok.com/@spikow

Image Credits
Image of Lindsey (Sparklezilla) covered in large wearable paper sculpture from “Paper Parade” performance – shot by Clint Basinger
Image of Lindsey (Sparklezilla) covered in reflective material and teal lines on her face – shot by Clint Basinger
Image of Pones dancers standing with their arms up – Image from “Keeping Our Torch” – shot by Lindsey Whittle
Image of Future Lindsey and Future Clint holding a boom box time machine – shot by Grace DuVal
Image of collaborative flag project with Benjamin Cook installed outside on Governors Island – Shot by Grace DuVal
Image of Chapter 3 of the Super Tall Obstacle Course outside surrounded by trees – Shot by Dustin Schleinbaum
Image of Lindsey (Sparklezilla) covered in Neoprene wearable project with strips hanging down- shot by Dustin Schleibaum
Image of “Interlocking Plexi Version 4” sculptures -Shot by Grace DuVal
Image of “Welded Metal Sculpture Version 2” Performance – Performed by Lindsey Whittle and Clint Basinger. Image shot by Rhee Lightner. Welded sculpture was design by Lindsey Whittle and fabricated by Adam Schmidt based on a Shape Language with Clint Basinger