Chris Edwards is an artist based in Chicago. I was introduced to his work several years ago while taking a break from waiting tables at Kraftwork. I sat with Zach Rawe (editor of this issue) and the Chicago based artist and curator Matt Morris who was in town for To Fade and Spill Out (and Look at another's whole) at Fjord. We were discussing clothing, research and meaning and Matt told me about Chris Edwards’ work. I called chris recently to ask him about the images and objects that he makes. We talked about the things that inspire us and how to carry out investigations with care. Here is a part of our conversation in the typical interview format.

SUZANNE LOU SEESMAN: Your work often dialogs with characters simultaneously outside of popular memory and somehow formative, foundational, archetypal even like the protagonists from films such as Parker Posey Party Girl which I saw in the theater as a teenager or Rosalind Russell's Auntie Mame which a VHS staple at my grandmother’s house growing up.

While I recognize these characters, they are also not the obvious set. I find myself referencing things like Party Girl to my peers and getting crickets in return. For me there is a web of recognition between the characters you've chosen to represent in your work. Your Nylons are a good example of what I'm thinking of. What - if any - is the thread in your thinking between people like Posey, Mame, Sandra Bernhard and Oscar Wilde?

CHRIS EDWARDS: I asked my boyfriend this question because he gets tired of the pop culture references that I assume everyone shares but they don’t. His answer: they are queer, they are not accessible, and their weirdness is not intentional. They set out to live their lives, and are told they are weird without them signing on to it.

SLS: This idea of labor in relation to clothing and communication is so real. It’s about maintenance and consistency too. This reminds me of how I came to know about your work through Matt Morris. He told me about your cataloging work specifically about your 2011 series One of Jessica Fletcher's Outfits from Every Episode How did your interest in the life and work of Angela Lansbury come about?

CE: In 2009, I found photo albums from the 1940’s that my elderly gay neighbor Bob threw away. I held onto them until he died right before Christmas in 2010. I had to figure out how to illustrate his impact on me without exploiting him. I started working on replicating the patterns and visual detail from his photos. This process led me to the realization that I am allowed to choose things to love and to dig deep to show I love them, and that process will help me love things well.

I had access to all twelve seasons of Murder, She Wrote, which is a massive object, 12 years, 263 episodes. Like Bob’s albums I had it was a complete document of a certain thing. I wanted to pay close attention, and slow down. It was a process of watching, screen-capping, and picking the best shot or crop of an outfit.

People were skeptical until I got close to illustrating the whole thing. About 150 collages in someone who had seen the project progress said, “Oh, I get it now”. It is easy to say you love something as culturally disposable as Murder, She Wrote - as this kind of campy cultural object. So, I had to prove it by building that love.

SLS: After our last conversation, I started watching Murder, She Wrote from the beginning and now I can't stop. What do you think it is about this series that takes such a hold and how is it different from more recent or current habit forming mystery shows like Law and Order or How To Get Away With Murder?

CE: In an interview, Angela Lansbury described Murder, She Wrote as simple, like doing a crossword puzzle. The stakes are low, if there is something you don’t understand it is a closed circuit that doesn’t ask you to think beyond itself, and you can look forward to the next installment. Murder, She Wrote is comfortable, it isn’t asking much from you, and it will give you exactly what you expect.

Murder, She Wrote was built as a family show to pair with 60 Minutes on CBS in the 80’s. The network viewed as something to keep the lead in on Sunday nights and for people over 50 even though its popularity was much more widespread. It was in the top 15 rated shows until it was put against Friends on Thursdays in 1995. It was gentle, the violence was only implied, and most episodes end with a freeze frame of Angela Lansbury laughing at a friend’s joke. It is kind and comfortable. It aspired to be somewhat sophisticated. The theme of the show is that plucky curiosity and a drive toward justice will win in the day.

Murder, She Wrote was turning away from depictions of violence and sexuality that they saw on television in 1984. In 1998’s Mature Audiences: Television in the Lives of Elders Karen E. Riggs interviewed older women about their long term interest in Murder, She Wrote. Her interviewees identified Murder, She Wrote as a “salve to relieve their anxieties about the decaying morality in entertainment television”. They also identified it as a pleasant way to mark the time and said it represented a set of ideals that they enjoyed seeing celebrated in each episode.

Television mysteries have progressed, the story telling is more complicated, season arcs are the norm, and writers are pushing the medium forward. Show like Damages or How to Get Away with Murder that use this freedom to create nuanced, complicated female characters that Jessica Fletcher couldn’t and wasn’t trying to be.

Murder, She Wrote presented diversity in an easily digestible and non threatening way; minority characters were still firmly middle class and even when Jessica travelled to faraway places things were never outside the reference level of middle- America.

They were trying to tell the viewer that you can trust the world, and also softly nudge viewers toward a more open mind. In Mature Audiences, the respondents talked about how they identified with a woman who could go out into the world and have new experiences and learn new things. One interviewee talked about how Jessica learned how to use a computer in her 60’s and that it showed that you can always change. I think that was important to the show and to Angela Lansbury especially after she became a producer in the early 90’s. Jessica was resistant to switch from her typewriter to computer, but adapted, and also adapted to moving from Maine to New York City. It is a very gentle nudge, but in a progressive direction.

Angela Lansbury brought a level of control and kindness that made the show what it was. My favorite story about Murder, She Wrote is that there was an actress, Madlyn Rhue, who was confined to a wheelchair due to MS. Angela Lansbury was a producer on the show and made sure she appeared as the town librarian each season so that she could continue receiving SAG insurance.

SLS: The series is full of scenarios that seem designed to test expectations in terms of representation and relationships. This holds true for Jessica Fletcher's love life as well. Brushes with romance come and go for J.B. but these never become the focus of the show's plot or narrative. I know that you have read quite a bit about Lansbury. Why was it so important to for her to make sure that J.B. remain relatively uninvolved in this way?

CE: I have a few bodies of work that are coming together at the same time. I recently started living with someone, which shifted my focus even closer to me. I have never reached far to find starting places, and now I am working with making work about relationships and domesticity and the right way to process that. I am finishing a series of foam/papier-mâché/wood/acrylic cactuses that are a sloppy metaphor for my boyfriend. I had to work through actually making something for/about someone I love who can actually respond to it, and develop a nuanced way of thinking about the work about that allows me to show that love without damaging it. We have also been doing household science experiments, and making borax crystal sculptures together. And sewing stuffed objects and stuffed paintings, trying to cobble together an understanding of where I am right now in terms of domesticity and family and junk.

SLS: When we last spoke you said something along the lines of "not everything that is disposable is garbage". I really like this idea but I wonder if you would mind explaining what you mean by this in terms of your work or the work of other artists.

CE: I mean that there’s something valuable in taking the time to love something when it doesn’t matter. The world is flatter than ever, there is so much content, it is all disposable. Learn something by loving stupid things.

I think it goes back to Bob, he threw away this record of his life in the 40’s and 50’s of himself and his boyfriend Bob and their gay friends. Totally disposable, was literally disposed of, but also totally worth caring about and learning from. ⊗