Lori Nix is a photographer, sculptor and diorama artist. Her latest diorama series, The City, depicts nearly 20 post-apocalyptic urban indoor scenes in which humanity has disappeared - and nature is slowly taking back over. Painstakingly crafted by hand almost in its entirety, The City shows her brutal attention to detail, from incorporating real full-sized houseplants to hand-painted globes and maps. Her earlier works, "Accidentally Kansas" and "Unnatural History," show a human-less rural Midwest and a beautifully cluttered black and white Museum of Natural History, respectively. She loves disaster flicks and lives and works with her partner Kathleen in Brooklyn; here is a portion of our phone interview.
jonny: Lori, I first wanted to congratulate you on winning 2010’s New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Grant.
Lori: That money’s already spent. [Laughs.] The money went to doing three quick scenes for the New York show [of The City] last November. We have 18 total now.
jonny: I read that in college you made the transition from photojournalism back towards ceramics. What inspired you to primarily work in dioramas?
Lori: When I was in college I worked for the darkroom. I was the photo editor; you have to want to stand in a crowd and know what’s going on. I’m horrible at photojournalism; I’m horrible at portraits. I’m not a street photographer at all, so catching interesting things around me is difficult. After being a ceramics major and building things with your hands, building dioramas is a more natural process.
jonny: How did you come to work for New York Magazine?
Lori: When they have an idea that they think I can illustrate through a model or photograph, they usually call me and see if I’m interested in it. They only call me once a year or once every couple years. We just finished an editorial piece called “The Ultimate Sportsman” for Field & Stream Magazine.
T-Rex, from Unnatural History
jonny: What did you take away from working on “Unnatural History,” since its black-and-white film lent to expediting the set building?
Lori: I still enjoy them – they’re light, they’re humorous; I can re-use a lot of sets over and over again which is something I’ve never allowed myself to do before. I’ve been collecting plastic figures for a long time; I have a whole room full of them and it’s good to finally have a use for them. I’m just enthralled by the Museum of Natural History.
jonny: The main inspirations for “Accidentally Kansas” and “Unnatural History” are pretty clear; did “The Lost” have a specific muse?
Lori: Most of that just comes from living in a large urban city and reading the New York Times, the New Yorker, reading published articles. Those were just kind of the inspiration – just being here and feeling like a lost soul.
jonny: When did you bring Kathleen in to work with you?
Lori: In 1999. We’d get home from work and I’d be working [on dioramas] and she’d want something to do so I’d just ask “Here, why don’t you help me with this?” so she started doing that. The work has improved a lot since I’ve brought her on board.
Library, from The City
jonny: Do you still like disaster movies, despite the almost complete reliance upon CGI? Any favorites?
Lori: I’ll still watch them; I just don’t get to watch them that much. I work a full-time day job, and there’s a bedbug epidemic in NY and you get a lot of bedbugs from going to theaters. I need a plot though.
jonny: I read your comment about changing our impact on the climate; how and when do you imagine mankind will finally end?
Lori: Am I being a pessimist when I think it’ll happen overnight? It’ll come so fast that we won’t get science to see our way out. Just the last two years, the summers are hotter, and the crazy weather we’ve had this winter…we’re gonna reach this tipping point if we haven’t already that we can’t come back from.
jonny: Have you ever visited any major disaster sites? There are plenty of ghost towns and toxic dump areas that could easily find their ways into your future projects.
Lori: I live close to the Iguanas Canal, which is an EPA superfund site, but purposely? No. I like to stay home and do all my research on the computer.
jonny: How did “The City’s” winter New York and Chicago tours go? Did you have a chance to go with your work to visit Chicago?
Lori: The show’s up right now [in Chicago]; it’s been up since the beginning of January. I was out there for the opening. It was cold, but at least it was sunny.
The Bar, from The City
jonny: My favorite pieces in “The City” are “Map Room,” “Library” and “The Bar.” Do you have any favorites from it?
Lori: No; some ended up being closer to my original vision than the others. I like most of them; probably all but one.
jonny: Do you have any other projects you’d like to start work on soon?
Lori: I’m always having new ideas but I need to finish the projects I have going on. I was going to start a whole different type of photography, but I know in my heart of hearts that that’s just going to take me off the path I need to finish; it’ll be too distracting. Even the black and white will be a little distracting. I think I know what I want my next body of work to be about but I can’t start for another three or four years.
jonny: Will any of your work be touring any other cities in the near future?
Lori: It’s gonna show up in Buffalo in the summer, and at CEPA (a non-profit gallery space in Buffalo) then I’m having a showing of the series of The City in Toledo in November sometime.
jonny: Thanks for your time, Lori.
For more on Lori Nix, including galleries of her stunning work, please visit her website at http://www.lorinix.net
