Whitney May: You were a toymaker and an industrial designer before you became a full-time artist.  In what ways have your previous pursuits shaped your paint- and ink-filled oeuvre so far?
Stella Im Hultberg: I don’t know if there is any direct influence from my having been a product designer to be found in what I do currently. Before I ever studied and worked in the industrial design field, I’ve always drawn. One of the reasons why I chose industrial design was because it seemed like a field in which I could utilize my love of drawing in more practical terms. One outcome of working as an industrial designer, however, is that, somewhere along the line, I began to feel like I have lost my own voice when it came to drawing.

The Art House Gallery & Studio is unique to Nashville as it is the only gallery focused solely on the work of local artists. While the definition the Art House assigns to “local” is a broad one—John Hung Ha, one of its top-selling artists, currently lives in Brooklyn, but grew up in Nashville—the Art House is committed to its community and the people that make it up. Located in a small bungalow home dating back to 19__, the Art House is part of the 12th Avenue South district, an oasis of small, eclectic businesses, many of which are housed in converted homes like this one.

The KKK is after John Sims. In September of 2004, Sims installed his Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag at the Gettysburg College and the Mystic Knights of the Ku Klux Klan had a bit to say about his redefinition of this weighted symbol of the South and slavery. Why were the sheetheads so pissed? Well, Sims found the only "proper" way to hang this flag was by a noose. Fitting, eh? Reverse it. Feed it right back to 'em. And the KKK was quick to call this action "an extreme act of racism against white Christian America." Interesting.

In talking about artists who turn their life into art, one has to mention Richard Foreman's new mixed media play WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD! purports to be a response to a world in which visionary sages and poets are replaced by specialists who make platitudes out of the immediately observable. Supposedly here, the unconscious fights back to life in a shape resembling "the stone that rolls up the hill backwards" (the evil one) and, from such "evil,” life renews itself.

In talking about artists who turn their life into art, one has to mention Carmen Einfinger as a primary representative of our day. Without any artificial attitude, Carmen Einfinger transforms every aspect of her everyday life into an art piece: her clothes, her furniture, her whole Soho loft, everything she deals with gets that colorful, mysterious and magical touch. The bright colors and the clear and simple, although very expressive shapes clearly derive from her Brazilian background. A background which is a self made one: born in Great Britain from Dutch and Croatian parents, Einfinger was brought up in Santos close to Rio de Janeiro.

“The only task left is to consider how I received this idea. For I did not get it through the senses, nor has it ever appeared to me unexpectedly, as the ideas of sensible objects are wont to do, when these objects are presented or seem to be presented to my external organs, nor is it only a product for the fiction of my mind, for it is not in my power to diminish nor to add anything to it. No possibility remains, consequently, except that this idea is born and produced with me from the moment that I was created, just as was the idea of myself.”