A conversation with Ida Floreak.

Transcript from episode fourteen of the Good Folk podcast.

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SPENCER GEORGE: “Each new generation adjusts to the world it’s born into, and that goes for nature too. The mockingbird that mimics cell phones and car alarms is responding to its world. It might not know anything different. I’ve now been trying to look more toward the future, because there will be a future one way or another. As humans we have powerful imaginations, and it’s our responsibility to shape a future that’s better for our children and the children of the mockingbirds.”

My name is Spencer George, and you’re listening to the Good Folk podcast. That was a quote from the wonderful, inquisitive Ida Floreak, a painter living in New Orleans, LA. Her work deals with ecological anxieties paired with reverence for the natural world. She explores what it means to be human in a time of ecological disaster, where to find hope and our place in the recovery, as well as the universal human trait of worship. 

Humanity is an ancient and vital part of the planet’s ecology - our belief systems and rituals are an integral facet of nature. Drawing from a classical tradition with influences in the Italian Renaissance and medieval reliquaries, she examines the importance of acknowledging a world and systems greater than oneself, and finding the sacred in the smallest artifacts of nature.

This conversation reminded me of one of the greatest forms of activism we possess: the act of paying attention to the world around us. When we begin to pay attention, we begin to see the truth of the multifaceted world around us. And when we see that truth, we are invited to imagine it and reimagine it. 

Lately, like many people, I’ve been thinking about the end of the world. I’ve also been thinking about how the very concept of the end of the world revolves around humankind, and the problems within this. The world will go on, whether I am here to see it or not. There’s fear in that, but there’s also comfort, too. As Ida says, everything will adjust to whatever future is next. 

When I look at her paintings, I feel certain that another world is coming— one I hope will be more connected, more intertwined, and more attentive. Ida notices the details of things, and important power in the act of imagining new worlds. We are not all so separate as we think. Look around, and look forward. There’s something waiting out there on the other side.

SPENCER GEORGE: Thank you so much for being here and I'm so excited to get to talk to you. We've mostly been working with North Carolina artists, so it's really nice to get to expand. I am dying to get to New Orleans. I study the Gothic South, so everybody has told me I have to come down to New Orleans and I have a piece coming out soon with the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. So I'm hoping I can get down there for that. 

IDA FLOREAK: Cool. When is that again?

SG: It is happening in March and it's the same weekend as like eight other things. So I'm trying to figure out if I can make it.

IF: Festival season. 

SG: Festival season. But yeah, the Tennessee Williams Festival and the Saints and Sinners Festival are both two two literary festivals that happen the same weekend. If you've not been, I definitely recommend. I haven't been either, but I hear great things, and I hope I’ll be there in March. 

But I guess I would love to start— in your own words, you know, obviously we'll have the intro and everything, but in your own words, how would you describe your work as an artist and the way you found yourself doing this? 

IF: Yeah, it's very open. I feel like my work as an artist is always changing. It's always a little exploratory. I think that I have kind of different channels of work that I engage in. Mostly I'm an oil painter, for starters. I'm kind of known for doing these sort of hyper realistic— they're kind of like altar pieces, paintings of natural objects that I find. But I've been branching out a little bit lately and doing various imagery, birds and landscapes and fires and  just kind of telling a story that's different from the older work and kind of trying to figure out how those two things incorporate. 

Yeah. I'm based in New Orleans. I grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so up north, and moved down here right after college. The way that I talk about it is that I graduated right in 2009. There was no work for anybody. And so I was like, well, I’ll go to New Orleans, be a waitress. I feel kind of lucky in that that I didn't find myself in a profession that was tenable long term. Art was just the thing that stuck.

I've been drawing, I've been painting since I was little, but as a career, it kind of never really felt like an option, like that was going to be possible. There's the trope of the starving artist, and you don't always feel like there’s the possibility for you. But it just kind of was the thing that stuck. And I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to be able to do that here in New Orleans. Shall I kind of get more into the practical element of it or the work? The paintings? 

SG: We'll definitely get into all the paintings because I for sure want to talk about your work, but I am so interested in that piece— every artist who comes on here says the exact same thing, which is that we all loved art or whatever our art form was, and most of us did not think it was possible.  I would chalk that up to— I think there's so little representation of artists who actually live a good life and get to be happy and get to not be the starving artist. But I'm definitely interested in hearing— you mentioned that you grew up just kind of painting and drawing, did you find yourself feeling that you needed to go to formal art school or doing anything like that, or was it more I always did this thing and then I kind of found my way into it through that?

IF: Yeah, I'm again very lucky. My mom's a graphic designer, and she always was very encouraging, and so formal art school was an option. I wasn't forbidden from taking that path. I do kind of wonder now maybe how useful it was. 

SG: I have a degree in creative writing, so I agree. Maybe I should have studied anthropology years ago, but now I'm a folklorist. Life loves to surprise you.

IF: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot that I'm very grateful for, but I think that there's also a lot in the kind of formal art training that I'm trying now to unlearn. That's taken many years. I went to school before for illustration, thinking again, well, I'll need to do something that I'll be able to get a job in. But lucky for me, those jobs didn't really exist. So it was just fine art painting, just making images and kind of a little more freedom in that.

SG: There's both a freedom and a fear when it doesn't exist, the thing you want to do. Because then it's like, I get to make it. I get to make it myself. But also, what am I doing? 

IF: There's no constraints. 

SG: Yeah, there's no constraints. It's like the most exciting thing to a creative and I think what draws so many of us to this kind of profession and also the thing that's terrifying at the same time. 

IF: Yeah, well and I think I always kind of thought in my youth, in college that I'll find my thing that interests me and that I can do, and then I'll have it,  it'll be set. But it's just that fear of, I can do anything. The world is open, and any painting I make, like, every single day, I can do any number of things, and it just never goes away, that feeling of, maybe this idea is bad, maybe I'm on the wrong path, maybe I need to totally change direction. At least not yet. 

SG: Well, having seen your work, I think you're in a great direction. But it is always a fear that lies over you, and I think about it often. I'm like, my work is so tied to the South, and what if I leave the South and all kinds of things. So many fears with that. 

But I would love to think about New Orleans. So you mentioned you grew up in Cambridge. What drew you to New Orleans as a place and kind of brought you here? 

IF: Yeah, I had a friend who grew up in Baton Rouge, and I came down to visit her, and we just spent a weekend. And it was just sort of the first time that it was that I went somewhere and just felt that feeling of like, oh, this could be home. This is it. It was kind of immediate. I think a lot of people come to New Orleans and experience that. I've heard that a lot, that people come for a weekend and then just never leave. They unpack their suitcase and that's it. And I think that that was kind of definitely the case for me. 

I think it felt like a place at the time— which is feeling less less the case now, I think, for for younger people— but it felt like a place where I could survive as an artist. You know, there was a very low cost of living, and there just was this… It felt like art was important here in a way that it doesn't really in Boston as much. And yeah, I think that was kind of it. It was just a sort of lightning bolt, you know, love at first visit experience and you know, I'm here twelve years later.

SG: It makes me feel like I need to come there. We talk a lot in both the newsletter and the podcast of, I feel like I've always been looking for home— that I'm just going to get there and it's going to immediately feel like home and I feel like I have yet to find that. Now I've convinced myself it doesn't exist. And then I'm hearing you talk, I'm like, maybe it's New Orleans. Maybe I need to get there. 

IF: Well, but I will say too, it's hard here. It's a constant heartache and the city in so many ways doesn't function and I do always have a bit of a foot out the door. It's not an easy place to just settle down and live. I don't necessarily know that I'm going to be here forever. Which isn't to rain on that beautiful sentiment that it is the most beautiful place in the world, but it's just both. It's a really hard place and it's like nowhere else. 

SG: There's so many places in the South that feel that way to me, that they are beautiful and they're also really hard and really difficult. I love the way you describe it as art felt important. That's something that I felt really deeply in a lot of Southern cities that I've grown up around and grown up in, in a way that when I moved to New York, I was thinking that would be my arts community. 

Obviously the arts are very important in New York City, but it was completely different to me. It felt like everybody was vying for attention in the arts rather than building the community piece. I would love to kind of hear your reflections on that community and finding your way within that and what that looks like for you, because it's hard sometimes to break into a community, but it's also very comforting when you go somewhere and that community is established in a way that it's not in other places. 

IF: Yeah, definitely. I always just kind of assumed growing up in Boston and thinking like, New York, there's an equal sign there, and that's where you're going to go. I spent a lot of time in New York kind of in high school, just would take the $15 bus on weekends. 

SG: I've taken that bus from New York to Boston. It stranded me in Hartford overnight. 

IF: Oh boy. It's caught fire, it's broken down. I love that bus. But, yeah, I had friends in college that went like a year ahead of me and did the New York thing and just were kind of broken by it. I feel like I had friends that just went there with dreams and just never picked up a paintbrush again. It seems like it's an incredibly vital place, but just so difficult that it just didn't feel worth the struggle to me at that time, that point. 

And yeah, I think that there is something about New Orleans. I have found it really easy to make friends here and to find mentors. I had a mentor for a while that was just a painter, and I met him at a park. You know, we were both just taking walks and struck up a conversation and had a years-long friendship after that. It sometimes really is that easy here. And I think that that's a much harder thing to do in a lot of especially northern cities, where people are kind of more closed off. I'm in a studio building a few miles from where I live, and it's kind of always shifting, but it's been a pretty amazing place for just having access to other artists that are there every day. Even if you're not talking all the time, it's just through there. And that feels great. 

SG: Yeah, just the presence. That's a great way to put it of, at the end of the day, like New York just wasn't worth the struggle for you. And I wish we had these conversations more because I completely agree. That's exactly how I felt. I went there and did it and could have kept doing it, but I also realized there are incredible art scenes in other places and there are ways to support and be a part of that. And while this may be a great art scene and obviously vital, it's not the only one. Nowadays, people love to talk about LA, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta is maybe getting on the map, but New Orleans— from what I hear, and I have not been, but I am definitely trying to get down there— has one of the most incredible art scenes and such a storied history within the arts. And it always amazes me that it is overlooked in some ways. 

Part of that is probably New Orleans has also had a really difficult history and has obviously been hit by some really hard things and is struggling and has struggled in a lot of ways, but so has every city, in so many senses. And I think your work does a really beautiful job of kind of engaging with the place and the stories and the world around it within that. And definitely we're going to talk about that, but how would you say that New Orleans in and of itself has influenced your work? 

IF: Oh, it's huge. When I was thinking about what we're going to talk about in this interview and having listened to some of the others, I think that there's a way that the place that I grew up was so specific. I grew up in this very… it wasn't just the north, it wasn't just New England. It was like my house was directly between Harvard and MIT. It was just this very specific way of thinking where it was just all, like rational thought and scientific method and kind of strict and narrow in that sense. At the time when I was growing up, it was kind of valuable, and it definitely did shape the way that I saw the world. 

But then I think coming down here kind of opened my mind up and maybe spirit up to the idea that there's more than what we can see and measure, and that it's important to not close yourself off to things that you can't see. I think that there's a way that the veil is a little thinner here. You're kind of always more connected to past and to things that don't have answers. I think that's been really huge, and I think that the nature here is so thick and lush and rich, and the connection to death and decay is much more present here. It's all right there in front of you. There's no avoiding it. There's no sterilizing it. I think that's been a really important element in my work especially. I think that there's just a lot of ways that it's kind of fundamentally shifted the way that I think and process the world. 

SG: I love the way you talk about death and decay and not being able to look away from it. And it feels so relevant to me when we think of these older Southern cities. I grew up in Charleston, which is in so many ways like Charleston and Savannah are what I hear to be smaller New Orleans and kind of along the same wavelength of that type of city. I feel the exact same way. I often remark on that I don’t know if I've ever known somewhere that has been both so beautiful and also so painful at the same time. They're kind of juxtaposed up against each other in really strange ways, and especially with the nature piece, which I want to get into for sure. But it's like you have these beautiful houses, and then you have cemeteries right next door, and then you also have waves that are just continuing to rise and coming right up, and everything is there all together, and it's this element of like, you're watching something beautiful die out. 

And also the myths of these places die out at the same time. New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston are cities that there are so many myths told and so many legends that revolve around these places. And art to me, is such a way to investigate that. Yeah, I just really love how you describe that. I think that's so beautiful and so pertinent and true. 

IF: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's an interesting place, for sure. I've never been to Charleston or Savannah at all, but I really would like to add them to the list. Absolutely. 

SG: If you like New Orleans, from what I hear, I think you would like them because I've been told the same on the reverse end. But I just think so much of modern creative work— and you talk about the veil and the veil being thinner, and I completely agree with that in so many parts of this region— but art right now is really investigating so much of the stories that are told about these places, and so much of that really is tied to nature. And especially when you think about New Orleans’ relationship to water or some of these other coastal cities, there's so much there, and there's so much to explore. I love in your images, it does. You can feel that kind of beauty, but also this sense that there's something underlying it and something a little darker and deeper there that I personally never felt in any of the northern cities I went to. 

IF: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that New Orleans was the first time that I really kind of understood there's almost an antagonistic relationship to nature here, I think. Because you know, it will kill you. If you don't keep your guard up, you know, whether that's the levees or you know, I've had the insects, the termites that swarm in the springtime that are completely overwhelming. They're gorgeous, but also disgusting. And the cockroaches and the vines that will eat your house. It's kind of this battle all the time, it feels like. I feel like a lot can get lost in that because it can be hard to— I'm trying to figure out how to say this. That felt very unfamiliar to me moving here and just kind of experiencing this sort of cultural just inside/outside divide by necessity in a lot of places. 

I'm not sure if I'm articulating that well. I've never lived so close to water. I'm not far from the Mississippi at all. But the access to it, it's not easy because we have to have levees and we have this whole industrial system and it's just a very different relationship to nature where it feels like… You know, up north, it was nature was a thing that was out there, and you could get in your car and go to it and have a nice day, and then you come home, you know. Here it's just everywhere. That's such a beautiful thing. And it’s also a very hard thing.

SG: I mean, it is, in so many ways, its own kind of veil— of this veil between man and nature and humankind and the natural world. And I think there's something… that has always felt really important to me here, kind of growing up between the Appalachian Mountains and the coast. You can't really look away from it. There isn't that separation of, like, I'm going to go for a day hike, and then I'm going to come back to my apartment. These two worlds exist differently. They really are juxtaposed right on top of one another. And in so many ways it reminds me just of what it is to be a human, which is both a beautiful and terrifying thing because you really understand your place in it. I study the Gothic South, and I'm like, everything in the Gothic South either wants to haunt you or kill you, but it also opens up all these doorways to really understand your own humanity and find your space within that and do something a little differently that I think draws a lot of creative people in. That kind of element of, I can't look away from what is around me, and I have this duty to kind of speak to that through whatever art form I take. I think it's why there are so many art movements that survive and thrive in these areas, and we just don't tell those stories of them often enough, but they exist and they're out there.

There's like the veil of the human world and the spiritual world, and then there's really the veil of us being humans and thinking that we live in a separate world. And these places and so many Southern cities will remind you that the world in which nature and humans live in is not at all different. It's the exact same one. 

IF: I've been thinking a lot lately about how this concept of nature as a thing that is separate from us is relatively new in human history. Nature used to be like describing or using a word to describe the air that you breathe. It was where you got your food from. It was where you lived. It was where you slept. It was where you communed with other people. It was just everything. And that you wouldn't have a word like nature because you don't need it, because it's everything. I think that kind of when we did put up that wall, we lost a lot. 

I'm appreciative of the fact that I think being here has kind of allowed me to just even see that that is a concept that is a different way of looking at things, whether or not I've fully been able to live by that value as much as I'd like. 

SG: It's very true. And modernization came quite late to the South, comparatively. I mean, electrification was not all that long ago, and now we do have these very distinct separate categories that you're right, we didn't always have. And that's a really interesting way to think about it. Would you say in your work the idea is to kind of remove this idea of nature as a category of separate? You do a lot of things with different animals and different elements of the natural world that are so cool. Your work reminds me so much of tarot cards, but with all these different animals, and it's really amazing. I would love to hear a little bit more about that process or how you feel that you're either bringing nature into your work or kind of removing that separation. 

IF: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's such an interesting question. The project that I've been working on for the past, like, eight years, these paintings of the objects, is kind of, at its core, just sort of grabbing you by the shoulders and just saying, look at it, just look closely. Because I think that there's so much that we just don't see every day. And I think a lot about the way that I grew up thinking a lot about nature in terms of evolutionary biology and these kinds of systems. I still really love evolution. I just have such a fondness for that structure of thought. It's just beautiful and it's elegant. 

I think that on the surface I just want you to be able to look at every single leaf and every single vein in a leaf or an insect’s wing and see that it is there for a purpose. And it's there to draw nutrients to the core of the tree or to provide structure to the wing, to be able to fly, things like that that feel so simple and easy to to overlook, but then also kind of within that, being able to tell a deeper story. They feel like an attempt at sort of like augury or fortune telling where what I want is to be able to draw connections between these objects and between these icons and to tell a story that is going to be totally different for you than it is for me. But also there's something universal there. 

SG: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it really does. And it's such a cool concept to explore in art. I was thinking, as you were speaking, you know, Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets of all time, who once said that attention as the beginning of devotion. 

IF: Absolutely, yes.

SG: I think that your work calls for that attention in a way that can lead to this almost spiritual type of experience. Which really does happen. My new challenge for myself as of late has been to walk without my headphones and genuinely just pay attention to the world around me. And it's amazing how hard it is, and especially when you get out into nature. I mean, you could sit and stare at a leaf for like, four hours and learn something new every single minute. I think art engaging with that is so important, especially now in the world that we live in. And it does. I think attention can lead to devotion, for sure. 

IF: Definitely. I think that what hurts me so much is how separated we are in our houses and in, I don't know, capitalism and the way that so few of us have access to nature. Yes, it's incredibly important to go on walks and to have access to parks and trees, but I think also to have access to nature that you can influence. To a garden where you can feel the soil and leave a positive imprint on that piece of land, which I think is so much missing from so many of our lives and from the narrative.

Especially around COVID, there was this narrative that you heard all the time about, humans are the problem and, you know, humans are the virus, and we just need to get out of the way and nature can heal. But that ignores so much of human history, which has been, you know, has had a more— not benevolent but reciprocal relationship to nature. It just feels like it's so important to be able to just start that relationship back in some way. It feels kind of inadequate, but it feels like what we have right now. 

Like, I would love for us all to have access to forest farms where we can, you know, plant berries and tend to our food systems.

SG: It’s the dream, right? I was thinking back to what we were talking about earlier with modernization, and it's not so much humans that are the enemy. It's the way in which we've all been forced to survive in the systems that we're in that really is the enemy. 

For thousands of years, we've been able to coexist. And there's something right now that specifically there's a problem and there's so many things that you could point to as part of it. But I think one small step is that act of paying attention and learning to appreciate what is around you and not just take it for granted. I've been working on the novel as of late that follows kind of a pine tree god— a vengeful pine tree god— who's upset that they've chopped down all the trees and kind of claiming his revenge, set in like a post climate change society. So a lot of these things have been at the forefront of my mind, and I think a lot about ecocriticism as well, and some of the different movements in ecocriticism. I don't know if you're familiar with something called the Dark Mountain Project.

IF: I don't think I am, no.

SG: I tell this to everyone I know, and I'm very conflicted about it, but I think at my core, I sort of agree with it. But it's an ecocriticism movement based mostly in the UK, but it's kind of spread into America. And their philosophy is essentially that we can't— they take their name from a poem by a poet named Robinson Jeffers who was big in the 50s and 60s out in California and wrote a lot of ecological poetry— but their idea is that we can't fix the damage that we have caused, so we kind of have to learn to appreciate the ruin that we're in, and do that through the act of paying attention and engaging the ecological world through our art and through our music and poetry and writing and film. They have a lot of writings and they publish anthologies and host conferences and all the things. 

But there's something about it that's always spoken to me, that so much of the focus in the world of ecology is in fixing the problem and solving it, which is natural to humankind. I think we always want to look for a cause. But one thing that I have really appreciated about your work and the way in which I've studied and engaged it thus far is, you talk a lot about adaptability and the ways in which people and species and things can adapt to the world around them rather than just trying to kind of fix or solve it. And I would love to hear a little bit more about that. 

You have this one great quote from your Garden & Gun Interview that I will link to, but you said, “Each new generation adjusts to the world it’s born into, and that goes for nature too. The mockingbird that mimics cell phones and car alarms is responding to its world. It might not know anything different. I’ve now been trying to look more toward the future, because there will be a future one way or another. As humans we have powerful imaginations, and it’s our responsibility to shape a future that’s better for our children and the children of the mockingbirds.”

I just think that's so brilliantly said and worded. 

IF: Thank you. 

SG: The idea of adaptability and futurism is not talked about so much in the ecological and climate movement. 

IF: Absolutely.

SG: Not nearly enough. It's all about what can we do to fix it? And I think that's part of the problem. 

IF: I mean, and it's so easy to, like, to look at that and be completely overwhelmed and say nothing. You know, we can't, so let's just give up. We'll just go extinct, and it'll be violent and horrible and what can you do? And that's not good enough.

I am currently pregnant with my first baby, so— 

SG: Congratulations.

IF: Thank you. Thank you. It's insane. It's this, like, terrifying, incredible experience. But it has also completely, you know, shifted the way that I have to think about the future because it's not enough anymore. You know, not that it was ever enough, but in this very real way in my body, it's not just about you anymore. That's just completely changed everything. 

I have some friends who are farmers and work with the land here, and I've talked to them about their understanding of invasive species and how there is this kind of attitude of, you just have to get rid of them and we have to restore the land completely to what it was before colonization. That would be lovely, but I just don't think that’s possible. There's so much that's extinct and there's so much damage that's been done. They're now finding ways to incorporate and think of invasive species differently. Maybe reword them, and our entire ecosystems are going to shift. 

We don't know what that's going to look like, but I think that having the mindset that it has to go back to the way that it was is just… It's not enough and it's not going to work. So your options are get more creative and find a solution, and you have to hope. Not hoping and not looking for a solution is just not an answer. 

SG: Yeah. Going back to the past is not always the solution. With all social problems, people often do tend to look back and they're like, well, how can we just get back to that before we messed it up? Which is so mind blowing when you start thinking about it, because instead of really trying to reimagine different revolutionary futures, we're just trying to reinstate a system that was not great and was not perfect.

IF: Yeah. Yeah.

SG: It's so hard to imagine a different future, but I think it's also so deeply important. And that's kind of the whole thing with the Dark Mountain is that they're saying, even if we all go under, we at least have a duty to try to imagine something different and to appreciate what is around us. To really go back to that act of attention and devotion: the world can be on fire, and we can still find beauty in it. 

IF: Yeah. 

SG: I'll link to the poem in the show notes, but that's where it comes from, of a poem that Robinson Jeffers is saying. You know, we're looking at the Dark Mountain and at the blaze and at the beauty of it, even as it's on fire, which I think is a good metaphor for our world today. 

IF: Definitely. Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, there are seeds that germinate in fire. I've been kind of incorporating fire imagery— again, I'm a painter, I'm not an ecologist. 

SG: You do a good job of walking the line, I think. 

IF: Thank you. Yeah, it's like I think more about nature, and painting is kind of the way to channel that. Like, I'm not sitting home thinking about paint as much as I am about trees, but, yeah, I've been kind of incorporating fire imagery into my work as that sort of…  because the way that we talk about our current situation is that everything is on fire, everything's burning. And if that's the reality, how do we work with that? How do we use that? How do we find the good in that? How do we rebuild after that from the ashes, whatever that looks like? Because it's not enough to just say, okay, well, that's it. Let's just walk away.