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Local artist Roselina Hung still dreams about her last cat Ari, and isn’t afraid to talk—or draw—about it. In her latest piece, i still dream about you, she incorporates these feline reveries into a poster-sized collage print, piecing together a series of hand-drawn portraits her own and others’ past cats. For ex-pet owners, Hung writes on her blog, the print might capture feelings of love, loss and obsession; but “for anyone who hasn’t owned a cat before,” she warns, “the image can propagate the idea of the ‘crazy cat lady’ ”. 

For the sake of all our self-proclaimed crazy cat readers out there, we couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by. Sad Mag sat down with Hung for the scoop on all things art, feminism, and of course…cats.

 

SM: So lets start with the basics. Where are you from? How did you get into all of this?

RH: I’m from Vancouver. I grew up here and did my undergrad at UBC in fine arts. After I finished there, I moved to London, England and I did my masters there at Saint Martins. I was there for about 3 years and then I moved back at the end of 2006.

 

SM: How did you originally get into art?

RH: I think I’ve kind of always been doing it. There was never really any doubt in my mind that this was what I was going to do. When I was growing up, I’d tell myself that I was going to do something else—you know, like a more “practical” job. But I always just kind of ended up going back to art. I just always knew.

 

SM: You’ve done some residences in some amazing places—Banff, Paris, Reykjavik—has any one place stuck with you in particular?

RH: Each one was so different. I got something different out of all of them. When I went to Paris, that was the first time I moved away from home…and the first time I moved somewhere where I didn’t speak the language. I had a studio there just off the Seine and across from the Louvre, so that was a very romantic idea of being an artist. [The residency] in Michigan was kind of like summer camp. Off in the woods, we were in cabins and there was a lagoon. We’d all come together for home-cooked meals. And the Reykjavik one was an even smaller group, and the environment there was so unlike anywhere else—almost no trees, everything’s low bush, shrubbery. Parts of it look like the moon!

 

SM: Can you tell me a little about the cat print?

RH: While I was [in Michigan] I found some fabric with all these animal heads on it. Something about it was so tacky and gross, but it also really attracted me. So I made some mock-ups with different fabrics I found—a cat one, dogs, horses.

 

SM: How did you find the cats you used?

RH: I wanted to find images with people’s pets that they didn’t have anymore—that had passed away or been given away, so I was asking people for pet photos. Not many people sent anything to me actually…I think dog people would send more. I even had people write me and say, “let me know when you do a dog one.”

 

SM: What about cats attracted you?

RH: I’ve always just liked cats, and I had a cat for a while. And my cat still comes up in my dreams—you know, every once in a while. Once you’ve had a pet and it passes away, you just always miss it.

 

SM: Is that the same idea behind your pretty boys kill me collection?

RH: There’s a bit of a parallel. But with the pretty boys, I guess it’s a different kind of desire and love…

 

SM: I hope so!

RH: (Laughing) A different kind. I’ve done a couple now with different [themes].

 

SM: Where do the titles come from?

RH: They’re from text messages and chats that I’ve had.

 

SM: Really? How do those pretty boys feel about it?

RH: I don’t know…I haven’t talked to any of them. In some ways, they’re so generic—anyone could say them with how people text and chat. I don’t even know that they’d know it was from them.

 

SM: It seems so much of our communication is like that these days—generic. And that we build so much of our identity through these almost anonymous texts and chats. Did you think about that while you were working on the pieces?

RH: I was interested in the way that we were communicating desire and love through these little snippets of text. There’s only so much that you can put into [them]. They aren’t even original; we’re just repeating things that we’ve seen or heard somewhere before. Kind of like lyrics from songs—clichéd and repeated.

 

SM: I also noticed that you opted for male instead of the traditional female muse for this collection. What was your intention with that?

RH: I was thinking about that a lot, actually. They had “pretty boys” in art history. A lot of times they’d be the angels or the gods—all quite young and angelic looking. But it was always men painting them. I just kind of wanted to see a woman do it.

 

SM: So, the women in your paintings, are they supposed to be you?

RH: Kind of…kind of not. They don’t look like me, but the stories are all ones that I identify with, events that have happened in my life. I put a bit of myself into it, but my identity is hidden behind those women.

 

SM: Is it hard to put so much of yourself into your work?

RH: Before, I was doing more self-portraits—I was putting way more of myself into the work. Now I can just put the work out there and stand back. It’s still personal, but not so personal that I’m…you know…taking everything personally.

 

SM: Alright, one last question for the cat aficionados out there: Do you have a favourite cat story?

RH: My cat was an indoor cat, because I used to live near the driving license place and I was afraid of letting him out. He was actually pretty big, almost 20 lbs. or so, and my bed was small. I couldn’t sleep sometimes, so every night I would close my bedroom door. For a small period of a couple months or so, I would hear my cat running around the house as soon as I went to bed. I guess he’d been chasing a necklace of mine that I had dropped on the floor, [because] in the morning, he left it at my door. A couple weeks later, he left this little artificial rose, and then the third time he left me a little teddy bear. You know how cats leave gifts for they’re owners? They’re usually dead animals. I had the best cat—he gave me romantic gifts!