“A creative life is a joy and a privilege”
Edition 12: An interview with writer, editor and style-savant Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Sarah in NYC (photography by AJ Lee)
A strange thing about growing older and stepping into worlds that once seemed unreachable — book launches, art shows, film festivals — is that you are often confronted by the mundane, fleshy reality of artists. People who can make hearts soar with their sentences, or craft magic from any instrument, can just as easily be a pasty dad in a T-shirt moaning about the Games of Thrones finale. Don’t get me wrong: I love humble artists who let their work do the talking, and I certainly don’t expect everyone with creative urges to be Elton John (that would be exhausting). But, deep down there is the 12 year old kid in me — the one who would regularly day-dream about how it would feel to strut into a glittery art party in time with Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ wearing a head-turning outfit, hip popped — who can’t help feeling let down when creatives aren’t just a little bit more... out there.
Then, sometimes you meet someone who is brighter and shinier than everyone else, and it gives you hope that it is possible to be both creative and fabulous. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is one of those rare birds of paradise.
Sarah has culture coursing through her veins, having grown up in LA splitting her time between her ambitiously artistic parents: actress and singer-songwriter Ronee Blakley (famous for her Academy-nominated performance in Robert Altman’s Nashville), and screenwriter Carroll Cartwright (who’s latest feature Mrs Harris Goes to Paris starring Lesley Manville is coming out next year.) Perhaps influenced by her upbringing, Sarah is unique in her ability to connect the dots across many worlds — writing, fine art and film, plus, with her own irrepressible sense of style, fashion. (She is the only person I know who can rock a pink and yellow Prada dress and wide-brimmed sun hat at a 3 year-old’s birthday party on the hot asphalt of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. I find it hard not to constantly photograph her.)
Sarah channels her influences and her own innate talent through an impressive number of avenues — as editor of ‘The Artist’s Library’, a series of conversations with artists on their most beloved books, for Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula Magazine; associate editor of literary magazine A Public Space; publishing director of Chicago Review of Books; and host of literary reading series KARMA. And as a writer herself: having already penned a best-selling young adult novel, she is now working on her debut literary novel for adults.
Sarah also possesses another skill: nurturing friendships. She is endlessly curious about the world and people around her, and gives generously of her time and wide, red-lipped smile, drawing people in like moths to a flame. Sarah, her partner (artist Nicolas Party) and their miniature poodle Pepoli moved into their house in Andes, NY last year, and their gatherings of assorted friends there — each invited into Sarah’s world with warmth, and to be found reclining under parasols on the lawn or diving into the bracing cold of the property’s hilltop pond — are quickly becoming legendary.
Like a Belle Époque art salon host transported to modern day New York via La La Land, Sarah is a true original.
View from Sarah’s house in Andes, NY (photography by AJ Lee)
AJL: Sarah, it is such a pleasure to finally interview you. You just got back from Europe — what were your cultural highlights from that trip?
SBC: Thanks for having me, Amy—it’s a pleasure and an honor.
Like any visiting tourist, when we visited Milan, my partner and I looked forward to visiting Leonardo Da Vinci’s 15th-century masterpiece The Last Supper. Unfortunately, upon arrival, we were told that the mural was closed to visitors due to a conservation effort. We accepted defeat and had repaired to the local trattoria to drown our losses in chianti when we got a call that thanks to the efforts of a few of Nicolas’ colleagues—the Poldi Pezzoli museum, the gallery and museum director Astrid Welter, and the gallerist Francesca Kaufmann—my partner and I were invited into the dark convent in which the mural is housed, and up the shaky scaffolding for an infrared-lit fifteen minutes among the restoration team. L’Ultima Cena is a whole universe in a single image: betrayal by sunrise meets the harmony of forgiveness. As I have said, I wept, but I still can’t tell whether the plate is of herring or eel.
While in Switzerland, I had the supreme fortune of visiting the studio of the great Swiss artist Caroline Bachmann. I found the two-room atelier at the top of a narrow, winding cobblestone street that culminates at Lac Leman. Caroline’s practice is transcendent, in an entirely earth-grounded way. It involves drawing the landscape every morning, and reworking those sketches within soft, painted frames. What Caroline sees is so distinctive. She doesn’t shy from subjects like rainbows and waterfalls, even the crucifixion. She also paints portraits of contemporary female artists, mostly her students, and we were surrounded by their powerful gazes while she spoke vividly and enigmatically of sunlight, wonder, and fragility.
As the visit concluded, a thunderstorm, drifting across the lower Alps, cracked open the sky. I left reluctantly, with Caroline’s umbrella, feeling that I would much rather sit down at the long wooden table and paint—a longing I’ve never had. I’m not sure Caroline believed me when I told her it was the most potent studio visit of my life, but now it’s in print.
That sounds breathtaking. Let’s take it back now to your career: You had a break-out success with your novelization of the movie Red Riding Hood in 2011. How did it feel to hit the New York Times Bestseller list at age twenty-two?
At the time, I felt I had no right to be there. I didn’t believe it when my editor called to tell me the book was debuting on the Children and Teen list at #1 and sent flowers. Until I saw it in print, I thought it was a hoax! It probably had to do with being a young woman, fresh out of school, and also with not wanting to be seen as someone who took too much stock in her own success. When it finally landed, it was exhilarating. I have learned to take myself more seriously as an artist, and to celebrate a success at its inception.
Sarah, Pepoli and Nicolas Party at his show ‘Pastel’ at the FLAG Art Foundation (photography by AJ Lee)
As you should! Somehow you manage to be an enthusiastic supporter of your many friends, while leading a very varied, busy career: writing books, editing, and recently launching a new interview series for Hauser & Wirth. Do you enjoy juggling several projects or crave simplification?
The truth is that it depends on the day. There are moments, especially in the initial drafting of a novel, one of which I’m currently at work on, that one wishes one had nothing to do but get lost inside the project. Other days, something ignites and one activity fuels the other directly and straightforwardly. Still others, most days, they coexist peacefully. Promoting the work of other artists is good medicine. I recently spoke with the great artist Phyllida Barlow about Fernando Pessoa’s stunning Book of Disquiet, transcript forthcoming in Hauser’s Ursula Magazine—that morning’s revelatory conversation carried squarely into my afternoon creative work.
You have always been surrounded by creative people: your parents, your extended family (including godmother Catherine Hardwicke and godfather Wim Wenders) and now your partner is an artist. Over the years, who are the folks that have had the biggest influence on your creative outlook and aspirations?
I grew up in two households that shared the distinction of opening wide doors to a steady flow of professional actors, writers, musicians, painters, and filmmakers. I was one of a rotating cast of roommates, looking on as these artists experienced the highs of success as well as the moments that work might have dried up. Many a candlelit celebration at the kitchen table and many a long night of comfort and communion. I saw first-hand and frequently that a creative life is made up of spells of both. I live now with Nicolas. His example reminds me every day that a creative life, with all its natural fluctuations, is a joy and a privilege.
Ronee Blakley (left) with Joni Mitchell (right), 1975 (photography by Ken Regan)
Much like you now, your mother was at the heart of American 70s zeitgeist: recording with Bob Dylan in California, and partying with Valentino in Studio 54. What lessons have you taken from her experience at the cutting edge of culture?
That it mattered to be there. Not in a self-aggrandizing way, but for the sake of having lived it. To proudly take a seat at the table with other artists, not to mention artists of that reach and caliber, that sustains a person. To appreciate the moment in which you live. Thanks, Mom. I don’t think there’s a better lesson than that.
You are a natural connector and a magnet for diverse culture-makers. Which artists — across formats — are you excited about right now?
Lately, I’ve been drawn to writers who allow room for the words to breathe, sharpening a reader’s ear for silence. This loose connectedness, lacking a formal structural principle, strikes me as being true to experience and to memory. These include Tove Ditlevsen, Sei Shonagon, Mary Robison, Kimiko Hahn, Claudia Rankine, Natalia Ginzburg, Yiyun Li, Emilio Fraia, and Magda Szabó. Phyllida Barlow referred to these as books that “wander through life.”
Visual artists I’ve been looking at include Paula Modersohn-Becker, Marc-Camille Chaimowicz, Carol Bove, and Jana Sterbak. Maya Deren shorts. I’ve been listening to no music whatsoever, just the birds.
I have been lucky enough to visit your beautiful home in Andes, NY. What do you love about the area and spending time upstate? Are there any hidden gems we should know about?
When I’m up here, it takes a forklift to haul me off Andes Main Street. An afternoon, rain or shine, spent on the Andes Diner porch with a copy of the local monthly Gazette and an egg salad sandwich, add tomato, is one I’d rather spend no other way. Bring a book and head down the block for coffee at 55 Dragonfly or across the street for a bourbon at the Andes Hotel with the handsome and spirited proprietor Derek, often outfitted either as Santa Claus or the Easter bunny, depending on the season.
Sarah with Pepoli in Andes (photography by AJ Lee)
I couldn’t finish this interview without touching on your inimitable style: what I like to think of as Elizabeth Taylor meets Marianne Faithful by a poolside at Cannes. How important is style as an expression of your creative identity and who are your style icons?
Oh, you! You know, Nicolas and I undertook the pilgrimage a few years ago to Georgia O’Keefe’s home in Abiquiu, New Mexico. I don’t think anyone can leave that premises without feeling that what we call style can be an important articulation of the self. My late godmother, Sandra Mathers, was my earliest vision of elegance, flair, and intention. She often looked after me when I was little, careening up the PCH in her Volvo 240, baskets of fresh peaches on her arm, trailing enormous scarves, festooning the picnic cake with fresh-cut flowers nicked from her neighbor’s garden. Ronee Blakley, Caroline Bachmann, Anne-Catherine Party, Luchita Hurtado, Siniša Mačković, Donyale Luna, Clarice Lispector, and Tilly Lee are close seconds.
Thank you Sarah, for giving us a look inside your encyclopedic mind and magical world.
Check our Sarah’s series of interviews with artists in Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula magazine. Plus, for those in Europe, don’t miss Nicolas Party’s new show ‘Boilly’ at the Consortium Museum in Dijon, France, opening on July 7th 2021.