Creativity Rules How artist Lucy McRae brings new life to the body

Before she turned her focus to art and design, Lucy was an athlete. She remembers a childhood spent pushing her body to its physical limits – 14 years in the studio training in classical ballet and endless hours at the track, where she competed in the 100-meter hurdles. “Movement is ingrained in me. My body has a memory of exploring the edges, whether it’s speed or choreography,” she says.

These experiences triggered the fascination with the body and its potential that has largely defined her career. But they also cemented an awareness of the relationship between mind and matter, and between creativity and activity. “I find that thoughts are physical sensations, and physical sensations are thoughts. They are inseparable,” she says. “We get one body, and the way that we tune it, and move it, and care for it ultimately decides how we see, and are, and think, and act in the world.”

As a visiting professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture: SCI-Arc, Lucy knows that her pedagogy is unconventional: Rather than focusing on teaching the right and wrong way to approach a task, her primary goal is to foster an appreciation for intuition and “cultivate an affinity for working from places of doubt, vulnerability or uncertainty.”

“Through filmmaking and prop-making, we use the unknown as a process, and trust that the magic of alchemy and the transformation of materials will get us somewhere,” she says. “I have had a lot of pushback from students because it’s not the normal way of approaching education or architecture.”

This approach stems from Lucy’s fundamental view of the creator as explorer, which means a degree of fearlessness is key. “It’s not like getting in a car and going to the beach. for me, is exploring the unknown, untrodden paths,” she says. “If you know exactly where you’re going, or what you’re making, then you’re not going to create anything new or pioneering.”

Going into the Kia Creativity Drive Hackathon, Lucy was excited to collaborate with minds who shared her passion for creativity and education: “As someone who likes to disrupt markets, it felt like a natural habitat for me to be involved in,” she says. “I’m also known for and like being a wildcard in these environments.”

Whatever the project, she believes different characters, energies and experiences should be given equal seating at the table; disagreement and friction should be encouraged rather than feared. But when it comes to values around risk and innovation, consensus is essential to ensure the best result.

“It’s really important in the beginning that there’s a shared vision, that we all want to go beyond what already exists and, through risk, we innovate on a particular theme or topic,” she explains. “If there’s any kind of misalignment there, then that’s a good clue that there’ll be misalignment down the path.”

For a self-professed sci-fi artist, it comes as a surprise when Lucy admits she finds little inspiration in the genre. “My earliest, most memorable sci-fi experience was Gattaca and that left lasting impressions,” she says. “But I was more interested in science than science fiction.”

She points back to the four years she spent working at electronics brand Philips’ Far-Future Design Research Lab, developing concepts that included an electronic tattoo and illuminated dresses that change color to reflect the wearer’s emotional state.

“That was when I started looking at technology through an artistic lens, but it was never fantasy; they were all potential technologies that Philips had patents for,” she says. “For me, it’s really important that whatever I’m making is grounded in science or emerging science, and speculating on how that might evolve or change.”

In 2007, Lucy began working with Dutch designer Bart Hess on a series of garments that reimagined the human silhouette, rooted in a shared interest in genetic manipulation and future beauty. Working under the moniker LucyandBart, they photographed themselves in DIY costumes covered with quills, spikes and grass, or else deformed by bubbles and foam.

While the execution was slick, the costumes themselves were not: The duo used everyday materials like Q-tips, balloons and pantyhose to bring their concept to life, reflecting a high-concept, low-tech hybridity Lucy exercises to this day. Heavy Duty Love, her commission for this year’s Venice Biennale, for example, was sewn from carpet underlays, tarpaulins and other camping materials in her LA home.

Working with common materials not only gets around issues of cost and access, but also enables her to pursue projects with the urgency she thinks they deserve. “I think if you wait until all the planets align and you have everything that you need, you’re going to be waiting for a very, very long time.”

Many of Lucy’s artworks look at how we might use technology to protect the elements that make us human – not only our bodies, but also our psychological needs and capacity for resilience. Similarly, she preaches a holistic approach to creative production centered on care and longevity: “I have in the past likened the creative process to the way elite Olympic athletes train: There’s a warm up, a cool down, a competition and a recovery,” she says.

For Lucy, that recovery period can be hardest to commit to; after completing a major project, she typically feels as inspired as she does exhausted and anxious. But she considers those moments critical to growth.

“That time of recovery is really good to reflect upon what part of the creative process worked and what didn’t, and that allows you to adapt and mutate and reinvent your pipeline moving forward,” she says. “ also allows for the beauty of detachment and for serendipity to take place – something you didn’t necessarily program can come in and set you on a whole new tangent.”