Pamela Love and Francesco Clemente Reflect on Decades of Collaboration

How to stand the test of time in industries as fickle as fashion and art? Pamela Love and Francesco Clemente seem to know the answer. Clemente began his art career in the ’70s, gaining international acclaim for symbol-laden works in mediums from painting to sculpture, collaborating with the likes of Warhol, Ginsberg, and Basquiat along the way. Today the artist is fresh off a solo show at Mass MoCA, where a series of his bright-hued tents was installed throughout 30,000 square feet of gallery space. Love, nearly a decade into her jewelry business, remains as interesting as ever, constantly evolving her eponymous line with new shapes, ideas, and twists on the free-spirited pieces that have become her signature. Their staying power, I’d venture, has much to do with the fact that both of their creative outputs connect with the hearts and minds of customers and viewers, leaving trendiness and hype by the wayside. It should come as little surprise to learn that Love honed her craft as a painter’s assistant in Clemente’s Greenpoint studio, where she still moonlights as his right hand on occasion.

In honor of a new Rizzoli book about Love’s inspirations and references with text written by Clemente, Vogue.com rang up the pair to talk about their relationship over the years. Here, highlights from our conversation.

How did you first meet?
PAMELA LOVE: I met Francesco through his daughter, Nina. I remember I saw him at a TV on the Radio concert. [laughs] I had a job I was really unhappy with at the time, so I went and said hello to him, and then I said, “Do you need a painting assistant?” He said, “Yeah, I do. Can you start tomorrow?” So I quit my job and I started the next day. That was like 12 years ago, maybe longer.

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE: Yes. There is no teamwork here. It is just me, mostly, on my own, though I do need one painting assistant from time to time to help me turn a few corners. So that’s what happened.

PL: I did that for a really long time, and I started my business in Francesco’s studio basically, answering emails and making jewelry while I was working for him. Even after the business took off, I still worked with him and I still work with him today because it’s just such a great experience and it brings me a lot of happiness.

FC: For me, it’s very important to have someone who is present but who also doesn’t take room, so there is—what do you call it in New York? A positive energy coming from her.

PL: Thanks! [both laugh]

Why do you think you work together so well? It seems to me, in preparing for this, that you both are very much on the same page visually, spiritually, and philosophically.
FC: It’s what I call synchronicity. We didn’t know that, but somehow things came together kind of miraculously, no?

PL: It was a really interesting experience because I had always been drawn to these particular types of things—different cultures, different elements of spirituality. I was very fixated on the occult at that time and these mourning rituals. I was exploring these ideas through jewelry, but I didn’t really know if people would take to it or not take to it. Working for Francesco, I saw that a lot of these influences and ideas had a lot of relevance for him. That was really important because it pushed me in a direction of following these more unusual sources, and it made me really think about creating jewelry as storytelling, which is what I feel he does with his work. Instead of just following trends, he inspired me to really think of this as something much bigger than that. It was really validating and really helped to push my work into the direction that ultimately I wanted it to go. There’s a lot of fear when you’re going into something that’s really a fashion medium. To follow your passion can be scary.

FC: I imagine that it is useful to refresh our sense of experience from time to time. To me, that’s what art is, a tool to refresh your view of the world and your vocabulary. So-called spirituality—I know, the word is as discredited as any other word—spirituality is real and is tied to the oldest vocabulary in the world. I hope that the viewers of my work can be reminded of the actual experiences connected to the so-called spiritual world.

Pam, when you were starting out, did you find it difficult to stand apart from trends?
PL: It was funny. In the beginning, I didn’t really think it was going to work out, so I decided to go down the path I was on and to focus on the things I was drawn to. Once I made that decision, and especially in the environment of being in Francesco’s studio all the time surrounded by important art and smart people, thinking about trendiness sort of fell away. I just focused on doing what I thought was meaningful at the time. It seemed to resonate with people in that time period, especially in 2007 when everyone was terrified that they were going to run out of money—it was a weird time to launch anything, but I think the weightiness of the material resonated with people as a result.

FC: At the end of the day, good language is bold language. That’s what Pamela has been doing, she’s been embracing a language of the bold. It was not planned that way, but that was a good decision for her, as it happens.

PL: Thanks! [both laugh]

Both of you utilize multicultural symbols and motifs in your work—why are you drawn to these things?
PL: Travel is extremely important. I think it’s really important to experience the things that you’re referencing, not just pull them off the Internet. That’s a danger now—the world is so small, you have access to everything, and you can easily take something and rather than reference it, just copy it. For me, it is really important that we pull from our experiences, not from photo representations of someone else’s experiences, because it’s important to have those experiences and understand what the things are that you’re referencing. Sometimes we’re looking into the past—how do you experience the past? I think it’s really important even when you’re referencing the past you’re putting your own take on it and making it something different than anything that has ever existed before.

FC: In my case, it’s also a political decision in the sense that I believe that by embracing different contexts you can give a sense of how relative every cultural value is and how at the bottom of all these values there is one common human narrative—

PL: Totally—

FC: And so I think in a modest way, I’m taking a stance against the rise and epidemic of intolerance that you’re seeing today.

PL: That’s a really interesting point. I think in the exploration of all these different ideas and cultures you do see this common narrative, common ideology, and common imagery—these things that appear over and over again throughout the world and throughout time, sort of the archetypal way of telling stories that is human and not from one culture or another. That’s something I always aspire to and I know that’s something that is really important to Francesco’s work. What he said is so true: We’re all together and we’re all human, and these sorts of things show you that.

Do you find that how easy it’s become to share images online has made it easier or harder for your work to be taken as authentic?
PL: I think the Internet and social media—as much as I do enjoy some of it—I think people’s attention spans have deteriorated a little bit, and so I do think it makes people . . . I don’t know, what do you think? I think people are maybe more likely to just scratch the surface of something nowadays.

FC: I think the power of the Internet is overrated. If you want to be present, you will be present. If you want to encounter something in the flesh, you will. At the end of the day, that need is never going to disappear.

PL: Right. You can only look at so many pictures of something on the Internet. It doesn’t replace actually experiencing a life or meeting people from another part of the world and seeing how they work. You can only experience that by going and doing and being.

I want to segue for a moment and talk about tarot cards, something I know you’re both deeply connected to. How did you each find the tarot?
FC: Well, we’re both fans of Alejandro Jodorowsky, a great card reader—

PL: And filmmaker!

FC: And filmmaker. Apart from that, I connected to the tarot late in life, when I was somehow more pliable to take the conditions of life literally, to accept the fact that there is only those many cards in the deck, and then, as you may know, I actually painted my own deck of tarot cards, including in the deck many of my friends as the characters of the tarot.

PL: I became fascinated with the tarot when I was 13 or 14. I started reading tarot at summer camp in Georgia, and all the kids would come to my bunk and have their cards read. I became really fascinated with the symbolism and the storytelling and was very pleased when I started working with Francesco and I started to see that he was also very interested in the tarot and found inspiration in Jodorowsky. Francesco is actually a really amazing card reader as well, and there have been several times when I’ve been going through a rough stage in my life or a rough patch where I’ll come and Francesco will read my cards. It’s always extremely therapeutic and helpful for me.

Francesco, what were your impressions of Pamela’s jewelry when she first started?
FC: I noticed that her language was bold, she was not chasing some comfortable neutral ground. I was pleased to see that. No matter where you are, what field you are working in, I always love anything that cannot be easily categorized.

How has your relationship with each other changed or evolved over the years?
PL: I still work here sometimes. I can’t really say I don’t. I run my business and I have my team, but any time Francesco needs me for a painting, I always figure out a way to be here to help him because it’s really important to me.

FC: I was also the minister at Pamela’s wedding.

PL: I consider him a mentor, but we also have a strong friendship, and he’s close with my husband, as well. Working together for so long—I’ve been helping him with paintings for over 10 years now, so I kind of think of him as a father figure as well.

FC: On my side, I’m interested in all sorts of things, so I’m happy to have access to new sensibilities and information from other worlds than the creative world of the art-making. Pamela can bring in that kind of information.