Imagining the Unseen Interview with Myself

1:.QUESTION: How and why did you start with art? ANSWER: Art is about how one responds to the world, how one interacts with the facets of one’s life. In that way, an artist’s perspective can be an inborn feature of one’s self. I feel that perhaps I was born with this perspective; perhaps all children are born with this perspective. Growing up I really didn’t know any artists and although my mother was very creative, she was not an artist. My father was intellectually creative but far from artistic. I remember really enjoying making things, even destroying things sometimes. I deconstructed my mother’s electric typewriter with a hammer when I was about three. Today that seems like art of a sort. Additionally, I am a visual artist. As a visual artist, my inspiration often comes without words, comes with a childlike immediacy. I have come to appreciate this direct approach and as an adult have endeavored to foster the quiet, wordless messages that can lead one to artistic expression.

2:.QUESTION: Do you have a childhood event or memory that has affected you as an artist? ANSWER: Yes, both. As a fairly young child, around ten or so, a friend’s mother took us to a naval scrap yard. I found one particular piece of scrap, a four-inch square of two-inch steel with the corners drilled out. The result was a cross of polished rusted metal with an engaging shape and appealing patina. Unfortunately, the piece has been lost. However, this hunk of steel still speaks to me and seems to have given me a sense of symbol and surface. For me a symbol says something important without words, a vague understanding that is hard to further define without language. Texture and patina offer me a sign of age and depth, a fulfilment of reality. Perhaps my strongest early influence is the memory of my numerous wilderness adventures with the Boy Scouts. I especially remember the remarkable visions of pristine grandeur. I learned, without question, that nature creates with a power and perfection unknown in the human created world. I daily revel in the amazing generative capacity of the universe.

3:.QUESTION: What sort of art education do you have? ANSWER: I have a varied and eclectic arts education. In many ways I am self-taught. I did explore my creative nature at school, delving into woodworking, ceramics, photography, and printmaking. However, I never understood how to become an artist; I had no real life examples. Instead, I followed a different path and studied science, mostly biology. I am a big fan of the scientific approach, which can be very logical and analytical, almost diametrically opposed to the artistic approach. I now feel that I can welcome both artistic and scientific points of view. After a serious personal disruption in my life, I wanted, needed, to more fully explore my artistic side. At this time, I was lucky enough to find two great community college courses, 2-D design and silkscreen. They were game changing and I wanted more. I started painting and printing on my own, with a ton of personal (if not commercial) success. Ten years later as I wanted more arts education, Palomar College offered me an excellent studio arts program. I studied 3-D art and graduated with degrees in jewelry, sculpture, and ceramics. I am now having my first one-person show in sculpture. I again feel very personally satisfied with how things are going.

4:.QUESTION: What’s with the title of the show, “Imagining the Unseen? ANSWER: For me imagining is like dreaming. The suggestion I make to myself as I try to find an artwork inside is: first dream. This means to daydream and muse about the topic until things crystallize into a look, a process, a feel, and finally a finished piece. Creativity doesn’t explain itself in so many words. Creativity engenders imagination and ingenuity but rarely offers any explanation or understanding, at least not for me in my pursuit of sculpture. Some people talk about delving into the unconscious. I’m not sure what this means really. More to the point is that we, as humans, can “think” in different ways. We can think with words or we can think with our bodies, our movements, and our feelings and find an expression that is less definite. Perhaps one becomes enmeshed in a less refined level of being. I of course can bring words to bear on almost any topic. As it turns out, I like to talk about things. I can speak about my sculptures too but only when I look back on them from a place of analysis and critique. I have some of the same disadvantages as other people looking at these sculptures, looking in from the outside. I become removed from the place of creation and have to figure out what’s going on the same as anyone.

5:.QUESTION: What art and artists inspire you and your art making? ANSWER: My inspirations have evolved over time. I keep looking for new inspirations as art and artists cross my horizons. My earliest influences were mostly painters, famous stars such as Picasso, Klee, Calder, Dubuffet, Kandinsky, Miró. These artists showed me color and an eclectic array of figurative and abstract art. I was certainly not so interested in classic or realistic renderings. As I started painting, I was immensely attracted to Rufino Tamayo, a Mexican figurative abstractionist and colorist. When I was visiting Mexico City I left my group and rushed across town to see the Museo Rufino Tamayo hoping to see the art in person. No such luck, most of his work was showing abroad. I was disappointed. Some years later my luck returned and I saw almost everything at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, a little late but still much appreciated. Another memorable exhibit was the Helen Frankenthaler prints at San Diego Museum of Art, big, bold, colorful, wonderful prints. I see many sculpture exhibits, around the country, around the world, and even around town. The minimalists inspire, the assemblage artists intrigue, the conceptualists make me wonder. With sculpture I am still collecting impressions trying to decide what I could do or what I should do. The input can come from anywhere and everywhere; the output needs to be mine alone. I like museums so I see John Chamberlin and Richard Serra at MOCA, Nagouchi in Long Island City, Noah Purifoy and Calder at LACMA, Richard Deacon and Ruben Ochoa in San Diego, and so many more in so many places.

6:.QUESTION: How are materials important to your artwork? ANSWER: In many ways material is key to the process and final outcome of my sculpture. In high school and university I took three full years of ceramics. I focused mostly on functional work but gained good understanding of the materials, the processes, and limitations of both. Every material has its pros and cons. Ceramic is a very malleable and ultimately a very permanent material but requires technical expertise and precision and a dedicated studio. So far I have been unable to make the needed commitment to ceramics. As a more accessible and immediate alternative, I have been exploring mixed media often using repurposed building materials and hardware, things such as lumber, paint, roofing tarpaper, nails, wire, and other things. These materials are open to many possibilities and respond very well to creative innovation. Tarpaper, and its reaction to paint and heat, is key to this exhibit. By painting and heating tarpaper a rich surface develops that is interesting and fairly stable. I think of this as patina. I have been exploring the use of tarpaper for a number of years, first as a backing to wall hung pieces and then as the main element in small to medium sized freestanding sculptures. For this show I decided to create large sculpture. I soon found out that large sculptures are hard work, take a long time, and can point to unexpected issues. Because the tarpaper did not have enough structural integrity in my first large piece, I had to desperately reinforce the internal structure to get it to hold on. I see now how art can sometimes be like golf; success may depend on how well you play from the rough.

7:.QUESTION: What do the sculptures mean? ANSWER: This is a hard question to answer directly. Because the sculpture represents an innate mental/visual gesture by the artist (namely me), any explanation of or reaction to the art ideally comes intuitively without using the internal voice or depending on words. I think this means that the sculpture speaks for itself and means what it is. I understand that this is not really a satisfactory answer and not really an explanation. As I mentioned earlier, the creation of the art comes from a different place than the analysis or description of the art. The artwork itself is a gestural, nonverbal expression where the discussion of meaning requires linguistic insight and awareness. I will switch gears and attempt to give my interpretation of the artistic motivation underlying these sculptures and the associated artistic viewpoints. Even though many different interpretations are possible, several threads have risen to the surface for me through the years. These start to slowly build a consensus of meaning. A common thread at work here is the use of repetitive features in the sculptures that can be counted and can refer to numbers or multiples of numbers. Three is an important number. Three to the third power is another important number. One hundred and eight has deep meaning among certain groups. At the heart of the matter numbers are an elemental component of the universe; numbers represent a part of universe that is unattached to the human mind and the physical world and exist as part of the information, along with the physical laws, that underpin the universe. Grids are another motif that represents the all-embracing nature of universal information. It occurred to me while reading at theoretical physics (for the mathematically challenged) that empty space is never truly empty but is imbued with information that is universally applicable across the entirety of space. Grids represent the physical universe and its universal nature. In a similar vein, some of the sculptures remind me of monuments or markers; some are referred to as steles. I’m hard pressed to know what they are marking. But as usual, I can speak to the topic without knowing very much. These are markers of, monuments to, and steles commemorating points in universal space. I say: why not?

8:.QUESTION: What is the impetus for you to make art? ANSWER: In straightforward, simple terms, I want to work with my hands and see my personal feelings, impulses, thoughts, and intentions realized physically with style and allure. In thinking deeper, I wonder about the source of creativity and by extension, about the ultimate source of us all. Did I mention that I am attracted by the BIG questions? My nature, probably my human nature, wants me to see things from both sides. One side says that humans are animals subject to evolutionary pressures and that creativity is a tool in our adaptive toolkit. No doubt, in terms of numbers and sheer dominance as a species, we have become incredibly successful problem solvers. For me actualizing an artwork is about problem solving at every step. The challenge and satisfaction of solving problems is a core reason for me to create art. Many also consider creativity as a spiritual and metaphysical condition of humanity. I am agnostic on the divine nature of everything and even though there is much evidence to point to the spiritual nature of existence, I continue to be skeptical that this provides a full answer. However, as a practical matter, seeing creativity as a sacred essence gives us, as artists, a way to get out of our analytic minds and into the river of creativity.

9:.QUESTION: What are your thoughts about the history of art; where do you fit in? ANSWER: The history of art is the history of humanity. The superstars of art history grow tall out of a bed of human talent just as mushrooms grow up from an underground bed of mycelium. I feel comfortably part of the unseen, yet rich, humus of the art world. I believe the long history of art clearly predates the birth of painting and sculpture in the era of the Cro-Magnon. I see the human capacity for art springing forth at the dawning of our genus well over a million years ago. Homo erectus, as a species, certainly thought creatively, produced tools and artifacts, and communicated competently, albeit nonverbally. Much of art today, and certainly art from the deep past, is nonverbal in its impetus. I am actually very interested in how art and the brain evolved together over time. A huge watershed in art history was when artists started to analytically think about and mentally model their art and to figure out how get their art onto walls and into sculpture. As humans proceed through advances in language and writing to exponential expansions in technology and computing, art also evolves becoming more and more intertwined with and dependent on decisive cerebral breakthroughs. I see that, even now, art continues a trend towards a deep-seated intellectual collaboration. I see art moving from pictorial and narrative traditions of the past towards the iconoclastic, intellectually driven movements of modern and contemporary times. We can think of impressionism, cubism, conceptualism, and others as new theories of art following rules developed through an increasingly scientific and methodical doctrine. Art seems to more and more share the tools of philosophy, literature, and science. Visual artists seem to have a shot at turning away from being engulfed by analytic methods and to favor more primitive modes of observation. I think I am not alone in looking to the past, possibly the very deep past, to find a place and a process unfettered by stratified, petrified thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t think so much about how we make art.

10:.QUESTION: What are your challenges in making and showing your art? ANSWER: For me art is a fairly undefined discipline meaning that it is hard to say where an effort would be best applied. Should I be working in the studio, reading to deepen knowledge, seeing and researching art? Perhaps I should clean up? With so much to do I have a tendency to freeze up. They call art a practice; I need to practice breaking the work into small chunks and getting on with it. We all know that deadlines harden resolve. This is one of the reasons to like exhibits. I’m under a deadline right now. A challenge for me with sculpture, especially larger pieces, is what to do, what to use, and how to do it. First I will find a piece by daydreaming about it. I will look at the piece in my mind, consider the size and look, identify materials, go over assembly processes. This is a repetitive exercise but it allows one to start seeing the problems, modify the effort, and repeat the visualization. The fabrication is, of course, a challenge, especially with larger pieces. Here you find out if the processes you’ve been visualizing and thinking about are right. I want to get it right from the start because I often want to use the same procedures over the entire surface. I don’t want to have to change in the middle. Another challenge is the physical effort, especially with larger pieces. Especially as I get older, my body protests, a tendinitis here, sore back there, elbow, shoulder, foot, etc. It’s hard work. What about the challenges of showing work? Having a show puts you in the public eye and if you are (I am) not careful you can build up expectation of something, success, failure, rejection, fame and fortune. For me, any expectation messes with me. Anonymity and equanimity in certain measure have mostly helped here. The prospect of selling builds the wall of expectation all over again. I don’t think I could really do art if I really had to sell. I am incredibly grateful that I don’t really have to sell; therefore, I can be an artist.

11:.QUESTION: Where do you see your art practice going from here? ANSWER: I have been thinking about this. I have a lot of interests. I have a lot of media I like to work with. I am going to work smaller for sure. These may be the last large artworks for some time. I want to work within the size of my studio, which is not so big for all the stuff I have. I want to work an idea across several media, drawing, painting, printing, sculpting, mixed media, ceramics, glass, jewelry. Looks like I want to do it all. We’ll see.

I. C. “VING” Simpson Linksoul Gallery
7 October 2017