That wonderful, fanciful, fantastic food artist, Patricia Arribálzaga, whom I featured a while back was kind enough to respond to my request for a short interview. I love her concise, to-the-point responses; she radiates confidence and certainty about her craft.
What do you love about your medium?
I love working with edible material, my art is ephemeral, my art object are dematerialized when people eat it
Describe a piece of artwork that you find superficial or boring.
In my case I find boring the artwork that you can find in every places denoting lack of surprise and personality .
When did you first call yourself an artist, and why?
When I was around 7 years old when I felt a strong emotion with the result of my drawings and hunger to continue working.
Describe a piece of artwork and/or an artist that you find consistently inspiring.
Today I bring you an artist profile for an amazing mixed media artist, David Brady. David Brady uses found objects, sketches, paint, and all manner of other mediums to create these hauntingly beautiful creations. He is also a distant relative of mine, so I’ve gotten the benefit of some of his artist wisdom since I was pretty small. He was one of the first people to demonstrate how an artist can take themselves seriously, press into new and weird experiences, and still laugh at things that are funny. Here’s some about his work in his own words.
What do you love about your medium?
I do love taking discarded objects, things that someone has no use for and bringing it back to life in a completely different context. The essence of being a mixed media or one that works with an unlimited source of material is how I view creativity, one with no rules.
My One and Only
Describe a piece of artwork that you find superficial or boring.
Where do I start, there is quite a bit of art that has nothing to say or reflect any emotion or truth. Art has always had a much bigger responsibility and purpose that most artists grasp. To answer your question…pretty much any art that has been in any hotel room i’ve stayed in. I don’t go home and listen to elevator music either.
Shielded Detail
When did you first call yourself an artist and why?
I don’t really see myself as an artist, rather simply a creative person. I don’t like the paradigm that goes with the artists label as it is quite confining.
Reaching
Describe a piece of artwork and/or an artist that you find consistently inspiring.
What is your unique purpose for creating work?
As they say “you were given a unique gift” so I’ve taken that to heart and work hard and being honest in my work. My purpose is to educate others on the value and relevance of art today, especially in our media saturated world. Art is still the king of when it comes to “a quiet moment of reflection”. I strive to tell stories and visually explore emotions that we are often afraid of to help others connect to themselves and see the world around them differently.
The Big Wheel
Brady’s work is currently on view at FIVE08 Gallery in Santa Monica. Wed-Sat. 1-7p. 310-994-9400
An artist profile of the amazing Cheryl Sorg! Since Monday I was burning my long weekend on a fruitless attempt to potty train my toddler, I didn’t have time to post this very adult, artsy, fascinating profile. Believe me when I tell you, I would rather be blogging.
Cheryl Sorg makes these amazing book-related collage pieces, many of them specifically tailored to the life and loves of the person they’re made for. I love how she brings literature into the realm of visual art and in such a respectful and effective way. Here’s some about her in her own words, enjoy!
What do you love about your medium?
There are a couple of things I love about it.
The first thing I love about it is its very simplicity – I am somewhat gear-averse and like to keep things really simple. My favorite forms of exercise are walking and yoga, largely because they require minimal gear and you can do them anywhere. In my art work, while my process is complex (as well as labor intensive, one might even say tedious), my materials are certainly not – they consist of paper, tape, scissors, a sticker machine – that’s pretty much it!
The other thing I love about my medium is that it is hands-on and labor-intensive, which makes it a sort of meditation for me that soothes my over-active (and often not in a good way) mind.
Children’s Booklover Thumbprint Portrait
Describe a piece of artwork that you find superficial or boring.
While I can’t recall a specific piece of artwork off the top of my head, I can say that, living in a small beach town that caters to beach-going tourists, one sees a lot of kind of traditional or kitschy seascape paintings and while there is no doubt I find the ocean beautiful (it kinda goes without saying), I have to admit my reaction to these sorts of paintings is often dismissive.
Family Thumbprint Portrait Detail
When did you first call yourself an artist and why?
I have always been one, always knew I wanted to do art in one form or another, but I spent a lot ( a LOT) of years cycling through many of the various ‘practical’ applications for my artistic leanings. All through my childhood I was sure I was going to be a fashion designer and would spend endless hours filling pages with drawings of dresses and shoes and the like. But after a year of college as a fashion design major, it became clear that wasn’t going to be my thing (though I still adore fashion and dream of being able to fill my closet with designer wares). I dropped out and was a bit lost for a while after that, thinking maybe I’d be an art teacher, an art therapist, who knows, until I got a camera at age 26 or so and then decided to return to college as a photography major. I studied photography (with some of the most incredible photographers as instructors) at MassArt in Boston and loved it. But the gear aversion, various experiments with other media, and, well, life, steered me in yet another direction and I began creating things with texts and book pages – collages, installations and sculptures instead of making photographs. I certainly thought of myself as an artist while in school. It’s part of the absolute glorious nature of art school – making art is your full-time job for a while there and it’s fantastic. But in addition to art courses, I took tons of literature courses and literature independent studies and even thought I might go on for a higher degree in comparative literature, so I still wasn’t calling myself an artist to the outside world so much. I think that finally happened during my time right after graduating in 1999 – at age 31. I was working a wonderful ‘day job’ as an administrator at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, in which I had a fantastic boss who was just so supportive of my art life and also in which I got the chance to interact all day with diverse, bright, cultured, lovely students all day. It was a job that supported me financially and psychologically and while I worked there I was able to crank out tons of work in my off time and begin exhibiting regularly.
Family Thumbprint Portrait
Describe a piece of artwork and/or an artist that you find consistently inspiring.
Oh boy – there are so many. Two that come to mind immediately are from two very different artists, but I find them equally inspiring. One is a video piece I saw years ago at the San Francisco MoMA by Sam Taylor-Wood that was just so genius I was instantly jealous of her and so wished I had thought of it. It appeared at first glance to be a still photographic image of a scene of people sitting in a cafe displayed on a screen, but if you stood there for a few minutes and watched, you would notice that the woman’s cigarette was burning down, that you could see the tiniest tremors that come when people sit so very still for that long. It was brilliant, and I know I will never ever forget it. The other that comes to mind – especially because I got to see it in person for a second time this past summer on a trip to Paris – is a Van Gogh self-portrait. It is so gripping, so riveting, draws me in so completely I have cried both times I’ve stood in front of it. It’s so beautifully rendered I feel him looking at me, and as a person myself who experiences profound sadness and hopelessness and psychological despair myself more often than I care to think about, I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it – I feel like I feel his pain, I feel a profound empathy through that eye-to-eye connection. In front of that painting, I’m a little like the museum-goer in Ben Lerner’s‘Leaving the Atocha Station’, who the protagonist watches, mockingly (somewhat enviously?) sobbing in ‘a profound experience of art’.
Interestingly, I find both of these pieces both inspiring and devastating. There’s a small part of me that feels I should throw my hands in the air and give up this crazy art-making thing when I see work so moving, so amazing, so doubtful am I that anything I create will ever move someone in that way. But I don’t. Throw my hands in the air and give up, that is. Because I have to make art, period. And if I can give, one of these days, just one person that feeling, ‘a profound experience of art’, well that would be pretty f*ing awesome.
Overlapping Skies (in progress)
What is your unique purpose for creating work?
I love the written word. I love books and the stories held within their pages. I am so inspired by them and comforted by them. My purpose is to celebrate those stories, as well as tell a few of my own. I’ve had this idea of ‘celebration’ in my mind lately (perhaps a summer in France did that?), and new ideas are creeping up as a result. They are not fully formed yet, are a little kooky, and revolve around this phrase: book party. Woo!
Matthew Hamblen, the wonderful surrealist that I featured last week, has agreed to do an artist profile for me. I am really enjoying getting to hear from all these artists about what inspires and drives them, and this one is no exception. I hope you enjoy this look into Hamblen’s artistic world, as well as the lovely images he’s generously agreed to display here.
What do you love about your medium?
Everything. I can’t really state anything specifically here. I guess I was just born to paint, as it’s my #1 thing in life since a very early age.
Describe one piece of artwork that you find superficial or boring.
You know when you go into a modern art museum and you see a huge wall-sized painting that’s just one color (usually white) ? Yeah, I’m with you on that, as I just don’t get it either. I mean, minimalism is one thing, but…. (??)
When did you first call yourself an artist and why?
Well, I grew up with a Father who’s an oil painter, and the family lineage is all about art on his side of the family for many generations, so to me it was no big deal, I guess.
I’ve always felt that no one grants you “permission” to be an artist. You have to call yourself one at some point. Precisely when that happened to me, I’ve really no idea. I think we all have it within us, as a lot of it is psychological, as are many things in life.
We’re taught to believe that to be an actual “artiste” one must be a certain “something” that’s oh-so-special, or have a list of accomplishments that would make jaws drop, and I just don’t buy into any of that, nor do I buy into the whole “art world” game, really, as it’s all about “who you know” and “where you’ve hung” which inherently rubs me the wrong way.
Art is about creativity and perhaps quite a bit about rebellion as well, so that’s my POV on the whole thing.
When I was young, an artist I admired advised me to just go and paint if I wanted to be an artist, so that’s just what I did. Simple.
Describe a piece of artwork and/or an artist that you find consistently inspiring.
This might sound terribly egotistical but it’s not meant to be. To get fresh ideas on what to do or where to go next, I actually go back to my own older stuff nowadays. I’ve always referred back to what people want of me, and what they’ve purchased in the past, as I enjoy painting what others like, and I enjoy making people happy with my artwork. The inspiration is just melded in there automatically, as I love what I do, and it always inspires me on it’s own. I used to glean inspiration from tons of artists and various places, and still do on odd occasion if I see something that just blows my mind, but nowadays, I mainly stick within my little niche.
What is your unique purpose for creating work?
Just making people happy, and hopefully inspiring others to create. I’m grateful beyond words to be in a position to do that.
I’m loving that I’ve had three Mondays in a row with artist profiles, hopefully I can keep it up. I love reading the responses to my questions, and seeing how each artist’s identity emerges so uniquely from any other artist. Here is a profile of Daryl Stokes, a redwood sculptor who’s been working with that specific medium for 30 years. Daryl Stokes makes these lovely abstract sculptures from found redwood displaced by fires or floods. You can really see the love and wisdom he puts into his work in these images.
What do you love about your medium?
I work with natural redwood burls and root materials and what I love most is that they are all unique. It has been a constant challenge and inspiration to create sculptures and furniture designs with random materials such as these. It is a combination of utilizing natural forms and visualizing what can be created from such forms in a way that is aesthetically rewarding.
Describe a piece of artwork that you find superficial or boring.
I create types of abstract expressionistic wood sculptures and for that matter I have not been excited by many types of realistic works such as seascapes or or portraits, depending on how they have been executed.
When did you first call yourself an artist, and why?
I have been an artist ever since I was in junior high school and that’s when I discovered that I had a talent and that it eventually became an integral part of my mental well being.
Describe a piece of art and/or an artist that you find consistently inspiring.
I have always been drawn to surrealistic artists such as Jim Warren and I am constantly fascinated by their approach to creating realistic objects in abstract settings. I have attempted to translate some of the surrealistic aspects into my sculptures such as transitional effects where gnarled wood forms have transitions into crisp geometric counterparts.
What is your unique purpose for creating work?
My art is my passion and allows me to express my inner consciousness to the best of my abilities more so than anything else I could do aside from dancing.
As much fun as it is to hear me talk about the art that I love, I thought I’d give some of the artists a chance to speak about their own work. I’ll be doing these profiles, you know, occasionally, most likely whenever I have one to post.
Guante is an amazing spoken word artist and rapper. Since he is a local (to me) artist, I’ve been lucky enough to know him a little and greatly honored to have shared a stage with him. He and the St. Paul spoken word team (I’m sure they have an official name) won the National Poetry Slam competition, twice. Guante is also one of the only poets I know who makes his living on poetry, and he gives all his talent and knowledge away by teaching tons of classes and coaching youth slam teams. If you visit the homepage of this website, you will find a review of my novel that Guante was kind enough to write for me. Here is some about his artwork in his own words.
What do you love about your medium?
With spoken-word, there are no rules. You can say whatever you want in whatever way you want to say it. So it really lends itself to the type of work that I want to do, work that examines the intersection of art, media, rhetoric and education. Sometimes, the most powerful spoken-word piece ISN’T the “best” poem. Sometimes it’s more of a PSA, or an audio op-ed, or (ideally) a compelling mashup of all of these different forms. As spoken-word artists, we get to learn from everyone, but we’re not beholden to any particular style or school of thought. That’s tremendously liberating.
Describe a piece of art that you find superficial or boring.
As a rapper, I’m particularly hard on other rappers; it just comes with the territory. And the thing is, most other rappers are good. If you follow hip hop, there’s a lot of good stuff happening right now. I think the problem is a lack of ambition; there’s a ton of “B+ music” out there. And a B+ is good, it’s enjoyable, it’s well-crafted, but it’s not stunningly original or revelatory or transformative, and that’s what I look for in music. So no matter how good it is, I just can’t get excited about another song about what it’s like to be a rapper, or another song about having a fun party, or another song that just kind of vaguely talks about everything that’s wrong with the world. I want creativity, specificity, focus. It’s important to point out that this is my personal preference; I don’t think there’s anything “bad” about music that isn’t explosively original. I just don’t get excited about it.
Spoken-word isn’t much different– it’s easy to get up on stage and rant and rave about things; but what separates the special work from the rest of the pack is how it moves beyond the surface-level analysis– maybe it examines your own complicity with a given problem, or explores a grey area, or allows us to see something we think we understand in a new way.
When did you first call yourself an artist, and why?
I’m really not sure. My journey has been very gradual and organic. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the term. I think sometimes the word “artist” is put on a pedestal, like artists are magic elves or something. I think we’re all artists, whether it’s our career, our hobby, or something we want to do but don’t have time for. I hesitate to think of it as a specific identity, because there are so many different ways to create art and live artistically. I think you can be a mother who makes art, or a politician who makes art, or an activist who makes art. I’m just a weirdo who happens to make art.
Describe an artist and/or piece of work that you find consistently inspiring.
I’m really lucky in that some of my favorite artists in the world live in the same community as me. I bring Ed Bok Lee‘s book “Whorled” with me to almost every show I play, and sometimes read from it. Same with Bao Phi’s “Song I Sing.” Both poets are very good at doing what I want to do– creating work that is immediately powerful and actually says something explicitly political without sacrificing the craft of it. That’s not an easy thing to do, and I’m grateful to have role models like them so close.
What is your unique purpose for creating work?
I’m a pragmatist, and I see art much less as an expression of my infinite soul than as just another way to talk to people, an avenue for communication. I’m a communicator. I want to talk about things like privilege, and language, and activism, but talk about them in ways that are difficult to forget. So sometimes that’s a poem, sometimes it’s a rap song, sometimes it’s an op-ed. I think art is another form of independent media, and independent media is an integral part of the movement we’re all trying to build. So that’s why I do it.
