Q: What initially inspired this work?
A: The work comes almost directly from what I've been thinking about for the better part of the past three years. It’s all inspired by an interest in technology – the way we view it and interact with it on a daily basis. This work in particular was more about the purpose of technologies, and undermining that to create an unknown purpose. I’m trying to create machines that clearly have function in them – they have recognizable symbols, shapes, designs, and patterns that we’ve come to understand as an interface – but that are disconnected from the actual functionality. I used to watch Star Trek as a kid, and in the background there would be panels of random, sci-fi technology. I remember always loving that because they’re clearly not real – they’re just flat screens – but they’re implying all kinds of things. Like, “this is where the captain does this or that,” but it’s up to the imagination to fill in the possibilities of the details of the functionality. That’s what I’m aiming to do.
Q: Can you walk us through how you made this? You say in your artist statement that it was a “sculptural progression from [your] drawings.” Can you tell us about that?
A: So it’s just foam core hot glued together, and the surfaces are drawn on with Micron pen. I’ve also been incorporating some cabled elements, like guitar cables for example. Like I said, this is all coming from the work I’ve done over the last few years – most of which had been just drawings, almost like world-building. In the beginning I was thinking about things a little too sculpturally. I draw as my main artistic practice, and I was approaching this work from a really strange perspective. I was trying to make sculptures that were my drawings, instead of taking my drawings and making them sculptural. It’s a really subtle shift, but I hadn’t really thought about it that way. It took someone in the art department to say, “this is what’s happening, you’re just not seeing it.” At that point I was welding things and putting paper on it… it was a mess and just not working. For months I was ripping apart old analog… anything. I was taking out motherboards and gluing them to planks of wood – I felt insane.
Q: It’s clear that ideas about technology are found throughout a lot of your work. Have you noticed any other themes that typically recur?
A: Looking back I’ve realized that a lot of my work is almost world-building, like I mentioned before. It’s not so literal as to be named; it’s not like a Lord of the Rings type world, with characters and species and things. But I’m making up places and alluding to an imaginary reality where these machines really would work. So I’d say technology and machines, sci-fi…
Q: Why do you think these things consistently come up?
A: I think the reason I’m drawn to sci-fi is because it generally takes what we know logically, and brings it to some insane conclusion that, to me, is exciting. It’s escapism, I suppose. It helps me feel less in a malaise about the mundane – which is especially helpful right now.
Q: What makers might your work be in conversation with? Who are you inspired by?
A: I’ve always been inspired by MC Escher, or dense imagery like The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch. Also, this quote by the philosopher Marshall McLuah has really stuck out to me, “Humans are the sex organs of the machine world.” From this theory perspective, we’re only here to propagate machines. According to McLuhan, that’s our only purpose. So if you look at it from a macro perspective, machines grow in almost biological ways. It has these really weird implications. It’s safe to say that humans are natural, but generally people (myself included) make a distinction between humans and the things they make -- so houses and computers are unnatural. But it’s interesting to think that if you zoom out far enough even that becomes a natural process, like ants building an anthill or bees building a hive.
Q: How would you describe yourself? What do you do?
A: I think calling myself a drawer or illustrator is the easiest, safest answer to give. Because I draw. I’m a musician as well, I make music. And I’ve worked with sculpture, projection… but I’ve never identified with any of those things. But I’ve always drawn, ever since I was a kid. I think that’s why identifying myself at all is weird to me. My hand’s gotten steadier, but I feel like I’m doing the same things as I did when I was a kid: just drawing things with a pen. That said, I’ve never really identified as a “drawer” either, because I was just a kid doing stuff.
I think it’s interesting to think about what a different type of artist with similar interests to me would create; I think a sculpture artist would probably be a mechanic at that point.
Q: A lot of seniors have expressed feeling robbed of an opportunity to celebrate years of hard work. What are you most proud of?
A: I’m most proud of this project, I think. It was a perfect culmination of all the work I’d been doing. Aesthetically and technically it was a good reach, too. My work ethic dramatically went up while I was working on this. I can definitely see my improvement over the years, and that’s something I’m proud of.
