Big Time Questions No.2

I really enjoy your gallery work. I am assuming it is all computer graphic work? What is your favorite program and where do you find insirpation for your unique style?


You are correct, most of my visual work in the past has been done on the computer (mostly Photoshop, which is a very accessible and open-ended program), but I frankly enjoy doing collage with tape and scissors most of all. I would work in traditional means more frequently if A.) I could afford to, and B.) if I had more of a space to work. That is the other good thing about computers, you can construct a HUGE file/ image in the corner of your tiny cluttered room. With collage, or painting, or what have you, you really need a decent space to spread out in and work. I like the limitations of collage though. I like how you only have so much that you can pull from and you have to make it work. The computer is very wide-open, and seems more arbitrary. Although these days I feel most visual art is rather arbitrary. I work in a print studio one day a week with an actual Artist (whose big in the Chicago Pop Art scene), who collages large silk screen images, like Warhol, but with more images piled up on top of one another. In fact the whole set-up is very similar to "the Factory." Myself and a few others pick out a lot of the screens and compositions for these pieces of Art that will sell in New York for thousands of dollars. There is some direction and intent there, but by and large it's a very serendipitous process. Generally the results are exciting and pleasing, and whichever one you like better is all up to personal taste. And this is like "ART" art, which seems like nothing more than an excuse for people that have more money than they should to give it away.

As far as my style is concerned, I think it comes out of number of areas. I've always liked harsher imagery, and been attracted to harsher sounds. Much of my progression through art in general (this includes film, music, and books as well) has been an ongoing search for extremes. It's like I've always been looking for stuff that would upset me. I have a very high threshold for the startling and grotesque. I don't know why either. I was a very shy and nervous little kid, but was always fascinated with monsters and "darker" stuff. I was brought up on movies like "Young Frankenstein" and "Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman" until I could stomach actual "scary" movies. Maybe because of that I don't really scare anymore, which is a shame, because, damn I've tried. I've read practically every short ghost story I could get my hands on, expired the whole list of horror movies, and never found anything. But I still love all that stuff. It's just fun to me. As soon as anything scary happens I think, "this is great!" So a lot of my "art" has to do with that. Horrors. Not, obviously, in the sense that I draw monsters and stuff, but in the sense that I am trying to pursue some sort of really viscerally startling imagery, more for myself I think than anyone else. I don't think I've really succeeded yet, so in the meantime, I just make harsh stuff that I think, at least, looks interesting.