ISM: A Community Project (2007)
"real-ISM"; 10 Questions Q&A Interview
www.ismcommunity.org
I was in a few group shows with an art community focused organization called ISM in 2007 and 2008. The people who run ISM are all good people and it was a great opportunity to participate in their shows. The '10 Questions' interview is no longer up on the website, but I am reposting it here (below):
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Define art?
An expressive act, in any medium, that communicates specific ideas and fosters growth, reflection, understanding, conversation, knowledge, questioning, and community.
Where and from whom do you find your inspiration?
I am inspired by many things.
I am inspired, or pushed, to work by seeing other artists and artwork.
Childhood experiences are very important to me as an artist. My simultaneous connection and disconnection with nature, observations of urban/natural and man/nature and technology/nature are extremely fascinating to me. Many forms of art, illustration, design, architecture, and environments are inspiring to me. And so is the role of the artist/designer in society.
What is success to you?
Being respected as someone who creates good work, living and working how I want to, and the ability to express the ideas and creativity that I possess.
Day job?
Part-time Microchip Tester; radio frequency chips for wireless and multimedia devices.
Who has personally supported your creative endeavors?
Many people have supported me in my creative pursuits when I think about it. Of course my Mom and Dad have been really important, so have close friends and family, fellow artists, and the teachers I’ve had at Art Center and in San Diego. In my experience most people are supportive and interested in art. It is just difficult as an artist to compete with the payrolls of other professions when it comes to cost of living expenses; this uncertainty is a huge pressure and worries a lot of people.
What is your recipe for love?
Common interests, attraction, friendship, communication, effort, airing on the side of support and positivity, and knowing when to put your ego aside.
What is your philosophy of community?
Sharing, support, health, art and music, celebration.
Even though a community is a large group composed of many people, it is constructed by individual efforts.
Please share with us a story that changed your life.
There are a few stories that come to mind, but I will share two…
First, at age 5 my family moved from central San Diego to coastal North County San Diego. We left a suburban neighborhood down the street from a lake (Lake Murray), where I had the freedom to explore the shoreline with my family and our 110 lb. German shepherd. My dad got a new job opportunity so we moved. We moved into a tract home development about 2 miles from the coast that was on the edge of both agriculture and virgin canyons and hills; chaparral for almost as far as you could see. It was an absolute paradise for kids to go exploring in. It was wild; packs of coyotes, rattlesnakes, cactus, lizards, frogs, ponds, crayfish, bugs, quail, manzanita, deer, dust, and dirt; it was teaming with life. About 3 years later that changed. Within weeks the large hills and canyons for nearly a mile were leveled. Nothing left but dirt lots. More space was needed for new tract home developments, and integration into the natural landscape was not one of their interests. As a kid I didn’t understand it all. Why would someone want to destroy this land? (Overlooking the fact that my family lived in one of those tract homes) My friends and I made the most of the dirt lots, until tract home construction began. Then, at about age 10 my family moved out a bit farther east to the new edge of canyons and chaparral hills reuniting me with this natural playground. This time within just a few months the bulldozers and earthmovers started leveling it into dirt lots all over again. Soon more tract homes began to be built. Every two years or so a few new tract home streets would further separate my friends and I away from the easy access nature we had come to know so well. This left adolescence to be spent exploring and frequenting construction sites to hangout, to make BMX jumps or skateboard ramps; which is an entirely different story.
The exposure I had and the connection I developed with the local land, as a kid, was so powerful and rich. And to have it constantly destroyed right in front of me, constantly fleeting, constantly manipulated, was probably one of a few most influential experiences on my life. It was this strange connection and simultaneous disconnection with the natural environment, the paradoxical modern state of being, that left such a profound impact. It shined a spotlight on questions around what it meant to be a human being and what nature is.
Secondly, moving up to Los Angeles, at age 19, to enroll in Intro to Illustration with the Clayton Brothers at Art Center College of Design also changed my life. It also opened my eyes up to a whole new broad range of art, design, and illustration. It also opened my eyes up to art being a profession and a job full of possibilities. This was also in addition to it being my first time living on my own.
What will your epitaph say?
I don’t plan on wasting space here on land, my ashes will be scattered in the Pacific. I’ll let the water and the wind do the talking.
