Art Feature: none

none
by addison

Here today, gone tomorrow….

Will wonders ever cease,

will wonders ever wonder?

We were fortunate to learn more about addison, an artist whose intellect, imagination, and creative insights speak to artists and writers of all media and genres. In this interview, he shared his views on such topics as art, the creative process, and how to determine when a piece is complete. We hope you enjoy spending time with his work, and learning more about the artist behind it.

Question: This is an acrylic piece. Is this your preferred medium? If yes, we’d love to know more about why. (If not, can you tell us more about what is your favorite, and why?)

Bronze would be my preferred medium for the shear excitement and terror of it—a labor intensive rush.  Yes, chocolates, you never really know just what you’re going to get: perfection, melted money broken out and pouring through the sand, or crippled and incomplete monsters and orphans.  And then there’s always the fire, your very own sun in a crucible.  There’s a whole ritual and procedure, which is where you learn prayer.  It all comes down to timing and coordination; it’s where not being there in the moment could get you killed or barbecued.

Q: What inspired this particular work?

It’s an attempt to limit both form and application parameters while letting placement and color become the main media of variation.  That was the proposal, the result was a nonobjective style.  Just one more experiment in propositional language, pure design, or pure bullshit, these are the descriptions given to me.

Q:How would you describe your creative process? Do you often start with an idea, and let it manifest? Or do you start with creation, and slowly shape your final product?

I find both processes effective.  From what it is to how to do, this indicates the route to take.  I made a few notes for this interview and haven’t used a one of them.  The first two methods are linear; the third is nonlinear, quantum.  I think we’ve all been there (?).

Q: How do you know when a piece is complete? (This is something that’s often a struggle for writers, and we’re interested to learn more about what that’s like from a visual art standpoint as well.)

Of all these questions, this is key. For me, it makes for the point of the interview.  But well before this should be the question as to the worth of even completing.  Beyond that, one must visit the extreme of the overdone—and on more than one occasion, in order to gain experience and reference.  This done, if you need keep asking you need not master.  To stray too far from one’s original intent or intuition can sound the alarm, though it could, sometimes, provide for a new intent having fresh intuition but at cost.  Another good indicator is the mere length of the struggle.  This applies to written as well as visual language, and if you can’t find the heart to plug in that final period, consider this….  And then there’s always the counterpart of not enough; incomplete.  Of the two, I’d rather end up here, thinking about what would have been, rather than the train wreck it was.

Q: Are there any other projects that you’re working on that you’d like to clue our readers into?

Solar photography, the properties and theories of light and its detection.  “There are more things in heaven.…”  I’ve already done the earth part.

Q: Have any specific artists or works impacted this piece? What artists have been your primary influences in general?

No, it was an attempt at getting out of my own comfort zone rather than referring to someone else’s.  While I enjoy the means and expressions of others, it is their technique I examine for the hastening of my own expressions.  My mentors emphasized drawing as the foundation of art and in accord with this I would have to recommend the great draughtsmen of the Renaissance.  It all begins with contrast, dichotomy, be it shaded as line or a dot.

Q: If you could introduce the world to one artist, who would it be?

As anyone in this position would honestly say, myself, as I would surely enjoy, and have enjoyed, meeting another’s introduction, themselves.  This aside, I would introduce Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as a primer to such artist before the introduction of said artist to anyone. Such is the case. Art, as opposed to design, is a visual language and all languages propose to paint a picture.  There are rules to grammar unless the choice is to be incoherent or vaguely on the fringe, which can all come into focus as a means to unexplored ends.

Q: What are you reading right now?

I just reread The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which I have this sneaky hunch may come in handy) while amid a biography on Rabindranath Tagore.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

A time value added stamp is good enough for me.

Cisco Covino is a writer and graphic artist and aesthetic scientist.  He received his MFA in fiction from Fairfield University and currently teaches at Johnson & Wales University.  His work has appeared in such publications as Now What?, Cracked.com, and Old Time Family Baseball.  He can usually be found riding his bike through the sweet absurdity of Boston, MA.

**Cisco also serves as Spry‘s Graphic Designer. 

Linsey Jayne is a wave-headed poet with a penchant for jazz who received her MFA in creative writing at Fairfield University. Her writing has been published in such publications as The Standard-Times, The Dartmouth-Westport Chronicle, and exactly.what.  She has served as the chief poetry editor for Mason’s Road, as well as the student editor for the Bryant Literary Review and the opinion section editor of The Archway. Linsey is currently at work on her first collection of poetry, entitled Idle Jive.