On building community as an introvert

Where does your desire to make art come from?

When I was in high school, I read a lot. I had this book on abstraction called An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art by Roger Lipsey. I was trying to get my head around it. I really liked a lot of abstract painters, like Paul Klee. But I felt a little intimidated by the 20th century artists who were trying to crack the code. I think that book was a little over my head at that time, but he described cubism as a way of seeing. And I think that was when a light bulb went off for me. I thought, “That’s it, that’s something I’ve been doing since I was a kid.”

It’s about making things from a vision. It’s not about depiction necessarily or an allegory, but a way of seeing [the world] and I think that’s when I felt like I could really be an artist. And so that drives me and the kind of work that I make. It’s a way to unwind the world and see things differently.

You’ve sustained an art practice for decades, while working other jobs like woodworking. How do you prioritize your art practice?

I’ve had full time gigs where I had to be very disciplined about getting up early and doing a lot of drawing and writing [before work], which has become more of a foundational part of my practice, but not so much something I show. This practice really helps build a well of ideas. I’ve done things where I freelance and do a lot of work and make a lot of money, and then take a month off. I usually follow my instincts. It’s important to me to find work that I don’t have to bring home. Because I feel like once it affects the home and the studio, it can be really discouraging. But the flip side of that is usually those kinds of jobs don’t pay well. Having a good boss is really crucial. It’s easy to turn the negativity of a job into negativity in the studio. Once, I was working a job I didn’t really like, so I decided to read a poem before I went to work every day to remind my mind of what’s important.

A lot of people give up pretty easily, early on in their art careers, because it’s hard. Or because it doesn’t provide them the immediate rewards and satisfaction and fame that they were hoping to achieve. So, what motivates you to wake up every morning and keep doing it?

Well, I think it’s the sense of discovering things, especially through drawing and writing. It’s the really juicy, creative, quick kind of mediums that keeps me going, especially in the morning with a fresh mind, fresh energy. It’s very exciting. I go to bed sometimes thinking, “I can’t wait to get my coffee, [write and draw], and figure something out.”

If you stick with it, you get better at what you want to do. The struggle first is to figure out what it is you want to do. I was listening to an interview with Ira Glass where he was saying something about how for a lot of artists and creative people your taste is better than your ability to make for a long time. It can be very frustrating because you kind of know what’s good and you know what you want, but you can’t get there. I think that one of the rewards is sticking with it.

I’m 47 now, so it can take a while to be good at what you’re doing. Being able to draw the way I want to draw, and realizing a vision in my head very quickly, I’m really grateful, and I’m proud of myself for having stuck with it. To be able to do even that simple thing feels very gratifying, and I don’t take it for granted.

Do you have any advice for other artists who are in it for the long haul? How can they see past rejection and financial burdens and keep making things?

The financial thing is so tough. When I first got started out of art school, I didn’t have very much at all. But that’s one of the great things about art, you can really make anything [with very little]. The artist Ray Johnson made these little postcards. I think those are some of the coolest artworks. You don’t have to have a ton of money to make something really great.

As for the rejection thing, all through my 20s, it was all rejection. The thing that got me through all that (and maybe it’s easier in places like LA) is really trying to find other people who are doing the same thing that you are, and are as committed to it. How do you want to spend your time and your money, and what do you want to talk about?

Especially in your 20s, people start to make their way, ascend into middle class life a little bit quicker, and at least in my experience, that can be very discouraging [for an artist] because you’re friends are going out and doing fun things and they’re having these jobs and “I’m getting rejected. I’m not making any money. I’m spending all my free money on [art supplies].” It can be very, very discouraging. That was a big part of wanting to go to grad school. I got in and made new friends, people who I still look up to and stay connected to and it’s nice to know that they’re still doing it. I wanted to feel like I was part of a community. You need to find like-minded people. I’m an introverted person, so it was hard for me. That’s the key to a lot of my frustration in life, talking to other people, unloading things.

I can relate. I think community is everything. When I didn’t have a single writer friend, I felt the most alone. “Why am I even trying to do this?” Once you find your people, it changes everything. It gives it meaning. There’s this Annie Dillard quote I love. “How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives.”

That’s great. I don’t like the term “career.” How often people say it. I understand the term, but I just think you can really lose the point pretty fast if you focus on the sort of metrics of your life and not the joy that you get from it, just on its own terms.

The idea of an art “career” is really intimidating for a lot of people and impossible to have for many…

I used to get super down on myself when I’d go to shows, and there’d be people my age with these really long resumes. It was tough. But one good opportunity with people who you really like and who make you feel like you’re a part of something is so much better than ten shows. I think it’s worth being patient and waiting to get something that’s really good. As an introverted person it can be hard to network. I loved having my work shown at Alto Beta and Goat Gallery in Landers…some examples of working with great people.

I know you split your time between Los Angeles and the desert, Landers (near Joshua Tree) in particular, how has the desert and its rough landscape inspired your work?

I think it’s less the roughness and more the desolateness, the emptiness of it. When you ascend up the highway and get to the top of those hills, there’s this real release. I grew up in the South, so the heat doesn’t get to me the way it does to some other people. In fact, the wind is the thing that gets to me. I’ve gotten really into the moon phases because of the desert. There’s nothing else like the [desert] night sky. There’s a spirituality about the universe that I feel out there that I haven’t ever had in my life. I guess its effect has been more general. But I think for my last sculpture show, the first body of work that I made completely out there, I can’t tell if this is something that happens to artists when they get a little older, or if it’s also the desert’s [influence], but I was able to strip down a lot of things to their essential form.

The thing that comes to mind is a sensory deprivation tank. The sparseness of the desert appears to illuminate other things. Landers is also known for its alien/celestial lore. You come from a religious family, right?

There’s a long history of people coming from religious backgrounds [who are no longer religious] and have a sort of hole that’s left to fill. I’m still figuring it out, but I do feel this sense of embracing the unknown, embracing the limits of what humans can understand. And I think looking at the night sky is a very strong reminder of that, and that we’re not meant to know everything. Sometimes you have to live with the mystery and the wonder that is. It can be scary. But I think often the answer is we don’t know, and that’s just kind of what you sit with.

I love your glass paintings. What sparked the idea for this project? Did they surprise you?

I did a residency in the desert called Yucca Valley Material Lab. It was a glass focused residency at the time. Originally I wanted to do a bunch of glass casting, because a lot of my sculptures are multi-media. But then I was talking to a friend of mine who had done a similar residency and he said the process of glass casting is very laborious, and this was only a two week residency. He suggested I look into doing some kind of glass painting. At first I was sort of skeptical, because I don’t really like a lot of glass paintings. A lot of my 2D stuff is more geometric, and more opaque and kind of collage based. But then I went down to the Bullseye Glass Resource Center, which is quite fortunately less than five minutes away from my place in LA. I realized that [glass painting] was basically a collage that you bake in the oven.

I realized that I could do an opaque image. It reminded me of a lot of my colored pencil drawings, and so it all came together. Do you even call it a painting? There’s no paint, no brushing. Generally speaking, people think of a painting as something that occupies some wall space, and has a compositional element, or maybe no compositional element, but it’s such a physical thing, unchangeable even. If you have a collage, you can get a sense of the touch with texture edges. With the glass paintings, all that goes away. The hand goes away. When I look at ones that I’ve done a long time ago I forget how I did it. There’s something really nice about that.

They’re so abstract. A nod to your origin story.

A collage is basically a set of decisions. How do you make the right decision? My [creative] state of mind has way more to do with making decisions than there being a decision to find that is right. I was never really able to harness that, until I started doing the glass work. These glass paintings honed that realization about state of mind being the foremost important thing. Even with abstraction, I think you can build in a kind of intentionality to a vision that is noticeable.

It sounds a little like improvisation.

Improvisation can be very fruitful, generating an image by responding to previous things, responding to music and all drawings…

What inspires you?

I’ve been taking really long walks through Highland Park. I think maybe that is sort of an antidote to the desert’s emptiness. It’s nice being around people. I’m sure it’s a simple biochemical thing, rhythmic, not too strenuous exercise where you’re kind of taking in the world. It helps me unravel ideas.

I wouldn’t call it a synesthesia thing, but I do feel like I get ideas for things by listening to music. I also really love going to the movie theater. I love seeing films on the big screen. I get so much more into the structure of movies, how things are set up, and the tensions when I’m in a theater.

Any advice for other introverted artists?

My tolerance for being alone is very high. Fight through it.

Get rid of these false narratives about yourself. It’s easy to get hung up on the past. Did I fuck this up? How did I get here? It’s this story you’re telling yourself and none of that is really true. Try to get out more. I always feel better when I do. The times in my life when I’ve gotten lowest was when I realized that I had just been really isolated.

Reach out more. And I think part of introversion is this sense of not wanting to burden people, because you feel like you got these things that you want to talk about, and you’re worried they don’t want to talk about it. But none of that’s true, either.

Introversion is great for creative people in some ways. You can go and do a lot of things, make a sculpture show in the middle of nowhere and not talk to anyone for two weeks, but it does wear you down. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to be aware of the damage that can do mentally if I’m not careful. I make sure that I’m seeing people, walking around the neighborhood, going to coffee shops, getting away from that kind of isolation.