We are currently in Christmas break, but for the fall semester I was sleeping in the
painting room behind my paintings and then security found me somehow and I got in trouble
so I started sleeping in my car.
Somebody had told him I was in there, but like I'm on the security list so there wasn't
anything I could do about it.
I ended up working out better.
I basically would wake up five days a week and out of my car in the parking lot and just
walk to the art room and start going and wouldn't get done until about eleven at night, so ten
a.m. to eleven.
You know, religion and philosophy go hand in hand with things like technology and artwork
and technology is getting very more and more abstract every day.
Nobody knows where an iPod comes from, nobody knows where computers come from, we don't
know how to use them, we don't know what's going on, but at the same time the commercials
say you already know how to use it, you know, you don't know what it is, so I think artwork
is becoming more despondent and more confused as that happens to our psyche.
It's our psyche being abducted, so that's what my artwork was dealing with last semester.
With all the pieces I was trying to put symbols that anyone could interpret for themselves,
you know, and find your own meaning, so it becomes this kind of cathartic psychological
experience looking at a piece of art.
I guess any art could be like that, but some art is made to help you with that process.
I don't really remember naming any of them.
I haven't needed to yet.
I think everybody struggles with artwork and struggles with finding meaning in whatever
it is that their art is, so this person is kind of frustrated with it, but at the same
time there's really nice things coming out of all this weird chaos and everything, so
that was a nice piece, I really enjoyed that.
You were staying in the art building again, was that by choice, or was it because you
didn't have anywhere to live, or what was up with that, why were you doing that?
For one thing, it was like a spiritual journey thing, like to help my discipline, you know,
to not be around my family and to not have steady food or anything like that, and it
helped me adapt and be dedicated to my craft and all that.
We had to clean everything out for the next semester, but I have a few things.
Is that normal for them to give students keys to the building to come up any time?
They only give like three people keys.
Like who's that?
Who's the three people?
Like the president of the art club.
This piece was also a good experience for me, it was a collaborative piece with my friend
about Curry, who I work a lot with.
I have to come to grips with the fact also that I'm not making something that's utilitarian
really, it's just kind of symbolic, you know, for rich people to buy or whatever, but you
know, that stuff's always going to be around, art is always around in any culture, no matter
how bad the economy gets or whatever, you know, people need to see visual representations
of what their entire society and culture is thinking.
No, this is about a quarter of what I did during the fall semester.
So I'm trying to do that in an American way, but also in a universal way.
I think art helps wake people up because everything is becoming a euphemism and a euphemism is
a symbol, you know, it's a sarcastic symbol and it's a deceiving symbol and our food is
a euphemism, our religion is now institutionalized and it's a euphemism, our politics is a euphemism,
it's all this horrible joke on our own minds.
So I think that artwork that is coming from an honest place in you, no matter if it's
technical or whatever, is good and you know, try to focus on good things, focus on freeing
people, freeing people's minds and how it happens.
That semester was meaningful for me because I think before it started I decided I was
going to set goals and collaborate with people and help other people out and you know, try
to get the program energized as well as myself and small little things I felt like that were
something that helped me most.
How do you plan on living in the art building again this semester?
No, I only did that for a while and switched to my car so I'll probably be sleeping in
my car again.
This is my daughter Daisy and she's done a lot of my artwork.
