Looking Glass Gallery: Figure Telling: Steve Storz at Looking Glass Gallery

Looking Glass Gallery at St Johns Booksellers will present the work of its November artist Steve Storz. "Figure Telling". I first met Steve after I moved to Taos in 2008. What impressed me most about Steve's work, besides his consummate professionalism, was his infectious curiosity regarding electronic materials and their potential for the exploration of form. At the heart of Steve's work is a commitment to putting himself creatively on whatever ledge he needs to get closer to the unknown. With Steve's work one gets the sense that his pieces are dispatches from some mysterious place that hovers at that intersection between the world we have created and the possibility of something better...or worse, as the case often is. He readily recognizes the nightmare quality of modern life (one of his favorite places to explore in New Mexico is Los Alamos), and he shows us that Gauguin's famous dictum, "be mysterious" does not have to be a sugar coated daydream. Steve easily navigates between drawing and sculpture and recognizes that they are expressions of the same searching that drives him. Steve was gracious enough to answer some questions about his work for this blog. Enjoy!

1. Can you talk about what has been the driving impetus behind your development as an artist? Is there a common thread between the younger artist and the artist you are now?

Invention with materials at-hand to solve the idea that is foremost in my mind is probably the most obvious thread. Since finding a rusted spring in the alleyway behind our home in Texas City, when I was a young boy to scavenging electronic cast-offs in Silicon Valley dumpsters in my twenties to scribbling frenetic lines with garage sale pencils now in my 50's, I like the feel of art that is authentic to me through invention with unusual materials.

2.I often feel that artists will do things that may not make any sense to them (or others) at the time that they do them, that an artist may embark on feels like a lark or a diversion at the time, but they find later on that they put tools in their tool bag that would only become indispensable at some later junction. What have been the most important diversions for you in terms of your artistic development?

I still daydream. With daydreaming comes inspiration and contemplation. I simply don't make time for much social media, text, surf on the web, etc. I am in my studio. The daydream (tool, if you want to call it that) is a really important space for me to go into, and spend a lot of time there. For me, it is also where I can couple with a mystic state that reports back as almost all of my art. Some would call it a waste of time, but for me it is a crucial process. A diversion, but a crucial one.

3. You tend to use a lot of lightly worked negative space in your pieces to help embrace and define the density of your forms, which creates a pleasing contrast for the viewer. Can you talk about your conception of space as it relates to your forms? In the statement you wrote for this show, you talk about sound, which for me signifies the way that objects and forms resonate in space. Can you say more about that?

I think of space often as an almalgam of the energy of the positive and negative spaces in unison. I think i arrived at this through years of practice and training and critique from colleaguesand mentors. I find form as important as the negative space around it. That is not to say that negative space need be blank, but a supporting space that accentuates the form, folding around and through it, thinking all the while of what it would look like if it was a 3 dimensional object and I were able to move around it.

The "Telling" i wrote of in the statement came from the lines that emanate from the figure's faces. They seemed to be voicing something. After a few weeks of making those marks I began to recall ancient Mayan glyphs that showed, what appear to be, wisps coming from the mouths of ceremonial figures. I am also a fan of old horror and sci-comicbook art and admire the use of voice and thought balloons as a signifier of human sounds. This is my own version of those ideas.

4. Can you talk about displacement? Much of the sense I get from your figures feels to me like forms discharged into the ether, frantically sensate, scrabbling to adapt, and coping with their awareness, coping with the confusion of being alive. How do you see art's role in navigating this territory of being "outside"?

There is certainly an element of self reference in them. I feel as though I, myself, am (as you well put it) "scrabbling to adapt" and also see many other artists, formal and amateur, trying to gain ground on a surface that is more and more incongruous. In my daydream time a funnel of experiences rotates in maelstrom, gathering and discarding a huge mass of ideas and forces that I spew upon myself. Much of it is difficult, but makes life worth living so I have to continually try and reframe some of it, say from aggrevation into warrior, from inconvenience into challenge. Art, then is another aid in this, but has the added value of multiple languages and dialects that, coupled with craftsmanship and intent that, for me anyway, can bring this maelstrom into a focus and result in artworks that are genuine and satisfying to me. I think that all artists are essentially "outside", but a few have a designation, such as MFA, that only resides in a narrow field of the academic and can in no way replace the connection to creative self and an abundance of time in the studio. The work is the work.

5. We both spent time in Taos, New Mexico, and I would count my experience there as one of the formative experiences in my development as an artist, especially in the way I have understood the impact of landscape on our lives. Can you talk about what New Mexico has meant to your development as an artist who grew up in the Pacific Northwest?

Having just returned from a recent trip to Taos where I have a rustic studio and many art colleagues, it occured to me that the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest may be changing places. The land I have out on the Taos mesa, normaly sparce of vegetation, dry, vast with blue sky, seemed moist, fecund, and perpetually cloudy. I revel in moody atmospheric conditions of both types and can easily move into a mystic state when they assert themselves around me. New Mexico, though, has given me a wider sense of the ancient knowledge that has been the foundation for humanity and who I am. I have always had, what some have considered, a primative (possibly outsider) quality to my artwork. Drawing on further studio work and associations with artists here in New Mexico (such as Timothy Nero, Ted Egri, Randall Lagro, Joel Lage, and more recently you) feels to have awakened an even deeper connection to humanity and the textures and lines of existence here.

6. With younger artists, I see a lot of self-censoring and a deferring of the rawness of the subjective experience to collective approval. I see a lot less risk taken, but I also see attempts to reclaim notions of sincerity and authenticity. How do you see the work of younger artists, and do you try to let that inform what you are doing as an artist?

I really enjoy teaching younger artists, particularly elementary and junior high kids, who are eager to develop their work. There is less to un-teach, and expectations are wide open. They are unfettered by censorship or the need for collective approval. I find the younger they are, the more I see in them that is inspired and relevant due to their innocence and continue to re-ignite that in myself. As today's younger artists grow I often become bored with much or their work. I think that they are often unaware they are being driven into stupefying mediocrity, largely as the result of prolonged exposure to current entertainment, much of which is absent of inspired creative value. I do praise any attempt at creativity though, with the encouragement that they continue to pursue craft and originality. For myself, Peer acceptance, taste acceptance, behavioral acceptance and similar aspects of my being cannot be held too tightly for me to get my work done. It is the harder path for sure, but it is my full authentic self and produces the most sincere and gratifying work I am capable of. From my viewpoint there is no shortcut, but to emmerse myself in my studio and work. I lament that many younger artists now are being miss-guided by some notion that they can achieve strong, sincere and authentic work in the space of a Google search, and with minimal effort (such as "work smart, not hard"). Art has a much slower, deliberate velocity. The rewards, the growing, the satisfaction, are spread over a more vast, endless scale and simply cannot be condensed.

7. What are some of the more defining experiences in the development of your craft?

As a teen I learned some electronics and simple mechanics. In my early 20's I learned to weld steel and forge steel. I was thrilled when I gained these skills because it allowed me to upgrade my sculptures from fragile styrene plastic forms to steel forms and make any shape I wanted to, many that had movement and special lighting. I also had a great experience in my late 40's taking a drawing class from Timothy Nero at UNM (Taos). I accepted a lot of assignments from him that were way beyond my artistic technique comfort zone and I am grateful for his teaching skill and persistance. I also cherish my years working with the last of Taos Moderns, Ted Egri, before he died. It was extremely gratifying to work with a renowned artist who gave no attention to making what might be considered as popular, or acceptable. He made whatever he had in his mind, in his heart and mastered numerous techniques and materials that he shared with me, such as resin casting, drawing, and panting.