More Is Better

Are You using all of your creative skills as an artist? What can you add to your tool kit?

I’ve worked at painting for a long time, but it is my 3rd try at art. When I was 15 I learned how to throw pottery. It was fascinating to see my instructor form a spinning wedge of red clay on a potter's wheel. It was like magic how he could make the clay expand and shrink in the blink of an eye. From the start I was gripped by the process, the medium and I wanted to get good at it. I’m convinced that I spent so much time watching my instructor, Youtube videos and playing the process back in my mind that I became a natural at it. In a few short months I had the basics of prepping clay and wheel throwing down. It was a good feeling to know that I could actually make a vase or a coffee mug out of a raw lump of clay. Then I learned that I could win an achievement award, and that changed everything.

It was The Ceramic Book Award for my High School and only one person studying ceramics would be able to win it. I was 1000% committed to Football so I had no idea who I was up against. Sure, I had seen other students working in the studio but I had no idea who the heavy hitters were, who was really showing up and cranking out award level pottery. I knew I had no choice other than to live in that studio. I became obsessed and every minute I could spare, I would spend it in the ceramics studio making something. Most of the pottery I had thrown at the time went straight back into the recycled clay pile, but there were those that did make the cut. 10 to be exact. That selection of pottery went on to win me some national scholastic art awards and of course The Ceramic Book Award. That was my first real experience with art in its purest form. I saw what I wanted to create, learned about the materiality of it, practiced and executed the creation of a final product that I loved. In my senior summer I had my very first art show which was more of an art display. This was my first medium and experience as an acknowledged artist.

I took my time to develop. I went to play College Football and study English. Right as I was about to fumble my destiny, I transferred to Columbia College Chicago in my senior year. Columbia is one of the best Media Arts Universities in the U.S. This is where I learned photography. Just like ceramics I was gripped by what I could learn and do with a simple tool. I took to photography head on and spent every moment I could in Columbia’s state of the art photography studio. In a year I was hosting sessions with local fashion companies and being featured in Italian furniture catalogs. I wasn’t even an editorial photographer yet I found myself seeing decent success with an art form that I truly enjoy. I even took it a step further and photographed the old ceramic pottery I’d made to give them a better presentation. At this point my skill set was starting to compound. Having great professional photos of my pottery helped me to see how both skills worked together. I could now combine what I knew to create something bigger. I truly enjoyed photography and my journey as a photographer, but I realized that I needed to be more involved in my work. I needed to use my hands. 

When I began painting I felt like I’d done it before. Even though I had no formal training I knew that it was something that I would be doing for a long time. For me, painting is a combination of both ceramics and photography. It’s tactile and requires me to use my body similar to ceramics, I can break a sweat doing both. Stretching canvas and wedging clay share similar parallels as the prepping processes of each medium.They’re very involved and initiate the fusion between potter & clay and painter & canvas. Photography on the other hand is more analytical, requiring you to look closely at how the light reacts to your subjects and the composition of your subject in the frame. In painting, like photography you begin to make creative choices on the fly as a result of reading your subject analytically, while keeping the image within the constraints of the canvas. I’m drawn to painting because of the connection between both of these elements. I continue to build on what I learn. I guess that’s my point here. If you’re an artist and you know that you have an intermediate to advanced skill set in multiple disciplines, it’s in your best interest to maximize all of your skill sets. My goal is to ultimately produce at a high level in each medium creating a multitude of mixed media artworks. Hand thrown pottery with paintings on them, painted photographs, pottery with photographs printed on them, paintings with photographs embedded in them, ceramic slabs painted and shaped like stretched canvas. The possibilities are endless. This type of versatility breeds new and innovative work .

In this day and age it is becoming harder for artists to be seen by honing in on just one skill. Yes, being the best at what you do matters. Having the highest quality work, materiality, and execution of your subjects all matter. Having all of those things lined up perfectly will definitely increase your chances of getting eyes on your work, but that’s left up to chance. Equipping yourself with the knowledge of and skill sets within multiple mediums can give you a powerful edge and increase your visibility. As artists we should be the masters of our work and our fate. We control what our work looks like and who gets to see it. In my experience the best way to take control of who sees my art is to produce high quality images and videos that articulate my art in an easily digestible way. As an advocate for the independent artist my mission is to empower artists to be stand alone entities that control 100% of their value and story. I don’t see a problem with working with established art galleries and dealers, I feel that the artists should have control of their work enough to dictate that those transactions are fair in the artists favor.  

-Von