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March 2018
Interview Rich Walton |
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Rich Walton is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He describes his art as, “Capturing the energy and imagery of the in-between states, where one thing is becoming something else yet hasn’t fully solidified…” Walton is active in Tucson’s six-member Artist Studio Coop and the coop’s Gallery Azu at 439 N 6th Avenue, #179.
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SAN: Rich, you studied art in Vincennes, Indiana, San Francisco, and New York City. What brought you to Tucson and how long have you lived here? Have you made the transition to being a desert rat like so many of us in southern Arizona?
Rich Walton: I came to this region to be an Art Monk! Fourteen years ago, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area Doing design work for myself and the company I worked for as well as trying to make my visions. The Bay Area was very expensive then as it is even more so now, and I felt that I wasn't getting enough of my artwork done. I had traveled to Arizona before and loved the Tucson area. Hot, dry and yet wet and lush. The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts are magical places to me. I bought 5 acres between the Chiricahua's and the Dragoons. I built a large studio with the intent to live on very little and spend most of my time making art and meditating. I did that for a while, but moved to Tucson to help my mother with her health. Life can be a river, and its usually better to flow with the stream than go against it.
Rich Walton: I came to this region to be an Art Monk! Fourteen years ago, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area Doing design work for myself and the company I worked for as well as trying to make my visions. The Bay Area was very expensive then as it is even more so now, and I felt that I wasn't getting enough of my artwork done. I had traveled to Arizona before and loved the Tucson area. Hot, dry and yet wet and lush. The Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts are magical places to me. I bought 5 acres between the Chiricahua's and the Dragoons. I built a large studio with the intent to live on very little and spend most of my time making art and meditating. I did that for a while, but moved to Tucson to help my mother with her health. Life can be a river, and its usually better to flow with the stream than go against it.
RWalton_Between Two Doors Ahead_
SAN: Your personal history includes throwing away all your artwork and entering a Buddhist monastery for a time. Although you didn’t decide to stay forever there, and presumably, you stopped throwing away your art, how do you think long hours of meditation ultimately affected the development of your art?
RW: I grew up under difficult situations as a child. My family was poor working class, and being an artist or visiting an art museum was completely foreign. In fact I was not only the first in my family to go to college, but to graduate high school as well.
After three years at art school during summer I encountered auspicious connections and opportunities to study with some amazing teachers out of Tibet, so I packed up a bag and headed to the mountains, so it was actually a retreat center.
We worked six hours a day and we were expected to practice/meditate the rest of the time. No time or place to make stuff. Meditation opens you up to the bigger we, and it helped me see my place and vision clearer in the cosmos. Making Art in the beginning wasn't a struggle but justifying its existence was. When I make Art, I can be prolific, so I produced lots of stuff and threw it away when it couldn't justify itself to me!
RW: I grew up under difficult situations as a child. My family was poor working class, and being an artist or visiting an art museum was completely foreign. In fact I was not only the first in my family to go to college, but to graduate high school as well.
After three years at art school during summer I encountered auspicious connections and opportunities to study with some amazing teachers out of Tibet, so I packed up a bag and headed to the mountains, so it was actually a retreat center.
We worked six hours a day and we were expected to practice/meditate the rest of the time. No time or place to make stuff. Meditation opens you up to the bigger we, and it helped me see my place and vision clearer in the cosmos. Making Art in the beginning wasn't a struggle but justifying its existence was. When I make Art, I can be prolific, so I produced lots of stuff and threw it away when it couldn't justify itself to me!
RWalton_Between Two Doors Present_
N: You have said that you started making art again because you couldn’t help yourself. A lot of us feel that way about art-making. What do you think art-making is for those of us who can’t help ourselves? An attempt to be “in the moment?” An attempt to become more conscious or whole? To experience joy or relieve pain? All of the above?
RW: YES! All that and so much more! I have a lot of ideas and feelings about all this! I have let my blog wither, but I plan to start getting more active and start posting lots of stuff and ideas. I don't want to speak for other people, but to me; Art, making Art, contemplating/looking at Art is profoundly spiritual! I think we artists are shamans of our time and need to be for the future. It’s very important!! We have given our power away, mostly because we are confused about our place or function in the world! I don't want to sound preachy? But I guess I do! Humanity needs to be in balance /connection to the collective subconscious that’s what Art does! From simply seeing and showing something not seen in a piece of fruit to cultivating and mining deeper places in the collective that connects us whether we realize it or not!? I would really like to have bigger discussions about this so, check my blog in the near future if anyone is interested?
SAN: Your art manifests as organic forms that really connect us to the natural world. Even when your drawings, for example, have mechanical or human-made inclusions, the overall experience is one of a biological form. And yet, they are not recognizable as anything we can point to in the natural world. How do you perceive this ever-organic nature in your work?
RW: I am never completely sure, but I think each series takes me to a little bit different place? I think all things start with biomorphic forms? Ideas, bodies, feelings. It’s kind of like synesthesia. It tends to translate that way for me. The mechanical or non-organic images are humans attempt to impose order or control on organic things. Think of leashes, harnesses, clothes, corals, buildings, etc. When I go deeper in relationship with an object or image, it always seems to be that the incompleteness or it being unrecognizable is where it’s the most complete. I see my work often as riddles. Like koans, they want to evoke something more than their physical appearance.
RW: YES! All that and so much more! I have a lot of ideas and feelings about all this! I have let my blog wither, but I plan to start getting more active and start posting lots of stuff and ideas. I don't want to speak for other people, but to me; Art, making Art, contemplating/looking at Art is profoundly spiritual! I think we artists are shamans of our time and need to be for the future. It’s very important!! We have given our power away, mostly because we are confused about our place or function in the world! I don't want to sound preachy? But I guess I do! Humanity needs to be in balance /connection to the collective subconscious that’s what Art does! From simply seeing and showing something not seen in a piece of fruit to cultivating and mining deeper places in the collective that connects us whether we realize it or not!? I would really like to have bigger discussions about this so, check my blog in the near future if anyone is interested?
SAN: Your art manifests as organic forms that really connect us to the natural world. Even when your drawings, for example, have mechanical or human-made inclusions, the overall experience is one of a biological form. And yet, they are not recognizable as anything we can point to in the natural world. How do you perceive this ever-organic nature in your work?
RW: I am never completely sure, but I think each series takes me to a little bit different place? I think all things start with biomorphic forms? Ideas, bodies, feelings. It’s kind of like synesthesia. It tends to translate that way for me. The mechanical or non-organic images are humans attempt to impose order or control on organic things. Think of leashes, harnesses, clothes, corals, buildings, etc. When I go deeper in relationship with an object or image, it always seems to be that the incompleteness or it being unrecognizable is where it’s the most complete. I see my work often as riddles. Like koans, they want to evoke something more than their physical appearance.
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SAN: Tell us a little about your drawings. Are they all graphite? How about the meaning of the drawings. You have two series of works posted on your website: Enigmatica Constraint Series and Enigmatica Shaman Series. What is going on in these series?
RW: I think the last answer address that somewhat? Yes they are just graphite. Drawing is very meditative to me. It’s simple, direct and just flows in and out. The Constraint Series starts with an object of early science or medicine that was used to contain or constrain people or animals. I removed the being in the constraint and then allowed myself to descend to a place where that emptiness in the constraint shows me what needs to be there. What happens when the undefined is constrained? Those images produce feelings/ideas of the power of opposites I think like Yin/Yang. The Shaman series are more illustrative, but without conclusion. Illustrations seem to trying to nail things down! Certainty! Yet the shaman is always working with the profoundest magic in a very ordinary way or the other way around! Ordinary magic in the most profound way! :-) |
RWalton_Prana Dancer #2_
RWalton_Prana Dancer #3_
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SAN: Looking at your sculpture series, again the organic nature of the forms is strong there as well. I think it’s fair to say that there is an erotic component as well in the imagery. What materials do you use to create these works? What does the imagery represent to you?
RW: My medium used to be found objects I altered by sculpting onto them. The added forms started to take over and get bigger so I had to come up with a medium that was light, inexpensive, durable and non-toxic. I came across sculptures from a museum in France from Louis Auzoux. He made medical models in the mid 1800 before there were plastics and he made them from paper mache! I asked myself “why isn't paper mache considered a FINE art medium?” These object where handled daily! Taken apart and put back together daily! If you took a Manet painting from that time and handled it that way it would have fallen apart by now! I spent a couple of years playing with recipes and methods until I got something that works!
As to the “erotic” imagery? I come from a Tantric Buddhist lineage, the divine or highest spiritual beings are in YabYum or sexual union. If we can get over our hang ups, the profane is sacred and the sacred is profane. Union of opposites just like yin/yang. We humans are organic forms living in the realm of desire! if you examine yourself deeply and honestly its always there? Regardless of whether you act or not! Art(Spiritual) is being in union with life!
RW: My medium used to be found objects I altered by sculpting onto them. The added forms started to take over and get bigger so I had to come up with a medium that was light, inexpensive, durable and non-toxic. I came across sculptures from a museum in France from Louis Auzoux. He made medical models in the mid 1800 before there were plastics and he made them from paper mache! I asked myself “why isn't paper mache considered a FINE art medium?” These object where handled daily! Taken apart and put back together daily! If you took a Manet painting from that time and handled it that way it would have fallen apart by now! I spent a couple of years playing with recipes and methods until I got something that works!
As to the “erotic” imagery? I come from a Tantric Buddhist lineage, the divine or highest spiritual beings are in YabYum or sexual union. If we can get over our hang ups, the profane is sacred and the sacred is profane. Union of opposites just like yin/yang. We humans are organic forms living in the realm of desire! if you examine yourself deeply and honestly its always there? Regardless of whether you act or not! Art(Spiritual) is being in union with life!
RWalton_Icons of Being_
SAN: Tell us about the Icons of Being series.
RW: I think the Icons of being series is for me joining heaven and earth. As I was birthing these they felt like they were deities that rose up from the earth. I’m interested in how energy can become physical beings. Before we take an organic form we start out as energy in the in-between state. In the west we don’t see gods or deities as a being of the earth. In animistic traditions they come from everywhere no separation between high and low. They also have that enigmatic quality especially where their heads would be. Communication with the these iconic beings are both immediate and inscrutable.
I see them as power objects invested with the energy of the spirit the represent. they also are very fetishistic and come from that same source as say African fetishes do.
SAN: You had an exhibit at Gallery Azul in February that was titled “Below the Surface: Who Am I When I Am Not.” You say that this is an exploration of “Dreams, Trance, The Subconscious, Identity, and the states between death and life.” Tell us about what you are saying in your artwork for this exhibit. Are you thinking these days about states of being between life and death?
RW: This is my latest show. This show was largely made up of paintings. I started out painting years ago. I identify as a sculptor, but really, whatever gets the job done.
As for the content I'm always trying to find ways to go deeper, dig and clarify what’s below the surface. I practice traditional meditation but I also more and more work at putting myself in trance and practicing lucid dreaming. This work comes out of that. Also this last year had me thinking about the eventual death of this current body. A close friend who was closer than a brother to me died. Add to that my mother’s latest fight with cancer. It’s all connected so it surfaces.
SAN: Do you open your studio occasionally for art lovers to view your work? I ask because Gallery Azul has very limited hours.
RW: Unfortunately we are just six artists at ASC with day jobs so our hours are limited, however we are open every Saturday 1:30 to 4:30 and on 1st Saturday Art walks 6:00 to 9:00PM. When we have these other shows my studio is always open, and I love meeting and talking with people. You can call and make an appointment and we also participate in open studios as well.
SAN: Here’s a question I ask everyone who is interviewed for Sonoran Arts Network. Most of us seem to be struggling to find exhibition opportunities and opportunities to make a living as an artist. What do you think would make life easier for artists in southern Arizona?
RW: Yes thanks for asking that question! I have lots of ideas and thoughts about that as well, so I would love to have some discussion about all these topics on my blog.
When I graduated from school in 91, I had several opportunities to enter the gallery system like some of my peers but feared getting pigeon holed. If I was smart I would have played the system. For the past 20 plus years, I haven't tried to promote my work and made peace with working a regular job and not having a social life to focus on art. I am about to make some big changes and that includes trying to implement some of my ideas to promote my work. Ultimately if you want to earn a living as an artist you have to treat your art career as a business. You need to find and cultivate your audience or tribe and I think with fine art there is also some educating involved as well.
Learn more about Rich at https://www.richwaltonart.com/ and http://www.artiststudiocoop.com/rich-walton/