Turning the Tables, with Wes Way

I recently conducted my first ATCTE interview with one of our very first artists, Wes Way. You'll notice at the end that I had him turn the interview around on me and he was able to ask me a question. This concept was not without its hitches. There was a misunderstanding about this between us which I will include below. The interview starts now!

1. Wes, what is your background in artmaking and in what manner do you normally work?

I've always made art. I've always been interested in art. I taught myself to draw when I was little, copying the comics from the daily paper. My family was poor and art supplies were out of reach, so I drew on brown paper grocery bags. We had a Norman Rockwell coffee-table book which I studied, marveling at Rockwell's realism. I did well in art classes through high school and was accepted into the art program at Virginia Commonwealth University. During my first semester at VCU, I began to question whether a formal art education was what I wanted. I decided that I would rather be self-taught and withdrew from classes. I think this might have slowed my development as an artist somewhat, but I've never doubted that it was the right decision for me. I spent a decade or so having chemical adventures and that probably didn't help, but since I got straight, it's been all progress.
     

I've worked sporadically over the years, sometimes banging out lots of art, sometimes doing very little. I'm also a musician and sometimes I focus more on the music than the visual art. In recent years, I've become much more confident in my art.
     

Most of what I've done over the years has been collage. In the past year, I've opened out and now use any media that comes to hand or seems most appropriate to whatever I'm working on.

2. If you can, take us back to the time when we started, what interested you about joining this collaboration? 

At that point, I hadn't been working on art much. I was really focused on the music and on my daughter. I wanted to get back into the art and saw this collaboration as a challenge. I try to occasionally take on something that will force me out of my comfort zone.

3. How was the experience for you, working with another visual artist, versus working with other musicians?

I wasn't really ready to do this project. I thought I'd be able to jump right into it, but it didn't work out that way. It was really hard to work on the mandala. I see now that I thought it would be easy, that I'd be able to just jump right into a collaborative project. I'd been doing music almost exclusively for a few years and had reached a point where I could just plug and improvise with other musicians easily, whether I'd ever played with them or not. So, I expected it would be like that. The reality was that I wasn't really able to get my brain around it. Months would go by and then I'd suddenly have an idea and then I'd have to carve a few hours out of my schedule to execute it. Since we finished the mandala, I've been doing more and more visual art and have put the music on hold. It would be very different if we did a mandala now.
     

The difference between working with an artist and improvising with another musician is that art happens in space and music happens in time. With art, you're there alone, thinking, daydreaming, making marks, erasing, painting over, musing, dozing off, drinking coffee...it's a slow, contemplative process. Music is instant. You can't go back and paint over a sloppy chord change. It's done and all you can do is go on.
    

I switch back and forth from art to music, but they're really totally different worlds. I don't want to give the false impression that I switch back and forth easily. There's usually some awkwardness. The mandala was part of that awkwardness. I'm glad I did it because it helped me get from where I was to where I am, but I think I'd do better if we did another.

4. I know that you recently expanded on the concept of these collaborations to include working on a new mandala with your young daughter, can you tell us about that artmaking experience, and what it meant to you, both as an artist and a father?

My kid is awesome. I'm so glad I get to do stuff with her.

I proposed the idea of me doing a mandala with her as an offhand comment. Then it started to seem like a great idea. I didn't explain the project to her - she's two-and-a-half - I just asked her if she wanted to make a picture with paint. She did, so I put some paper on the easel and gave her a brush. I drew a circle on the paper and coached her a little, but I don't think that compromises her input. Guidance and instruction are appropriate at this point. She covered much more of the surface with this piece than she usually does. I think the fact that I was making suggestions made her get more into it. She really likes interacting and doing things with another person right now. Maybe I should give her more guidance and instruction....I'm figuring parenting out as I go. Of course, I think my kid is an amazing artist right now and of course, I have some hope that she'll be interested in the things I'm interested in. I really love her paintings and when she smacks the strings of a guitar to hear the sound, I think "She'll be a musician like her old man", but I'm really conscious of all that and try to encourage her to follow any and all interests. She's also really into baseball right now. I've never been into sports, but I think it could be really fun to coach a girls' baseball team in a couple years if that's what she's into.
     

I haven't sat down with her painting to do my part yet.

5. What does the mandala mean to you?

          

I think I know what my part will be. Actually, I know exactly what my part will be, I just have to do it. I'm going to go over her big colorful blobs and smears with a really fine, black line, traditional Hindu mandala design, a Kali mandala. I'm really interested in the images of female deities right now. I'm doing yonis, crones, goddesses. Kali is usually misunderstood in the West, as a destructive force. She can be that, but she's also a maternal figure. She's a strict mother who doesn't put up with any crap. If you're doing something that prevents you from growing or developing, something that hinders you, she will take it away from you. That can seem awful and painful and in that scenario, Kali will seem like a big, ugly, black daemon with a lot of arms destroying you, but it's for your own good. As a student of mythology, I appreciate that and as an old punk, I really dig the Kali imagery, with the necklace of skulls, skirt of severed arms, dripping blood, all that fun, gory stuff. It's raw and ugly and visceral and that's necessary - if your religion is going to be at all helpful, it's going to have to have those elements, to enable you to make it through the really nasty things that can and will happen to you as you struggle through your life.
     

So, I'm going to put that element on top of the bright, colorful, spontaneous smears my daughter did. My girl is a bouncy, squealing little blue-eyed blonde. She charges right into situations, wide-open, knowing everything is going to be okay. She'll climb up on something and jump off, assuming I'll be there to catch her. So far, I have been. I love juxtaposing opposites, especially when they only seem to be opposites. The scary, old, wicked witch and the sweet, innocent, young girl are two aspects of the goddess, just as winter and spring are aspects of the year - and that is exactly what they represent. So they go together. My role in this is that of some creepy old trickster - Coyote or Raven or Loki - jamming these things together in a way that hopefully looks skewed or somehow off, but has internal logic and makes sense below the surface.
    
     

***Now we'll turn the table, wherein you may also ask me a question. I'll post my answer on the blog with your interview...it can be whatever you want!

I have no idea. I don't question art. Or artists. Show me a piece of art and I accept it exactly as it is. If it's got a paint-splattered goat or a dead shark in it, I might love it (R.R.) or hate it (D.H.), but I don't need to analyze it. I don't mean that art doesn't cause me to think about things - it does, but that happens in a slow, gradual, free-association sorta way. I might be staring at a piece that's been on my wall for years and notice something or have a thought that I never had before. I was at my mom's house the other day, looking at a Rockwell print and saw something that struck me. Some tiny detail. I love that art can do that, that a piece of art can grow and change with you. I also think art is totally subjective. It doesn't matter at all to me what Pollack thought of "Lavender Mist" or what Warhol was feeling when he did the Campbell's soup cans. It's the same with my own art - I don't consider myself the authority on what any of my pieces mean, if they mean anything at all. It just is.

I guess I assume, possibly incorrectly, that other artists work the way I do - that they have some kind of idea and start following through on it and later on figure out what it's about. Maybe a formal education causes people to know what they're doing. I don't know.

Anyway, I don't know what to ask. I definitely love the mandala project.

This is the email string:

  

 On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Shana Goetsch <shanagoetsch@yahoo.com> wrote:

hey, everything looks REALLY good with the interview....but i think you misunderstood my reasoning for having you ask a question of me at the end....1. i was trying to put a spin on the typical artist interview, and i tentatively pre-named the interviewing posts "Turning the Tables", as in you turn the interview on me at the end (it's all circular) 2. it's a community-building exercise, wherein people learn a little bit about our relationship from the question/interview.

so, i can definitely post it as is, but maybe you want to ask me something that is non-art/mandala related? it was just meant to be a fun thing because there are artist interviews up the whazoo on the net, so I was trying to differentiate a bit. just think about it and get back to me.

coolcoolcool,

-shana

From: Wes Way
To: Shana Goetsch

well, okay then, but since it's a conversation, you should include my misunderstanding, your clarification and my question which is.... 

Does the gender/race/identity of the artist matter?
Should it?

(Shana's answer) 
Ah, in a perfect world, no it should not. Unfortunately or fortunately--I'm sort of on the fence about that--right now, artists, humans, I don't think we have reached the point where labels do not matter or happen. I know that you and I have spoken about this several times before, in reference to typically "feminine" subject matter being rendered by male artists. In relation to this, I can see it both ways. A part of me, as a female, with the body parts in question, wants a man to tread lightly, or at least be knowledgeable enough to explain his intent when depicting female imagery (I'm really talking about bodies, or body parts). I also know that I find women to be much more aesthetically pleasing, so I can't say that I blame anyone for recognizing that.

No it shouldn't matter, but it still does....and I really think that that comes down to the fact that there are still insensitive douchebags all over the place, who like to exploit other groups of people. Knowingly or unknowingly, it happens all the time, still. One, single d-bag has the capacity to ruin everything for everyone. 

So my sticking point then has to be: What is the intent of the artist, and how transparent is that intent to their audience? I can rarely fault someone for anything when I can see that their intent is honest and transparent, and open, regardless of their message. When dealing with issues of gender, race or class, having knowledge, experience and transparency really are the best options. And as an artist who is continually struggling with the creation of strong, social justice/issue-based art, I am really just trying not to be one of the aforementioned douchebags.

Of course I am taking the context of your question in entirely one way, is that what you meant, by "matter"? My answer was really contingent upon me thinking of this in relation to an emotionally charged piece of issue-based, or political art. I guess if the art has nothing to say about anything...then, no it doesn't matter who or what the artist is; "silent" art is boring art. There's no controversy over who made it, at the very least. Art that says something, that's another story, depending on who it's talking about, and who's receiving the message. In those cases, it might matter very much who the artist is, identity-wise, and it might be a very warranted response.

*Please leave a comment - feel free to jump right into this discussion...