Interview with ALESSANDRO RIPANE

q)Walk us through an intimate day in your life

a)It's the classic life of a regular illustrator I guess: adventure, fast

cars, beautiful women, richness!

No, I'm kidding, actually I spend the most of the day drawing or working

on my computer.

q) Where did you grow up/where do you live now and how does that

contribute to your art?

a)At the moment I live in Genova (I also born there), but I lived for a

period in Sweden, and I think that the place could influence a lot your

approach to your work, even if searching through my works there's not so

much of Genova inside.

q) What is your earliest memory that propelled you to create?

a)I recently found an old sketchbook from when I was around 5 years old, I

think it's that one the oldest memory I have: me, in the kitchen, drawing

wild animals (or dinosaurs, as long as they're big and wild and

dangerous).

q) Tell us a little bit about your creative process.

a)Actually there are no big secrets about the creative process that I

follow, it's much more boring than you thought!

q) How do you wish for your art to be perceived?

a)I don't know, probably in the most ironic way you can perceive some comics

about a "vegetarian penis".

q) What do your internal dialogues sound like?

a)Something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDzBpQ0GcoU

q) Do you feel that there are limitations to what you want to create?

a)I don't really understand this question, but I guess "no" it's the correct

answer.

q) Do you feel art is vital to survival and if so, why?

a)It depends what you mean with the word "art".

q) Describe a world without art.

a)I can't answer, but I can describe you my world without art, and I imagine

it like a world where I have no excuses when someone ask me "Why don't you

practice sport anymore?".

q) Tell us a secret, and obsession.

a)Secret: I really hate flying on aeroplanes, I consider planes as my worst

enemies.

Obsession: parmigiana di melanzane, a traditional dish from the South of

Italy.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)You can see my works on www.alessandroripane.com!

Interview with ROMAN PYATKOVKA

q)Walk us through an intimate day in your life.

a)It was quite a long time ago.  My friend and teacher, famous photographer Boris Mikhailov (winner of Hasselblad prize) used to constantly criticize my works, even tear them down. Once I made a very intimate project “Adultery”. It was dedicated to the theme of evolution of the psychology of a man living two lives – one with his wife and another with his mistress. Boris looked at it very precisely, then he hugged me and congratulated with a great job.

q)Where did you grow up/where do you live now and how does that contribute to your art?

a)I was born and still live in Kharkiv. I identify with the Kharkiv School of Photography’s middle generation. This was the generation that debuted in the 1980s. It had no official recognition or state support. Consequently, our esthetics has been largely driven by the desire to be an artist in hostile circumstances. The lack of photo studios meant we had to turn to our private space, where our tiny apartments, our personal and even intimate life became the proving grounds for our art. The unavailability of high-quality equipment and materials led to the emergence of “poor quality” as an esthetic category. The absence of any formal education, funnily enough, made photographic art more intellectual, produced as it was by humanists and assorted freethinkers. Our existence outside the socialist context critically distanced us from the Soviet art system and the political structure in general.

q)What is your earliest memory that propelled you to create?

a)I was nurtured in a very intelligent family. Since childhood I was deeply interested in music, dances, I was spending a lot of my time on reading, movies and theatre. While I was in my adolescent ages film directing and acting classes were absorbing all my time. Thus I can say that since my childhood I was into the creativity.

q)Tell us a little bit about your creative process.

a)My art is a three-way junction of ideologized Sots Art, deeply private conceptualism, and frighteningly simple realism.

As an artist, I study personal relationships in various social environments. Sometimes a snapshot is just raw material, and I come up with a complex system of image processing to turn a realistic photograph into an epic installation. I use individual shots like puzzle pieces to create a single picture, a single exhibit-worthy organism.

q)How do you wish for your art to be perceived?

a)I would like my works to be interpreted by recipients. With new project I create my own secret language. The code to it lies in sensitivity. It is crucial for the recipient to feel firstly, and through that feeling to comprehend my art.

q)What do your internal dialogues sound like?

a)I am in the constant search for the striking and actual ideas that will touch everybody. I suggest letting go of the purported credibility of a captured fact and rewriting, reimagining events through the prism of personal experiences, which are always true, being given us here and now. Contemporary photography is a reflection of social relations and a study of life’s various facets. A contemporary artist is a blend of the social and the personal in exact proportions.

q)Do you feel that there are limitations to what you want to create?

a)I understand that I irritate a lot of people because of the provocative character of my pictures. They are brutal, scandalous and erotic. And people tend to so called mental inertia, thus are used to clichés in art. 

If a person spends all his life on fashion magazines, Hollywood movies and visits of the photo amateurs forums it is normal that one’s taste is in a very poor level. As result – people do not understand contemporary art. It is common today that people, without any qualification and education, let themselves judge contemporary art.

My art is not a pop-culture, it is not for big auditory. I understand that there won’t be big lines for my exhibitions.

Do I have any taboo? Yes. In 1988 I made one of the biggest mistakes in my professional life. I created erotic pictures with using religious symbols. It was not made on purpose, I just thought that it will work. It affected my personal life in a very negative way. So I have promised myself not to sin in art.

q)Do you feel art is vital to survival and if so, why?

a)I believe that contemporary art, as it is today, has to be in high demand. It gives visual picture of all the contradictions between political and social institutes. Today an artist is the one who has to ring the bells of liberty and democracy.

q)Describe a world without art.

a)As a famous French novelist Honore de Balzac once said, “All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual”. I couldn’t describe it better.

q)Tell us a secret, and obsession.

a)Look at my pictures and I'm sure you will find the answer.

q)Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)www.pyatkovka.com

http://cargocollective.com/romanpyatkovka

Interview with JIM LUCIO

q)Walk us through an intimate day in your life

a)A great day will be me getting up at about 6:30am.  The house is always quiet at that time, so I can get some writing done or work on some stuff for the homoarts.com website.

I love to cook, so a good day would include planning and preparing a nice meal that I am hopefully sharing with a few friends--and opening a few bottles of wine.  I also usually try to spend some time in my studio working on my collages.

q) Where did you grow up/where do you live now and how does that contribute to your art?

a)I grew up in Salinas, California which is very close to Monterey and 100 miles south of San Francisco. I’ve spent just about the same amount of years in San Francisco, New York City and now Baltimore; I guess I am inspired by my own movement. The idea of staying in one place too long bores me and I start getting a bit agitated.  Baltimore has contributed more to my overall creativity because there are fewer distractions than larger cities and less of a rat race experience which leaves more time to think about being creative.

q) What is your earliest memory that propelled you to create?

a)I don’t know that this inspired me to create, but I remember as a very young child, looking at a photo of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and being totally confused and mesmerized by it. I didn’t understand it, but I think I liked it…I couldn’t stop looking at it.  I guess the easy answer is that I always preferred art class to anything else and spent a lot of time drawing, which I never do now.

q) Tell us a little bit about your creative process.

a)As it relates to the collage work I’ve been doing for the last couple of years, it’s been a really rewarding experience to step away from digital design and go completely analog and handmade.

Over the years, I have amassed a pretty large collection of old paper, magazines and various bits of ephemera, so what I typically do is sit at my work table and almost randomly pull something from one of the piles of paper around me and just wait to get inspired by something.  From there it becomes more about finding the right components to add to what I’ve started.  Sometimes things come together quickly and other times it will take hours to find the right little scrap of paper to finish a piece off.

I also start pieces and set them aside until I see a use for incorporating them into something later.  I have a whole bunch of piles and small boxes of half ideas that I can pull from and use when the need arises.  It really is like a puzzle sometimes to make everything fit the way you want it to.

q) How do you wish for your art to be perceived?

a)I look at what I do as my own visual language—like each collage is its own marketing piece. I like to say that I consume and regurgitate everything I take in visually. I translate what I already find in print and turn it into a product or design that is much more appealing to me in its new form.

So, I hope people can see and appreciate the language I am putting forth and enjoy this aesthetic as uniquely my own.

q) What do your internal dialogues sound like?

a)I wish my dog would make me some coffee. I am sick of winter.  What new projects can I start?  What can I make for dinner? I need to update my website and make art.  It’s a continuous cycle of what…where…how…who.

q) Do you feel that there are limitations to what you want to create?

a)Not at all. Currently I am working a lot on my collage work, but my creative output includes photography and events.  I co-ran a gallery in Baltimore for a while and worked as a visual arts director doing major outdoor installations with other artists.  I want to take www.homoarts.com more into the realm of publishing and events and I love collaborating with other artists, so that pretty much leaves all possibilities on the table.

q) Do you feel art is vital to survival and if so, why?

a)It’s vital to MY survival..that’s for sure. It’s just something I need to do. I love helping other artists…promoting their work, talking about it and whatnot, but I also need to produce my own because it’s the pure thing I can offer that is just from me without anyone else fussing over it. It allows me to really ‘check out’… when I am making art it’s the closest I can get to feeling in a zen place. I suck at meditating and this is as close as I can get to it.

q) Describe a world without art.

a)It is joyless. It is not being allowed to creatively thrive when you have something worthwhile to offer. It is soul-crushing to those who need to create and are somehow deprived of it. And for those who say they don’t appreciate it, their worlds would suck if they couldn’t reap the rewards provided by artists.

q) Tell us a secret, and obsession.

a)A secret…for as sociable as I can be, I often prefer to be alone.

I am currently obsessed with reality cooking shows, homoarts.com and getting through all 692 episodes of Prisoner: Cell Block H…they’re all streaming online and I am currently on episode 133!

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)www.defekto.com

www.homoarts.com is where you can find my work, artist interviews, etc.

Flickr: www.flickr.com/defekto/