Six Questions

#115: Art spaces, Edward M. Corpus, Robin Hobb, Museum and Art Gallery Angst, Allison Parrish, FreeSkool Santa Cruz, JC Jazz Crew, Tago Jazz Collective, and Shapaley's Tsampa

Sep 10, 2023

HERE & NOW

I seem to have lost my sense of smell this morning; I couldn’t smell my cup of green sencha tea, nor the banana I ate afterwards. A home Covid-19 test came out negative. Perhaps it’s the nasal allergy spray I’m using?

Oh, well, it’s a mild, sunny day and I can see two nasturtium flowers finally blooming in the pot on the patio.

ART

I will be showing some of my art and small artist books at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts Sept. 30-Oct 1, 11 a.m.—5 p.m., for the 2023 Arts Habitat Artists Studio Tour, along with other local artists (download the catalog). Hope to see you there!

Online art marketing platforms are ubiquitous these days. But I’ve been wondering about local, small, brick-and-mortar (galleries, cooperatives, mutual aid spaces) or more flexible venues (as in “pocket” or pop-up galleries) for artists: Why do people take on the challenge of creating such art spaces, especially during an unstable economic period when internet art marketing platforms have become so dominant? I’d like to hear from locals creating these types of projects and incorporate their responses into my Q&A section.

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SIX QUESTIONS for EDWARD M. CORPUS

When looking at the work of Filipino American artist Edward M. Corpus, I get a sense of darkness underlying his often surreal visions (not quite Goya’s “Black Paintings,” but something disquieting, nonetheless). On the other hand, dreams and possibly rainbows also seem poised to burst out at any moment from his canvas. Corpus lives in Carmel Valley,1 CA. He recently received a grant from the Arts Council of Monterey County for his project to paint portraits of Monterey County residents of a certain age (born between 1946-1964, i.e., “Boomers”) for an upcoming exhibit in 2024. Corpus explains, “At a time where ‘Boomer’ is a word some consider an epithet, I design this project to convey to that subject population that ‘You matter. You matter to the well-being of this country, to history and to me. You deserve to be seen and heard.’”

1. Where did you grow up and how did that (or any other significant experience you’d rather address), influence your art?

Time and space here doesn’t permit me to even list the formative incidents that molded me into an artist through seventy years to my present incarnation. Federico Fellini stated that “All art is autobiographical.” James Baldwin echoed this in saying “All art is a kind of confession.” These statements surely apply in terms of my art.

I will say this much, though. Being an Asian born at the end of the Korean War just eight years after the end of World War II greatly contributed to my first negative encounters with the issue of race. Our first home was a one-room studio in a railroad tenement in the Bowery, at the time the skid row of New York City. My mother liked to repeat a story to whoever was willing to hear it that at the age of three I climbed up onto a dresser and drew an airplane on the mirror using her lipstick as a crayon. My memories also include the savage beating my father gave me for drawing on his homework. I’d learn years later that he was desperately attempting to present his doctoral dissertation in this time period, an effort which would fail.

“The Yellow-haired Girl.” Acrylics, 48 x 36 in., by Edward M. Corpus.

During a rough childhood and adolescence, artwork, reading, and writing were my refuges. Ethnicity and socioeconomics were sore issues in and out of the family. One brief bright spot was attending and graduating from the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts, an institution you may remember from the movie Fame. Living in New York City as a youth gave me direct access to great art. It was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I experienced an out-of-body altered state as I gazed into Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair. That ineffable spiritual encounter marked me profoundly and confirmed my life mission as an artist.

In high school I was a Leftist radical. I left family at age eighteen and rolled out to the West coast, spent some years as a devotee to an extremist cult, was a private investigator, a credit card fraud investigator in the banking sector, returned to school way into middle age and last held a day job as graphic designer. Despite the various hats I’ve worn in life visual art is the consistent thread that ran through it.

Anyway, I’m writing an illustrated memoir where hopefully you can read the rest of my story. Read it and weep, and laugh. I just need to get through perpetual rewrite and somehow get it published before I transfer out of this life to the higher dimensions.

2. What’s your creative process like?

Here’s another quote, this time from Toni Morrison. “All art is political.” I use traditional and mixed media to create what I refer to as cultural subversive art—disquieting or whimsical visual allegories, metaphors and mythological references that express my visceral impressions of the crises of normalized social inequality. You can see a portfolio of work on my website. I aim to subvert the dreadfully normal in contemporary culture through my art, to challenge viewers’ assumptions of what is real. If you witness that social dysfunction has become the norm, do you still want to be considered “normal”?

I usually try to not be too didactic in my art. Note the word “try.” Relying instead on compelling magical realist imagery to prompt reflective thought in viewers seems a better alternative to hitting them over the head. Whatever image is depicted in any painting is only ostensibly the subject, whether it be persons, objects or settings. To me the real subject of art is the dialogue between the minds of artist and viewer. My canvas is a window to which I invite the viewer to stand where I’ve stood, perhaps to see something of life they might otherwise not have seen.

However, on rare occasions my artwork is driven by outrage. I was outraged by the Trump administration policy of separating migrant families or by the current trend toward censorship and banning of books from libraries and schools. Then my artwork becomes more two-by-four across the head explicit.

The artists and writers of early Dada and Surrealism developed these cultural movements in the early Twentieth Century in reaction to the horrors of war. They sought to inspire viewers to explore the hidden truths of the subconscious mind, and further to reject capitalist notions of normality. I acknowledge their major influence in both my visual style and personal views, especially important today as large sectors of the population embrace inequality as normal.

“Are You an Angel?” Acrylics, 36 x 48 in., by Edward M. Corpus.

3. What puts a damper on your creativity? What do you do—if anything—to remedy that?

Suppressing emotion instead of processing it is the primary damper to creativity, in my opinion. There are no “bad” emotions as such. Fear, rage, grief or shame are unpleasant experiences, but are merely information that calls for action of some kind. The inability of people to identify, process and integrate those emotions causes them to act in and act out. Nowadays we’re seeing more of that - acting in as depression and acting out as uncivil social behavior. There’s a lot out there for us to be afraid and angry about, but oftentimes acting on felt emotion is neither socially, ethically or morally acceptable. Yet to suppress those emotions and attempt to not feel them is a tremendous energy suck. You suppress one emotion and wind up suppressing everything, including the emotions associated with creative activity.

Say for instance that some incident triggered me into a killing rage, and I were to say “Oh, no. I’m supposed to be a good person. That’s a bad person thought. Forget it.” Similarly with grief. Insert distractions, get comfortably numb. There’s a tremendous amount of emotional and physical energy wasted in desperately trying to keep that werewolf locked up in the basement. The better remedy begins with acknowledging it. Yes, I feel this and feel it deeply. This is information. What’s it telling me? We question its true origin as trauma. How much is it based in reality, and how much is that “old stuff” rearing its howling head? We look at ourselves and others from a compassionate heart. Otherwise, if I am “successful” at ignoring and blocking it out, the werewolf will come storming out at the most inconvenient and hurtful times – and as an artist I’ll also likely find myself blocked creatively.

4. Does age [any age] factor into your creative process, and if yes, how?

Oh, funny you should mention it. By the time your readers view this, I may have already crossed over into the seventh decade of life. That’s seven decades of the American experience. I think that counts for something in the development of my worldview, philosophical and spiritual outlook. Although I’ve considered myself an artist since I was three as I mentioned previously, it’s only in the past eight years or so that I’ve been exhibiting my work publicly. I’m now actively seeking gallery representation, perhaps in San Francisco or L.A.? Maybe I can pull off a Phyllida Barlow or Grandma Moses style emergence? I’ve still got my whole life ahead of me; though I’m acutely aware that whole life ahead is much shorter than it was just out of high school. The historical context is that we’re in the terminal stages of hypercapitalism. I’m anticipating that in the long arc of history this is a good thing for the Earth and the 99% of us who are not the billionaires. However it shakes out, though, there will be a staggering number of casualties. Among them many will be the very young—and old.

5. What are you working on, currently, and what impels or inspires it?

I’ve just submitted three works for a juried exhibition to be held in a public library— two older pieces and one just off the easel. These three are examples of art driven by outrage. As of this writing the jury is still out. Let’s see if they’ll accept pieces that are graphic two-by-fours-to-the-head.

In June I won a generous grant from the Arts Council for Monterey County. Over the next year I’m seeking out, interviewing and photographing minimally a dozen or so Monterey County residents as prelude to painting their portraits and writing their biographical essays. Volunteers born between the years of 1946 and 1964 qualify - in other words Baby Boomers, the generation born in the immediate wake of World War II.

Project participants will represent diverse ethnicities, cultural traditions, gender orientations and socio-economic backgrounds. I anticipate that these portraits, along with their corresponding biographical essays will be the subject of a public exhibition next year. I’ve done three portraits so far, with several more “definites” pending. I don’t have all of the dozen lined up yet, though; so, you MoCo Boomers out there, please call me. You can read fuller descriptions in my blog.

I'm offering volunteers a small monetary compensation—that’s right, the artist is paying the portrait subjects. Participants sign model releases allowing me to take as many photographs as necessary to capture the candid expressions of their emotional and intellectual engagement with me as I record our conversations about their lives. However, while these photos serve solely as my visual references, I don’t aim to paint strict photographic likenesses.

As a departure from my usual acrylic painting styles, this time I envision mixing different media, rendering their portraits with collage, acrylic, oil and spray paints. I’ll paint this new series in as new, experimental and bold a visual style as the way I now feel, rendering as tightly or as loosely, as literally or as fantastically as my interpretation of the sitters and their environment dictate. I’d like them to be as much a revelatory surprise to me as they’ll be to my sitters and the public viewing them. This project could be the most challenging for me to date in many ways.

6. What’s your favorite imperfection?

Among my own imperfections (of which I have many)? Whoa! This sounds like a [question from a] job interview. I don’t know how to answer this. Well, OK. I guess I find myself most attracted to women who are weird and strange. Take that as you will.

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