WILL RIGBYTHE BLOBS

How long have you been making art? As I recall from knowing you, it hasn’t been all your life.

No. Well, I was making art up until 7th grade, at which point Mrs. Harrison told me—we had to draw these **** marsh-mallows and shade them really well, and she totally tore into me, I didn’t follow the assignment, I did the inverse or whatever. I didn’t touch art again in middle school,

Yeah, I was good enough at it because it was high school-level.

Good enough to get arrested, some would say.

Some important judges would say! Good enough to get arrested. Good enough to call the Hazmat unit. Good enough to call the Bomb Squad. Good enough to have a probation officer. You know they brought eight cop cars to my house? My mom was so embarrassed.

And?

I went to Vanderbilt as a civil and me-chanical engineer. I took ceramics my freshman year. I liked it. I made a tree stump—this big! [motions what would widely be considered a large tree stump] And yeah, I got a C+. But I sorta liked art, and it reminded me again.

Do you start a piece with an idea of how you want to make it or do you start with the whole idea?

I start with a medium. I took a neon glass-blowing class, a metalshop class this summer. Woodworking, moldmaking, 3D rapid-prototyping stuff. I try to explore the boundaries of the material, and a lot of

times that ends up in abstract shapes.

Is there one you go to, or do you feel like making art starts somewhere else?

A hundred years ago, you were a master in something that was your craft: stone-carving, painting, sculpture. But now as media progresses, everything’s an instal-lation: I’m really attracted to that because if you hang the same painting in Paris and in London, it means something different.

Cheers.

When I was in Europe, whatever country I was in, we cheersed in that language. In London it was “Cheerio!”

in high school; I kinda pursued more of the mathematics/sciences route.

[We order another round.]

What’s the Bistro Burger?

Bacon. And Cheese. So math and science?

Is there an artist you like, or that particu-larly inspires you?

I have a list.

Don’t pull out the list.

You want me to give you, like, one or two?

Yes.

I love Anish Kapoor. I love Chris Burden. He did some piece where he left a note in the gallery saying he was going to make art for himself in Mexico or something (you’re going to have to check this. [I didn’t check it.]), but… he’s no Bear Grylls, you know.

He didn’t bring enough water. He didn’t bring enough food—

As it turns out, Bear Grylls is no Bear Grylls.

Oh yeah, he stayed in hotels and stuff. ****ing Discovery Channel. Next, we’re gonna find out Shark Week’s a scam.

Would you say your art is more of an ex-pression of Bear Grylls or of Shark Week?

I would say Bear Grylls, in the sense that a lot of art is what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Until modern times, they weren’t X-raying Picassos to see how he did each layer.

But if you look at your paintings, where there’s no… painting actually being done, do you really care about the process or is the exposition of it part of your art? It seems like that’s how you think: “Woah, check it out! This process is really ****ing cool!”

You know those blobs? I really liked how much of it is one shot, and that’s it. You can’t

go back and spend hours working on it. It’s something that was formed in that instant, dried in that way—one way—and I have to photograph it within moments because… do you know much dust is in this world? And this fly landed on one of them. It was a great image. But that was like, the fifteenth sculpture. I sculpt with paint, but not in the Picasso sense of seeing each brush stroke.

What else?

You know, I’m cute. I’m comedic. I’m not

a sad, serious, drama guy. It’s something I’ve been struggling to embrace because it’s hard to poke fun at yourself and pretend to be taken seriously.

Will just completed summer residency work at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, culminating in two shows, both in Sculpture, Installation, and New Media Art. His work has expanded to include high-defin-tion photography of meticu-lously crafted paint squirts, tra-ditional plaster/paint sculpture, and dripping-plastic-computer-controlled-laser-guided things we can’t really wrap our heads around. Very Will.

(see tiny objects pictured on a shelf in the next spread.)

SVA SHOWS in

Sculpture, Installation, and New Media Art (program 6/1-8/9)

took place on 7/1 and 8/5year of our lord, 2010

So I never looked back from freshman year. Studio Art’s a small major at Vanderbilt, but it was for me. I’ve always been more spatially based as far as 2D painting. I don’t want to be educated in color theory, ever.

My definition of an artist is someone who doesn’t need ap-proval. Someone who’d do it regardless of whether he had a penthouse on Park Avenue. Or was living in squalor. Or was hopping from friend’s apart-ment to friend’s apartment. [N.B.: This is very much how I am currently living. Will is, at this point, smiling and trying not to laugh at me on record.]

ON ORIGINALITY:

If you make something away from that world, do you find that it feels more original?

I’ve never felt unoriginal. I know that sounds egotistical. I saw this piece once in this other Will’s locker at school. It was awesome. I always wanted to use it because I know he never did. It really bothered me that I didn’t come up with it first, but now I can never use it because it’s kind of a tainted idea for me.

Let’s put it this way:

Say there are two twin sisters, and you’re dating one. And you meet the other one’s boyfriend. You’re like, “Ok, you’re doing kind of the same thing as me, but not the same thing, ‘cause I did it on my own, and I didn’t need your help to do it. I discovered her on my own, and she’ been something en-tirely unique to me.”

So do you think with more contemporary art, there’s a difference between being re-ally good at making art in a certain way and being really good at communicating a certain idea?

I’ve always loved communicating an idea. So I’ve never felt artistic; I’ve felt creative.

“I find it really hard to make things in New York sometimes. I always feel ultimately distracted and competed with.

It’s all distraction. But not competition; not for me.”

Do you feel like it’s more im-portant to communicate with the art world than with real people? Being humorous, you are probably more adept at communicating with people not of the art world, right?

And that’s what I get criticized for by people who are in the art world. I love the residency process because you meet such real people. Next residency I do, I’m telling you, is going to be in some village somewhere with no access to Internet, where I have to eat local food.

[We order another round.]

All images & artworks © Will Rigby 2010

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