Meika Loofs Samorzewski
Meika Loofs Samorzewski is a Sculptor living in Tasmania, you can check out his website at http://meika-loofs-samorzewski.com and also his blogs http://consortstothemountaingoddess.blogspot.com/ http://a-gallo-roman-god.blogspot.com/
Interests you have other than art you feel are important to mention?
I write flash fiction for a number of paying twitter.com based e-zines. Basically I’ve moved from poetry to sculpture in the last few years.
What are the main medium/s you work in…
Poured metal, bronze and pewter, I’ve done the odd audio compositional poetry installation in the past. I like metal because it has a heft few words can balance. I liking making things other people can appreciate with their hands as well as their eyes.
Artist’s statement…
I prefer artefacts to art. I shape according to the symbolic logic of the history and context of an object. I like to carve my way in between to people’s cognitive crannies and the political considerations.
How do you describe your work, realistic, stylised, abstract, narrative, symbolic, other?
I’ll use all of these, currently the symbolic predominates; the other descriptions in the list are the symbolic’s handmaidens. Everything is symbolic of something, even the symbolic, because the symbolic points towards the unknown. If art points towards the known then it is just another road sign.
Does your work have social, political, cultural and or personal messages?
All of the above. I’m looking at deep culture, currently the ancient use of “Art” as it has come down to us in archaeological contexts, in doll like votive figures has allowed me into a certain space where questions of rites, auspices, and naked want allow me to interrogate, in a metallic physicality, a human propensity to imbue meaning into objects and so share them.
What are you currently working on?
Consorts to the Mountain Goddess, a whole series based on male Cretan votive figures, dolls more than statues, but re-devoted to the mountain in Hobart, Tasmania. These should be finished with sometime this year. I am working on a life size ginger bread man possible escaping a fire regime of whale try pots, or something. A concurrent text project is a series of medals in pewter and aluminum.
What fascinates you?
I find it fascinating that I can be fascinated by something and not others, and while we all have an instinct for beauty we do not agree exactly on what that is.
One word or statement to describe your current works?
Artefacts
Why are you an artist?
I have no choice.
How did you get into art?
When I was childminding our oldest child as a small baby I started carving sandstone with a cheap chisel. I discovered I could actually carve what I saw, I was pushing the chisel into what I saw and it was made manifest. A couple of years later I spent 2 weeks googling images of a bronze figurine I saw in Trier Roman Museum, or a Treveri, I decided to re-make one for the Art From Trash exhibition http://a-gallo-roman-god.blogspot.com/ It sold. It sold as a wedding present and I thought I can do this. At that time I had never sold any of my writing, but was a real sculptor by following a needling want-to.
How important is art for you?
Not very. I prefer artefacts. I hate arty things, shiny things, things stolen from time. The only art I love is public art, it is the only real art. That’s why I do sculpture, I want to do public art.
What is it about Visual Art you find compelling?
It maps a space into a territory, and thus a terrain into a landscape.
Your art education was…?
Living too long with bitter and twisted art students, thus becoming depressed. The cure was to marry a scientist and craftsperson.
The craziest thing you did at art school was…
Help create the Resource Work Co-op which runs the tip Shop in Hobart and the Art from Trash exhibition by using the, then rare, laser printers in the UTAS Fine Arts Library.
Have you always been interested in art?
I guess. Science is more interesting though. They are both problem solving, but science does not make up problems the way art does.
What did you do before or during becoming an artist?
I was a failed poet. Writing is a mug’s game.
Do you remember your first painting or artwork?
In grade four, at St thomas Aquinas Primary School in the Blue Mountains, NSW, I drew a charcoal sketch of a gumtree and when we came back from outside and hung them up on the walls, my teacher went and got the other teachers to show them, particularly my gumtree, which looked just like the gumtree.
Was art a “thing” that was encouraged in your family?
Not in an arty way, just in an imaginative play way.
What or who inspires your art?
Excellent artefacts. I don’t fetish the shiny, the object d’art on its plinth but the artefact with it history in its very fabric, surface, patina in it’s case. The history is more important than fame.
What caused you to choose the medium you currently work in?
Metal is heavy and that figure of a Treveri farmer was lost-wax and in bronze, but I first worked by directly carving in sandstone. I am not so keen on modelling.
What can you tell us about your planning and making process for making art, and has that altered over the years?
In sculpture, pieces lie around waiting for their next stage of processing. There can be nearly ten stages before a piece is finished. Planning involves asking the question, what can I do today while I wait for X? And a lot can go wrong at each stage, just technically, so, it’s like working on all of them, and none of them at the same time.
Does the “creative process” happen easily for you?
Yes, finding time is not.
Creative streaks do they come in waves for you?
No. It happens all day long. I daydream a lot (see Brain’s problem-solving function at work when we daydream http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/05/11/brains.problem.solving.function.work.when.we.daydream )
How important is the clarity of concept to you, prior to starting an artwork?
Only important in the speed it can give to the process.
Do you have a personal description of “Art”?
Art solves problems that Art creates. Science solves problems that are given or discovered. Technology is somewhere in between. And design is between tech and art.
How important do you think craftsmanship is to artistic creation?
It can be hired so… I support slow art, the studio workshops with twenty underlings are not for me, at least right now, I love the direct physical connection with materials, the few seconds involved in actually pouring molten bronze at 1200C is incredibly intense. And so I wouldn’t give it up to others, nor entirely over to digitization. This may change with easy 3D scanning and 3D printing (the end of the world as we know it).
Does the sale of your work support you?
It breaks even with my expenses, time is another matter, but as I am emerging this is to be expected.
Do you get to other artists exhibitions, openings etc?
Occasionally, parenting takes precedence, the children don’t like the interruption to their dinnertime routine.
Do you have much contact with other artists?
Always have as an adult. One of the reasons I took up sculpture was the realisation I have always been surrounded by artists, and writers not so much. As we are only limited by the people we know, I decided to take advantage of the boundlessness of the people I have met.
Some say the life span of many “artists” post educationally is about five years, any thoughts on that?
I started after 40, nearly a decade after my Master in Applied Science, but yes an un-used degree.
What has been a turning point in your career thus far and why?
Finally starting.
If you could have any piece of artwork in your personal collection, what would it be and why?
That original bronze of the Treveri celtic farmer in the Trier Roman Museum, Germany.
Can you name a favourite artist or three… and why?
I can name them but they don’t need the linkage anymore.
Do you keep an Art Journal or Visual Diary of some kind?
I blog a little, a slow diary and I twitter.
What happens to works that “don’t work out”?
After hanging around in the limbo of “yeah-I-can-fix-that” they eventually get melted down for scrap and re-poured, reborn as a new figure.
One thing you wish you had listened to from an art teacher or lecturer?
When I was 19 someone told me to go to New York. IMMEDIATELY. I never have and I sometimes wonder what I might have done if I have taken that “uncool” advice.
Do you aim to break the rules of basic composition, layout etc or do you ignore the “rules” and just create?
The rules for using symbols are socially constructed and thus continually subject to negotiation, The rules of basic composition etc are symbols too, of natural order and artistic expression, and can also be negotiated, though to a lesser extant as their neurological basis is a little more strict than the obviously symbolic.
What sort of research and or reference material do you do for current works and has that changed over time?
Visiting museums has been replaced by googling images.
What sort of depth or meaning is there behind the work you do?
I use symbols in an exploration of human experience of (social) consciousness in the made world. (I don’t use symbols like some dream dictionary. I don’t use them to decode a universal matrix or structure. I don’t use them to deconstruct current excesses and futilities.)
Do you hope the viewer will “get” what you are trying to communicate or do you feel compelled to spell it out to them?
Oh they get it alright. But curiously in my writing, my failed poetry, where I explore very similar things (place, positons. symbols) they very rarely do. Sculpture is a complete liberation.
Art is about entertainment, experiment, inventiveness or shock for you?
Experiment, both in creating problems and in solving them. It’s research. This research is a balance to my symbolist interest. Research subsumes the other intentions, the other what-art-is-about. E.G Shock is an answer to a certain problem of complacency. Invention is how you create and answer the art problem. Entertainment is an answer very similar to shock, but more indulgent.
Respond to the notion “Art is a device for exploring the human condition”…
The human condition is about to change so the exploration is about to get very interesting indeed. I try conveying this in my writing but it was too out there, I hope my sculpture will do better.
If you stopped doing art right now would you miss it?
No.
What discourages you from doing art?
Art.
Is motivation to work an issue for you and how do you overcome it?
No.
Do you have a challenge knowing when a work is finished?
No. It is finished when the answer, or the problem, is complete. Knowing when the answer is finished is another matter.
What about the role of titles with your work, some hate them others revel in them, what about you?
As a (failed) writer the roles of titles is easy, fun and a definite part of the work.
The business or marketing side of Art can be a challenge to some, what are your thoughts?
Keep making. Keep talking.
Metaphors, analogies, symbols, stories, how important are they to your work?
Metaphor is everything. My other metaphor is a kangaroo, a symbol for the uncaring researcher.
Is your art, “art for art sake…” or a matter of “art for commercial viability?”
It’s just art for goodness sake.
If you have been working as an artist for a while, how do you feel about earlier works that are in people’s collections / ownership?
It feels fantastic, they are in good homes.
If someone says to you “Oh your work is decorative and lacks any meaning…” your response would be…?
A decoration is a symbol too, though perhaps not a strong answer to its ‘mothering’ problem.
Tell us about your studio environment (too big, too small, enough storage or not, the light, the position, how you found it etc)?
My studio is shared with the bike shed, the storage shed, the garden shed, the tool shed… so I work in the garden and the lounge room a lot.
Otto Dix the German artist said (in part)… “All art is exorcism…” Is that the case for you? If so how…
No, but I don’t think I have his problems…
Do the seasons affect your work or work habits?
Less light in the Tasmania winter means I work less on close work, and less overall. But generally the light easily makes up for this at other times.
Some say a measure of an artwork is the ability for it to hold a persons attention or cause the viewer to come back after an initial glance and become captivated by the work, is that so for your works or an intention of yours?
I hope so. It needs to be fascinating in order to work. If they don’t want to steal it, it’s not art.
People around you (family friends etc.) what would they say about the way you work, the moods you have, your life as an artist etc?
“Shhh, I’m working.” “Sorry, what was that, I was working.”
What is more important to you in your work, content or technique, concept or product?
The problem created and solved in a substantial form is most important.
How important is society, culture and or history to your work?
These problems are everything.
Technology (websites and social networking sites to name a few) has become an important marketing tool for many industries and individuals, what are your thoughts from a “You Inc” perspective and your art sensibility.
I think everyone should have a personal website in order to back up their online identity. It need not be anything more than stable contact point.
Do you work from life, or from photographs or from imagination or some other method?
I combined the museums’ documentation and identification with imagination.
When you create your work is it somehow an emotional relief as you do it or at the end?
No, it’s an intelligible rush.
How many artworks do you produce in a year?
20-30+ Started. 10-20 finished, so far.
How often do you work in the studio?
Everyday.
How long do your works usually take to complete?
Weeks.
What did your prices start off at?
$500.
Can you respond to this quote “Anyone who is half assed about art should get out.” (Janet Fish).
My arses are the artefacts best feature.
Compiled and edited by Steve Gray © 2009+
Follow me on twitter! http://twitter.com/stevegray58
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