Sterling Ruby Interview: This Manic Circle

[Music] [Applause] [Music] I I didn't do very well in school I I went to this kind of farming school it really was it was like in the States we have something called 4-h and it's like mostly agriculture and livestock you know I just thought that that I didn't I didn't really know any better you know I thought that was schools you know I just thought I'd I just but school sucks [Music] [Music] [Music] but I always drew you know I drew a lot as a kid and and so so when I when I when I was 18 and I left high school I started working construction you know cuz I couldn't couldn't get another job because I just my grades were so bad now he's working mostly labor and I was working on these really big job sites with a lot of you know guys who had been doing it for a long time and I was I was always kind of amazed how old they looked you know and that they were all they were all miserable you know they were just like super you know not not that I'm I mean my father was a laborer and you know a contractor and he he loved his job he loved making things and I can equate to that you know I can definitely understand you know wanting to work with your hands and wanting to build things but I saw a lot of I saw a lot of these guys kind of getting worn out you know because they were they were getting slightly older and couldn't do it anymore and and at that point that early diagnosis like kind of kicked in I was really really depressed you know I just like I was miserable and my mother had a had a friend yeah he was a wildlife illustrator he drew you know pheasants and deer and you know things like that and he worked at this local school in Pennsylvania and you know my mother was the one who was kind of like listen you're you're miserable you're depressed you're only 20 maybe it was like you know 20 at that time like you can't you know what do you want to what do you want to do your grades were too bad you can't get into a real college how about you know applying with this friend Bob of hers and I did I drew some cats hi drew you are you know I always drew so there was stuff I had a portfolio so I went to this school and they and they let me in and that was kind of it I you know I I started to understand you know how to put things together I didn't have any real it wasn't that kind of school like we had one textbook it was Gardner's art through the ages you know so pretty much stopped stopped at the seventies you know there wasn't anything after that and I did that for about four years I just drew you know bowls of fruit and we drew the nude figure a lots and we had like an additive and deductive sculpture class but you know and I did that for four years and then I realized I saw that Bruce Nauman exhibit at MoMA and it just changed everything and I realized there was something it was slightly past the 70s that really really made a lot of sense at the time you know where I grew up in Pennsylvania it was like it was rough you know it's just like these guys who just wanted to fight all the time and they had a lot of you know they were aggressive and they hated everything and they were horrible to women and you know they had really narrow opinions about everything you know they were confused about their own sexuality I didn't know that at the time either but you know that was obvious later on and you know that Bruce Nauman exhibit really kind of seemed to me to be all about like all of those things it was like it was so I got it I didn't really understand it but I just like I had already experienced everything that Bruce Nauman was making work about and I thought it doesn't look like anything that I've seen in in Gardner's art through the ages but I can totally understand the kind of psychology of it you know it made a lot of sense and at that point I just I wanted to do that I wanted I wanted to do what Bruce Nauman was doing I wanted to you know work with materials that were already existing I guess that that was considered the ready-made yeah but I didn't know that and I wanted to but I also wanted to work with my hands I wanted to make things and I wanted to just like push these things together and I wanted to make work about like the kind of psychological experiences that I felt I had already dealt with in my life and potentially was going to deal with in the future and you know Bruce Nauman just became a icon for me it was like you know I told you hi then went to work at this place called the video databank and I started to realize that like even video art in the in the late 60s early 70s the Porter packed stuff that was about you know artists and their manic you know kind of work habits and that was like being like actually recorded on like early video pieces and like early studio performances and things like that they might not have had an audience but they were recording everything and they were so manic it's the same thing with Bruce Nauman like everything that Bruce Nauman did and still does has this kind of drive to it but it has no end it's just this manic cycle and that that related to everything to it was like you know how I grew up and and the the farming community that you know I'd see him every [ __ ] day like plowing the fields Jesus you know hundreds of acres he's just plowing and plowing and plowing in this summer is when I didn't go to school I would have to work at this farm and we picked like we've mostly picked Tomatoes and you get paid by the bushel you know you just like work all [ __ ] day and you know they have like these you know things have you know bushels of tomatoes next to you I didn't really mind it but it seemed senseless like there was no end to it it just could go on forever but I didn't I didn't mind the activity so much but so when I really started to make art I didn't feel any different than when I you know was working on that farm but it seemed like it seemed like an endeavor more than a like a just more than a kind of a job you know [Music] I don't think I'm an all-around artist yeah yeah I think so that's not the politically correct answer but yeah I think I'm an all-around artist I think I'm interested in painting there's no doubt about that well the thing I'm also you know interested in aspects of architecture and space and time that painting doesn't always have the most immediate you know it doesn't translate all of those things but that doesn't mean that painting can't overcome some of the kind of trials and tribulations of say sculpture or photography they're just different and I think I tend to choose mediums because they translate I choose specific mediums because I feel like they translate you know the idea more than another medium would going around the studio you have quite an output are you is it kind of a working ethic or are you just productive all the time I think it is I think it is a work ethic and that was kind of very early on in my childhood my father's side was well my mother's side of that family too but mostly my mother her father's side of the family you know if you didn't work you were you know you weren't really worth your your weight and that's I think that's that's just been this kind of conditioning that I think has easily translated to the way I make work but it's also something later on I realized a lot of other artists kind of felt the same way that maybe they've felt a little ashamed of being artists or being creative and so they kind of embedded a kind of labor aspect of it into it and I think that's probably partially true for me I also I think that you know I'm a kind of manic paranoid person and working in a bunch of different mediums and and always having a place to kind of always having a place to go helps for me I I think I can finish up a work or think that I've finished up a work and identified that in the work it's a painting if it's a sculpture if it's a video piece if it's photography working on the sound piece for a video piece you know I mean I can usually identify whether or not a work is successful by how manic it feels I just had a great critic Philip Dagon from Paris he wrote about these and we talked at length about what I wanted to do with these and he wrote about it in in relation to new realism and that that something is happening now with a lot of artists who are making abstract works but in all actuality what they're doing is a new type of realism and it's a way of kind of taking a scenario in the real world and making what we would always up until now have considered an abstract work and and that's that's like a kind of visual description of it and I wasn't sure what I was doing with these to tell you the truth up until the time that Philip Dayton told me but that's kind of that's nice because I knew that I was trying to get him to understand what I wanted from them but I didn't I didn't really know and I felt that way for a long time and that's that's perhaps what we were talking about in in relation to formalism or to composition I always thought that it was just innate that you know things became compositional or formal because you know an artist had the kind of knack for it but maybe that wasn't what you know it like you know Matisse has cutouts I don't know if that wasn't just formal you know and so I really like this idea that what I'm doing is an abstraction of something that I am experiencing in real life but in all actuality it's it's my kind of like visual description of it but I think it's for your grandmother I would be fine if you look at them as you know formal compositional paintings I know that the artist that I've admired the most and who had become the most influential for me have done the same thing I am pretty aware that that's my that's my that's my desire that's that's my end goal yeah [Music] you

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 107,087

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Sterling Ruby, ceramics, Los Angeles, Studio visit

Id: VS1E5KjVbWY

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 01 2018