New Connections Become New Ideas. An Interview with Artist and Educator, Stephen Child.
What inspired you to become a fine artist/designer?
I started relatively young. I saw a movie called, “A Dog of Flanders”, about a young boy who paints and it somehow struck me. So I bought some paints and got started in about 4th grade. I really enjoyed the work of Marc Chagall and Paul Klee. Their paintings were magical and felt truly connected to the universe. In high school I got interested in Illustration. Brad Holland, Maxfield Parrish, Aubrey Beardsley, and Alan Cober were among my favorites. I took classes in painting and received some awards and scholarships towards college.
I came from an intense family of six children that had a lot of creative energy. One of my friends told me that when he came over to the house he could “feel the walls cracking” there was so much going on. My older brothers wrote music and had bands and I listened to a lot of music, especially jazz. I played the clarinet and saxophone. I went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and then Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia for undergraduate school. I was a painting and drawing major. I grew tremendously from those schools and I had some great teachers. My roommates at the time were graphic majors and they helped me to get into the profession when I graduated and needed a job. I knew very little about graphic design when I got out, so everything I learned was on the job. I don’t recommend it. Even though I had good visual skills, it involved a lot of late nights.
What are the challenges of being a fine artist/designer?
I see the two disciplines as quite different. Even though they rely on some of the same set of skills, they serve very different purposes. I don’t really place one above the other. I just see them as different. Painting and drawing once served a more functional purpose within the culture. Most paintings were commissioned and provided a service to the church or the patron. Paintings and drawings were the major visual medium for the culture. Paintings told stories and captured the vision of the world at the time. The advent of photography pushed us into modern and postmodern art. Painting found itself out of a job and moved into a more personal and expressive venue. I see graphic design as an applied art. It serves a practical function in the culture. I enjoy the places where they sometimes overlap.
I’m not sure where I fit in because I’ve been involved in both worlds. I lived in a studio in Philadelphia for 7 years and I lived in a loft for 6 years in LA. I also worked in health care advertising for 4 years between undergraduate and graduate school and I’ve worked in entertainment advertising for about 10 years now. I once thrived on being in my studio and creating. I don’t feel that way now. Something happened. There has been a big shift in my life. I’m not sure if it is fatherhood or maturity or what. I began to feel the fine arts work was somehow not very fulfilling. It seemed too insular. I’ve been finding myself more satisfied with the projects in which I’m helping a cause or contributing with others.
I think any creative endeavor is challenging. Making a living and participating in the normal routine of life is demanding enough and then you need to make time and energy for creating. Organizing your life in a way that allows you to create is challenging. I need to create. I’m not sure why but I get very anxious if I’m not working on something creative. So you have to be creative about being creative. You need to feed your mind and learn to keep learning. I think it is important to ask yourself what purpose you are fulfilling with your work and if it is enjoyable to you.
What is most rewarding about being a fine artist/designer?
I really enjoy the process. I like solving graphic problems. I like the investigation and the puzzling. I like making art and I like learning. I like being in touch with the mystery and magic of life and creating art is one way to touch that. All we can do is allude to the great mysteries of life because they are beyond comprehension. But they are within us, not out there. To bring your consciousness to the miracle of life can come about in many ways. Art can sometimes be one of them in which to awake.
I find it rewarding collaborating with others and solving problems that might make the world a better place in some way. I teach mostly now but I did enjoy the camaraderie of working in an agency. I think promoting products and service can be an enviable way to make a living. Many of these products and services fulfill very important needs that make our lives more comfortable and enriching. So I don’t necessarily see fine arts as serving a higher need. I do have quite a bit trouble with the mindless consumer mentality of our current American culture though. I think there is an extraordinary emphasis on having rather than being. There is a great confusion within our culture that says “more = a better life” and it isn’t true. In fact very often more becomes a barrier to living an enriching and fulfilling life. We are so busy trying to have that we don’t have time to be.
What advice would you give to young artists and designers?
We all have an inner teacher. Listen closely and work with your inner teacher.
You want an inner teacher who is supportive and compassionate. Who understands and is there to help you along the way, “You’re doing a great job! Keep up the good work! You’re really improving and learning a lot!” This is an important voice that will encourage you to become better.
You may also observe a voice that may be quite harsh. “You suck! You can’t you do anything right! You’re always screwing up! You’re no good at this $#%^&!” This voice is a block to creativity. It won’t allow you to enjoy and experiment and let you fail without punishment. In fact it may not even allow you to try much. There may be a slacker lurking, “Whatever! This is fine; at least I got it done! It’s OK, who cares! I didn’t really try that hard anyway!” or a conceited voice, “I don’t even have to try and I’m so much better than everyone else! I don’t need to do all those sketches, these are great ideas!”
What you ideally want is to have a supportive and compassionate inner teacher but one that also encourages you to improve and is rather tough as well. You want a voice that expects you to be the best you can be! It has so much respect for you as a human being in the world that it wants you to live up to your full potential. To solve problems, you need to be humbly confident that you will solve the problem in an engaging way. If you don’t have enough encouragement or confidence you may give up too soon. If you are too confident you may think that everything you do is great and may not try hard enough to solve the problem. It is a balance. So listen and get to know your inner teacher. Listen to the tape that is being played constantly in your mind.
There are 3 aspects in helping to become a good designer:
Theory:
Become knowledgeable about design. Study design fundamentals, process and methodology, typography, the history of art and design, and critical writings. Keep current with the technological and theoretical field.
Practice:
Look, look, look at lots of art and design. Just do it. Practice, practice, practice. Bring your focus and attention to your work. Apply what you’ve learned and experiment. It begins by learning how to dribble the ball and working on the fundamentals, but then you will want to play the game. You learn from experience.
Vision:
How good do you want to be? We are more than just designers. The job demands that we do more than solve graphic problems - it involves working and communicating with others. Questions such as: How do you get inspired? What kinds of work are you really good at? Who are you in the world? How do you relate to others? need to be thought about deeply.
Just keep at it. Many of my heroes are those that just kept on going even after great failures. They picked themselves up and just kept on working on it and getting better and better at what they did. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”—Michael Jordan
What is your ultimate goal?
I’m not sure if I have one ultimate goal, but I have several larger goals.
I try to see my life as a piece of art. I try to envision myself daily. How I think, act and speak in the world is very important to me. I see that my actions and the way I think and treat people has an impact on the world. Being mindful is as important to me as making art. We are so much more than artists and designers. We are husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and co-workers. I’m not always successful, but my intention is there.
One of my immediate goals is to be a very effective teacher. This is something I’ve been working on for a number of years. I’m learning and growing with each class. It is an art. The first and most obvious aspect is to become extremely knowledgeable about your subject. Then you have to look creatively about how to present that information to the students so they understand and absorb it. There is lots of information to dole out and you need to look at what will benefit the student the most. Structuring it and portioning it out in an engaging way that connects to the student’s experience is a skill. I feel it is important to speak to a student’s spirit also. To discuss how they think and solve problems. To discuss how they view themselves, their time and their world.
I want to create an agency within USC in which students create non-profit design work for the community. This is a long-term goal that is only a proposal and may take quite a while to realize.
What would be your ultimate creation?
This is a great question! I don’t know what the ultimate creation could even be? I don’t know if I would know it if I saw it. I think you just do work that resonates with you and speaks to your thoughts, heart and spirit. The creations that I respond to make me think, are mysterious, and take advantage of the visual medium in which they are made. It doesn’t necessarily have to be well crafted, although I think it usually helps. I’m not fond of visual work that is not very visual, that doesn’t take into consideration the visual language in which it resides.
One of my favorite pieces that I’ve created was for Deerpark, a Buddhist Monastery near San Diego. Deerpark is an extended center from Plum Village in France whose teacher is Thich Nhat Hanh, the poet, human rights activist and Zen master. They asked me to help out with a brochure on solar power. I had little time to design. I told my daughter what to draw and put it together quite quickly in one night. It isn’t nearly as interesting visually as some of the other pieces I’ve done, but I really believed in the cause and was happy to be involved. The purpose was something I really valued. I’m trying to participate more and more in projects that have a purpose, that respond to my values, and try in some way to make the world a better place to live.
What is your source of inspiration for your artwork/designs?
I get inspiration from everywhere. I am always searching for interesting ideas. Whatever you bring your attention to is where your energy goes, so when I’m working on a logo, I see logos everywhere – in the refrigerator, in the bank, on the bus, in my dreams. If I’m working on a brochure suddenly where there weren’t brochures in my consciousness they are everywhere for me. Sometimes the ideas come straight out of the process. I do a lot of handwork before I go to the computer; sketching, cutting and pasting. Usually the ideas are synthesized from combinations of sources. I do a lot of comps in my design. I may take the same idea and present it in 20 different ways before I feel I’ve arrived at something. I am a big believer in the laws of problem solving. The process of the mind, whether conscious or not, follows certain steps in producing ideas. These steps follow an order. If you try to solve a design problem without doing the research you may find you’ve lost the way rather quickly because you really don’t know where you’re headed in the first place. Going to design books is helpful but limited. Looking in other nooks and crannies can be more fruitful.
I listen to music. I look at much artwork and design in terms of its rhythm. I look at a piece and feel it might need more volume or silence in a spot. At first I usually ignore the words and just look at the visual expression. Later I make sure it makes sense literally. I use collage a lot in my work. My graduate show was collage. It is a great way to bring together images and text and generate concepts. I think seeing the interconnectedness between everything in the world is of great benefit to inspiration. When you can see relationships it is very helpful in making new connections. New connections become new ideas.
>Interview by d/visible managing editor Ruth Hwang.
