Donald Bracken ART Habens can exam the leaves ’ shape , form , texture , contours , without touching it , from all angles , just as we could if we could freeze time and closely examine the world around us . The falling leaves and light perhaps represent death , but they show it as a transient state , embodying the paradox of life within death , because nothing is truly dead or gone as long as it is in our memory . It ’ s in my tradition of magic realism .
Your relationship with the use of materials to create imagery is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers , that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience , as in It Takes a Village . In particular , your process of semantic restructuration of a view has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand ’ s works , when he stated that “ nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead .” While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity , there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you explore . So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process … Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience ?
Personal experience can absolutely imperative . The piece Night Music was originally a frozen moment of chaos inspired by Hurricane Sandy . But it became about tripping on a summer night , and by that I don ’ t mean drugs but rather a total body and mind experience , about being drawn into the safety of the womb of mother , nature at night . It tries to describe the direct experience of lying in the middle of a tree-lined road still warm from the hot sun of the day and watching the fireflies merge with the stars to a jazz symphony of all the night creatures jamming in intricate patterns of rhythm and sound . And for Heaven and Earth , I had the experience of working in the World Trade Center , staring out the windows , eyeing the clouds and the view that no longer
21 406
Special Issue