S H A M U S C L I S S E T th e fu ture rend ered
ANDREA BLANCH: Two of your pieces, Mr. Realistic
almost like the two paths split: here’s the one path taken
(Keeping America Clean) (2014) and Builder Destroy
and the other one. In the 3D world you don’t have to fol-
(Acid God) (2013), depict a person inhabiting a trash cov-
low any literal narrative; you create a library of different
ered, post-apocalyptic environment. Where did the idea for
objects and scenarios. Some things from before end up in
this world come from? Is it a version for our own world?
pieces that come later, other things are hinting at things
Is it an omen for the way we mistreat our environment?
that are going to come later that I don’t make – it’s all over
the place. But all of the ideas are happening simultane-
SHAMUS CLISSET: Yeah. When I got into working in 3D,
ously for me. It just depends on which one I’m working
my original approach was to realize that this 3D world was
on at the moment, that’s the one that will get finished first.
something analogous to our own world – it was this new,
undiscovered territory that you’re creating while explor-
ANDREA: It’s totally endless! You have to cut it off in
ing it. All of this frontier imagery started to come into the
your head.
earlier work, which was a lot about conquering a frontier
in American history, but very much in light of where we’ve
SHAMUS: Yeah. Every finalized piece that you see has
ended up and how we’ve conquered it. But, where are we
gone through dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of it-
now? We’ve paved it all over. My parents live in Colorado,
erations before I decide that that’s the final one.
which has become one of the most suburbanized…
ANDREA: You insert yourself into your work in the form
ANDREA: Where?
of an alias called Fake Shamus. How has Fake Shamus’
personality changed and evolved over the years? Is that
SHAMUS: The area outside of Denver and Boulder. It’s
what you just said or…
where I grew up. Back in the 70s and 80s, a lot of people
went there to get back to nature, that’s why my parents
SHAMUS: Sort of, yes. This character wasn’t necessarily
moved there. In the meantime, it’s become the same sub-
supposed to be me, but he was a way for me to put a char-
urban wasteland that you see everywhere across the coun-
acter in there and make references to my own history and
try. The imagery from my earlier work was commenting
obsessions. He’s not literally an alter ego, but he’s someone I
on that transition, which led towards this post-apoca-
can play around with in that space. I give him superpowers
lyptic thing. Keeping America Clean is interesting because
and create these surreal environments that he can explore.
the figure in all of my works comes from one figure that
evolves from one piece to the next, but I consider him the
ANDREA: What are your own obsessions?
same character through each iteration. At the beginning,
he was that destructor-type character, the explorer. Then ,
SHAMUS: Thinking about where we are at in terms of
he becomes someone magical who cleans everything up
digital media and where that’s gotten us. Last night, I was
from the destruction he had left in his wake. In a narra-
talking with a friend at the studio about how we all have
tive, your mind goes off on tangents. So I might think of
these supercomputers in our pockets now, in the form of
something, and then I make a picture that’s based on one
the iPhone. These things can do more processing-wise than
idea that I had, and something in that will remind me of a
computers could do just recently. Yet, what does everyone
different possibility. Then I’ll go and make a picture that’s
end up doing with that? No one fully understands it except
Portrait by Andrea Blanch.
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