3 Questions Digital Series

Eric Standley

An interview from Art in Embassies 3 Questions Digital Series with Eric Standley, who speaks about his creative process and artwork at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Tirana, Albania.

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Full Transcript

00:23
It’s really an investigation of essence prior to existence, which means that there is the
00:29
existence of you and me, of objects that we make, even songs and phenomena that we create,
00:36
but I believe that the essence of those things are already in existence before we are and
00:42
that we as natural human beings, we uncover these things, and I call them archetypes.
00:48
The best example I think of these is a song.
00:51
A decent song is something that we can’t get out of our heads sometimes which is that it
00:56
speaks to us, and for me a decent song brings on a transcendence, and perhaps healing.
01:03
So I like to thing of my work is physical objects, almost like physical songs.
01:08
They are familiar and they might provide a platform for people to transcend and perhaps
01:15
even heal.
01:21
I’m an object maker, you know, I make physical things so I cut paper
01:25
with a laser, I use a CNC laser that actually removes negative space in a composition and
01:34
then I stack these layers of cut paper and create this overall composition that’s really
01:41
about space.
01:42
So I work in layers and I start from my sketchbook, and I draw these compositions that are based
01:49
on fractals that, they’re really something that we all are familiar with yet perhaps
01:55
we’ve never seen.
01:56
I’m very old school.
01:58
I draw every curve, I make every decision on how this paper is gonna layer, conceal
02:05
or reveal color.
02:07
So in that, it’s, it’s a slow process and it’s a very meditative process.
02:17
So I’m so happy to have the work out in the world, especially in a public space like an
02:23
embassy, that’s wonderful.
02:24
It took about a month to make and it was made with about four other um compositions, and
02:31
they were all based on atoms.
02:33
I was working with a team of scientists at Virginia Tech and we were charged with the
02:38
investigation of chromatin architecture.
02:41
My colleagues, this is their field, and they brought in an artist because their scientific
02:47
research is steeped in complexity and a lot of theory, a lot of the unknown.
02:54
And they thought it would be interesting to bring an artist onboard who also works with
02:58
complexity and to a certain degree the unknown.
03:01
And it was super fun because I was the creative person in the room so speaking with a biophysicist
03:08
most of the conversation is way over my head but I could ask some very obvious questions
03:14
about physical structures and theories about how chromatin of a DNA functions and why there
03:24
is a dynamic response to any number of environmental influences.
03:31
So the artwork that I created from that series, it led to some interesting fractals that were
03:37
taken from DNA, both from human DNA and fruit fly DNA.
03:43
People ask me, you know, where do you get the patience to do what you do, and its its
03:47
truly about it’s like I’m an archeologist you know, I’m uncovering something that seems
03:54
like it needs to be in the world and that gets me excited, so you know I go to the ends
03:59
of the earth to make these things happen, and it happens to work right now with tools
04:05
such as a laser and a computer but really it’s about trying to get these compositions
04:11
looking the way I think they’re supposed to be in
05:11
the world.
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