Gary Panter
I miss album covers. When we had album covers, every single person in the trailer park had an art gallery on the floor of the living room, several feet thick. Now we are you-tubed and art-starved.
I love all art and I love to hear artists talk about their work. In college, a great boyfriend, the one who always brought me little wonderful presents that I loved—stones and collages and books of poetry—gave me a Gary Panter poster, signed. I think it’s the only object I have left from those days, besides D’s blue sweatshirt and a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cassette tape with Iggy on the B side.
Gary Panter’s person-ness is art, and I love his interview in this new issue of the Believer.
Panter does comics and light shows, collages and installations. He’s a musician and literature student/professor and he paints, etc.
Here’s a little excerpt from his answer to the question, “Do you worry you spread yourself too thin or that your head is going to explode?”
Panter: “when I want to do something I think of doing it in a practical , non-extravagant way…. It would be fun to spend a few hundred years on each medium but it’s not going to happen so I avoid certain difficult mediums like oil painting. …you have to make peace with limitations, with what you can do. Then think about what you’d really like to do, which is the hard part.”
Students: what do you want to do? Not thinking about what you feel you should do, what’s popular or publishable or expected or right or rebellious and trendy and hard or easy. What do you want to do? It’s summer. You get to pick. Do that.
Related posts: