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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.
SubscribeAlright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Connor Ryan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Connor, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I’ll highlight Deepwater Sponger, a thesis film I wrote and directed for my BFA at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. My team and I were challenged to make a film during the height of the pandemic, and the filmmaking process was somewhat restricted by the necessary safety protocols. We needed our actors masked, and so we came up with the idea of an underwater diver in an old vintage dive suit. This enabled us to engage with the actor’s face and performance while maintaining a safe shooting environment. In this industrial age sci-fi story, Deepwater Sponger must dive through the abysmal depths of a polluted ocean to save the world’s water.
Though this was a student film, our crew treated it like it was a project for a major studio. We had incredible costume design, props design, visual effects work, cinematography, producing, sound design, scoring, editing, casting and support from a crew of nearly ninety people. The support and compassion of so many of my collaborators throughout the process made this project deeply meaningful. We had very limited resources to complete a massively ambitious film, including over one hundred visual effects shots, complicated lighting and sets, and challenging working conditions. When I burned out, overworked myself, obsessed, my collaborators were alongside me, supporting me, and committed to getting the project done to the highest level of excellence we could manage. We made something that I will always be proud of. The process and the product are testaments to human sacrifice and love. If the process is meaningful, then the product always will be, no matter how many people view it.
Connor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a filmmaker, photographer, writer and explorer. I’ve always been taken with storytelling and exploring new worlds, real or fictional. I gravitated towards filmmaking because it builds upon so many different art forms–visual art, music, writing, performative art, technical art, collaborative art etc. Filmmaking gives me the opportunity to bring a wide range of forms and techniques to one product, so I never really get tired of doing the same thing. Exploration and travel have become a critical element of my process. Part of being an artist is about trying to understand your place in the world, and that’s impossible if you don’t go out into the world and learn about it. Listening to a diverse array of stories and experiences informs and deepens my own while helping me to build compassion and love for humanity. This feeds into the essential compassion and love a storyteller must have for his or her characters. I have made films in Iceland and Germany, collaborating with local cast and crew. These were small, challenging films, however the relationships and collaboration have proved some of the most meaningful experiences of my life.
Narratively, I’m interested in how personal mythology shape the experience of the individual and the journeys that people go on to redefine their own mythology. Depth and water seem to be big motifs for me. I’m an avid sailor, and I find myself constantly exploring nautical and sub-aquatic themes. I think it’s the idea of exploring the depths of our world and our own hearts. The courage that it takes to venture into these terrifying places (such as the ocean) can lead to so much discovery and beauty. I sailed across the North Atlantic with a small rag-tag crew over the summer of 2023, then explored the fjords of Greenland. The solitude and grandeur of the ocean and arctic are impossible to convey through words. The journey was at times very challenging personally, but it is the type of journey that allows me sort through the terrible and beautiful depths of my own heart. I want to continue making work that helps people to have a deeper passion for life, to fully engage with their own experience — both the triumphs and the tragedies — to live life ALL IN.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In my opinion, the best thing that society as a whole can do to support artists and creatives is to slow down; pay attention; be present; value depth over volume. We are inundated with so much attention seeking all day long, and in my observation it really limits us from connecting to art and creatives at a deep level. It’s important to find art that you engage with at your core. You can achieve this by paying attention to the subtle responses of your own heart, rather than trying to engage with everything and everybody. Find local galleries, photographers, filmmakers, writers, dancers, musicians that interest you, and give their work the opportunity to have an impact on you. Don’t force anything, just be open minded and gravitate towards the work that feeds your passion for life and for humanity. And ultimately — tell the artists that their work has had a meaningful impact on your life. As an artist, there are few things as encouraging and supportive as knowing that what you created was able to touch someone’s life.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I started my company, Glass Poets, based on an ideal that I strive for, a mode of being and of creating. Simply put, it’s about letting the light of our shared humanity shine through us all. I grew up in a 200+ year old farm house. The windows were old, wavy, cracked with air bubbles and cobwebs throughout. When the early or late rays of sunlight passed through this glass, it created a spectacular, ethereal, glowing caustic image on the floor or wall. From a young age I was absorbed with the beauty of this light. My goal, and my company mission, is to embrace a vision of the artist as an old piece of glass. Imperfect, perhaps broken, hand molded, experienced. When Light passes, refracts through such glass, it projects a numinous aberration, a vision and story to the world that will help renew and lead to Truth. A vision of the soul as glass must embrace vulnerability while encountering fear with courage. It must abandon ideology, replacing it with compassion, conversation and openness. And the beautiful light will focus and scatter, as eternity passes through the heart.
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Image Credits
All images Copyright Glass Poets; with the exception of the black & white image of me, that is taken by Ondřej Mesiereur; and the one of me closer on a sail boat (with a figure in the background) is taken by Tully Ryan.
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