We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carlo Marcucci a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Carlo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I always knew because I inherited the art gene from my mother (also an artist). I had my first exhibition at the Ann Jacob Gallery in Atlanta while attending a liberal arts college and then decided to transfer to an art college to learn graphic art and design. I worked for a few graphic design firms after graduating and moved to Los Angeles, where I worked for one year at Disney Imagineering as a signage designer. It was a good and steady paying job, but the office was an industrial building with few windows, which made my days monotonous. During this time, I started applying to “exhibition calls” around Southern California and landed my first solo exhibition at a non-profit art gallery in Burbank. I then decided to give my art career a try.
Carlo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a visual artist based in Culver City, California. I graduated with a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art (aka SCAD Atlanta). It was an obvious vocation to follow, since I have always been involved in art as far as I can remember. I was fortunate to know early on what I was meant to be, even though it took a few years to narrow my interest to fine art.
I create artworks in different styles and media – mostly paintings and assemblages. My works can appear divergent from each other, depending by the body of work (some might be abstract mixed-media, realistic paintings, or architectural assemblages). The variety of styles might set me apart from most artists, but I’m proud of my creative range, even if it is harder to market myself as a uniform brand. All my work share an attention to detail, craftsmanship and graphic composition. I am mostly known for my “Chemical Still Life” and “Golden State” paintings, my “Wheatfields” assemblages (made of spaghetti, soba, and udon noodles) and “Staples” (works made with mostly office staples and paper clips).
I start and finish each piece one at the time, so each work is a focused study that teaches me something I can utilize in my next work. I often title them with numerals as to identify them in the order they were created.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I can schedule my own hours and I don’t have a supervisor. I still deal with the same stresses that all artists must endure (like the occasional creative dry spells).
The creative part is invisible to others because it happens mostly within my head. I don’t sketch much. I visualize the concepts in my head and sometimes rough doodles them while talking on the phone. I then “transfer” these mental blueprints into existence. Being an artist allows me to create something from nothing – it is like giving birth, but without the excruciating pain. I achieve a sort of immortality – something people will remember long after I’m gone. Future generations might not remember my name, but might enjoy my works hanging somewhere.
Art requires creator and audience and I value people’s enjoyment and interest on my work. I find the interaction and that happens in that space between the artist, the work, and the audience to be fascinating, because each viewer absorbs an artwork with a different perspective, different past, different body, different culture, different mood. While I create with a certain frame of mind and intent, my audience might be appreciating the exact same work for completely different reasons.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
I think the technology is still young and must find its true purpose. Most of the art I’ve seen and associated with NTF is not good (a monkey with sunglasses?) and is overpriced. For now, NFT seems like an exercise in conceptual art. Like with crypto currencies, some artists and investors are trying to capitalize on this trend, while also experimenting its practical possibilities.
While NFTs are predominantly interconnected with digital works, I think the real potential might be their use as ‘digital certificates of ownership’ for any physical piece of artwork (even antiques). They could promote transparency, provenance, and be useful to record all sales and related information regarding any works. Artists and collectors could one day provide all physical artworks with a thin decal chip or a tag – keys to the artwork’s unique digital blockchain ID code and metadata viewable across networks, platforms, and institutions. We could possibly see the formation of new institutions to register these transactions (like the US Copyright office). Artists could easily and directly receive resale royalties every time a work changes hand.
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