We were lucky to catch up with David Adey recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi David, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
No way! I had a regular job, and I’ll never go back. When you’re young and naive, you’re focused on whatever captures your imagination in the moment, not making a living or a career. But I think that’s a necessary stage to linger on for a while if you want to do something interesting. I spend a lot of time with college students, and one of the things that depresses me the most is when I see a lack of optimism and idealism. All artists are dreamers to some extent. Too much pragmatism at a young age is a shortcut to cynicism. I’ve known a lot of students over the years who’ve had their dreams beaten out of them by the time they enter college. Many of them are pressured to have a career plan before they turn eighteen. I was very fortunate to have supportive parents. I can’t remember a single time in high school or college when they asked me how I planned to make a living. They gave me the freedom to explore, and they trusted me to create my own path. I’m sure some will point out the privilege of not having to worry about making a living or school debt. To be clear, I am very fortunate and privileged, but I also didn’t pay off my school loans until my late forties. What I’m referring to is a person’s ability to tolerate risk and to work extraordinarily hard at something you love in the face of uncertainty. I’ve come to believe that those traits are a much better indication of future success than artistic talent. I’m now in my fifties and have many friends who took more conventional career paths. Most of them make more money than me, but many of them are bored. The artist’s life is a roller coaster, and you’ve got to have the stomach for it. I’ve had some fantastic highs and gut-punching lows, but I’ve never been bored.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I have a diverse practice, but my primary studio work is sculpture. I work in a wide range of materials, including paper, plastics, ceramic, electronics, metal, wood, 3D printing, installation, etc. For the past fifteen years, I’ve created a body of sculpture that examines the nature of two-dimensional imagery and its effect on individuals and the broader culture. I spent the early part of my career in graphic design, immersed in the world of branding, corporate identity, and image. That experience continues to inform my work which has since expanded into a broader investigation of the fraught intersection between our physical bodies and the increasingly digitized, two-dimensional world that we inhabit. For my ongoing “Hide” series, I did a three-dimensional scan of my body. The triangulated 3D model containing over 75k triangles is digitally unfolded and flattened onto a single 2D plane and laser cut in paper. I also spent a year and a half doing a deep dive into gun culture, culminating in an exhibition titled “There Be Dragons.” That body of work was also the subject of a short film by Andrew Norbeck and Jared Callahan titled “White Male Shooter,” which made the rounds at film festivals. I’m currently working on another body scan, as well as an experimental video installation project about advertising within the pharmaceutical and health, and beauty industries.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Early in my career, I worked for some horrible companies in New York and New Jersey with abusive bosses, criminals, and even mafia connections. After a couple of years, we moved back to San Diego where my wife is from, and I was soon hired by one of the top design firms in town. The work was exciting and challenging, and the clients and people were wonderful. It was a very special place and time in my life, and given the situation I had just come from, it felt like a dream. But the fact that I knew how good it was helped me realize that I was still missing something. When I graduated from college, I dreamed of going to graduate school to get my MFA in sculpture, but life took over, and before I knew it, I found myself six years into a graphic design career. One night I was working late on a deadline and was the only person in the office. I was exhausted and hadn’t showered in days. I was chugging coffee, eating junk food, and endlessly staring at a computer screen, kearning type for some piece of corporate marketing garbage that I knew would end up in the trash. For a brief mental escape, I took a few minutes to browse the websites of some of my dream schools. I entered my address to order a few catalogs and then got back to work and forgot all about it. About a month later, the catalogs started arriving, and the dream suddenly felt like a possibility. I was still working full-time at the firm, so it took about a year and a half of early mornings, late nights, and weekends in my garage to create a body of new sculpture to begin applying to MFA programs. Many friends and family didn’t understand what I was thinking at the time. I was giving up a dream job for something with little hope of a return on my investment. That brief moment of clarity, and simply ordering a few catalogs, set in motion the most important career pivot of my life.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Freedom! I probably would have answered that question differently ten years ago, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized how fortunate I am to do something I love so much every day. I’ve always been pretty ambitious, but you get to a point in life when you realize that The Whitney Biennial isn’t calling, and MOMA will never be mine, but most of that stuff is out of my control. There’s a true freedom in letting go of some of those things. It’s opened up my creative practice in ways I never expected. I’ve recently written two children’s books that I’m in the process of illustrating. I’ve been writing some creative non-fiction essays, and I write a lot of songs. The first children’s manuscript I wrote is based on a protest folk song I wrote about social and economic injustice and trickle-down economics. It’s not exactly what the kids are clamoring for, but I can’t stop working on it. I’m also really into bonsai, and I have around twenty trees in various stages of progress. That’s the creative and intellectual freedom I’m talking about. My day job is teaching college art students, which I still love after twenty years, but it’s my creative practice that keeps me motivated. I’m typically up between 4:30 and 5:30 every morning, and I’m excited to get out of bed because I’ll have two to three hours to work in a quiet house. Those are the moments that remind me that I’ve made good life decisions.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.davidadey.com
- Instagram: @davidadey.studio