Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Max Roemer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Max thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
The kindest things for me as an artist come from those who believe in me, who appreciate and support what I do. I think of my practice as threefold. There is the making of art, but this never happens in a vacuum. It is fueled by study and learning, taking in traditions, influences and techniques. And it comes to life by sharing the work and its output. Without the connections from learning and sharing the making of art in isolation is a bit like the tree falling in the forest that no one hears. It might make a sound but who cares. Some of the kindest things have come from sharing my work, such as Annika Nelson letting me show my work at UCSD Craft Center, Barbara Freeman at her gallery, or Rose at Flower Hill in Del Mar, where we have our Creative Collective gallery. They didn’t have to do that, and none of these shows would have happened without their kindness and spirit of paying it forward and taking a leap to create community.
Max, 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 am a sculptor and painter who likes to play with found materials and natural objects. I live in Encinitas, CA, and my art making is part of my basic daily habits like cooking, surfing, gardening, reading, through which things become what I imagine them to be: trees turned to figures and animals, portraits and icons from sawdust and sand. My work is short in place and long in time: It is hyper-local as I forage yards, fields and beaches within a quarter mile. And it invokes art history and traditions of scholars and recluses. The results speak to the viewer as archetypes and inner fairly tale figures. I am from Germany originally, and grew up in Bavaria, a landscape dotted with baroque onion domes, and I now have laid roots by the onion domes of Swamis.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
All my lessons as an artist seem to be lessons of unlearning. You might be taught something but you’ll never know something until you unlearn it. And that unlearning comes from doing. What’s nice about unlearning is realizing all the things that aren’t necessary, all the rules that are redundant to oneself. There are so many tools and techniques, it can really become overwhelming very quickly, even for example something as basic as an ink drawing, where there is just paper, brush and ink involved. A good analogy might be cooking, which I enjoy a lot – there are thousands of cookbooks, recipes, appliances, tools and pots and pans, not to mention foods and diets and spices. But to me the tastiest meals and the most nourishing dishes are the simple ones, one pan, one or two steps, two or three fresh ingredients. It involves knowledge and experience but also a lot of unlearning and realizing how unnecessary most things in the kitchen are.
The backstory here might be that I’m self-taught in many ways. Not just as an artist. The learning never ends. But neither does the unlearning.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
First and foremost, doing my thing and allowing myself to do my thing. That’s the initial impulse. But no man is an island. So what I find most rewarding is the community and the connections that come from making art. The Creative Collective, for example, is a group of artist in San Diego that I am a part of and we came together from all kinds of media and backgrounds as we share a gallery space at Flower Hill in Del Mar. It keeps growing and changing and meeting new artists and making new friends has been as rewarding as having the chance to pay it forward a little. I’m a big fan of paying it forward, as I feel I have benefited so much from others paying it forward towards me.
Contact Info:
- Website: maxroemerart.com; sdcreativecollective.org
- Instagram: maxroemeart