We recently connected with Stephen Shugart and have shared our conversation below.
Stephen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
I spent the first 50 years of my life as a writer. I was one of those people who said I can’t draw, therefore I’m not an artist. But I knew I was highly creative, that it was the one thing I was confident of. I also was a person with undiagnosed ADD, with symptoms of dyslexia, which many creatives seem to have, or other similar learning challenges that helps them think and experience the world differently. I was labeled as lazy, a dreamer, lost, damaged, intellectually challenged. Very misunderstood and mischaracterized by my parents. Nevertheless I was actually subconsciously and secretly working on artistic ideas, inventions, stories, and poems as a child.
I eventually overcame these painful labels on my own, with determined work. I found my own work-arounds to get by in school with average grades. In the 5th grade, I wrote an imaginative science fiction short story that got an A+ in creativity and C- in grammar and mechanics. I submitted it to a contest and I won. It was the first creative and public success I had. I took it! From then on I worked to be a fiction writer,. I become a creative writing professor, published writer and playwright, though I still faced mischaracterizations and even some derision for my pursuit.
However, I have come to say that I had my ladder in the right neighborhood (of creativity) but on the wrong building (creative writing), trying, in a way, to prove to my parents that if I was a writer, I would be smart and successful. However, I always had the nagging desire to work with my hands. I am a very visual person and I was most interested in writing about the visual setting in short stories and much of much of my focus was painting scenes with words . Also, I had been a student of contemporary visual art and was friends with visual artists so eventually I realized I had great art ideas too.
After decades of spotty success as a short story writer, playwright and professor, somewhat proving my detractors right that I wasn’t the fabulous success they would expect, I shifted my entire life and now as a visual artist, I am having more success and finally being characterized and regarded positively as an artist – there is no doubt that I am an artist.
My learnings are you must always fight to be yourself and do what you know you were born on this earth to do – even if it takes more than half a life time. If that self is crushed by other’s judgements in early life, it can take a long time to work your way to a more positive self-esteem. Had I had more support in my early years of my visual art talents and given lessons to help me learn how to draw, guided to take art lessons instead of being called lazy and not working up to my potential, I might have had a bit of an easier time of it. Nobody really knew my true potential but me. I valued other’s judgements of me for too long. I am proud of my lifelong and diverse work in many art disciplines and I kept going until I found the right one, where I feel whole.
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 got into creating light-based sculptures, reliefs (wall hangings), and art installations after hearing an interview with James Turrell about eight to ten years ago. He is one of the original artists and founders of the California light and space movement that began in the 1960s and has now evolved into an international art movement or discipline. I connected with his personal journey and his transformational vision of what art is, or what it can be.
As a short story writer, playwright, and creative writing professor for most of my life, I found my visual creativity unleashed listening to Turrell. It suddenly was the thing I needed to do. I needed a change. I felt compelled to do stuff like that with my own take, twists and innovations. Ever since then, I’ve completely shifted away from creative writing and playwriting to this visual media. Light based art has challenged, sparked and sustained my passion (perhaps even obsession), and unending curiosity around using light and space to create art, especially since the advent of RGB LED strips and bulbs. I love using this medium (along with the everyday materials I use to build these light spaces) to investigate how the physical properties of light can transform ordinary objects or spaces into a seeming, perhaps fleeting, new dimension…or into another world.
I hope my minimalist works communicate, in form and installation, an examination of the materiality of things. From the beginning, creating light art sculptures and installations is a deeply personal act for me about bringing light into the darkness and dimness, looking at shadows, literally and figuratively, and examining the ephemeral nature of reality.
My works have been shown in galleries throughout the Rocky Mountain Front Range, From Ft Collins to Denver to Pueblo. And have been purchased by private art collectors. I am available for commissions and finding ways to activate spaces with natural or artificial light.
I make my assemblage/constructions so that they stand as sculptures in their own right, unlit. But of course they come to life in dim and darker spaces and at night.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me is to watch people interact with my work, especially children. After I have put all this thought and work to actualize an artistic idea, having worked to make a sort of immersive art work, I most want to see honest reactions, not necessarily talking about it at one of my openings with gallery visitors, though that also is very, very rewarding.
But it’s the unguarded moments I like to sneak. I like to see the whole range of reactions, from folks challenged and taking a long pensive look, to some simply ignoring the entire exhibition. It just doesn’t connect with them; others smile and nod, couples discuss (which is a goal)…”What am I seeing?” “How is this artistic experience made.” I love to see this. But children have the most authentic reactions of curiosity and delight, tugging a parent’s hand to show them. Kids don’t say this is “sort of weird” or “I don’t get it” or even “That isn’t art” or “I could do that.”
Young minds are not yet conditioned to define good art as only that of old and contemporary masters of painting. But youngsters and adolescents simply react to my unique, edgy, and conceptual art without pre-condition and that is a great joy to me to see them gaze or jump with excitement, thrilled with the intensity of colors, shapes, and textures. They understand all art intuitively (they like it or they don’t) and are quick to react one way or another. When I get chances to see these moments, they are the most rewarding because I get a sense of what’s working and what’s not. When it seems viewers really “get” the intention of my artwork, when it brings them into a moment of reflection and appreciation, that is what I live for. Art is really the only way I can give back to society, by offering thought-provoking moments of beauty that engages, as James Turrell says, “the light within.”
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
While I believe everyone is creative is some way, there are some people, I would suggest, who are born natural artists (whether or not they can paint realistically, which seems to be the criteria most people use to judge who is talented or not). They simply see and interact with the world as artists, who are a kind of rare breed. They are after ephemeral things like emotions, imagination. They also are creative craftspeople and they find ways to bring these ideas and visions into reality by building, carving, and painting, and assembling them.
Being an artist can be challenging; it’s kind of a “have-to.” You must be an artist; there is no choice really, though you may be forced to choose some sort of additional path that provides food and shelter. There is nothing else you can do as well or would rather do. Being an artist and seeing the world artistically is part of an artist’s core, a part of his/her essential being and they way they see the world. It’s not an option to not be an artist, even if you have to be one at great cost.
It’s a calling. Sometimes this calling can run counter to society’s notions of success. While you may be admired for the final products of your work, if you show somewhere and actually sell, artists can face challenging skepticism from family members and other important people in their life who are “non artists.” They don’t understand or sometimes think your pursuit is ridiculous. One hears things about artists like “who spends all of their time to make things that? It might not get bought or even seen!” Or, “That’s just a dream, not “real” job/occupation; it’s just fun play, frivolous, a waste of time.” Art is seemingly not serious to some people.
The values of an artistic life do not always sync with the values of society at large, but this ultimately allows the artist to reflect deeply and create objects of profound personal emotion that are universal and affects everyone artists and “non-artist” alike. By being outside of society somewhat, artists see and create things that reflect what people may not fully see consciously in their daily life, and thus art creates a new understanding of what’s going on in the world. Indeed, “non-artists,” especially those devoted to appreciating and collecting art because they find it meaningful, are an essential part in the survival of the arts. However, of course, as I’ve noted, the arts will always survive because artists will always create; they have to, even if they don’t sell or it is only seen in one show in a basement of a museum or gallery or restaurant or church. However, they will gladly sell or even gift it if someone loves it and needs it in their home.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stephenshugart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephenshugart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stephen.shugart.3
- Other: https://stephenshugart.tumblr.com/ https://www.edgeart.org/artists/members/stephen-shugart/