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The Balancing Ira Cummings Ira Cummings is one of those rare people who sees complexity in contradictions and harmony in chaos. A quiet, reserved man in his late twenties, he is on the verge of graduating from the often foreboding status of emerging artist; a change appropriately accompanied by a change in what he prefers to call ‘visual language.’ Technically proficient and conceptually grounded, Cummings creates with a tentative confidence that, when in force, is more an expression of intuitive knowledge than ego or superciliousness that characterizes many young artists. Such a quality gives Cummings an air of maturity and his work a tempered freshness. In Spring 2006, Kasini House commissioned a print from Cummings to commemorate Burlington, Vermont’s First Friday Art Walk. The image of the print is currently being used as the face of the event in posters and other media. Cummings produced a limited edition of thirty etching and aquatint prints which are available for purchase through ARTSHOP. Ric Kasini Kadour spoke with Cummings about the First Friday Art Walk 2006 Print and how he goes about making art in general.
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KADOUR: How do you create? CUMMINGS: I try to make marks every day. I think that’s important. I draw to clear my head and get rid of some of the things that I don’t otherwise want occupying my thoughts. A lot of times my drawings don’t have much to do with my prints in the sense that I don’t usually do a drawing and say, oh, that’s something I want to develop further. Because a lot of the times I work on my prints the same way that I do my drawings. A lot of my work is etching, so I work the copper plates a lot like I would a drawing. The plate evolves as I see fit. It’s a very organic process in a way, shaping and adding and subtracting until I find the point of balance, when adding more is going to be destructive. KADOUR: Can you describe the process of creating an etching from a technical point of view? You have a copper plate in front of you. How do you start? CUMMINGS: I start with a pretty standard hard ground, which is a very linear way of working, which is very much in line with the way I draw and it allows me to draw more or less the way I would with pencil and paper. It’s very fluid and very easy to draw on. I usually evolve that for a while and then I move on to aquatint, which allows me to add tone. Usually, around that point, I decide whether it needs to have color. I’ll use whatever technique adds the most to the image, so I’m not married to etchings once I start. I’ll switch it up and add in some relief or a collagraph or glaze as I feel is necessary. The image determines the medium for me. KADOUR: Can you describe the tool you use to do the initial linear drawing on the copper? CUMMINGS: I use a standard etching needle. I think I got it in Italy. It’s stainless steel, pointed, sharp needle with a cork handle. KADOUR: For aquatint, can you describe what’s involved in that process? What do you use? CUMMINGS: Traditional aquatint is putting a fine dusting of rosin on a copper plate and heating it to fuse the rosin. I have an airbrush that I spray screen print screen filler onto the copper plate, because rosin, if you inhale it, sticks to your lungs. It’s some pretty nasty stuff. The airbrush gives you much finer aquatint and is non-toxic. KADOUR: How do you decide on color? CUMMINGS: I like the qualities of black. I try to exploit and use it a lot because there is a traditional history of just using black with etchings. You can build up such a wonderful black with etching. Sometimes I use color. Sometimes as an exercise, because there’s something that I’ve seen and want to experiment with. I just feel it’s warranted with the piece. KADOUR: In terms of finishing up the process, once you’ve worked the plates. Where does it go from there? How is a print done? In terms of “finished”, not “executed”. CUMMINGS: It feels right. It’s that moment of balance. It’s usually somewhere in the nature of ten to twenty trips into the acid bath, where I have worked the plate enough, but not too much. Any more would send it in a downward spiral of something that I hate and don’t want to ever touch again. KADOUR: So when it’s done, you know it’s done and you call it. CUMMINGS: Yes. KADOUR: Would you describe that as an act of conviction or an act of faith? CUMMINGS: I guess an act of faith. More than anything, I trust that this is the time. There’s a certain point. Every artist feels that point. KADOUR: Kasini House approached you to create a print. We set some parameters in terms of the size of the print and what we wanted the print to convey in terms of having a connection to First Friday Art Walk and this moment in Burlington’s art history. How was that process for you? CUMMINGS: I was both the designer and the artist at the same time. It was very difficult internally. The dialogue in my head was very back and forth. I felt that there were two different goals, two objectives. KADOUR: How did you work through that? CUMMINGS: Our first meeting with the sketch. I did something that I think was safe, it was similar to the work I had been doing and not stuff that I am doing or want to be doing. That was the wrong way to do it. In the end, I think that doing a poster the way I would want it to be done, as someone who is an artist in Burlington and is aware of what people do for the South End Art Hop, for First Friday Art Walk, for gallery openings and who sees the postcards and the posters and stuff like that. I think that’s doing something that I’d like to see. KADOUR: What does the print say? CUMMINGS: I didn’t start out trying to convey anything or have an agenda behind the work. It evolved to a point where it stood out to me as something that suggested what lies beneath the surface in Burlington: This artistic tension that I feel constantly going to galleries and being an artist here. In talking with other artists, it’s always “Oh, yeah, I’m an artist, but I don’t know where to show” or “I don’t know how to make a living doing this.” Jaded tension, I guess. There are a lot of creative people, people doing interesting stuff, but there’s always that tension of trying to make a living at it, like there is everywhere else. You couldn’t walk down a street in Burlington, throw a rock, and not hit an artist. It’s the highest per capita of artists of anywhere I’ve ever been. KADOUR: What does the print look like? CUMMINGS: It’s two elongated forms coming up the sides from the bottom of the print towards the top, meeting towards the center in the top. They are almost muscle forms or maybe tendons. There’s this sketchy, scribbly texture in the background. The two forms are dark sepia. The background is a grassy green. KADOUR: How do you feel about this print? CUMMINGS: I’m happy with the way it came out. I tried a couple of different things as far as execution. Some things didn’t work and I had to backtrack. That’s the way it goes. I was excited to arrive at the final product. The sketch that I gave you was digital. That’s the first time I’ve done much digital sketching. It’s an interesting process and an interesting way to start the creative process, something I’m hoping to explore more in the future. I was happy that I was able to take the initial concept and work that into a copper plate. KADOUR: There are two things that are different about this print in comparison to your previous work: One is that there are only two forms in this print. That is an example of that refinement you were speaking about earlier. The other thing is that in this work, the forms are not entirely in view. The forms extend off. Where in Randy, for example, they’re gathered in the scene that’s being presented in the image. In the First Friday Art Walk print, it kind of goes off to the side, and there’s a shift in perspective. Is that significant? CUMMINGS: I’m making somewhat of a conscious effort to explore the picture plane. There was a point where I looked back at my work and felt a lot of it was too balanced, maybe…then I went with something that was a little too symmetrical. I saw a lot of that pattern developing. To a certain extent, I’ve been consciously avoiding things that are too centered. Although the two forms are near symmetry in the print, it doesn’t feel too centered to me. KADOUR: What connection is there for you between the image in the print and Burlington’s art community. CUMMINGS: There are times like First Friday Art Walk and the South End Art Hop where you see the vitality in this town. You see the vitality of the artists here and see all the stuff that they’re doing. Those are the things that I look forward to. KADOUR : In an earlier artist statement, you wrote: In our world, complexity abounds. The intricate structures of the natural and man-made environments lie just below the surface. Often, this complexity can seem overwhelming, and we cannot help but confront it. Each person has their own method for coping. Some distance themselves, dulling their senses, and ignoring everything beyond the immediate. Others seek to catalogue and organize. By succumbing to the depths of the external and the internal, they seek to achieve a balance. I am one of these people. Are you someone who is overwhelmed by complexity or are you someone who craves simplicity? CUMMINGS: Ultimately both. As it relates to my art, complexity is something that is unavoidable and something that everybody has to deal with in some sense or other. In that anal aspect of my character, I always seek out simplicity and strive towards it. Life is cyclical, alternating between complexity and simplicity. I strive to get rid of clutter in life. I have a reputation of being anal. I’m sure that’s a valid description. I don’t like a bunch of stuff lying around. KADOUR: Where does that comes from? CUMMINGS: I don’t know. In some level, it’s a reaction to the materialism of American culture. Stuff is pushed on us a lot of the time and having too much stuff everywhere freaks me out. Kadour : I am someone who lives in chaos and probably thrives in chaos, thrives at the extremity. I have trouble understanding what you mean when you say “balanced” or “harmony” or “simplicity”. These are concepts that are ultimately foreign to me. For someone like me, how would you explain those notions? CUMMINGS: For a long time, I thought that I was an expressionist in the sense of German Expressionism. That was mostly when I was a teenager and, like every teenager, I did that angst-y, dark, kind of boring, trite artwork. After I went through that period, my work stopped being about an emotional twitch reaction to situations and became, for lack of a better word, meditative. That’s what I was talking about in my artist statement…the “automatic” quality to my work. When I draw and work on prints, it is an act of clearing my head. At the same time, I think about the other things I have to do that day or something that’s bothering me or something I’m looking forward to doing later. It’s about being inside my head and balancing that as well as balancing my work. KADOUR: It all sounds a little Buddhist. CUMMINGS: I love and am fascinated by Asian culture, which started through my love of graphic novels, the sequential art form has a long history in Japan and China, Southeast Asia. Obviously, it’s blowing up in pop culture now. I don’t think there’s any artist out there who wouldn’t acknowledge the mastery of Japanese woodcuts and how they influence Western art, and, certainly, they influence me. I also appreciate their sense of balance, especially the Japanese sense of balance. I’m fascinated by otaku, which is a subculture that thrives on Japanese comics and animated films and the Godzilla-type movies, the campy B-movies. KADOUR: So there is a strong influence there? CUMMINGS: Yes. I don’t want to say it’s literal and I don’t aspire to be like one of those Buddhist artists where there’s a spiritual meditation with my work. There is certainly an appreciation of Eastern philosophy. KADOUR: Getting back to this notion of balance, then, is it fair to say that your sense of balance is something that you have faith in on a deeper level. CUMMINGS: I guess it alternates. I’m not all that confident in my ability to isolate that moment of balance. That moment of balance is when I’m creating something and I say, “OK, that’s it. It’s done.” Usually, I don’t touch it again. I hope that I find that moment. I’m not always sure that I do. Hopefully, I’m able to isolate that moment, because that’s what I’m looking for. KADOUR: Would you say your work is at a crossroads? CUMMINGS: In the past six months or so, I’ve gotten to a place where I’m more confident in my print work and my ability to work out my ideas visually. My work has become, in the past three months, more simplified, more focusing on two or three forms in their own characteristics, instead of exploring the relationships between different forms, as the work a few years ago was doing. KADOUR: Is it fair to call this minimalism? CUMMINGS: Only relatively. I don’t like minimalist art. It’s kind of boring. Not that I don’t appreciate it, but I don’t have a big desire to stand there and look at it for hours. I hope people can look at my work and connect with it more than a minimalist sculpture. Simpler is the best way to put it. In the past, to make an analogy, some of my work was more like those movies where they get fifteen different stars to be in it and none of the characters develop. Now, I’m trying to develop one or two or three characters and examine them under a microscope and explore their idiosyncrasies. KADOUR: It’s a process of refinement, not necessarily a step towards minimalism. CUMMINGS: That’s definitely how I’m looking at it. KADOUR: Do you have a sense of where this transition period is going? CUMMINGS: No, if I knew, then I’d be there.
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