A Rousing Conversation with Ian Carr

Photo Credit: Ian Carr

Ian Carr is a visual artist who, as an artist Ian, gravitates towards sculpture because, as he says,” I live in a physical world. We as people have daily lives filled with and dependent on buildings, and streets, and bridges, and machines, and movement through these connected planes.”

Through sculptures that spontaneously form and rise from the means of construction and the materials and tools, He gains access to heavily dictate the outcome of each piece. He lets the materials and forms he is working with have the power to allow them to be used for their abilities and strengths, as he states, “I perform merely as a liaison between the raw material and the finished work.” This whole process for Ian is somewhere between an emulation of and a reaction to the world around him, Inspired sometimes by observing from an acute point of view and sometimes stems from a grand and omnipresent perspective.

His works become about the unique spatial and material relationships within each piece while remaining conscious and open to the connections that can be made to our own real-world space and situations. Rather than focus on fame and exposure, Ian focuses on creating art that speaks to the experience and allows him to draw from not just figures and people but also from his personal experience towards these interactions.

I had the pleasure of asking Ian what book he would turn into a visual piece of art, his tiny desk series, and so much more.

UZOMAH: What has shaped your artistic process?

IAN: The simplest answer would be the world around me, the everyday. Every day, I move through the city, and there is steel and concrete and text. Glass and right angles: mass and movement. I imagine the buildings are moving past me instead of me past them. My appreciation and marvel for the urban environment was most certainly triggered by my growing up as a die-hard skateboarder and graffiti writer, looking at the city through a different lens with different goals.

“Efficacious existence is the only real beauty,” or something close to that, is a term coined by the Constructivists that has always resonated with me. The building stands as a monument unto the work that it took to create and construct. The fact that it stands is the proof of its success, and that is something I do find beauty in.

TDS No. 9 Tiny Desk Series No. 9, 2019, wood, cardboard, aluminum, and aerosol paint 20 x 34.2 x 2.3 cm.

U: What book would you want to turn into a visual piece of art or use as an inspiration?

I: What first comes to mind is the short piece by Kafka called The Way Home, translated by Michael Hofmann. Nothing really happens. The main character is walking home and feeling confident, and it’s enough to make him feel as if the world was made just for him, that he is the center, and it connects harmoniously to everything he sees or passes by. But the feeling doesn’t last.

Untitled (Sanayi No. 2), 2017, Steel, aerosol paint, prefabricated hardware 27.5 x 5 x 8.5 inches (70 x 12 x 22 cm)

U: Please explain your Tiny Desk series.

I: I started to make these small-scale, wall-hanging sculptures after I had found myself suddenly without a studio. I was working as a custom art framer at the time and would take home the scrap materials. I am particularly proud of these works because it sort of gave me a “proof-of-concept”. That the ideas I have about my own work, being in and around efficacious existence, and the tools and materials available to me heavily dictate the outcome of each piece. I was able to still “speak the same language” as my earlier and continued body of work with the minimum amount of tools and materials, comparatively. By taking the scrap ends from the materials used to frame famous paintings at my day-job, and using them to create new works of art at my home at night on a tiny desk that still had all the subject, content, and context as my larger, more complicated works, was a huge success in my opinion. The actual name, “Tiny Desk Series,” was taken from the YouTube NPR show with the same name. It is a show where very big stars perform in a very small, intimate setting, and I thought it was appropriate to use it as both are doing a lot with a little, in a sense.

U: What is your favorite medium in which to create and why?

I: Sculpture is the medium. If drawing and painting are chess, then sculpture is 3D chess. Simple analogy, but it is true. Within sculpture, there are physical elements that have to be considered and because we live in a 3D world, and art is supposed to be some sort of truth, reflection, or otherwise, then sculpture is probably the best way to accomplish something. I like to tell people that my sculptural work is the burrito, and as you eat a burrito (build a sculpture), bits and pieces fall out onto your plate. These bits and pieces are the drawings, paintings, and other material sketches that are produced almost as a byproduct of my sculptural process. So it all has value and is connected, whether it’s a little sketch or the whole enchilada.

TDS No. 18 Tiny Desk Series No. 18, 2020, wood, cardboard, aluminum, and aerosol paint 26 x 15.5 x 2.1 cm.

U: What is the hardest thing about constructing sculptures that many might not think about?

I: When your preferred materials are steel and other tough, heavy stuff, a lot might think of the weight of it all, and yes, it all gets heavy very fast, so finding a studio with the right accessibility becomes an issue, but the space needed to have the machine that cuts the material is what you need to account for. Because steel is so hard, it needs a powerful tool to cut it, and these things aren’t cheap, and they’re not small, so the overhead of making sculpture is exponentially more than painting, for example. And then, of course, with sculpture, there's always a storage problem.

ROARKISM I, 2018, steel, wood, household and aerosol paint, steel hardware 86 x 57 x 23 cm.

U: What is your favorite material to use when you sculpt?

I: The materials I use are always a reflection of the world we live in. They don’t build houses and skyscrapers out of ceramic, so I have no interest in using ceramic. And I must say that when I think of the word ‘materials,’ it’s not limited to steel or wood, for example, but also color, text, gesture, and form. These things are considered materials in my work. When using chalk to make a symbol or character on a steel sculpture, something happens. Not only are the chalk and steel materials in the artwork but the choice of using chalk specifically and the gesture of marking something both become material as well. When I use text in my work, it is there as another color in my palette and once again is chosen for its proximity to the world we live in.

Humvee Hip-Hop 1 , 2023, Charcoal, acrylic, and pencil on paper 11 x 8.5 inches (28 x 22 cm.)

U: Do you have authors that have impacted your artistic style?

I: Authors, not so much as graffiti ‘writers’. Text and letters have always been interesting to me from a young age. Seeing the graffiti in New York City as a child had me drawing letters and words, so there was a big impact on my artwork from the physical act of writing, of drawing letters, fonts, and signage, but not from literature. As one skates through the city, you get flashes of words and colors, and you’re never still long enough to read more than that.

TDS No. 10 Tiny Desk Series No. 10, 2019, wood, cardboard, aluminum, and aerosol paint 23 x 15.5 x 2.0 cm.

U: What is something in art you wish you could do but have yet to explore it?

I: I would like to build on a truly architectural scale. Imagine the materials, engineering, and manpower used to build a skyscraper. Imagine if that same amount of money and resources were spent on making an artwork of true architectural scale. A useless, uninhabitable sculpture. The world would never allow it, but I imagine just how physically huge art could be with the full force of human ingenuity behind it.

For more information about Ian’s artwork, please visit his website here. You can also find him on Instagram here.