Brian Chippendale interview – part 2

Earlier this week I posted a link to my review of “Human Mold: New Growth by Brian Chippendale” now at Stairwell Gallery in Providence. Yesterday I posted the first half of my May 16, 2008, interview with Brian Chippendale. Here are the concluding excerpts:

• Fort Thunder “would have hit a wall one way or another, I think. And I don’t think I could live in a huge warehouse with like 15 dudes and 10 cats and one cat litterbox. So I’m kind of happy it ended when it did or how it did or something. But I’m not happy that Providence is a more cramped, expensive place where people can’t get studios that they want.”
  
  
• “Since that time I’ve had a hard time investing in a space as like the end all product of all my art making. Fort Thunder was the big project, it was just like one big painting, in my mind, that was being worked on.”
  
  
• “Providence is actually still pretty awesome. It’s kind of more behind closed doors in a way.”
  
  
• “There have been great years since that time, like a few years after that there were three or four years where there was a ton of [music] show spaces around the corner from here. Munch House was one of the places. Red Rum is one of the places. That’s still there as a practice space but they don’t really do shows. There were a few years in this culmination where there were like six venues in this two-building complex and people were having shows all the time. And then it got condemned. And that’s where I was before here. And everyone got kicked out, like 60 people got kicked out over this four day period. Like the coldest week of January. It was like 2002. Fort Thunder left in 2001. Well maybe it was 2004. So there’s been good stuff, but there hasn’t been a place as big and open as Fort Thunder was, I think, since that time. Providence hasn’t had a comfortable medium-sized venue in any fashion since that point. Which has been a bummer. Like all the really comfortable places that make you feel like they’re more artsy and they’re more open and you can be more creative, they’re just tiny little places.”
  
  
• “Music and art were sort of entwined back then. When Christopher [Forgues] has a show, you go over there and he lives with a few people, and they do paintings and stuff too. So you’re in there and you see what’s going on. But for a while with Fort Thunder and that place over there, it was like Troy and Oak Street, a lot of people were having shows in their spaces and they were all making art too. So you were doing music, but you were seeing, it was like a venue for people’s art too. Now there’s just a couple little tiny places where you get that same feeling of I’m seeing music but I’m surrounded by art, and it all makes sense together.”
  
  
• “I’m just trying to make all-encompassing experiences. I think it’s just like trying to make intense moments. I know why I’m attracted to drumming specifically, because drumming, at this point in my life, it’s become a stabilizer for just being healthy. It’s a real physical experience. It’s just super fun. Sometimes I’ll go and I’ll drum. It’s the same thing, I bike as well. And I went for a good bike ride last night. You’ll be biking or drilling on a walk or if you’re just moving, and you’re hopefully not getting too distracted, you can just work through ideas.
  
  "So sometimes I’ll be working and I’ll get stuck so I’ll just sit down at the drum set and I’ll just play something that’s as stupid as I can. And then I’ll just think, I’ll think about the story I’m working on in a comic, or the way to finish an image, or just what the next idea is. Because it just gets adrenaline flowing and when the adrenaline’s flowing your mind just like gets to a clearer state. And the same when I play drums, I’ll play for like an hour and by the end I’ll literally get to this point where I’ve forgotten all my issues for the day. Again through adrenaline. The kind of music I play it just gets you to this other point. And then sometimes I’ll have drawing paper in there. So I’ll drum and drum until I get to this sort of ecstatic point and I’ll just run over and draw some shit.”
  
  
• “So in a weird way they’re all processes to get me to that ecstatic place.”

Also check out photos of Chippendale's studio.