Sterlin Ruby

Sterlin ruby

First off, I wish that he had had a little more time to speak. He seemed to trail off into little side thoughts and tangents that were at most times difficult to follow. I also wish that he had been able to show and explain a few pieces of his work prior to beginning his interview so that we as the listeners had some sort of reference point as to where he was going and what he was referring to and talking about-what kind of artist he was or what type of medium he predominantly worked in. Because he didn’t do this I had to conjure something else in my own head of what he was talking about. It would have been very helpful for me because as everything he was saying was fairly interesting to me I still felt like I was very much in the dark at times and coming into a story half way through with no background story. Either that, or I had hoped he’d been guided and directed by his interviewer a little more to keep him on topic, corral him and make him aware of timing and staying on some semi-cohesive track. It felt disjointed and random. Perhaps that is some of his charm. I really enjoyed hearing about his childhood and how he grew up in a foreign country for much of his early years and then immigrating to the states where his father was from. The fact that his family always seemed to live with a large number of people I thought to be important. It didn’t seem to me that his immediate family fostered art with him as a child, but I wonder if any of the people that they lived with or any of their house-guests had some sort of influence in that realm of art with him. If there was anyone in particular that really got him thinking about art of appreciating it. His path was intriguing. Construction, music, skateboarding and then feeling like he needed to figure out what to do with his life. His very traditional artistic schooling once he decided to ‘do something with his life’ and after a friend of the family got him into the school was inspiring in that he started doing something with himself a little late in the game after working manual labor jobs and being a musician but still succeeded into what he is today. It seemed to me that he adapted to school life fairly well and that he gained a lot of knowledge while he was at the very traditional art school learning all the basics in many disciplines. His school transitions were not what I was expecting. He became seemingly and intensely philosophical. His schooling path got really intense. When he finally started talking about sculptural pieces that he had been working on it was really nice to have a visual to his work but I didn’t necessarily grasp his intent with it. The bus piece and the prison cells didn’t make sense to me, or perhaps I just didn’t identify with it. I can’t really put my finger on it. It was definitely impressive but it just didn’t resonate. Nothing that he spoke of leading up to that last bit correlated. All in all it wasn’t my favorite interview on the planet, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Kalee Peters