Photography student Scott Preston transferred to UNM from Louisville, Ky., where he worked at a fly-fishing store. He strives to live a fulfilling life free of obsession with material goods. He works with black-and-white film, and he's pretty good at taking night photographs.
Daily Lobo: You said something earlier about leaving too much up to the viewer. I interview artists a lot, and whenever I ask them to talk about their art, they say, "Well, I mean, it's really what the spectator brings to it." It seems like this is a cop-out. So, do you think artists should have some sort of vested intellectual interest in defending their work?
Scott Preston: Oh, definitely. You have to have some sort of purpose in doing what you're doing, whether that is just creating some sort of aesthetic masterpiece. Anytime you're doing something worth doing, you always have something that you want the viewer to think about your work. Whether that comes across or not to them is kind of a different story.. Like, you have an idea, and you're trying, basically, in photography or any form of art, whether that's dance or theater or even writing - you always kind of have a main point or idea or thesis or something. And if you don't have something that you're trying to communicate to your audience, then you're not really making art.
DL: You're not? What are you doing? What if it's pretty, though?
SP: Well, the whole discussion of what art is could go on for days and days and days, but, I mean, as what's-his-name said, "Art is not what you make or do or say; it's what you make people see." Who said that? I've got that written down someplace. Anyway, I think it's probably the best definition, 'cause, you know, what is art? Is it the urinal you knocked off the wall? Is it this painting you spent forever and a day creating? Photography - is that even art? It's a waging debate.
DL: Wouldn't that be cool if the world went to war over the definition of art? Like, how there are religious wars, but an art war?
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SP: I hope that never happens, but I think it would be cool if two people were really that set in place over what art is. As far as leaving too much up to your viewer, it's always going to be open to interpretation, no matter what. But you still want to try and guide the viewer, like, down the path that you want them to go.. If you leave so much open, people's imaginations just run wild. Is that really a bad thing? I don't know. But your intent and purpose are lost when you leave too much up to the viewer.
DL: I don't think people's imaginations really run that wild, though, because, in my experience, people don't really look at a piece of art longer than it takes to peel an orange. I don't think everyone's so enchanted as the artist thinks the viewer is going to be. Is that pessimistic?
SP: No, I think you're totally right. It's like, people create this wildly conceptual work that is enormously deep. You can stand there and talk about all the different relationships and different hidden meanings that the piece has for hours and days at a time. When anybody looks at that, do they ever really think that? And did the artist really intend to have all this crap going on in the picture? More than likely not. If you stopped there for half an hour and looked at every little thing, it might become eventually interesting. Essentially, people don't want to look at your work. If it doesn't have a visual appeal to it, it's going to be tough to hook them on your idea.
DL: How did you make this? It's like a rat nailed to a cross in front of white flowers.
SP: It's a possum. It's roadkill.
DL: And you nailed it?
SP: Yeah.
DL: Did it smell?
SP: Horribly! Like, horribly, 'cause I found them all at different times, and I was trying to take this. I gathered them all and kept them in plastic bags .. It's Edward Degas. "Art is not what you see but what you make others see."
DL: That makes sense.
SP: I was only mildly happy with this assignment. I could have done more with it.
DL: Do you have any sort of big ideas for an art piece that you would want to see executed but you don't really have the resources right now to fulfill?
SP: Oh yeah. If I had access to the materials and the tools, I'd want to do this piece where there are these projections onto a surface of water. I was thinking about it, and I'm just more concerned with actually getting that to work. I actually got it to work, but it was really difficult, and it didn't work like I expected it to at all .. I had this idea - I want to take this whole bathroom, like a bathtub, a sink, a toilet, and I wanted to - most of them can look normal, but you have to paint the inside of the containers black so you don't get reflections. And you fill the sink with water and the toilet with water and the bathtub with water and have maybe, like, a room basically where I have the projectors on the outside of the room and kind of this veil that runs around the inside so you can't really see too much of the white boards that are mounted above it. Then you have these video loops of fish. And, like, a school of fish, small fish are swimming, kind of just dart off and come back and kind of have this loop going, or jellyfish going across. And you walk into the room, and it's fairly normal, except you look into the sink and there are jellyfish going across. This bathtub full of this school of fish that's swimming. Same thing with the toilet. That's something I wanted to do.
