photo: Lilacs
Some say there's a dark side to all of us, particularly during dire situations that test our fragility. Mixed-media artist Joseph Mills explores this idea by showing the malevolence behind raw human emotions through aged pictures of anonymous souls, carved into glass or covered in layers of acrylic paint. He admittedly enjoys sharing the stories of the perturbed, as is seen through works like a magnified painting of Kurt Cobain's suicide letter or collages of bedraggled orphans from the late 19th century. His work is currently on display at
Chicago City Arts Gallery, and
Elastic Arts Foundation will host an exhibit in September.
I enjoyed a glass of mango nectar at his Pilsen apartment and studio, while he explained how he incorporated Kafka's deathbed letters into a few of his pieces. He also spoke a bit about his obsession with music and how a rambunctious time in Paris led to work as a writer in Lance Fung's international Snow Show, an annual collaboration between world renowned artists (including Yoko Ono) and architects. Up next: a series in which he taps into his musical sensibilities by painting scores based on famous composers like Beethoven and Mozart.
You attended Northwestern's grad school as an English major. How does an English major decide to switch gears? How long ago did this officially happen?
The "switching gears" was really more just a shifting of emphasis. I'm still exploring many of the same ideas that I was then, but now I feel like I'm able to engage with them more directly. Also, I was increasingly disenchanted with the kind of emotional distance that academia encourages; I wanted my relationship to these ideas and these writers and these artists to become more alive and more intense, and I was conscious of the fact that writing a dissertation on something is the surest way to kill any passion one has for it. Art has just proved to be a more conducive means to explore what drew me to these issues in the first place.
photo: Joseph Clayton Mills
The winters; when the weather is miserable—the sky is dark and everything is bleak—I've found that the best way to get through it is to stay home and work.
Kafka, a letter from Helen Keller, orphaned boys about to enter into indentured servitude....Why the bleak subject matters?
Did I mention the winters? But, seriously, I think that one can draw strength from an awareness of the way others have struggled or suffered and persevered. Whether it's a writer struggling to articulate something that they can only partially convey, or a Victorian waif being carted off to an orphanage, you can connect to and empathize with them. My art is a means of trying to make that moment of connection or understanding happen. One of the things that I'm interested in is how art—and I'd include literature, poetry, music—can establish an affective, emotional relationship between people.
Why do you like to mix media? What are your favorite forms to mix?
Life is messy, and the messiness of it is what makes it interesting; and, for me, the same is true of art. The juxtapositions and contrasts and connections that it can create are more compelling for me than purity of form and somehow seem more honest. Another thing that appeals to me about mixing media is that it highlights how different forms can inflect the content. The specific ways in which language becomes material is part of what I'm interested in; how a word can be changed by the kind of typeface that it's printed in, or how a certain kind of handwriting can express something that the word, as an abstraction, can't.
If you had any control over it, what would you do with the rest of your artistic life?
Hmm, I'd like to think that I have some control over it! To be honest, my only real goal is to keep finding new challenges, avoid complacency and press on—to keep drawing connections between the things that I care about.
In 10 words or less, tell the world something about you they wouldn't get from your art.
I really, really, really love Beverly Hills 90210.
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