An UnsafeArt interview with Chaz dellaporta:

Interview, fall 2007, with sculptor Chaz dellaPorta:

Chaz dellaPorta, lives outside of Fairplay, a small town in Park County, Colorado. He admits he's had a great education in sculpture, technique and art history, but works hard to place all that aside with his own ego, and make what is most closely described as instinctual and is sculpture that would only come from someone working in his unique energy frequency.

usA.com: What's the purpose of art today?

CdP: Today?

usA: Not Oct. 9, 2007, but in general.

CdP: It's easier to say what will art be in 20 years from now. That makes more sense to me, only because I ask myself that, what is the point of doing what I'm doing.

You look at art history and look what was made in the 16th, 17th century, it was the power of the church the aristocracy. In the 1920s Europe, 1940s in America, found objects came in, and it was art because an artist said it was art. The wave of energy now -- the pond is so big that a ripple is disippated before it reaches the shore, but the number of people that can be reached before the energy is dissipated is amazing. There is a lot of stuff that's being made -- hey, my brother makes photographs, and you need some for your hotel, yeah, we'll buy 'em. That's not art never was.

What is the future model. Art for me is about quality of energy. If Brancusi was resonating 20 megaHertz when he produced those items that we call art, what was needed to get into that 20 mhz space. When they made it and it resonates 20 mhz. How do we acheive that today? I'm not sure what I'm resonating.

CdP: When I make something from a certain energy, from a certain space within myself, I find that I connect with other people. They connect and they usually tell me stuff that is very personal, very emotional, very private just becasue they touched the sculpture, an inanamate object. I realize I have to in a certain space: a level of calmness, clarity. Only I know if I'm in that space. However, if my ego is not involved and it's pure, then other people with know something, too. Then I've done my job. It's not about making an object. It's about keeping into that space. I need to oblige all the stuff I know, all my education, etc, but I have, first, to get into that space.

usA: As you're working on a piece do you make judgements?

CdP: I'm making it without my mind. I need a bigger word than intuition, it's spirit, it's the not tangible part of my mind, When I have these intellectual thoughts dribbling through I try to ignore them. Now, I've got some words like that's a cool shape, other that reminds me of a arm or a face, I know these words are a heads up -- I need to work on another section of the sculpture. Becasue my brain keep saying 'looks like a dog, looks like a dog.'

usA: It's important that your work isn't overly representational?

CdP: I have very little interest in telling people what to do. Instead, there is a sense of allowing.

usA: You do have to choose what to do? Do you always have to make objects.

CdP: I feel more of an affinity with three dimentions, more tangible. I've had a little experience with video and installation, and it wasn't satisfying.

 

 

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