Q&A and Studio Visit with Bryan Boone
Quick Q&A with Objets Trouve’s Bryan Boone.
Q: What are you working on right now?
A: I’ve just completed the first painting in a series and I am preparing for the next few works. I’m also making some sculpture again and fabricating a wall sculpture.
Q: What was your inspiration for this work?
A: The geometries of various landscapes — both natural and from our built environment — are my source material, if you will. The designs for this series have to do with the play of light. I want to capture a certain sense of motion, like walking through an environment and streams of sunlight or city lights are sort of fluttering or flickering as they filter through obstructions.
Q: Which artists have inspired your work, in general?
A: Much of my inspiration actually comes from design and architecture, and less from what we call fine art. So, you’re more likely to find me studying the graphic design of Scott Hansen, or pictures of a Bjarke Ingles building or Neri Oxman project than scanning through an art book when I’m in design development.
Q: When did you first know that you wanted to make art, and/or how did you start?
A: I was always an artsy kid and building or making something. I sort of rediscovered painting in my mid twenties and have been working as a professional artist since.
Q: If you could choose one word to describe what it feels like when you are making art, what would it be?
A: Meditative
Q: Who or what inspires you right now?
A: So many things, but I’m currently obsessed with studying light. I just recorded this of video in my house the other day after I noticed how the light from a window was striking a wall one morning. It was delicately buzzing with these little movements.
Q: When you think about life after COVID-19, what’s one change you hope to see in the “new normal”?
A: When expectations are shattered, they cannot be put back so easily. I think the situation highlights or magnifies many of the flaws in how we currently run societies. Health, justice, economics, all of that will be reevaluated by more people now. I hope we make some thoughtful and intentional changes to improve these things and more. I’m mindful of what I think is called "regression to the mean" — perhaps a little misapplied here, but the phenomenon that standout things that don’t fit the pattern often resolve to back normal after a bit. However, I’m cautiously optimistic, provided many people are willing to work and agitate for change.
Q: It’s a stressful, uncertain time. What do you do to relax?
A: Continuing to make and produce.
Q: What do you like about being part of Objets Trouvé?
A: Oklahoma City has many advantages for being a creative person. Low costs and a large sense of community and collaboration, but it can be a little isolated sometimes from those larger centers of gravity in the arts. Objets Trouve has a mission to be more connected with the broader creative community and expand the reach of Oklahoma artists.
