about the artist & studio
s e a n t u p a
Sean has been drawing and making his stuff all life.
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Now he's decided to make his creations publicly available.
Rosalind [as Ganymede]:
"Love is merely a madness,
and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a
whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are
not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I
profess curing it by counsel."
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-William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3 Scene 2 Line 407
aesthetic philosophy
Captivate
I create art that seeks only an audience hungry for engagement. My pieces are not suitable for mere observation; they covet attention. They beg the onlooker to pour over, to explore, and to investigate them because— in my view— a work of art is an object of time.
We live in an age of frenetic non-focus. The molasses of stress and distress percolates up from what should be the terra firma of society. It sticks to our feet and muddies our paths towards self-fulfillment. My art offers a fresh, clean bath to wash off the toils and chores of the day. It grants one permission to take a moment for one’s self and to meditate. Cast off the dread; lay down your phone; breathe a little.
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Then once one grants the work their gaze, the latter should draw them in and stretch that small moment into distraction, and then into procrastination, and then surrender and loss of resolution, and from that into trance.
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My art will enchant and entice by appearing somewhat grotesque, or macabre, or odd, or bothersome, or just not right. It should bring the staring person to the realization that they’ve spent so much effort looking at something they would normally find repelling. They wonder for a moment why it has instead provoked their acute curiosity.​​
Intrigue
They lose the game to the art; a mere image trounces their initial priorities. A phantasma on paper opens the claws that clutch the material worries of the day. They forget and let go. The image claims its bounty of attention. The audience sloughs off any remainder of challenge and resistance. There’s no more for them to do, so they simply continue to look at it. They follow every line. Account for and inventory every single splotch. Run the eyes over the contours and landscapes of exposure. They feel, they know, that there is some ‘thing’ about this drawing. Something of substance like powerful meat.
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Therefore, to view my art properly, it should not be hung up on a wall like icons or crosses or animal heads. It’s not on display. It’s not a specimen. It's not a demonstration of sacrifice. It’s a living thing that needs care and light to grow. It’s organic. It lives. It is its own thing. Do not blasphemy my work by placing it on a wall. Lay it out in front of you on a table. Like a map…of a world you are just about to explore.
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The work of art should prod its person into the giddiness of finding pirate treasure. The audience should vibrate with the sweet torture of hope and discovery. I implore you–greedily trace the wrinkles of the vellum ever so lightly with the pads of your fingertips. Anticipate what gold and glory you may find: Inspiration? The entrails of dark humanity? A magic mirror?
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Hold it. Hold it close. Though you may wonder how those marks and etches spilled over its surface, you can still feel its weight in your hands. No supernatural event corroded the paper’s blankness–it occurred by the physics of sweat and concern, of cramped hands and self-doubt.
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Then once your eyes and imagination have had their gluttonous fill, let yourself dream and drift. Nestle your over-stimulated mind into the art’s warm nest. These are the feelings I wish for the audience to experience. You deserve it— this treasure.​​
Provoke
My art rambles and meanders and many voices resound in any single piece. The details are in the devil, as they don’t say. My drawings tie together tendrils and wires into undulating sculptures that are somehow very robust and present, but also seem like they’re going to topple over in any second. You need to look at them from many different angles, at different measures of closeness and while constantly adjusting the focus of your eyes.
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Though not all are three dimensional, they each demand to be treated as such. Their permanence should not be assumed. None of them are done. And they don’t necessarily belong to me. Yes, I am their origin, their author. But there are many other things beyond me that were needed for them to emerge into existence, as I am a product of many processes and things myself. They are creatures born of stochasticity, as are we all.
They decide when to declare their independence and when they do, I must respect and abide by their wishes. This relationship between myself and my art is of mutual benefit. Once we’ve separated, I can walk away from the work and leave it in the limelight while I dissolve into shadow to take my seat with the rest of the audience.
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The piece will come into its own on stage, in the circus ring, where it sees nothing but light draped over a void that’s filled with gazing eyes. To me, that position looks parching. But to the work of art, it’s fertile hunting ground for its main prey: succulent attention. My art, like most, is narcissistic and solipsistic. It breathes when seen and wilts when ignored. I’m perfectly happy to let it enjoy the enrapture of others. I have many more things over which to toil.
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That my seat is one among all the other viewers is significant. My opinion is the same as everyone else’s. My interpretation holds no more gravity or authority than that of even a child or novice of criticism. Loitering in the audience offers me a haven in which I may critique the art with peers. I can chide it and talk behind its back. I can hurt its feelings the same as anyone. I have no extra power over it. Nor have I less.
Call into Question
​The only privilege withheld from me is a refusal of responsibility. I cannot disavow my art. Even after three crows of the cock I still fess to the fact that my works of art are my children. They are from me and I must take credit for all of them–no matter my shame or pride.
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What else are works of art if not traces of the past? These artifacts are records of my movements and my moods while I made them, but they are not mired in the flat must of the “once was.” They are never complete. If they were to ever be done, then they would ossify my past. My art would deflate into nothing but my historical residue. So they must cling to an aura of becoming, of that tension between the past- ‘the was’- and the future- ‘the possible’ (but not the ‘will be’). The audience can only engage the art in its home terrain: the present, otherwise known as the bond between memory and expectation.
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As one traverses the path of these ‘maps,’, one sees the strokes of ink and carbon with which I engraved it in both angst and care. The observer becomes cognizant that someone, another human being, did this. That someone, through techne and labor made this piece of art happen; and they are calling out to the audience from a prior time. The audience will ponder why the artist did a particular thing, didn’t do something else, or find wonder in abstract shapes that, when puzzled together, make recognizable forms of the familiar. Hopefully, the lines and shades and shapes will stoke marvel from the embers of imagination.
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In so doing, the audience not only engages with the art, but also with me and my physical language. The viewer re-enacts the act of creating art by pretending to compose the same lines and shades. For a brief moment, my spirit from that time frozen on paper is thawed out and takes possession of the witness. They disentangle the music of my labor, crowded with notes and white noise, in the search for re-creation.
My highest aspiration is to create art that serves as a vessel of communion between me and any other person who interacts with it.
