Greg Lookerse (USA, b. 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist, author and educator based in West Michigan. Lookerse makes mixed media drawings, installations and performances.
Born and raised in Yucaipa, California, Lookerse received his BFA from Biola University (2009) and his MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston at Tufts University (2014). He has won awards and grants, exhibited internationally, and lectured extensively.
Statement
In Holy the Firm Annie Dillard paints a mystical picture of a candle as composed of wax, wick, and flame. Dillard says, “an artist lives jammed in the pool of materials” (pg 22). That is, the artist sits in the pool of wax that is melted through the candle burning.
I like to think that life is the candle and the studio is the pool of wax that forms after the candle has been burned. As the pool grows, it folds over itself, and streams spring from the solid wax like lava. Similar to lava they solidify but in a less stable state. They are wax after all, and wax tends to wane while stones appear quite solid.
There are three streams (of wax perhaps) emerging from my studio. First, I make drawings and sculptures out of common materials; second, I remix writings and texts; third, I document and perform actions in various ways. In much of my work all three of these streams are present, but most often one or two are more prevalent.
These streams emerge because of the pool of materials in which I am “jammed.” The common thread from which the streams flow is this: I am amazed that materials rearranged by artists in the past and words organized by authors before me have changed my life.
It seems absurd, which is why the artist must have faith—faith that despite all the obstacles and failures in the studio something meaningful might emerge. Reason would say that the cost of failures, that pile up like impenetrable wax walls, are not worth the few and far-between successes.
When I enter the studio, the inert materials are there, the ghosts of the past haunt, and the stories of past successes guide me. I do not know where these things will lead, but I know they will lead me if I engage with them—if I wrestle with them.
And so I wrestle things back and forth until something resonates. Because of this wrestling the work that emerges is interdisciplinary and multi-media. Even so, themes unite the various mediums of my work in the form of questions: how is religious faith and form so powerful and yet so absurd? Why does the action of the artist make even the most mundane material meaningful? Do words really make a mark on us? Are we that pliable? Can stability be achieved in the midst of a waning world?
None of the work answers these questions. Instead the work embodies the wrestle with the wax.