Interview by Jimon

1-Where do you reside and work currently?  New Haven, Connecticut

2-How would you describe Willie Stewart?  He listened to 80,000+ minutes of music last year(2020), and 2,880 minutes of that time was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

3-When did you first start making art and what led you to start?  When I was young, five or six, I was interested in writing. I’d write long winding stories in my notebooks, and have my great-grandmother, Doris, read them out loud, while I acted out the scenes. As the performances evolved, I began creating three-dimensional props, related to the stories, from cut paper that I would meticulously draw onto, creating objects with distinct characteristics.

4-What is your favorite Daft Punk song?  Teachers

5-Did you have any training for art or is it inherent?  I’m extremely privileged to have studied at Cooper Union and the Yale School of Art, where I obtained my BFA and MFA, respectively.  At both institutions, I worked with incredible artists who were extremely integral in shaping the way I critically understand and think about the whole world.

6-Best advice you ever received in regards to making art?  There’s not a song you can write, that the world can’t understand, because you’re not the smartest person in the world.” -Lou Reed

7-What influences you as an artist?  I am influenced by things in my everyday life; art, fashion, films, music, food, these are things that are there for me to disagree with as much as agree with,  and I like being influenced by these types of things, they can trigger psychological questions that chip away at me on a self critical level.

8-You have a series of work oriented around VHS tape, what was the inception of that?  I wanted to make things that considered a different understanding of how we regard and arrange time, where we place longing and what reminiscence looks like. Almost everything I make features some type of layering or nesting of images as a reference to how we organize mementos and memories. We can measure time by the length of films, identify a certain age with listening to particular songs, or associate a poignant moment to an image. I also regard occasions as a categorization of time within those works. Sentimental items, like greeting cards, bouquets or home movies, which mark a celebration or event, are only valuable to the recipient. The significance and symbolism of time is highly individual and personal, and gestures are abstract without relationships. It’s this idea of abstract-realism, as an antithesis to abstract-expressionism, that I am intrigued in since it creates a web of possible meanings from clear and recognizable things.

9-If you had access to a working time machine what period would you choose to live in?  There’s work for me to do here, and I’m not interested in leaving it. I’m so grateful to have relationships, here in the now, with incredible people I would never want to leave. I want to keep growing with them, in our time, and nowhere else.

10-The Jam’s Setting Sons or The Gift?  Setting Sons

11-Why make art?  I make art in hopes of generating conversations. Art has different levels of legibility, whereas some finished ideas can be fragmented and present as a singular “word” and other ideas with the same resolve can present as a full “sentence”. The reason I keep making new things is to improve on the conversation I have already started, it’s a type of “proofreading”, in hopes the next statement I make clarifies my point, more than the last.

12-If you were to be stranded on a deserted island and could bring one piece of art what would it be?  Jason Rhoades’s “My Brother/Brancuzi”

13-What is your favorite Sleaford Mods record?  Divide and Exit

14-How do you describe success as an artist?  If you’re happy being an artist, no matter your circumstances, you’ve found success as an artist.

15-Do you have a place/person/thing that you visit for inspiration?  I’ve always had this box of family photographs that my grandmother, Suasn, took while traveling. They’re all heavily touched and worn, 35mm “drug store” prints from the 80s-90s. I would look at those for inspiration, studying their composition and peering deep into their backgrounds for objects with the least focus. But nowadays, I try to listen to five complete albums a day, and watch at least one film every night, seven days a week. There has been something in this disciplined challenge that has helped me to find new inspiration in this daily listening and watching that has been key in my making, more recently.

16-If you could have dinner with 3 artists living/dead who would be at your table?  David Foster Wallace, Richard Brautigan, and Walter Benjamin

17-Name three things you can’t live without in your studio?  Records, pencil sharpeners, and Clif bars.

18-How would someone find you on social media?  Instagram @williesstewart

19-Do you have any upcoming shows you would like to mention?  I have my first NYC solo show opening January 21- February 20- 2021 more info at https://nicellebeauchene.com/exhibitions/willie-stewart/

20-Please name the first thing that comes to your mind while reading the following:

Art= Happy Mondays

Food= Mahmoud Elbarasi

Sports= Drawing

Politics= Fred Moten

Poor= One Rizla

God= Died

Rich= Memories

Luxury= Water

Sex= Tennessee Whiskey

Picasso= Sucks

Religion= Opiate