a visit with Eric Farache
How do you navigate the art world?Alas, that is very hard nut to crack for myself at least. Loop has afforded me the opportunity to raise my own profile but to be honest, I don't know where I put my decoder ring to really get a lock on the art world. Like many other artists, I have tried group shows, facebook pages, Saatchi Art profiles etc., I am not sure how that helps really.
Last year, I was in the The Artist Project, and that seemed to introduce my work to a entirely different group of people, frankly I am always trying to figure that out.
What themes seem to reoccur in your work?
Sexuality and fantasy have always been a theme in my work for the past 10 plus years. This sexuality can take on many forms, there was a sexual ambiguity to my older GIJoe toy photographic work. My more recent watercolours ( like in my Loop show Life Lessons and Quixtopia explored sexuality of boys as they become men and confront the ideas of fantasy vs. reality.
I am fascinated about the facades we project, whether our sexuality is, in essence, a truer more naked version of our personality or another kind of mask we wear. Our personality/psyches are so complex, I try to figure out what causes people to act the way they do and sometimes, I try to discuss that on watercolour paper.
What is your biggest challenge to creating art?
At this moment, the biggest challenge for me is carving out the time for art, I have a 2 kids under 4, there is not a lot of time left for artistic practice or what Woody Allen summed up as the desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. And then see if I can get them mass-produced in plastic."
So I tend to work in fits and bursts, the challenge is continuity and to maintain interest in ideas from one break to the next. I seem to work in a naturally split way, between painting and photography and now comics, the challenge can also be to stick with one thing till it is completed before moving on.
What are you currently reading, listening to or eating that is fueling your inspiration these days?
I have this graphic novel I started years ago that I have committed to myself ( and now you dear reader) of finishing, so I keep looking at different graphic novels and various old comic books to contrast what I am doing. I had really racked up some library fines when I noticed this massive book, called the "someday funnies' at Riverdale Library. It is a collection of comics about the 1960s that were complied in the 1970s but the editor could not get it off the ground for another 30 years, it was just terrific story telling often in very small space. The pace of my novel is fast and so is the speaking voice, it is in a kind of first person so I noticed some of Dylan's personal story telling seems to stick in my mind when I am working.
I am also very influenced by coffee to be honest, I have about 3 americanos or macchiatos a day. I am far too easily found at Jet Fuel or Rooster Coffee House, I need to work on that.
Do you have a day job - does it influence your practice?
It allows me the luxury of paying for some things so that is an influence! I have worked in commercial photography for almost 15 years now (...egad) I work often as a photographic assistant, which basically means running computers, taking care of lighting ( or more often then naught, getting in the way...) I started working with photography after including a photographic component in my final of my MFA, it got me intrigued and I kept at it. Digital started soon after and by 2004, I was already pretty sick of the technical pursuit. So, my photographic work with the Holga non digital 'toy camera' is in essence a reaction to my day job, wanting to do something different, less precise and more fun.
Thanks Eric for your studio peek!
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