Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Garber.
Randy, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I grew up watching my father engrave impossibly small images and letters into precious metals. Bent over his engraving block, his intent focused through an eye loop, he looked as if he was praying. I held a special kind of reverence for those tiny lines and the tools he used to make them. I watched silently, yearning to have such an intimate relationship with altering materials –what seemed like an ecstatic experience of transforming blank metal into something else. I also grew up with significant hearing loss. In fourth grade in the public schools, I was taken out of art classes and sent to lip-reading class.
Now, I transform my diminished auditory capacity into a visual experience through the alchemy of intaglio printmaking. It is process that gives me the chance to make those lines in metal that I once coveted, and to translate the experience of hearing loss into visual language that has the potential to speak to larger issues of how we communicate. My deafness resulted from extreme fevers I had in infancy, which burned and destroyed auditory nerve cells. Consequently, sounds and words are distorted and require considerable repetition to be understood. To express this in my art, I cut, carve and gouge my intaglio plates with acid and by hand to burn and maim the copper. Once inking and printing onto paper begins, I run the plates through the press repeatedly, to produce layer upon layer of information—alone each is incomplete; together they form a whole. In both my two and three-dimensional work I try to connect viewers to a world in which they are prompted to become hyper aware of how they interpret information. Meticulous, small marks and glyphs, and shadows that are visual echoes invite viewers to come close to the work in order to decipher and comprehend.
In the past decade, my work has expanded into installation and what I call a kind of hybrid sculpture: part two-dimensional print (sometimes printed on both sides) and part copper sculpture. By constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing materials, my work aims to highlight the infinite possibilities for interpreting coded information.
How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
Success is elusive…it may come as a moment of pure joy in the studio, when you realize you’ve finally broken through old habits, or when you’ve finally convinced a recalcitrant student to try something new. Curiosity and the willingness to be open to new ways of listening, seeing and understanding one’s interior and exterior worlds are essential to creativity.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
My work is included in many museums and collections throughout the United States. I will be participating in an exhibition September through November: “The image of Psychoanalysis in Art” at Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute • 141 Herrick Road • Newton Centre, MA 02459 • 617 266-0953
My work will also be included in an exhibition at Constellation Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska in October 2018. You can also visit my website, www.RandyGarber.com or visit me in my studio in Somerville, MA.
Contact Info:
- Address: Studio: 32 Clifton Street, Somerville, MA 02144
- Website: www.RandyGarber.com
- Phone: 617-851-3061
- Email: Randy.Garber@comcast.net
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Image Credit:
Stewart Clements
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