Today we’d like to introduce you to N. Sean Glover.
N. Sean, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m an artist, a father, and a teacher. My father is a retired Marine and my mother is a retired pediatric nurse. I grew up in five different places across the U.S., the last place I lived when growing up was Northern Virginia. I moved to Boston in 1993 to attend Northeastern University to study math, but I dropped out after one year. I lived and worked for many years doing odd jobs in Boston. During that time, I discovered that I wanted to pursue art. In 2000, at the age of 25, I gained admittance to the School of the Museum Fine Arts.
I learned fresco in 2003 while attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. When I attended Skowhegan I was unfamiliar with the fresco process. As a sculptor, I connected to the heavy labor and rich history behind making walls and painting with purge pigment. I fell in love with the medium. Today, I run the fresco program for Skowhegan and continue to make sculptural frescoes.
I left Boston for six years in 2006, living in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Along the way I earned my MFA at Carnegie Mellon University. Along with teaching at Skowhegan, I have also taught sculpture at Maine College of Art and Brandeis University. Currently I am faculty at Lesley University. I live in Roslindale, where I also have my studio.
My education is balanced by my formal training and my experience as a skilled laborer. I continue to learn from my students.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I am fortunate to make art. I am grateful for those in my life that have supported me as I have worked to become an artist. In 2002 I was randomly attacked and then hospitalized for three days. The consequential events relating to my recovery and my interactions with the legal system are deeply influential to my studio practice. While I often think about violence in its many forms, it is not overtly portrayed in my work. I know my story and my relationship to violence is not unique, but it has had a profound effect on me.
Please tell us about N. Sean Glover.
I am an artist that works with a variety and processes and materials to investigate the histories of objects, labor, and technology. While I specialize in traditional fresco painting, I am a tinkerer at heart. As a tinkerer and maker, I think a great deal about the qualities of objects and materials. These qualities are infinite, and include their shape, size, color, smell, function, history of use and design, and so on. We can perceive them separately, but every quality resonates together.
My frescoes are not affixed to walls or any architecture. Instead, they are free standing sculptures. These frescoes are often combined with contemporary objects and materials such as digital media players, robotic vacuums, and polystyrene foam. The possibility that we can combine these materials together is exciting and reflective of the radical shifts we’ve experienced in modernity.
In my sculptures, I fuse together materials and objects that do not typically coexist. I cut these objects apart, revealing leftover parts and patterns not unlike what you see in cross-sections of marble or stuffed meat like mortadella. These combinations can be supple, aggressive, and visceral.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had known how much this city would change over these last 20 years, I would have taken more time to appreciate Boston’s rich history of counterculture before much of it was knocked down for luxury shops, hotels, and condominiums.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.nseanglover.com
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