Volunteer Spotlight: LC
Meet LC, our Saturday session volunteer, who in this interview, talks us through his experience of working with sculpture artist Joel and what he loves so much about sharing his knowledge and experience with our Saturday artists every week.
Image description: LC our volunteer is working with Joel on a tin foil and wire sculpture. They have a laptop image demonstrating a figure moving as inspiration.
What do you like about coming to Artbox and what motivates you to offer your support every week?
In art in general, it is really important to complete the discipline. It's about presentation, research, investigation and being able to make mistakes and repeat, it's like a process.
I will say discipline is my main reason, I want to stay with the process. It's really easy to remember my meetings with Joel because they are always really interesting and his approach to this kind of art is about 80s and 90s TV shows which reminds me a lot of my childhood as well.
It's really nice the mix of memories, this new kind of art and experimentation. Just this interaction between knowledge and experience.
Joel is a really experienced artist and has been working with these kinds of characters and models for a long, long, long time, learning lots, so it's about the discipline that improves my own skills.
Image description: Artist Joel is working on creating a drawing with pencil on paper around a wire frame that has been taped down as a guide. In the background he has an anatomical drawing on a laptop he is using as a reference.
How do you feel when you share your own experience , because you are very knowledgeable in digital art and in using various different softwares and your specialist puppet making skills, how does it feel to share those specific skills with Joel?
It's very interesting because sometimes I feel like I have a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things but I really don't know what it is for, so I find it special and meaningful that when I started volunteering for artbox it all made sense for me, that I can improve the skills of other artists and inspire other artists.
I also like to understand the why behind my skills more than the how, I think that's the answers that Artbox can give me. By doing meaningful art, it brings something special to my own art and my own skills.
Image description: Joel is working with LC, in the studio with Patricia who is painting a large carboard piece and Anna. Joel and LC are working on some small clay models.
How do you feel when you come into the group on a Saturday, working with all the different personalities in the Artbox Studio?
It is one of my favourite parts. It's the answer to a question that I have for a long time, about how and what an artist should be? How there is a lot of pressure in the art world about how you have to be, to be a good artist.
When you come to Artbox every saturday you see every artist expressing themselves differently, extrovert personalities, we have a noisy area and a quiet area which is extremely interesting because there is no model of how to be an artist, you don't need to follow a particular path, you can create your own path.
I think especially in the Saturday group, it is very energetic and there are so many ways to be energetic, the artists are very creative, they are really into their own pieces of art in their own way and they are also inspiring for the other artists.
At the end of the session you can see how they are inspired by each other.
The art they create represents the mix of characters in the space, their own experiences and their own way to see life.
I think that is very important to remember as artists about understanding what is life? And what is the meaning of life? The substance that makes life. Maybe it is about colour, about shape, it is a completely open question.
I think it is very open in Artbox and it is very interesting to be here on Saturday especially, it is a very special day of the week for me.
Image description: Joel is holding a hand made from clay and tape, with string at the back that pull to move the joints of the hand.
Anything else you wanted to add about your experience at Artbox?
I wanted to add that it's really important that Artbox are going for artists, it is really important to give people the opportunity to be artists as part of their life.
It doesn't matter if it is one day or two days that they can pursue the professional path of an artist, it is really important to understand that everybody has their own perspective of art.
It is not just about how to improve technique, it is a very nice space to improve your technique, but also to remember you can be an artist and be as open as you want and I think that is very important for society, trying to understand that it’s a real path it is not just a hobby, a craft, or a minor activity but it's very important for every society for recording history.
Art is usually the witness of society and history and the changes so I think that is really important and I really appreciate the work you are doing here.
Image description: LC is laughing with Joel, they are creating a wire and clay sculpture in the Artbox studio