Topic • Most influential metal artist or teacher

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The question as to who is or was my major influence, as to a metal artist or teacher is an extremely hard question for me to grasp.  Especially having seemed to live several lives in one long life so far.  I still sort of consider myself a painter who is working in other media but mainly metals and video at this point.  I think Im taking the “metal” part of this topic and bending it a bit to fit my background.

I decided to look back upon my career and figure out the first teacher who liberated my thought process.  His name is Harland Snodgrass and he was my painting professor at Alfred University back in the early 70’s during my undergraduate years.  The odd thing about Harland was that by the time I was his student in painting he had declared the medium dead for himself.  I just loved the irony of it and he remained my painting teacher until I graduated, with a BFA in painting, in 1974.  Harland had started to work in a brand new medium, video, and it’s manipulation by giant computers in air-locked rooms with floating floors that had  far less power than a Nano Shuffle.  He was actually on the cutting edge of this whole new medium.  It was an amazing transformation to observe, going from painting to video, which helped me later in life to segue rather easily between media.

Now a change in direction can happen at any point for a variety of reasons.  My direction still changes, within Metals and without.  This is what keeps it alive and fresh for me over the past half a century (I’m including the serious start to a painting career at age six.)  But it was Harland Snodgrass who taught me the ease in which to work with any material and use what ever you needed.  An artist should be able to work in any medium without having to conform to just one way of thinking.  “If the only tool you have is a hammer your going to treat everything like a nail,” Abraham H. Maslow.

What Harland taught me was, to let go.  This happened at the beginning of my Junior year  after completing two years of foundation courses.  I was concentrating in painting and had kind of, painted myself into a corner that I just couldn’t get out of.  This corner was a heavy reliance on conceptualization to drive my work.  What was happening was that I was limiting myself in terms of the whole process of making art.  I was trying to create pieces that were ego or issue driven.

The magic words that Harland uttered to me at just the right time for me to hear were,” It doesn’t matter what you draw or paint, pick anything, just start and keep going.  Your ideas will find you.”  It was a fairly simple statement that had an amazing effect on me.  It took the pressure off of me rather instantly.  As the Indian Nobel Laureate, Rabindrinath Tagore said,”What seems to be coming at you is really coming from you.”   What i had learned was to embrace the whole experience of the process in order for there to be any kind of meaningful out come.  Mind, body and materials had to dance together if it was ever going to come out like the Tango. Not that you actually knew it was going to be a Tango.

Before I end this I have to mention one other person that changed my life and my work.  My son Dexter Guy Pardon who is now 11 years old.  In fact when he was 4 and I told him how much influence he had on my work he looked at me seriously and said, “Dad you would be nothing without me.”  He nailed it.

Participants:

                                      Lora Hart

Elaine Luther

                                                                   Kirsten Skiles

                                                              Marco Fleseri

                                       Angela Crispin

                                      Sherri Haab

 

Tamra Gentry

                                              Chris Parry

Lorrene Davis

                                                       Tonya Davidson

    

Tod Pardon (You Are Here)