Dug Stanat

website: www.dugosaurus.com

What do you do?Firstly, thank you San Jose Creatives for the interview!
I am a figurative sculptor. Most of my work is mixed media or ceramic.

Where can we find your work?Home website: www.dugosaurus.com
Social media: http://dugstanat.deviantart.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dug-Stanat-Art/467424890043805
http://instagram.com/dugstanat
Online sales: https://www.etsy.com/shop/DugStanatArt
Brick and mortar gallery:
FM Gallery in Oakland (solo show July and August, 2015)

What inspires you to create and how do you keep motivated when things get tough?I am inspired to create by the prospect of making something that no one has seen before. The possibility that I might stand back from a finished piece and think, “That is a fun, memorable, unique character”, drives me forward.

When I am having trouble I allow myself a break from artwork. If I am having difficulty exiting vacation mode, I like to imagine someone I respect is watching everything I'm doing...that generally gets me back on track pretty quickly.

What do you think is more important content/finished product or technique/process?
My previous response exposes my answer to this question. While I enjoy the process of creating, and the product cannot exist in its final form without the technique, ultimately my eye is on the finished product.

Who are some people who influence and/or inspire you?
With the web, influences are drops in a rainstorm, and I am soaked. However there are those that hit me like golf ball sized hail: John Kenn Mortensen's post-it notes, the artisans of Oaxaca and Bali, Bosch, and Bruegel the Elder come to mind.

What is the most incredible art moment for you so far?
I think it must be the long moment after college when I had no direction and started spending all my free time sculpting. I simply stumbled onto the path of the artist and just kept walking.

When do you get your best ideas?
I often get ideas from a couple words in a book or song, or while walking the dog and daydreaming. But I am at my most creative when I am creating: embracing mistakes and watching for forks in the trail...these lead to a more interesting final product than what my brain can achieve on its own.

What materials/tools do you use most to create your work?
For my ceramic work, there are no surprises: stoneware clay, sculpting tools, brushes, electric kiln, oxide washes, and underglazes.

For my mixed media work, I use whatever gets the job done and leads to a sturdy piece that the vermin won't want to eat. Materials include: wood, rocks, sand, wire, metal foil, sheet metal, fabric saturated with glue, epoxy sculpting putty, acrylic paints and mediums, and varnish. Tools include: saber saw, sander, drill, router, rotary tool, heat gun, glue gun, sculpting tools, brushes, and airbrush.

Are you self-taught or formally educated? How do you think that has influenced or affected your work?
I've taken a few art classes, and have found them useful, but mostly I am self-taught from books, experimentation, and time. I expect it has led to slower development and gaping holes of ignorance that I am not even aware of. Perhaps it leads to art that is more innocent in self expression.

Who would you most like to meet living or dead and why?Without a doubt I would most like to meet someone who is dead, as I have several questions no living person can answer with authority.

When you are not creating what do you like to do?My most cherished time is that spent with family and nature.

How did you learn to access your creative talents and gain the confidence to put it out there for everyone to experience?I don't feel as though I ever learned to access hidden creative talents. Instead I feel as though I have spent time creating skills that are now at my disposal. How I use those skills may be unique to me, due to personal aesthetics, sensibilities, and experiences, but the skills themselves are generic.

Regarding gaining confidence to show my work, again I think that just comes with time. I like strange characters. If you like strange characters, you might like my work. If you don't like strange characters, there is very little chance that you will like my work, and I'm O.K. with that.

What advice would you give others just beginning their creative adventures?
My previous response tips my hand here. Growing is, for the most part, about time well spent. A lot of time well spent. So time is your most valuable asset. For most of us, making time requires sacrificing sleep and/or standard of living. This can be difficult and painful, but the rewards can be great.

Dune Tran

Website: www.dunetran.com

What do you do?
I'm an acoustic indie pop singer songwriter. I play piano, guitar, sing and write songs.

Where can we find your work?
My website: www.dunetran.com, Bandcamp, or iTunes

What inspires you to create and how do you keep motivated when things get tough?Music inspires me. Emotions. Life experience. Hearing other life stories. Observations of human behavior. When things get tough and I need inspiration, I like to learn or relearn how to play favorite songs by other artists that I love. I enjoy playing classical music too. That usually gets me out of my element and in the zone. Discovering new music inspires me too, so listening to Pandora really helps with that. Going to open mics. Seeing and hearing other musicians and songwriters achieving goals and producing new work is also inspirational.

What do you think is more important content/finished product or technique/process?
Both! Technique and process bring your content to a finished product. ;)

Who are some people who influence and/or inspire you?I like to focus on other female singer songwriters and the list has definitely changed over the years, but off the top of my head: Regina Spektor, Lykke Li, Tori Amos, Aimee Mann, Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amy Winehouse, Santigold, Ingrid Michaelson, Sia. Lana Del Ray, Fiona Apple, Adele, Birdy, Holly Conlan, Joni Mitchell, Sarah Mclachlan

What is the most incredible art moment for you so far?
Having my songs being placed for use on TV

When do you get your best ideas?
When I'm alone playing my piano or guitar and singing. Sounds and melodies inspire a theme. In those melodies, there's an emotion and a story to uncover. It's kind of like a puzzle. A crafty poetic way of expressing thought and emotions in few words to connect and be relate-able to others. I like listening to songs that make me feel something or make me feel like "yeah I've been there too. I know how that feels."

What materials/tools do you use most to create your work?
Piano, guitar and voice

Are you self-taught or formally educated? How do you think that has influenced or affected your work?
Partly self taught and partly through education and teachers. Teachers helped provide foundation and technique. Education helped me learn about how to use software for recording. Self taught writing has given me the freedom to be creative.

I've also done a lot of research online and I've been to several workshops. This past year I went on a camping rafting songwriting retreat in British Columbia which was led by a couple amazing teachers (Jason Blume and Mary Gauthier). They were both so different but so influential, moving, reassuring and supportive. Hearing stories from them and others was so inspirational. I didn't feel so alone about being a songwriter. Not very many people I know personally are songwriters and it was comforting and energizing to be surrounded by a passionate group of songwriters.

Who would you most like to meet living or dead and why?
I would love to meet Amy Winehouse. I find her lyrics so raw and truthful. I also love her voice and songs. I love her ability to express herself. I find as an artist that it is important yet is hard to bare your soul completely. It's a challenge, but it's what I admire most about artistic expression. It's therapeutic and healing to write.

When you are not creating what do you like to do?
I love to hike, do yoga, listen to music, and play volleyball

How did you learn to access your creative talents and gain the confidence to put it out there for everyone to experience?
Writing and listening, rewriting and re-listening, taking time away from it and then repeat until I think it's good enough. I wouldn't have been able to do it without the support of my producer Joshua Rumer.

What advice would you give others just beginning their creative adventures?
Start small. Start simple. Don't be judgmental and hard on yourself.

Put together a concise, complete, coherent thought and purpose in your song.

Don't be so rigid in process. Some songs can start with just lyrics, just melody or just chord progression or just a drum beat. Try anything. Whatever brings out your inspiration to create. Whatever moves your soul and moves emotion.

Use the voice recorder on your phone. Save your work. Put it away and listen later. Make notes. Write down ideas for lyrics where ever and whenever inspiration hits you. Collaborate. Try playing a new instrument.

I've taken a whole bunch of classes around the Bay Area. The first songwriting class I took was through Carol McComb at Gryphon Guitars. Late on, I took a songwriting class at Foothill College because

I was stuck in a rut and it helped force me to write. I took a jazz piano class at De Anza. I also took plenty of music production classes at Foothill College. Try everything and anything. Craigslist is a great resource for meeting other musicians to play with, buy instruments, find teachers, etc.

Stephanie Metz

Website: www.stephaniemetz.com

What do you do?
I am a sculptor, a wife, and a mom to two young boys. For the past twelve years I have been experimenting with the medium of felted wool, creating forms that embody ideas about the physical body and push the limits previously assigned to wool and felting.I came to fiber from a background in sculpture, and I address wool in a way similar to the way I would build up mass in clay and remove it in stone. At the University of Oregon I focused on the human form and the traditional materials of sculpture; I only discovered wool felting several years after college and a production art job that left me frustrated. I became involved with running Works/San Jose, our local nonprofit art and performance space, and along the way learned the business of being a professional artist even as I was experimenting with the wool felting that would become my main focus. Over the years I’ve been invited to show my work across the United States and Europe, I’ve taught my technique, presented lectures, sold artwork, and received awards and grants. I have a very full life with kids and a sculpture career, and I owe a lot of my sanity to my very loving and supportive husband. My work and life continue to evolve; as my kids get older I have longer stretches of time to work while they are at school and increasingly interesting experiences with them that feed into my practice. In the studio I seem to always set new challenges and enjoy meeting them. Despite my relatively unique material I find I have a whole community network of artists from a variety of disciplines with whom I can trade ideas, techniques, and professional practices.

Where can we find your work?
I don’t currently have gallery representation; I show my work out of my San Jose studio at the School of Visual Philosophy during Open Studios and by appointment; my work can be seen online through my website www.stephaniemetz.com and some is offered for sale through my Square Market page at www.square.com/market/stephanie-metz. I currently have work in two shows touring the U.K., and I’m finishing work for the Rijswijk Textile Biennial in the Netherlands.

What inspires you to create and how do you keep motivated when things get tough?
I am a curious person; I stumbled across my strange medium of felted wool and wanted to learn about it and explore its possibilities. I find the experimental process itself engaging, and my material ends up influencing and steering my subject matter. I don’t have much trouble with staying motivated in the studio since I always have several different projects going at once and extremely limited time available to work on them (I have two young sons). I do struggle with a lack of motivation to do some of the other tasks associated with the business side of being an artist. I make to-do lists and love being able to check things off, and I’ll reward myself with studio-work-only time when I get administrative tasks done.

What do you think is more important content/finished product or technique/process?
Both are important to me-- the finished product is somewhat of a map of the creator’s journey up to that point. I know that when I look at art I often try to put myself in the artist’s shoes and consider what went into the making even as I consider the finished art in front of me. Every piece is also part of the larger arc of an artist’s creative output, and can give perspective on the past as well as potential future work.

Who are some people who influence and/or inspire you?
Artists Lana Wilson, George Rivera and Alan May have been some of my instructors and mentors; they are models of a healthy, productive, and sustaining blend of personal and creative lives.

What is the most incredible art moment for you so far?
That’s a tough question-- I feel like I get a lot of incredible moments when I’m working alone in the studio and in that state described as ‘flow’: wrestling with a challenge but feeling mostly confident that I can resolve it in a pleasing way. I think that is what keeps me going; I may later re-assess my success with a particular piece, but the highs I experience fairly regularly in the process of creating are extremely rewarding to me.

When do you get your best ideas?
There’s no specific best time or place-- being an artist is woven throughout my life, so I sketch or jot things down when they occur. Sometimes it’s when I’m specifically working on ideas, sometimes it happens organically. I tend to have a sketchbook and pens with me much of the time.

What materials/tools do you use most to create your work?
Wool, and sharp, notched felting needles in a variety of multi-needle holders.

Are you self-taught or formally educated? How do you think that has influenced or affected your work?
Both. I am formally educated to the tune of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the University of Oregon, where I focused on the classical figure and worked in nearly every area offered (bronze, clay, stone, metalsmithing, ceramics, printmaking) except fiber. I am largely self-taught in the use of fiber as a sculpting medium. I was introduced to needle felting through the book ‘The Felting Needle: From Factory to Fantasy’ by Ayala Talpai. From that starting point I have been teaching myself through trial and error, and my exploration continues.

Who would you most like to meet living or dead and why?
I’m tickled by the comedian Betty White-- she seems to have a great outlook on life, which she approaches with grace and sharp wit. I think I could learn a few things by spending a day with her.

When you are not creating what do you like to do?
I like to goof off with my kids, play roller hockey, read, and eat food other people cook for me.

How did you learn to access your creative talents and gain the confidence to put it out there for everyone to experience?
I knew I was an artist even as a child simply because drawing and paying attention to how things looked was hardwired into me. I knew going into college that I wanted a career related to my ability to make things, but I was not interested in being a fine artist who would sell work through galleries because I didn’t think I had anything to say to the world-- I wanted to do production work, or applied art, albeit at a very high professional level. A frustrating year of production artmaking changed my mind. I started teaching myself the business of being an artist and discovered needle felting at about the same time, even though I didn’t consider needle felted wool sculpture to be my ‘real’ artwork for quite a long time. My confidence in my technical abilities thanks to my classical art education combined with my enthusiasm for my material lets me put my work out there and not feel overly swayed by responses, good or bad. I’m ultimately doing this for my own pleasure. Okay, I’ll admit I do like it that others generally reply pretty positively, but it’s an uphill battle to convince some that what I do actually is sculpture, despite it not being made of metal, stone, or wood.

What advice would you give others just beginning their creative adventures?
I think some education in art techniques and art history can help, provided that it doesn’t replace your own voice-- you have to learn and process things and then you can set aside some and focus on others. I think a lot of art-making (and life) is about making decisions on how to use the time, materials, and energy you have currently available. Have faith in your own quirky vision-- your unique outlook on the world is the filter that creates your artwork. Don’t try to be or make art like somebody else. There’s a great quote by Georgia O’Keeffe: “I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.” Put them down, own them, do the work. Art doesn’t get made unless you make it.