'Scuse me 

Do you have a minute? I was wondering if you could help me do a quick interview for an art class.

"No. Sorry. Thank you."

"I'm going to meet someone actually"

"..."

Awesome thank you so much. What's your name? Nice to meet you my name's Gray. Yeah I study art at Westmont college right up the hill. Yeah It's for a class called 4D Intermedia. You know how art is like paintings and drawings and photography and music and stuff like that? Well this is all the art that's not like that like performance and... Yeah exactly. Well I don't really have a specific set of questions to ask you but I was just wondering kinda what brings you here today? No I mean like here specifically at the beach. Yeah. Yeah.

The Concept

    During first semester junior year I would go to the beach at least once a week. I needed relaxed time alone, and with a consistent cycle of people in my room, I couldn't find it there. I would try to aim for times with few people like foggy days at high tide. Nearly nobody would be there, and I would spend hours reading, drawing, praying, meditating and writing. It rejuvenated me with the warm and the cold. The kind arm of the sun and the strengthening limb of the breeze held me close enough to return me to life. Obviously, quite fantastic. But people still populated the beach, even with the dourest weather, and I grew curious about those people and wanted to interview them, even interrogate them to find out more about them, so that's what I based this assignment around. I transformed the beach into a third space for meeting strangers over five days. 

The Execution

    When meeting someone new you have a million and a half associations before you ever speak a single word to them. People have this filter of experience placed over others that obscures what might really be there. I tried to avoid this filter by asking very vague and open ended questions. You won't be amazed by how hard people try to avoid dead air, since we all tend to do it. People would just keep talking as I wrote, so it made it easy to just get more and more info. For this piece I would collect a page worth's of info on the other person, then ask them to do blind contour portraits of each other with me. This served two points. 1: It was fun and funny, and was typically a sweet way to end the interview. 2: I wanted to incorporate some kind of portrait of the other person, but wanted to incorporate the obscurity and unfamiliarity that comes with encountering someone new. Since you don't really see the whole person, but really the initial forthcoming idea of that person in that moment. The blind contours capture this best.

The Results 

Day 1: Pierre

(Pierre was the one exception to doing mutual blind contours, but he did concede to having his portrait drawn quickly. A similar effect is achieved as he was constantly moving, and removed his hat halfway through the sketch.)

Day 2: Harlan

(Dogs and people kept coming and going during this interview, so the format is also atypical of the rest.)

Me by Harlan

Him by Gray

Day 3: Olivia

Day 4: Thea

Day 5: Kevin

    No conversation was unpleasant. I'm sure if I did this for long enough, I would find an unpleasant one, but even my rejections were either curt or polite, never rude. People on the beach are nice. They also have a lot on their minds. Everyone tried to teach me about something. I won't spoil it at all, so try to read my writing to see if you can find the person underneath, and if that's too hard, you can always try to find the people yourself. Trust me, it is invigorating.

    So invigorating, that I hesitate to write any deeper reflection out here for fear of making the art too obvious, thus preventing you from having the discovery process I did. If you're curious, go do it yourself. Trust me. I'd like to reiterate, it is enriching.