Q: Hi Alexander, first of all, we would like know more about you. Tell us who is Alexander Conner, tell us something about your life and your childhood in your country.
A: Alexander Conner is an artist working a day job to afford to pay his rent, and purchase supplies for making work. These supplies consist of pens, pencils, film, paint, board, yarn, paper, and canvas. My childhood was relatively uneventful. I grew up in America in the late “Me Me!” generation of the 1980s, and in the economic-bubble-has-yet-to-burst 1990s. I have worked very hard to sublimate these early hubristic influences into a (hopefully) reserved public demeanor.

Q: What is art for you?
A: I
find that my ideas bounce around my mind so quickly, that it is sometimes difficult to concentrate. Art is the permission to take the time to concentrate on multiple aspects of one idea for a long period of time. I would also admit that there is a type of psychological purging I commit while working.

Q: Have you always been interested in arts? When did you discover that art would be an important part of your life?
A: I would say that I have always been chronically creative. As a child I built structures with LEGOs and such, used clay to make decorative little sculptures, and folded paper for hours upon end creating origami figures. In school I doodled on pages of my notebooks until I ran out
of room and they started covering my actual class notes! Art found me outright in college. I fell into a group of artists, developed an insatiable hunger for art criticism, theory, and history, and launched myself headfirst into my own developing practice, while finishing dual bachelors degrees in Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies.

Q: The majority of your artworks in meseon are photographs, Why do you choose photography as a means of expression?
A:Photography allows me to engage my immediate environment, while maintaining a bit of psychological distance from it through the camera’s lens. The latter is a wonderful bit of refuge from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I enjoy taking photographs of everything from people, to architecture, to whole environments. I primarily shoot on a Polaroid 335 Landcamera from the 1970s using Fuji FP-100C film. I like the immediacy of instant photography. While it is a little more expensive than shooting 35mm or digital, it allows almost-immediate comparison with the context the image was shot in.


Q: What concept would you like to show to your viewers? What would you like say with your artworks?
A: My artistic practice is highly interdisciplinary. I paint, crochet, sculpt, draw, make books, and photograph because each discipline offers a different context in which to examine an idea, and I think some ideas lend themselves to be better expressed through different mediums. I try very hard to create works that are complete manifestations of my internal dialogue going on about an idea, but I don’t want the work to be so visually esoteric that others find themselves unable to relate to them.

Q: How has society influenced your art? What are the social implications of your art?
A: As the great painter Frank Auerbach responded when asked what social phenomenon goes into his work, “absolutely bloody everything”. I am so assaulted by social interactions that they all filter into what I am working on. From passing someone on the street and having them say “good morning”, to getting caught in a revolving door at the local supermarket and seeing peoples faces as I finally exit; I find it difficult to disengage from all these things. I do not believe in the manifestation of social unconsciousness in my work, as I cannot
directly employ it, and therefore must eschew its influence. As far as social implications, I simply hope I am contributing to a progressive discourse of art in relation to society.

Q: Discuss one of your pieces. What were you thinking when you created it?
A: “Shelter, Form, the Storm” is a direct response to this aforementioned feeling of being assaulted by social phenomenon, and it filtering into my work. The storm is a symbol of the wealth of interactions themselves. The form is the way these manifest in each work, either through medium, color scheme, subject matter, etc.. The shelter is my private ability to synthesize them into a final work. The title for the piece was devised when I ran across the Bob Dylan song “Shelter from the Storm” in my iTunes playlist, and noticed it was mistitled, “Shelter form the Storm”.


Q: What was your most important exhibition? Could you share that experience?
A: They are all important to me. The opportunity to exhibit my work means that I offer up a bit of vulnerability to the viewers and hopefully they respond to it. Every show that I participate in, I get a handful of people come up to me to really ask about my work holistically, and then offer their critiques. I love others critiquing my work since it helps to show me if I am doing my job. I will continue to create what I create, so personal criticism is of little objective concern.

Q: What are the most important artist that are influence in your life and your works? why?
A: Just like the vulnerability I hope to express in my work, I respond to others’ vulnerability as well. As far as most important artists, I could not say. Sometimes I’ll see a crack in the sidewalk that reminds me of a particularly emotive brushstroke in a painting, or a tree next to a house whose composition from my perspective reminds me of a
photograph. When this happens, I know that a very good artist created the work I am thinking about. Below is a short-list of artists whose work I am unable to mentally disengage with on an everyday basis at the moment.

Tania Leshkina, Cy Twombly, Allison Schulnik, Adrian Ghenie, Marissa Paternoster, Hans Accola, Valerie Garlick, James
Castle, Keith Varadi, Banks Violette, Terence Koh, Kaz Oshiro, and Eleni Papachristou

Q: Could you talk about the procedures that you use in your artworks? Preparation, development and finishing.
A: I prepare a piece of art by being confronted with an idea. I develop it by being confounded by the idea, and trying to overcome my confusion. I finish it by coming to terms with the idea in the context I have constructed for it.


Q: What do you feel when you're finished an artwork?
A:
I worry that it isn’t finished. I let a painting rest for about two months after it’s been “finished”, sometimes reworking, sometimes not. Hopefully after this period of time I have either disengaged with the idea and moved on to a new work, or it drives me to do a complete rework. Very rarely I sit down, and in a complete flow of the imagination, finish a work in under a day. The latter is a wonderful feeling. I think these are the strongest pieces.

Q: Do you have some challenge or goal which you are pursuing?
A: Only self-satisfaction. I find my art making a practice a wonderfully selfish endeavor. If I could manifest the monastic-like discipline of artists like Ray Johnson or Frank Auerbach, I would be very content. However, working a day job gets in the way of this at the moment.

Q: Could you tell us something about you are currently working?
A: My books are collected by William J. Dane, head of Special Collections at the Newark Public Library. He is a lover of artist’s books, and at this time I am working on a volume larger than I have ever created before. The original of this work will be sent to Mr. Dane. Copies will be sent to 50 or so individuals on my mailing list.


Q: Have you got some anecdote that you wish share with meseon community?
A: Not a particularly poignant one. I would like to say that I think one of the worst things in the world is an apathetic artist. If you don’t find yourself compulsively creating in your studio\workspace\office\streets everyday, you may want to rethink your practice.

Q: For finish tell us, why do you create art?
A: I think I’ve covered that in the above answers, and don’t wish to repeat myself.

Thanks a lot for your time Alexander. Has been a pleasure know more about you and your work.