I met Sacramento-born storyboard artist and co-owner of ANKA Gallery Chad Glass at one of the Stephen Mitchell's Elysee Wednesday meetings at Caffe Primo at Sunset Plaza. Since I love to play the piano and currently don't have one Chad Glass caught my attention when he showed us drawings of an abandoned piano that he had seen sitting on the corner of a street. Therefore, we started communicating over FACEBOOK through which following conversation came up.
Chad Glass: You seem to like art and artistic things, what is some of your favorite types of artwork? Are you an artist?
Simone Kussatz: I'm a journalist who writes about art. I'm also a creative person. I feel good, if I take pictures and if I do a painting here and there or put things together like in a collage, but I'm not an artist the way we define artists in Germany, which is someone who does this on a professional basis and makes a living from it. But then I'm a writer and I do this on a professional basis and some people consider writers to be artists. My favorite type of art? That's not an easy question. I can tell you what I don't like. I don't like kitch and tacky things. I don't like sexually provocative or aggressive art, exploiting the body. That doesn't mean I don't like nudity, but it needs to be shown in a certain way. I'm someone who appreciates subtleness, depth and art that has some kind of a higher meaning - perhaps a humanitarian element. I like to see emotions and the human condition in general. If it's relevant to world events, I like that too. I don't know... it needs to intrigue me.
Chad Glass: I draw storyboards here in LA and have an art gallery in Portland, Oregon. I co-own it and founded it. I also show my own work there. It is here: http://www.ankagallery.com/
Simone Kussatz: Thank you... I'll look it up. I liked the abandoned piano you had drawn and showed at Stephen Mitchell's Elysee on Wednesdays.
Chad Glass: Thanks. Those drawings mean a lot to me and are highly symbolic.
Simone Kussatz: Can you say a bit more about that? In which way are they symbolic?
Chad Glass: It is death. It is a musical instrument that will never make music again. Its physical body was destroyed and it passed into another form, into a pile of wood several weeks thereafter.
Simone Kussatz: very nice. I can completely relate to that.
Chad Glass: If you've ever seen someone die there is a beauty in it as well as an ugliness. The piano was beautiful in its last days, with its insides exposed, the beautiful craftsmanship, the amazing work and sculptural forms of its mechanisms. But is was at once ugly in its death throes and destruction. The forces destroying it were hostile to it and to life. Life itself is brutal and this physical world is hostile.
Simone Kussatz: I've not watched someone taking his or her last breath, but I've seen my grandfather before the stages of death, and my little brother when he was dead. And the idea of an autopsy after death, cutting one's body open and looking at all the organs, makes me now think about the inside of the piano you drew. An autopsy is a last look at our amazing machine and the mechanism that takes care of us - the brain that sends us all the messages how to move our arms and legs, etc, the heart that pumps the blood to the lungs. And then all of a sudden this machine stops working and withers. It's difficult to find sense in it. Therefore I could not agree more with you about life being brutal and the physical world being hostile, trying to cover up these facts and feelings by bombarding us with superficiality.
Glass Well: Yes the body is a machine, a shell. When it is dying and is then dead the idea of it being only a vessel is very clear. It is unequivocal. Whatever was "in it" is definitely not there anymore.
Simone Kussatz: Thank you for our conversation. Shall the piano be a symbol for all the people who lost their lives during the tsunami. An image of a beach with abandoned pianos comes to my mind... what a quiet and long and sad sound.
Chad Glass: That is a very beautiful and lushly melancholic image. Thank you.
Simone Kussatz: I forwarded my link to my friend and colleague, art critic Peter Frank.. This was his response: "Vielen Dank! I like his drawings, both for subject and for form...."
Chad Glass: Simone, I continue my gratitude and thanks for your article about my drawings. I am grateful for your attention in this matter.
Simone Kussatz: And thank you for creating something that has personal meaning to me... thinking about abandoned pianos, makes me now also think about abandoned people and abandoned talents. I love to see your drawing also as an image of an abandoned soul... and in that also lies beauty and ugliness..
Chad Glass: Excellent, it is all of that.
