Today, we’d like to introduce you to Scott Gengelbach.
Hi Scott, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been creative for as long as I can remember. Lego’s, Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Erector sets, drawing, messing around with paint, making 8mm stop-action animated movies with toys, experiencing surfing as a dance rather than a sport, and always trying to dress in some sort of matching/coordinating way (damn you Garanimals!) even customizing some of my clothes in high school. I always spent time looking through my grandparents’ art books.
A book they had about Breugel really showed me how powerful art can be, but I didn’t really realize it at the time. The first time I knew I was good at making things was in 6th or 7th grade in Ms. Lisiak’s class. We had a project where people formed groups and created their own countries with economic and governmental systems, etc. I designed and made our flag, and nobody believed that I had made it. I don’t think it was anything special, but I guess it was for middle school.
That was the thing that made me know that I could make things that people might like. As a kid, I never thought about being an artist; I wanted to be a movie director and then a fashion designer. I would always mess around with art materials, but I never thought I would become an artist with a capital A. Throughout high school, I became obsessed with surfing. I thought of it as a dance, not a sport, and I would spend hours just working on my style.
That style always came with fashion, so to say, I would always get my boards and wetsuits in matching bright colors. In high school, I started doodling these abstract designs on my notebooks and school papers that were influenced by baroque patterns. I would doodle a lot, especially when I got bored listening to the teacher’s lecture in the classes that I was less interested in. Because of surfing, I knew that I didn’t want to go to college anywhere else but California.
The only school I got accepted to in California was Cal State San Bernadino, and I thought that was too far from the water, so I decided to go to junior college first and transfer to SDSU. It was in an art history class at Mesa College that I had sort of an epiphany. I was still doodling all the time and messing around with drawing/painting, and I was really concerned about global warming (which at the time was called the greenhouse effect). Somehow, I became an artist by combining my abstract doodles with drawings of trees that I did because of my concerns about deforestation.
For about ten years, I spent my time taking classes here and there at Mesa, working at my family’s small business, surfing, and making art. But I wasn’t making enough art, so I decided to get serious and finish up at Mesa so I could transfer to SDSU to get an art degree. My plan at SDSU was to major in Applied Design and possibly get a job designing things or maybe get an MFA in art and teach art. My plans veered away from the design job to wanting to teach, but after how exhausting it was just getting a BA in art, I thought I didn’t have the patience to get an MFA.
I mean, the whole idea that a small group of people can get together in a room and decide whether someone’s work is good enough to move on to the next stage of their master’s is the antithesis of free thought. Artists should be the freest thinkers of all! No artist should be telling any other artists what to make or how to think. They want you to make what they think is good, which, of course, is subjective. I want to make what I want to make. I don’t need someone to tell me if my art is good enough or not, that’s for the broader audience to decide.
Art should be democratic. I’m sick to death of all this esoteric bullshit. So, I’m still on the fence about getting an MFA. Now, I’m not bashing art education; It’s extremely important for a civilized society to have art education. I’m just saying it’s totally subjective, and it should be treated as such. And I’m sure there’s going to be people who will say I can’t take criticism, that’s why I’m not getting an MFA.
I don’t have any problem with criticism when it comes to objective things, but criticism about things that are subjective is basically just an opinion, and I’ve always been more interested in facts, so I’d probably have to get an MFA in art history. Since SDSU, I’ve been working at my family’s small business, making tons of art and surfing when possible. I recently started my own small business that was born out of the accounts I serviced at my family’s business.
My parents wanted to retire, and I didn’t want to take over because we never saw eye to eye on how to run the business, and they really wouldn’t let me run it the way I would want to anyway, so they sold, and I took my part and started my own. I don’t enjoy doing it, and I’d rather be doing something that has more to do with my life, like teaching art.
But here’s the thing, I make more money and work less time than I would if I was teaching, so I actually have more time to work on art and go surfing this way, even though the job sucks. Teachers need to be paid a lot more!
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
I have had a pretty boring, normal life, so I have no more struggles than anyone else. I’ve struggled with mental illness, but lots of people have, so it’s really not that unusual. I’m kind of apprehensive to discuss it because I don’t like the idea that an artist’s work is born out of their suffering. Mines born out of suffering but it’s not mine, it’s the suffering I see going on in the world around me.
My work is the same, though, whether I’m going through a depressive episode or not. I’m not going to lie, it’s been absolutely horrible at times, and I’ve been about a day away from killing myself a couple of times, but that’s how it is for lots of people who suffer from anxiety/depression. Other than that, everything’s pretty normal. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer. I’m a boring person. I basically just like to make art and surf. It’s kind of a struggle for me to get out to all the art openings because it gives me a lot of anxiety, so it’s usually easier just to stay home.
I usually have a good time when I go because I’m a people person, but the anxiety really stresses me out sometimes. So, I guess I miss out a little because I possibly could be meeting the right people who could help me move forward with my art career. I don’t know who would be helpful with my career though, I’m going a different route. I don’t really care about selling anything. What I want to do is to own a building where my whole body of work will be permanently on display.
I think I’ve made some decent pieces, but most are just OK. I think seeing the whole body of work together would be something worth seeing, I think my strength is in the body of work as a whole. My Pieces on their own aren’t very impressive. Does anybody have a building they want to give away? Hah.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe you can tell us more about your work next?
I’m a mixed media artist, and I specialize in assemblage/collage.
My work is almost always political and social commentary. I use a lot of toys in my work. I lean towards the left, but I try to make work that questions everything. I know that my work may seem like a statement, but I like to think of it as a question. I’m not really well known, so I can’t really say that I’m “known” for anything.
I like to use toys because they are so innocent, and you can make a piece that’s about something really bad, but people won’t look away at first because the toys will give them a false sense of security until they study the piece and see what it’s really about. Lately, I’ve been making these videos of my hands creating some sort of narrative with toys.
I’ve been told that I should try doing stop motion animation, and maybe that will be something in the future, but the pieces come out of the idea of a child playing with their toys, so the hands are important and live-action is important. One of the reasons I started using toys in my work was because I had been thinking a lot about the types of toys children play with and how that molds their idea of how the world should be. Of course, a lot of the toys are derived from movies and TV shows, so how they play with some of those toys has a lot to do with what the movie or TV show is about.
Regardless of the source, a lot of the toys are about warfare, so does that mean children think that war is just a way of life? Are children preconditioned to accept warfare? In the toy world/movie TV world, there always seems to be a battle between the good and bad guys. It’s like we’re conditioned to take sides, just like politics. I actually don’t think there should even be political parties. It should be illegal. Maybe problems would be resolved more easily that way.
We could make toys that are about everyone getting together and making solar panels. Hah. I don’t know. I have no idea how much toys affect our understanding of the adult world. It’s just something I used to think about a lot. I used to play with toy guns a lot, and I certainly haven’t grown up to be a violent person, so who knows how much make-believe affects us as we grow up? I know adults really don’t need guns.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think if you’re passionate about something and that something is risky, you should go for it as long as you’re being a little realistic. I mean, if you have a terrible voice, maybe you shouldn’t quit your job and try to start a band as the lead singer. Sometimes I think maybe an argument can be made that maybe the visual arts aren’t that risky because art is so subjective. There’s no parameter that defines what is good like there is if you’re, let’s say, a professional athlete.
So, you kind of have the freedom to do whatever you want. You don’t have to have a good voice to be the lead singer in an art band. Success in the visual arts (sound art, too) really comes down to meeting the right people. If your work is decent and you meet the right people you can be a successful artist, It’s mostly luck. Now, I’m talking here about high-end contemporary art.
I suppose also that the definition of success can be very subjective. If you’re selling lots of art but you’re not part of critical discourse, does that make you more successful than a person who hardly sells anything but does work that’s very thought-provoking? Are there types of art that are riskier to make?
I guess that depends on who your audience is. You should be making whatever it is that feels right regardless of if it’s safe or outlandish. I think honesty in your work is the most important thing. It’s more important to be authentic than it is to be original. I guess making something and putting it out there to be scrutinized could be considered a risk. I never really worry about it. I mean, I just kind of look around and see what else is out there and think, well, my stuff is as good as a lot of garbage that’s out there, so I might as well give it to an audience.
I mean, there are people taking pictures of dog shit and selling the prints for $40.000, so how much of a chance am I even taking? But like I said, those dog-shit photos are only selling because that artist knows the right people. There’s nothing that special about my work, but I think that it’s at least interesting enough for people to look at it. I’m not very talented, but I am very creative, and to me, that’s really the most important part. I’m not really taking much of a risk because I’m not trying to earn a living selling art. But I suppose it can be very risky for the people who have put all their eggs in one basket, and if they don’t sell art, they don’t eat.
That’s cool if they want to live that way; people can do whatever they want as long as they do not cause any harm to anyone or anything. But I can’t stand people who complain about it. If you want food, then go get a job that’s guaranteed to give you money. It is possible to make art and work a traditional job at the same time. But I guess that’s not romantic enough, hah. I used to share an art studio with my friend and come rent time; he was always late with his half. The building where we rented was all art studios.
When I would hound him about the rent he would say “Scott we are artists, they expect us to act this way”. That’s the type of attitude that was a little too risky for me. But I guess I’m not romantic enough. Hah.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.scottgengelbach.com
- Instagram: @scottgengelbach_art
Image Credits
Scott Gengelbach
