Artist Spotlight

 

Charlie Dickey (He/Him) a student of Linn-Benton Community College who was recently awarded the artists residency at LB. His artwork is featured in Chinook Hall at the Corvallis campus. Sitting down for an interview Charlie gave a little more insight to his art and other interests.

“What is your major?”

“I’m an anthropology major.”

“Do you have anything specific that you’re working towards in Anthropology?”

“So there are the four main disciplines of anthropology. I want to focus on cultural anthropology because I’m really interested in studying the police and systems of power. That was originally going to be my body of work for the residency.”

“What would you have done with that if you had gone in that direction?

“I would have gone through a bunch of body camera footage, taken scenes that seemed most common. Like these are all the problems that people are facing and then kind of move that together just to one scene. 

I was very conflicted on it, because there's a lot of issues with body camera footage and police with the technology that they use. So I decided to do something completely different”

Charlie has been interested in art since he was young, but started painting in his sophomore year of high school. He expressed having a preference for painting with acrylics and his favorite artist is Michael Armitage, 

“What about Michael Armitage inspires you?” 

“Instead of using canvas he used a cloth from Kenya, I think is where he's from. He sows it together and I think it's a hard cloth to work with because it comes from like tree bark. So there's a lot of holes and stitching in the canvas and just the way he paints is so loose, there's so much meaning in his paintings.”

“Do you find artistic inspiration in anything other than art?”

“I definitely find it in the research I do in anthropology. It’s less about the stories and more about the concepts that I hear. I feel like the concepts in sociology and anthropology can be translated into art. 

“I noticed you used lots of pops of color at the art gallery. Is that something you just fell into? “

“Yeah, I did it all by accident because when I was learning how to paint my teachers were like, you have to learn to use the primary colors first and then you can start adding all these other colors in. So the colors I used were just the basic primary colors. I didn’t really know anything about color theory. So I just mixed them together and they would make these vibrant colors and over time that's just what I liked the most.”

Many of Charlies art pieces focus of figures, portraits or multiple people in a painting.

“Do you deal with creative blocks at all?

“Definitely, I haven’t painted anything since the residency this summer. Because I had to paint everything in this short amount of time and after that I burnt out.”

“Is there a way you handle creative blocks to get past them?”

“Honestly, if I'm in a place where I don’t have to force it, if I’m not preparing for a show or anything, I just let myself not paint. I’ll come up with ideas or I’ll keep sketching. But if I don’t feel like painting I just won’t paint. I know it'll come back to me.”

Last spring at the student art show Charlie was awarded a residency at LB. He spent the summer creating a body of work specifically for this residency that was then showcased during an art gallery on campus. 

“What was it like for you as one of the featured artists in the art gallery?”

“It was so weird. It was surreal in a way. I’d always wanted a residency and I always wanted to get featured in a gallery. So when that came true it was like, what is going on.”

People can keep up with Charlie and his artwork through his Instagram, "Charliewwrenn."

“What do you like doing outside of art and school?”

“I really like to read. Right now I’ve been so busy, pretty much all I do is work.”

“What do you do for work?”

“I’m a Direct Support Professional. I work with people with developmental disabilities. I use to work at a grocery store and I felt like my work wasn’t valued at all and then I switched to something I feel like I’m needed in and that's just a cool feeling.”

“All of your work for the residency focused on mental health struggles. What was the inspiration behind that?”

“ I feel like everyone has their struggles and I wanted to represent that. When I see other artists doing something that is filled with emotion it always moves me. So I'm like, well maybe I can do it and move other people too.”

Charlie will be graduating from LB soon and is planning to attend classes at University of Oregon. He expressed an appreciation for the community built here at LB and how much support he's received.