Kyle Shaffer
Seattle, WA
How would you describe your work?
I should say at the outset that I'm humbled and grateful that anyone would take interest in my work, but along with that comes a pretty hefty dose of imposter syndrome. I don't have any formal training in art, and I've only been working on art and design for about a year. That being said, I work in digital collage and I would describe my work as surrealist in nature. I tend to work with older source images, so I think that ends up giving a lot of my works a "vintage" look, and I love emphasizing texture, grit, wear and tear in my images. For me, working digitally presents a number of wonderful tools, but it can be very easy to produce works that feel a bit too clean or sterile to my eye. I think a big visual theme running through all of my images is the desire to make something that feels cohesive and analog - like a weird, surprising artifact you might find in an old thrift shop or bookstore. That tug of war between the precision and dexterity of digital tools and the desire to make images that have a messy, almost tactile, quality to them is something that keeps me constantly experimenting and learning.
What inspires you?
Music is always a number one inspiration for me. I think of myself primarily as a musician in terms of being a creative person, and I always listen to music while working on art or design. Living in Seattle, the natural world also inspires me a lot. Going on hikes, camping, or even just going on a walk in a park with my wife Ally and my dog Miles can be a huge inspiration. With so much greenery, proximity to water, and mountain views it's hard not to be in awe of the environment here. Finally, with the blessing and curse of social media, I'm constantly inspired by other collagists and artists sharing their work on Instagram. I have a complicated relationship with social media. I don't feel comfortable promoting myself, I don't like how much of my attention it takes, I don't like the feelings of unhealthy comparisons it can promote. But, it's an undeniably powerful tool and I'd be lying if I said I found it completely useless. I have found so many talented artists through social media and have made nascent connections with artists all over the world, which is incredible.
Can you speak about your process?
From a technical standpoint, I work almost entirely in Adobe Photoshop for manipulating images. I spend a lot of time searching for freely available source images that inspire me. There are so many incredible resources online for these images, including scans of books at national libraries, Flickr collections, and online historical archives. It's a pretty amazing time to be working in digital collage with all of these online resources, but I also occasionally try to pull from hard copy publications like old LIFE magazines, National Geographic, encyclopedias, and scientific textbooks. Scanning those hard copy images lends so much texture to the final image that is almost impossible to replicate with digital tools.
From the creative side, I almost always think of my process as sort of "bottom up" in the sense of finding source images I like, and letting that inspiration guide me through the work. I almost never go into a project with a set vision of what I would like to make or say, or a message I'd like to convey, and in fact when I've tried to create in that way, the end result is always bad. So, I really try to let go and not force things too much and let the whole thing be as intuitive as possible. It's a lot of experimentation, trial and error, stepping away to get perspective, and trying to be comfortable with the somewhat random nature of the process. I try to pay attention to what surprises me or what feels like a "happy accident" in anything I make. All the images I've been happiest with have come about that way, where I'm trying an idea that doesn't quite work and then I sort of haphazardly reach for another image or try another technique, and something will happen that I didn't intend at the outset, and I'll sort of try to follow that feeling as long as I can.
How did you become interested in art?
I've been interested in art since I was a child. I have these vivid memories of being in the basement of my childhood home poring over old encyclopedia sets, looking at these amazing vintage illustrations. It didn't really matter what the subject matter was - reptiles, dinosaurs, flowers, insects - those images fascinated me and I tried to copy them with tracing paper and then later by freehand. Growing into my teens, I became more interested in music and that's a passion that has stayed with me my entire life. I think through playing in bands and being involved in various DIY and punk scenes I was introduced to lots of other visual art as well - things like show posters, album art, and flyers.
But even though I was interested in those things, I sort of always felt that I had to "stay in my lane" as a musician and didn't ever feel like I was "allowed" to try my hand at creating my own art. I don't know how I internalized that, but it took decades until I discovered that it was even a possibility for me to try making visual art. As I started my most recent musical project, No Edits, here in Seattle I found myself quickly making flyers for shows and things like that and I really enjoyed the process even if it felt scary and like I wasn't very good at it. That experience led me to make more pieces just for my own enjoyment, but also led to me creating album artwork for other local bands like Chrome Lakes. So my path to making visual art has been anything but linear, but I've learned a lot along the way.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
Definitely! I'll focus on what has been inspiring me lately. For artists, Xavier Forné, who works under the moniker Error Design, has been an immense influence on my work. He works primarily on music-focused art and design, and his show posters are instantly recognizable. It's probably obvious in looking at my work that he is someone I try to emulate and learn from. Eduardo Ramón is another collagist/artist that blows me away with his compositions. His use of vibrant colors and really dense, layered imagery just kind of sucks you into his works and really invites you to stay and explore.
For books, Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens was something I read when I was early on in thinking about becoming more serious about making visual art. It completely floored me on my first read, and caused a huge paradigm shift in me toward thinking about art-making as taking care of oneself as opposed to producing final works. That focus on the activity and "doing" of making things - whether it's music or visual art or whatever - is something I really value, and I try to focus on that sense of flow and immersion in the process of making art. For fiction, How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu and The Heart of It All by Christian Kiefer are recent favorites.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Again, being so new to making art and not having formal art education, I feel a little silly giving others any advice. But, I guess what I would encourage anyone to do in any creative field is to avoid as much as you can the cynicism that the "outside world" can bring toward making art. People will often want to know what your "practical goals" are with your art, whether you've "made it", sold anything, or had some kind of success as measured by some external yardstick. Do your very best to ignore that and to instead focus on the things that fulfill you in making art when no one is looking. That's the stuff that will fuel your work and motivate you to keep showing up for your practice. Beth Pickens puts it much more succinctly in the conclusion of Make Your Art No Matter What: "Your life is finite, and you should make your art. Things will get in the way and you should still make your art. Return to your art, over and over again. You will find clarity and answers as you feed this vital part of yourself."
