I recently sat down and talked with Sue Seeger from MontiArts. Here's that interview!
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Brian was nice enough to sit for an interview recently. He is one of our MontiArts residency artists, which means he uses a studio space at MontiArts for his “art office” and helps with various creative goings on in town.
Brian is a painter, and a talented musician. He has a strong online following through his yourtube channel, Metaverse Music. He also has an art website, a music website, and is about to launch an app.
Brian is one of the most introspective and interesting artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of interviewing, and is very humble and easy to talk to. Be sure to mark your calendar now for this show, which promises to be very cool and unlike anything we’ve held before. He will have orignal pieces for sale, some small affordable art, and even tee shirts and other items with his art printed on them. He believes art should be accessible to everyone. He’s going to be creating a mural on the back of MontiArts this summer with help from student artists and former interns from the High School Art Club.
Here’s a bit of my conversation with him, transcribed from an audio interview.
Sue: Hi Brian! Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Tell me a bit about your artistic journey. I think you mentioned you were always doing art, and were in bands in high school. Were you always an art kid?
Brian: Of course! Thanks for setting this up! Yeah I always was, for sure. I started out drawing comics. I would draw Spiderman, and Batman and Wolverine in Jr High and into high school. Then I started to get into painting in high school and took an independent study art class my senior year. I made this giant orange juice carton, like, (laughs) 5 feet tall. I wish I still had it! it took up so muich room though.
S: That is a cool thing about sculpture work. The undeniable presence of “Look, I made a THING!” (haha) Did it have some kind of underlying meaning for you, or was it an exercise in taking a very familiar object and enlarging it?
B: Yeah, it was a replica of the same exact orange juice cartons we had for lunch in the caffeteria. It was just like, “What if this familiar thing we saw every single day was just suddenly massive, and standing in the middle of the hallway?” (laughs)
S: At that point were you thinking ahead at all? Were you thinking of yourself as an artist? Were you thinking, “I’m going to do this and be an artist my entire life”? Were you thinking it would be your career?
B: I was, yeah. Musician and artist— I always knew. Yeah. With music I used to have Casio keyboards, and a couple tape reorders, and I’d bounce tracks between 2 different boom boxes— this was in jr high, and I was really into rap. So I was super into making my own little rap songs, then it changed to heavy metal, and then The Beatles, then back to rap, (laughs).
S: Were you combining your visual art and music back then too, or did that come later?
B: A bit later.
S: The stuff we see on your Metaverse Youtube channel, with the mandalas etc, are those your animations?
B: Yep. I have created a huge catalog of original music, first on my Youtube channel, then I got my website up where people could buy mp3s, and now some people are also licensing the music, so I’m really glad I did that. The app will be somewhere people can have full streaming access to all my music and there will be some guided meditations, similar to the Calm app, but heavily music focused.
S: A lot of your work seems centered around mindfulness. Would you say that it’s at the heart fo your work, and your art and music are sort of the vehicles you’re using to get people there?
B: Yes. I use my art and music as tools to help people connect to their inner selves.
S: Personally, I love your channel. When I’m working from home I’ll often have it on all day playing in the background. It’s not distracting, but creates a very pleasing atmosphere.
B: Thanks. Yeah. I worked really hard on it, leanring video editing and Aftereffects etc. I started out in a practical art career— being a web designer, so applied a lot of those skills to what I’m doing now.
S: Let’s talk a bit about your visual art; your paintings. Your work has a lot of movement and flow to it, even when there might not necessarily be action in the piece itself. I believe I heard you’re a synesthete, is that accurate? Can you explain what that is?
B: Yes- I get a lot of inspiration from walking out in nature. I love walking at Westbridge Park and Montissippi Park. I take pictures. I might see a cool tree and take a picture of it, but only use it as a guide. I see and feel a lot of flow in images, and somtimes the flow seems a bit chaotic at first. Painting is teaching me how to use both sides of my brain to tame that flow somewhat into a chohesive composition. I’m always trying to capture the energy I see in nature. Yes, I have Synesthesia. It is a melding of senses I guess. I thought everyone had it until during a carpool conversation about what color letters of the alphabet were. (Laughs) And the rest of the people in the car were like, “What are you talking about?” (Laughs) I did a little research then and found this is a condition some people have. It’s not super common, but can apply to any melding of the senses. In my case letters and numbers all have colors, shapes, textures, and personalities. It’s kind of a mind’s eye type thing. I just automatically see things that way without trying at all. Like, 3 is green, and has kind of a mischienious personality. (Laughs) And music is like that for me too; kind of a moving painting, that I hear and see all at once, and it has texture and is 3 dimensional. It all interconnects and interrelates. It can be sensory overload at times. That is probably the main reason I got into meditation, for a refuge.
S: Wow— fasinating. You have mentioned nature quite a bit, and a lot of your paintings depict nature. Do you find it sort of grounding?
B: Absolutely. I’ve been meditating sitting at the bases of trees a lot lately, and it just pulls everything out. It just really heals me. It’s so healing being in nature. It pulls all the tension out and relives me greatly.