Armando Ramos is a sculptor who works in a variety of materials. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Valley City State University in Valley City, North Dakota. I had a chance to visit with him over the Thanksgiving weekend.
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| Armando Ramos in his studio |
You work with 2D
images in conjunction with your sculptural work. How do they work together and influence each
other?
I try to approach them in the same way. Having a small studio forced me to look at
all the work as one because I wasn’t able to separate the two into mental
compartments or spaces. I began to look
at what material was most appropriate to the idea, rather that beginning with
the materials. When you’re a student, a
material is often associated with a department, but it isn’t in the real
world. Stuff is just stuff and you have
to find the materials that have the right properties for your idea. It’s all the same work to me.
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| Altered paintings |
Your work references pop
culture and childhood. How do you find
images and objects for your work?
When I started out I would choose images that had meaning to
me, like a specific memory. Latin
American pop culture or imagery that I had experienced as a young person was
something I gravitated to. Now I’m more
interested in objects and images that aren’t really about me, but have a wider
reach. I went to the historical museum
in Minneapolis and saw some images of Americana from the 1920’s. These were ads and boxes from old toys and I
started to think about them as a sort of propaganda that communicates this fake
idea about how the ideal world is or should be.
The repeated image reinforces this and gives it strength. This power of
images to persuade and train us to think along a certain line is something that
I’m interested in. I want my own work to
be a process of revealing how and questioning how images function.
I used to go to the thrift stores or junk stores for
inspiration, but I also find things on the street or at junk sales. I also buy
postcards and write down words and phrases that are interesting and
ambiguous. The illustrations in old
books are something I look at and will sometimes scan to create a template for
a piece.
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| Finished work in the studio |
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| Studio |
What do you think
about the life these objects and images had before you encountered them or do
you?
The very idea that someone used these things makes them
compelling to me. They were precious to
someone. I have a piece cast from a
plastic, Halloween ghost and someone had to keep it in their basement, clean it
and plug it in for Halloween year after year.
The history still lives in the object, but by remaking it I can somehow
reveal other parts of it that the original owner never saw. The ghost is a weird, phallic image, but the
family that owned it probably had more that one and never saw that in them.
How do you think your background in ceramics has influenced
your approach to sculpture?
When I began
working with clay, I really responded to the material and the process of
making, but I realize that I approach material in general in a more direct
sculptural way.
It is a complex material
that demands planning and thinking ahead, but I wish I had begun to work with
other materials earlier.
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| Ceramic heads, finished and unfired, in the studio |
You have a lot of toys
and other objects around the studio, do you keep these around as influences?
I see them as objects of interest. Either the tactile quality or color are
things I think about in my own work. I’m
also interested in the relationships between the parts.
What themes run
through your work?
The tension and awkwardness in the vulnerability of objects
is something I like to explore. I’m
interested in looking at another side of things that we ordinarily don’t look
at. Something soft and comforting might
become something ominous, or a sentimental decorative object that has a
specific meaning in a holiday or in childhood might be altered to communicate
an entirely different meaning. Visual
communication is at the heart of it. I’m
really trying to explore modes of visual communication and how the disruption
of that communication can reveal the process itself.
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| Painting the wood sections of a sculpture |
Do you work in series or have you been making individual
pieces?
I think I have been working in
individual pieces, but my work is going more towards the direction of
series.
This last piece I’ve been
working with is a Halloween ghost and I cast them in series in different
colors.
Right now they are in groupings
of three or four, but I want to make a mass installation of 40 or 50 in a
space.
A lot of my work is related even
if the pieces are different, but the repetition is definitely something that
I’m working with.
It also takes some
discipline to work through an idea entirely and not get distracted by something
else.
The
series allows me to play out an idea and
realize it’s potential.
What questions do you
ask yourself when you are making work?
I ask myself what is the most essential part that I want to
get across. How can I communicate this
in the most basic way. I began the
ghosts with an interest in a nativity scene from the thrift store, but it was
gone when I went back to get it. So I
began to think about what elements of it interested me. The ghost was sort of a bastardization of
something that was sacred. The outdoor
nativity scene that I remembered from my childhood had been coopted into the
fake sacred image for a completely secular ‘holiday’. The image was something that I thought
revealed the absurdity of we use images to construct meaning.
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| Finished ceramic 'Ghosts' in the studio |
What are you working
on now and what do you have coming up?
I’ve been finishing a group of work to install at an
exhibition at the
Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana.
I plan on working with more of the repeated
image.
I’m also in an exhibition at the
Rosalux gallery in Minneapolis starting in December and going through the first
week of January and in a survey exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the Midwest
at the
Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota.
