Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Carter.
Kyle, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I’ve been making visual art ever since I can remember. There wasn’t much focus on art when I was growing up, but my parents have always been supportive. I discovered screen printed gig posters in high school and became instantly obsessed with the combination of outsider / low brow art and underground music. Gig posters inspired me because they are such a genuine form of expression and a labor of love. I eventually stopped playing music to place my full focus towards mastering geometric art. After graduating from college, I started a screen printing business with my brilliant peer Chris Dock, which eventually became Raw Paw. We opened our official location with a retail store and art gallery less than a year ago and have been in business for over five years. I would be lying by omission if I left this out, and though it feels strange to include here, it is certainly part of my unique story. On January 2, 2018, all of my artwork and our workspace was destroyed by an arsonist. The past year has been challenging to find the motivation and will to continue making art and has forced me to reassess who I am and what I am doing with my artwork. After a very long and scary period of being creatively stagnant, I’ve started getting back into my flow, continuing along my path, and have big plans for the future. Outside of visual art, I love metal, stand up comedy, dogs, movies, podcasts, and conspiracies
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I was drawn to geometry when I began exploring symmetry around 2010. It happened very naturally and intuitively – exploring the basic shapes and seeing what I could do with them led towards making op art, mandalas and tessellated patterns. I had no exposure to Islamic geometry up until the point where I started heavily exploring tessellation and was told by many people to investigate Islamic pattern. This was the same story with mandalas – I was combining the square and circle into concentric compositions, and exploring the different possibilities available. Eventually, people told me I should look into Tibetan mandalas since I had stumbled upon the same inspiration that was present within the visual art of a different time and culture. The work I make now follows the same principles of balance and symmetry as when I first began.
I started by hand, using a compass and a straight edge to create everything. Over time I taught myself how to use Illustrator, and developed my own method for constructing geometry in the program. Illustrator allows me to drastically speed up the workflow required for drafting geometry, by using automation (mainly in the form of copy paste). Since geometric pattern relies on repetition, there is no reason to manually draft the same repeating element of a pattern twice, or twelve, or 500 times, especially when working digitally. So rather than spend the vast majority of my creative time tediously rendering repetitive details, I am able to focus my energy on exploring different possibilities, or more complex or expansive arrangements which are less feasible to tackle by hand.
Geometry is transcendental. It isn’t something humans created – it’s something we’re born out of, and later discovered. It doesn’t age; it simply exists, unchanged by time or outside influence. It’s the visual expression of mathematics. So when I construct geometry, I try to get myself out of the way as much as possible. I don’t think of it as me creating something new, so much as tapping into the available possibilities that already exist within geometry, and doing my very best not to betray them. In this way, I view the work I make to be very different from the goal of most western artwork. I am not using it to express my individuality, or personal experience, or tell a story. I am acting as a channel through which the geometry makes itself tangible in our shared physical reality. That may sound incredibly pretentious, but I believe it to be far more pretentious to claim the geometry I have discovered as my own work, that I created. When in fact, it is something that has always existed, and always will exist, which is why I refer to it as transcendental.
I used to get really into the meaning and symbolism associated with geometry and occult symbols. I’d construct my patterns with the symbolism in mind, in the hopes of creating something profoundly meaningful and significant. Nowadays, I view all the symbolism we attribute to geometric shapes (the pentagram, the square, the circle, etc.) as false meaning that humans projected onto geometry in order to give their lives more purpose and explanation. So in a way, these symbols do hold a great symbolic power, but the symbolism didn’t originate with the geometry, it has been slapped onto it. For example, the symbol commonly associated with “Satan,” the upside down pentagram, holds great symbolic weight and conjures up a powerful association when we view it. However, the upside-down pentagram in itself isn’t evil; it is simply a five sided star oriented to what we consider to be “upside-down,” so we associate it with bad things. Geometry cannot be “good” or “bad,” it simply is. The notion of “good” and “bad” is a construct created by humans to establish order. By removing the notion of symbolic meaning from my work, I have made it more truly representative of geometry at its purest form. I hope my findings function as a key within people’s minds and opens them up towards noticing patterns they were previously unaware of.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
Be undeniable. Make great work. Be true to yourself. Everything else is secondary. The career of a visual artist is an endurance race. Too much sprinting will burn you out. Just make great work at your own pace. It takes time to develop your voice and a strong body of work, so focus on making baby steps. Don’t get discouraged by how far away the goal seems, just do what you can and have fun doing it, and you’ll get there eventually. Something I feel very strongly about is that money usually corrupts art. If people love your work enough to buy it, that is amazing – it is far different than compromising your creativity to make something simply in the hope that someone will buy it. I’ve always been of the persuasion that it is better to make stable income outside of your artistic passion and retain your integrity than it is to make more tacky crap for consumers to buy. This is an obvious example, but if Van Gogh had sacrificed his integrity in order to sell paintings, he wouldn’t be remembered as one of the greatest painters in history, and more importantly, wouldn’t have pushed forward our creative evolution as a species.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
The Raw Paw online store, our physical retail store, and our gallery. Our next big show is April 6, and I will have several new art prints and shirts available.
Contact Info:
- Address: 506 E St Elmo Rd a3, Austin, TX 78745
- Website: www.rawpaw.ink
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/cogdut
Image Credit:
Marshall Tidrick – photo of me
Jinni J – photos of artwork with file names 4 & 5
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
