Aaron Glasson with HereIn
Aaron Glasson with MH-1 (Migration Home 1), 2022, wood, repurposed ballistic nylon, steel, paper, Peugeot Bicycle
[Image description: Aaron, who has light skin and wears white clothing, stands on a sandy road. There is a range of mountains behind him and trees to the right. He holds the handles and seat of a blue bicycle, hitched to a white pod-like structure that has wheels on the back end.]
Aaron Glasson’s 2022 exhibition, Primordial Refuge, at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego presents a combination of painting, sculpture, installation, and utilitarian objects that address a world in climate crisis. Employing a mix of realism and idealism, the artist challenges viewers to engage in solution-based— but always poetic— thinking to imagine a more positive future. Glasson spoke with HereIn’s Editor Elizabeth Rooklidge about the exhibition and his larger artistic practice.
HereIn: You have a pretty unique background for the art world. You studied art in college and then worked with non-profit conservation organizations. Can you tell me about that chain of events and and your journey as an artist?
Aaron Glasson: Yes, after high school I went to art school, though I always had an equal interest in ecology and conservation. A lot of the work I made in university was a reflection of that interest. When I finished art school, I travelled a bit and then some friends and I opened a gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. I was painting a lot. One summer I abruptly left to join Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, because I felt so frustrated with what was happening in regards to the whaling in Antartica at the time. Sea Shepherd is a direct action conservation group focused on saving endangered marine animals and volunteering with them was a very formative experience for me.
HereIn: Can you tell me what “direct action” means?
Glasson: It’s basically doing what needs to be done, through any means necessary, to confront the issues. So for Sea Shepard and the whaling, it meant going to Antartica on a boat and through any means necessary stopping the whaling ships. In our case, that was ramming and throwing bottles full of acid at their boats; two of our crew members jumped on board their ship and were taken for three days until the Australian Navy intervened. We had what we called a can-opener, which is like a giant spike to try to rip into their ships.
After I left Sea Shepard, I worked for other organizations over the years and always remained environment-focused, particularly ocean-focused. I ended up working for about ten years with PangeaSeed, an organization that uses art to promote ocean conservation. I eventually ended up teaching art at a university in Sri Lanka and was volunteering for PangeaSeed on the side. A lot of my work at PangeaSeed was making posters, helping curate art shows, and painting murals. I started to realize more and more that art-making and environmental work don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Around 2012 I decided that I wanted to pursue art full time. I left Sri Lanka, moved to San Diego and have been living here in the U.S. solely pursuing art ever since. Now I’m based in the Mojave Desert.
The Innocence between Fire and Flood, 2018, oil and acrylic on linen, 42 x 68 in.
[Image description: A hyperrealist painting of a group of people and animals on a wide-open plain, with a body of water on the left side. One figure, wrapped in a patterned blanket, looks off toward the water. Another is curled up on a Persian rug, their face obscured by a leafy plant. A pig, dog, rooster, snake, and tiger lounge with the figures. A monkey, holding a baby, sits on the reclined figure. Metal industrial objects and an animal skull are hidden among the grasses.]
HereIn: Early on you were working in a realist mode and then moved into relatively spare abstraction. You’ve now added a utilitarian facet, and also what one might call social practice with performative elements. How did these transitions come about?
Glasson: It was honestly a pretty quick transition. I spent a long time making very figurative work, striving to make somewhat realistic-looking oil paintings and murals. To put is simply, I felt like I was alway looking outside of myself for that work. It was very narrative-heavy and involved taking a lot of photographs, doing a lot of life drawing and plein air painting.
Bricolage sculpture arrangement and mud paintings at the Rural America Art Residency, Monroe, Utah
[Image description: A group of sculptures and a painting are arranged on a gray wood floor, in front of a gray brick wall. The sculptures are made of pieces of wood and stone, stacked together like totems. One rock on the left has a face carved into it. On the right, a geometric painting in rust and white hangs on the wall. A similar, unstretched painting is draped over a sculpture in the center.]
Then I started to mess around with abstraction about three years ago, initially just to make some poster designs really quickly. So I started to use these geometric forms, and then went to an artist residency in Utah, called the Rural American Artist Residency, that my friend Prescott McCarthy had started. I didn’t bring any materials and I didn’t intend on painting, either. But when I got there, I found a lot of discarded objects and realized I could make bricolage sculptures with them. I also found this really vibrant red mud, so I painted the geometric forms I’d been playing with in red mud. Something really clicked for me in the mud paintings. For the first time I felt like the work was coming from an internal place rather than an external place, which felt amazing. It felt like a completely different way to make art. Then I realized that with abstraction I could apply this aesthetic language to sculpture, to objects, it didn’t need to be confined to painting.
Left: Chime Chair, 2022, reclaimed wood, paint, and Japanese bell; Right: Dowel Sandwich Stool, 2022, reclaimed wood and granite
[Image descriptions: Left: A chair made from different kinds of wood. A small chime hangs from underneath the seat. Right: A wooden stool made of boards, dowels, and logs.]
HereIn: As we see in this show, you’ve started to incorporate furniture into your practice. There is still this idea in the art world, and especially art education, that there’s a significant divide between fine art and design. Frequently the distinction made is whether something serves a utilitarian purpose or not. In your artist statement, you say that utility is important to you. What is your perspective on this supposed distinction?
Glasson: I definitely don’t subscribe to the idea that, I agree, is touted in a lot of educational institutions and by a lot of artists, that as soon as something becomes useful it’s no longer art. I studied graphic design for a little while, worked as a graphic designer, and taught graphic design as well as art, so I think graphic design obviously has a lot of utility. And I think the desire for my work to be meaningful beyond just contemplation comes from that background in design. Just because something is useful doesn’t mean that it can’t be contemplative or meaningful, as well. Opportunities for all those things exist at once, I think.
Sumbiology Archive, 2022, reclaimed wood, stone, tile, and used books, installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego
[Image description: A wooden structure installed in a white gallery space. The room-like structure is largely open, its geometric parts creating shelves, on which books, paper, and pencils are visible. To the right are four wooden benches and chairs. A person in a white dress sits on one of the benches.]
HereIn: You have two pieces in Primordial Refuge — the library and the mobile shelter— that exemplify that opportunity.
Glasson: The library piece is called Sumbiology Archive. “Sumbiology” means the study of human beings living together with the totality of life. That’s the basis of the library. It’s a structure made of found wood and other materials, mostly from where I live out in the desert. It contains books that reference natural history and science, social justice as it relates to ecology, survival, DIY building, and climate change. All things related to where we are at this moment in time in relation to the climate crisis and environmental collapse, and how we can move forward with it. I wanted to create a space where people could come and learn about these different subjects, perhaps pick up a book and then feel inspired to go buy the book and read it.
I also made furniture, purely for the purpose of providing a place to sit and read. I didn’t buy anything to make the library or furniture— it’s all found or gifted wood, which speaks to the desire I have to make things from rubbish. I do believe in this concept that there really isn’t much need to make new materials. Human beings could get along just fine for a long time with what we’ve made already, so I try to speak to that through the materials I use.
MH-1 (Migration Home 1), 2022, wood, repurposed ballistic nylon, steel, paper, Peugeot Bicycle
[Image description: A boat, seen from the front end, installed in a gallery space. A white, pod-like dome covers the boat’s back half, and pieces of the dome open up in the front like wings so a person can enter. Two oars are attached to each side of the boat and they have decorative geometric shapes on the blades. The whole structure sits on a wheeled frame.]
There are also a couple of paintings in that room. Those are made with natural pigments. In one of the paintings there are pigments I made from rock, as well as rust from where the oceans corrodes the U.S./Mexico border wall. That speaks to borders and migration, which comes back to MH1, which stands for Migration Home 1. I think for most humans to feel safe in the world, they need to have a home, so I was thinking of a conceptual mobile home that would be human-powered and wouldn’t burn fossil fuels. It would be a place to sleep but would also be a boat. Firstly in reference to climate change— with the ocean rising, we’ll need a place to sleep as water becomes more prevalent around us. Secondly, and from a more immediately practical point of view, if someone was migrating, they could use it to cross a river or go around a wall. With escalating climate change more and more of us will become climate refugees, so the idea of a mobile shelter references that real need. I know MH-1 is not an actual solution to anything, rather I see it as conversation starter and imagination fuel.
Left: Post-Natural Conditions, 2022, coffee, rust and rock pigments, and oil on organic cotton canvas, 48 x 48 in. Right: Ambient Geography, 2022, coffee, rust and rock pigments, and oil on organic cotton canvas, 48 x 48 in.
[Image description: Two paintings hang side by side on a white wall. They both feature interlocking geometric forms in washes of earth tones.]
There is a conceptual idea behind the abstract visual language of the paintings and sculptures, as well. It came later but I realized that the grid-based drawing I do is based on three rules. An allover balance between positive and negative space; the qualities of the points where forms meet; and the individual contribution to the whole. Every form effects those around it in an interdependent system. So these rules that apply to the paintings also apply to all living systems and the planet as a whole.
MH-1 (Migration Home 1), 2022, wood, repurposed ballistic nylon, steel, paper
[Image description: A glowing yellow pod-like boat floats on a body of water at night. Trees growing up from the water frame the boat, while mountains line the horizon.]
HereIn: That brings me to a question I think about every single day. I’ve dedicated my life to art... what the hell am I doing? We are in acute crisis in so many different ways. What do you think art can do? Why is it worthwhile?
Glasson: I can definitely relate to those feelings. Like you, I question that a lot. For me on a personal level, and I think this is true of most artists, it’s the only thing I’ve ever really been good at. And I know instinctually that it’s what I should be doing with my life. In tandem with that, there are these frequent feelings of despair that you get when you are interested in environmental crisis, so I guess therefore I make art about it. Ultimately for me the goal is to make work that has real world effects outside of the art bubble. I think most art is worthwhile because we start with ourselves, but the artists I admire most are making work with actual, measurable positive impacts. Also, there’s this phenomenon that exists throughout human history; art inspires invention. There are countless examples of this, of artists writing about, painting, or envisioning things that are eventually brought into existence. Examples would be Da Vinci’s flying machines or HG Well writing about atomic bombs decades before their invention.
The proliferation of dystopian and apocalyptic futures that we have in our culture— via storytelling, movies, books, and artwork— is so prevalent. The antithesis of that— utopian visions of the future— are so few. It’s rare to even come upon examples of moviemakers, visual artists, or writers making work about positive futures. If all we’re talking about is a dystopian future, I can’t help but think that it’s going to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. So I’m really starting to believe in the value of solution-based thinking, artmaking, and utopian idealism as a way to help guide the future in a more positive direction.