Todd DiCiurcio's Philosophical Ponderings on Art, Music, and Composition
Publication | Juxatpoz Magazine
Motion, to the naked eye in a pictorially transformative piece of work, can be transparent and sometimes taken for granted by the viewer, but yet an obvious artistic objective to its creator. Color schemes that lend to obsessive discernment, in relation to the placement of the elements of art, are likely to become the objects of discussion in a conversation. However, this intellectual banter was birthed through the process of someone putting a brush on canvas. Todd DiCiurcio’s process, method, and approach to his work, for some conventional viewers, may at times, come off as unorthodox. But it is this sort of ulterior understanding that he has managed to harness and call his own.
While submerging himself in varied musical cultures, the musical tunes and their sound waves somehow intermingled and influenced his work. His approach is humble and aesthetically appealing, but it’s his artistic bounds that have proven to have no barriers, especially as an artist whose entire philosophy is based on life, and existing in “the present.” All of this happens on the upscale, praising the nature of the score to his own harmony, in his own artistic compositions.––William Lankford
Will Lankford: Can you tell me about Waves for Water and the board you made for the Juxtapoz Surf Craft show? How did that all come about?
Todd DiCiurcio: Well I came in late to the party so to speak, and I've always been a bit under the radar with all of my work coming from New York. I have an unbelievable support system, and I'm able to survive making art, but honestly, John Rose was the one that connected me, and he was like, "you need to be in this, you're one of my favorite artists." He put me in on a text, and as quick as that, he said if I turned in a board within six days, I'd be in. It ended up working out great. Sean Brewer who did the glassing for most of the boards told me about the show around a year and a half ago. I was doing boards there with another shaper and he said, you've gotta be in this show, I’m glassing the boards and I've been telling these guys about you. I felt like, if it's meant to happen, it’ll happen.
I actually got some breaks from charity events. The first break that I got In New York was this charity event for “free arts," where I had Donna Karan and Simon DePury get into a bidding war over the work, which ended up going through the roof. It was due to a drawing of mine of the American Indie band Sebadoh. They were both interested because they thought the marks in the composition were beautiful.
How much does music play a role in your process?
The previous sketches/live drawings I used to do are somewhat discontinued, and will always be a kind of thread in the fabric of what I do. It all really started when I was working in my studio with a lot of music. The idea I realized, was that music affected what I was drawing in so many ways, like how I was drawing, and what emotions were going into the drawings, which made me want to try and get it from the source. This is back before social media, in 1998. A friend of mine, who was acquainted with the guy who owned “The Sapphire Club” out of Orlando, mentioned that they were flying in Guided by Voices, and told me they wanted me to draw the band. I thought it was interesting because I had this feeling that I needed to do something like this, but I had my own way of doing it. So I show up and do the work, and there’s a bidding war for that painting as well, but I couldn't leave the venue until I sold the painting, I was essentially on lockdown until it was sold, which eventually I did. From that point forward, I started asking bands like Grizzly Bear, on Myspace of all places, then onto bands like Broken Social Scene, and all the way to The Rolling Stones, and New Order, it just started to take off. I've always worked the same way in the studio, and I've really gotten back to that. I've shown them in London, and I've shown some in New York with a gallery In SOHO. I just feel like my other, more emotional work, is much more important. There's more of a vocabulary there, and a dog that needed to be out.