Thomas Kiechle: Guitar Sprites
installation at Beulah July 2008
From Thomas’ bio.
“I began to focus on other painters from that time and then I discovered the capturing of time, or moments in time, through the influences of objects and multimedia. This began as an exploration of room corners, often the corner with a floor, and often behind a door in a room of a building. I had collected a large number of soil samples from ….. …. everywhere I’d been so that I could travel back there with a kind of telepathic association with the place of origin, and the time of that place. I also had a very large collection of discarded roadside beer cans that seemed steeped with stories. There were so many different brands spanning many years. I studied early Marin county history and found the location of many old dumpsites. Often, with the accompaniment of a friend, I began enriching my trash collection with glass and porcelain findings, some quite old.
This collection included broken bits as they told stories just as well as the whole pieces.
As I developed my affinity for the stories held within matter, or objects. I was also introduced to a number of working artists who also seemed to understand the depth of these conceptual meanings and expanded my understanding.
I began studying their work with intense interest. Through my association with Dimitroff’s Frame Shop, where I worked for a number of years while creating early assemblages, I met some larger than life artists. The Dimitroff’s, Steve and Lucien had worked and studied with Diego Rivera. Richard Pervier, who I had applied to work for, introduced me to his artwork and studio as well as some of his friends William T Wiley and William Allen, and other interesting artists that lead me to study their work. Two of these artists; Richard Pervier and William Allen greatly influenced my assemblage work. William Allen’s “ Trouble at the ‘Y’” being of special importance.
Richard Pervier called my attention to Joseph Cornell saying something like;
“ You really should be looking into his work, it’s so similar to yours in many ways and after all, he is considered a founding father of assemblage.” I believe he even loaned me a Joseph Cornell book that I avoided looking at for a long while. I didn’t want to see it.
This frightened me at first because I didn’t want to know someone else’s work yet that had done this kind of work before me(!!!), so fragile was my self confidence. I avoided Cornell as much as possible at first for several years not wanting to corrupt my study. Finally when I did see his work I was relieved to find we were actually very different. As I became more confident in my work I became more open to exploring the work of other artists.”