Q: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you began to develop as a sculptor.
Tor Dettwiler: My background in art began as a kid making comic books which led to art school as a teen. In art school I fell in love with photography, eventually supplanting it for my drawing/painting/sculpture pursuits. My photos relied heavily on found textures from the environment, and after many years of experimenting I felt they needed to become three dimensional. It was at that point I began to make found-object sculptures partially infused with, or exhibited along side of, my photographs. At some point I ceased the photography all together and focused only on the sculpture. I still appreciate the two-dimensional arena and hope to reconnect more with it, in my sculpture and separate from it, in the future.
Q: Your work is conceptually and visually “heavy” – incorporating layers of meaning to create a personal mythology. Do the levels of understanding for art or expectations of an audience factor into your work?
TD: Having been inundated as a young person with the language and expectations of fine art it is now automatic that my expressions reflect that teaching. By utilizing some aspects of conventional representation, I hope to reach a “general” demographic and leave the industry references inherent in the work as possible in-jokes for the art world audience. Much of the personal messaging in the work is purposefully crypticidez to protect my privacy from day job scrutiny. It’s my intention for the audience to get a sense there is a struggle being dramatized, but the specifics of that battle, they are welcome to inject from their own personal experiences.
Lusting for Latitude XLII (open cabinet)
Q: Where do you go for inspiration (visual or other)?
TD: I draw my inspiration primarily from my life experience. The sculptures I have made since turning 40, four years ago, are all reflections of my take on that transition. They are as much physiological expressions of aging as they are emotional/experiential. I get alot of folks connecting my work with hollywood science fiction aesthetics…this influence is perhaps more the cart than the horse in my case. I was raised in a home of science-minded people, but magnetted towards mechanically motioned types, so the amalgam of the two had alot to do with how I appreciate things visually. If anything, I have resisted the urge to emulate what I see in the movies. I recall being impressed in art school by the science-like process of art making made famous by the old masters during the renaissance. But in general I feel its best not to get too close to a powerful influence(from an existing art-related industry)or one might get swallowed up by it and lose ones own individual voice.
Q: With a full-time job, how do you balance your studio practice with life demands and how important is maintaining a studio space to your development as an artist?
Luring Achilles (in progress)
TD: My personal production has always been the mistress to my full-time job, and that type of conflictual angst fuels much of the content of my art. I chose to teach for the “time-off” it provides to make art. But to do a decent job teaching, that flex time is often absorbed preparing for the classroom. It’s not the ideal arrangement, but the steady paycheck funds the experimentation essential for my art. Maintaining a studio space is necessary for sculpture for obvious reasons. Recently, I’ve found it more accessible to produce in the confines of my home, and use the Cornelia Arts Building as an exhibition facility and to interview prospective collectors, though I feel that is a temporary/transitional arrangement.
Q: What are you working on right now?
TD: My most current sculpture was put on hold this late fall when I suffered a hernia. Since my work can be not only conceptually and visually “heavy” but physically heavy as well, I have had to let the studio dust collect on it mid-way through. Instead I am experimenting more with smaller, relief-type pieces using some of the forms from my larger works. I hope to be healed enough by spring to resume all the arduous lifting, sawing, sanding, etc. needed to finish my reconfiguration of Luring Achilles.
Tor Dettwiler is a sculptor at the Cornelia Arts Building, he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and went on to receive his Masters of Art in Sculpture from Governors State University in Illinois. Mr. Dettwiler is currently an art teacher and maintains his private art practice at the Cornelia Arts Building. Visit his website at:www.tordettwiler.com
