Artist Statement
“Serious Art Manifesto”
Joshua Hughes
Sep 2016
Serious Art is not a stance but something that makes you feel the need to sit. Like a chair when you must stand in line.
Serious Art is like a pillow, made to catch you when you fall on it. Serious Art is a love, a block of cheese, a political statement, a split of paper, a line, a can of soup, a rocket, and much, much more.
Serious Art is a meaningful statement of trees, or a weak gesture which is strong enough to topple them. Serious Art is the calving of glaciers, wild winds, and electric cars. Serious Art is warm summers and barbeques on the beach.
Serious Art is an artist who mumbles over rhythm, or embellishes themselves in gold showers in front of a camera. Serious Art is crushing stuff, having conversations over great distance, or making primitive technology.
Serious Art is digital, analog, mechanical, electronic, chemical, computational, tasteless, colorful or colorless, surfaced, and occasionally factful or factless. Serious Art is the destructive qualities of lead, copper, steel, aluminium, brass, and gunpowder. Serious Art is the outside perspective of struggle, weakness, pain, sorrow, and heartlessness.
Serious Art is recovery from wounds, flying high, moving fast, time elapsed, and occupied cats.
Serious Art is a conversation of text, short and sweet, and free. Serious Art is common, everyday, and accessible almost anywhere.
Serious Art is payday, holiday, and sometimes without warning, is a day we are too scared to look away. Serious Art is a terrorist, a riot, a movement, a life, a trigger, an opening, a site, an illuminated screen.
Serious Art is laughter, and manslaughter. Serious Art encompusses all human emotion except boredom unless otherwise glamorized into intrigue. Serious Art is sensational, breathtaking, and can be simultaneously horrifying or crass.
Serious Art is not the omission of relevant information, but the cascading tidal wave of it.
Serious Art is about the moment, the instant, the millisecond. Serious Art is about the consumption of the present, and the regurgitation of it. Serious Art is the art of mindfulness and awareness of it.
It is now.
Serious Art never takes itself seriously enough.
AWARDS
Dean's Scholarship PNCA, 3rd Place Fine Art Photography 1996 (Cloud Waterfall), Army Commendation Medal 5th Award, Army Achievement Medal 3rd Award, Combat Action Badge, Iraq Campaign Medal with 3 Campaign Stars, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and Others.
SHOWS
1996
Marion County Fair Photography Juried Competition
2012
55 Main Gallery, Bisbee AZ
2014
Common Group Show, PNCA Portland, OR
2015
Ideas and Conversation, PNCA Portland, OR
2016
PNCA Juried Print Show, 511 Gallery
Pop Design, 511 Gallery
Virtual Spaces, Online VR Galleries
Solo Show, VR Gallery
Viral Videos
First Front Flip, Youtube.com
(Chai Dog - 2,139,432 Views)
Published on Jul 13, 2015
SKILLS
Creative Engineering.
Prototyping.
Exceptional Leader.
Proficient and knowledgeable of Adobe, and Autodesk clients.
Capable of performing maintenance on additive fabrication equipment and CNC Routers.
Excellent communication skills.