Will Power certainly has an awesome name, but he certainly doesn’t like being called an artist.
“The title literally means nothing anymore. I hate calling myself an artist because it means I’m nothing. I’ll tend to use more specific terms like photographer or painter when referencing another person — never artist… To be an artist, to me, is to paint or draw or take photos or make music — art is fostering your own creativity for yourself. It’s an institution now. Everyone’s an artist. It’s disgraceful to the people who work hard and have real talent and who deserve to be recognized,” said Power.
In his third year at U of T, double majoring in cinema studies and visual art with a minor in American studies, Power is more a jack-of-all-trades than anything else.
“My medium of choice is definitely photographic film, usually 35-milimetre, though I also enjoy video — tapes, not digital,” he said, adding, “I’m definitely strongest at photography, though one of my strongest areas of expertise is in digitally editing film and sound, so there’s that too. But photography will always be something I can claim as my own. My process recently involves a lot of Photoshop, and the darkroom technical stuff I can do in my sleep by now.”
When asked where he stood in the debate of “art for art’s sake” pitted against pieces of art with broader socio-political themes, Power responded bluntly: “I literally make art because it looks cool. I like the way it looks. I’ve never had a message behind my art and I never will. It doesn’t represent anything. All those other artists, good for them, they have some sort of message behind their work and that’s great. But I make art because I simply like working with my hands.”
“There’s never much process other than making something and finalizing it,” he adds. “I hate thinking about making something for too long — conceptualizing it. I just do it and hope it looks rad. For example, one of my favourite efforts was this conceptual piece I did in high school where I’d flip the camera off, lower my hand, and try to find the exact same position, and do it again 24 times. My favourite recent work is this faceless Polaroid collection I’m doing, which is exactly what it sounds like. Spooky. Creepy.”
At this point, Power offered an amendment to his previous answer. “’It’s not an overarching theme, but if you want to consider ‘creepy’ a style, then I’m fine with defining my work with that label.”
However, finding time for his own artistic pursuits, outside of those assigned to him by his visual arts professors, has been tough.
“[Balancing photography and studies] has been a battle of ice and fire,” he said, visibly satisfied with his Game of Thrones reference. “I used to find art as a reprieve from academia, but now I just feel like it’s a chore, even with my freelance stuff. I have no time for either, and certainly no time for both. I’ve been very stagnated lately, so I haven’t really gotten around to doing much.”
U of T’s art program has done little to dig Power out of this creative rut. “The art program is strange when compared to my high school and what I’ve heard about at other universities. As is typical of U of T, most of the classes have readings, and we have to ‘learn’ things about the specific art we’re doing. I just want to do art, you know? In terms of creativity, it’s actually pretty stifling. They bombard us with so many examples from other artists that it just stagnates you. They technically give us free reign when it comes to the ideas of our art but it somehow all just backfires and any creative spark I have is lost in the vagueness and the examples. It hasn’t been a helpful environment for my own art, but it’s a small program, so there’s some solace in that,”he said.
A small program, however, doesn’t quite equate a strong artistic community. “The only time there are collective shows is when they force you to hang your work up at the beginning of December. God only knows if people do art outside the South Borden building.”
The lack of community hasn’t been a complete deterrence, however. Gearing up to make a documentary about millennials and nostalgia, and on the verge of finishing some 4×5 prints, Power is going at it alone: “Forget community in art. You don’t need collective collaboration. You can do it yourself. My art is mine.”
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