Meet Bil Brown | Lens Based Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bil Brown and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bil, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I think people are born with it. Partially its nurture for sure, but a lot of it is how you are built. Howard Gardner came up with the idea of seven different types of intelligence, kids when they are assessed for learning differences are told that they don’t process information in the same way others do. Some people call it “on the spectrum”. Twenty years ago you may have called it something from the DSM books. Maybe its a diagnosis. Maybe creatives are outside of the same motivations as other people.

Being almost four decades in one form of creative endevour or another I can tell you this: you may choose how to focus it, which can change from time to time, but it chooses you. You do not choose it. This is who I am.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Well as I have said, I have a lineage. A torchbearer. I know innately I cannot live or have lived without my past, both personal and in a historical sense. That said, I think as an artist you do the same thing that the scientific method works – you take what has been done before and take it further. Humans are these carbon based lifeforms that have limitations. What do they say, “hindsight is 2020?!” well what were we all doing in 2020? Self reflection isnt just during a pandemic, its constant if you are an artist. It never stops.

Now you take this and couple it with your own history, your own perspective! I tell students to “notice what they notice.” What that means is, you may see something or be doing something that triggers something inside you. Why? That’s important. That’s where it all comes from. We aren’t jus reacting to our world, we are defining it, adding to it. Makers.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Ha, well I can tell you it would be off the beaten path!

I think Los Angeles has a vast potential underground art scene that has largely been untapped! This creativity is seen in parties, and on gallery walls as well as people you would never think to follow on social media because they have like 200 followers! I don’t know where I would particular take a friend or foe, to show them what I see, but I tell you they would have a hell of a time!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would not be the person or artist I am today without the lives of those before me. As luck would have it I had direct access to at least a generation or two before me. I would say the lineage of The Beats – specifically my direct teachers, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman and a bey of others that changed culture from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Website: http://www.bilbrown.com

Instagram: @bilbrown

Twitter: @bilbrown

Youtube: bilbrownphotography

Image Credits
All photos by Bil Brown, All Rights Reserved.