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

Hi Asher, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I do what I do currently because I have never been able to stop sticking things together.

I’m tentative to say I chose a career; rather that curiosity and those I have met along the way have enabled me to sustain myself as an artist and designer. Growing up I had a really serious fascination with science but I was always learning in my own way and sort of failing in school. So my grades didn’t really give me much opportunity to pursue Science or engineering professionally. Late in high school I took a physics course and math became dimensional to me. At that time I was obsessed with illustration and comics. But the recent discovery of spatial thinking quickly led me to experiment with wood and metal and other constructive methods.

No one in my life was really knowledgeable with any of that so it was always interesting to figure it out and I think that gave me a lot of confidence to find the way. This was the early days of the diy movement on the internet so there was a pretty active community of people starting to share information and teach.

It’s still very difficult to imagine great success in the world I have made for myself but I am happy to be able to use my hands every day and engage with other artists and their practices. This on its own is what keeps my head on. I spend a lot of time caring about things that are invisible to others( both forms and ideas) so in order to stay sane I do find it important to do this primarily for yourself. It’s also very natural to have a flexible outlook to income. I often make compromises to support myself through my work.

But in truth I think I’d have a hard time doing anything but this. I have always worked with my hands and worked a lot to figure out how to use them.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As an artist in La I feel very responsible to be aware of my surroundings. Most of my material inspiration comes from La’s rich history of craft and industrial production. Yet as a newcomer I take so much of my formal interest from gothic and brutalist architecture and my personal fascination with religious structures and my own research of my cultural past. I enjoy the cross between moments of maximalism and material simplicity. I do not care about what is being bought. Sometimes I just tone things down if their required to be in a more domestic functional setting.

I am constantly learning about how to keep myself stimulated and it’s mainly down to being very loose. Starting with something but allowing it to change maybe in entirety. I’m reasonably patient with that. I try not to form such extreme expectations on how something might turn out. Even with craft I’m learning now how to let something not get overworked. There will always be time for letting yourself perfect a detail or moment in a piece but that’s no less valuable than slapping something together if the form’s more exciting than the finish.

In the next couple of years (as I’m quite new to this) I’d like to keep filling peoples spaces with objects that truly blur the lines between fine art and function in a way that really makes you feel removed from this world. It’s less about making a thing for me and more about creating an object that lives individually within a world of absurd but grounded material.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
There is no more perfect place to be than Elysian park. I even made a swing dedicated to Angle’s point as it looks out over the entirety of this beautiful city. Also beaches like point dume are really the most ideallic places to be. As far as food Amboy in china town and Da Sung Sa in Korea town are must haves. Although when friends visit I always try to wonder and find new grocery stores to explore what the city has to offer.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have to give a lot of praise to one of my favorite artists/ designer: Minjae Kim, he has probably inspired me more than any other peer. Not only with his beautifully formed sculpture but also his ability to carve out a niche for himself that has opened the door for so many conversations blurring the pages between fine art and design. He probably doesn’t need any more attention these days but It would be impossible not to shout him out as one of the people I get most excited to see new work from.

Instagram: https://eeba.studio

Other: Instagram and email are the best ways to connect for work interest.

asher.gillman@gmail.com

Image Credits
Erik Benjamins

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