Jessi Dally is a 16 year old woman who is a local Provo artist. She likes drawing/ painting with many mediums, such as pen, watercolor, acrylic, micron pens, or a combination of such. She loves justice with a side of gelato.
When did you start drawing?
Jessi: Probably age 3ish. I drew birds, I loved birds, and I still have pictures of those birds.
What's your favorite medium to use?
Jessi: Your mom. [laughs]I really like pencil and watercolor and micron pens... 'cause those are fun.
What drives you to make art?
Jessi: Usually after I see like a movie, or a play, or really cool videogame, or watch anime... that's usually how I get inspired. It's how it happens.
Are you looking towards a career in art?
Jessi: Hopefully in, like, I don't know, I kind of want to do videogame design art 'cause that'd be really fun. So, a career in somewhere with videogames and doing art in the videogame area. Graphic design art, 3D model design, that would be cool.
What does being an artist mean/ what does art mean to you?
Jessi: Being an artist to me means to express yourself in any way possible, be it poetry or visual arts or cooking, it's just any form of expressing yourself and showing what you have to the world.
Joshua Faulkner, Rion Buhler, and Daniel Romero are the trio that makes up the electronic-experimental band: Conquer Monster. They are a local band that mainly perform in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Their most recent performance was at The House Of Cattitude, opening for another band.
Located in a garage, the set up consisted of Christmas lights, dim lamps and lanterns, couches, a mini bar, and two t.v.'s playing in the background, giving it a laid back vibe.
After their performance, the members of CM were oh so kind enough to let us interview them on their art.
When did you start writing music?
Daniel: In general, I started writing music when I was a young one.
Rion: Me and Josh started playing music together in... what grade?
Josh: 11th grade.
Rion: 11th grade, and it was nothing like this music, but...
Daniel: Josh and Rion wrote punk-rock music to begin with, and then they've always had this dream of writing electronic music. Really, these guys have been writing music for a while, and I just joined the band a few months ago, four months ago.
Rion: So now it's a trio.
Who are your main influences?
Josh: Bill Cosby. [laughs]
Daniel: I've really liked electronic music for a while, I like Neon Indian a lot, he's a main influence on me.
Josh:The Books, for me. In this band, anyways.
Daniel: I can answer for Rion, he likes New Order a lot.
Do you want to tell us about your unique instruments?
Rion: Josh does.
Josh: Uh, I have... Two... Telephones*
Daniel: Haha, so we have a major, like, older instrument influence, we like to use analogue instruments, stuff from the 80's. Also Josh does make the majority of his instruments. He uses a commodore 64 and...
Josh: gameboy.
Daniel: A gameboy. He hooks everything up himself.
Rion: And it's always broken.
Josh: Yeah. We always have problems with it. [laughs]
Daniel: All of my synths, aside from one, are from the 80's. And, Rion, he's the frontman, he likes to lay on the floor and scream stuff into the mic cause he programs all his synths. [laughs]
Rion: It's true.
What's the craziest show you've played? (Within/ or not within Conquer Monster)
Rion: Remember that show we played at Sylvester's?
Josh: Yeah, with Loiter Cognition.
Rion: That was awesome.
Me: What happened...?
Josh: It was just jam packed.
Rion: Oh oh! And we played a show with this kid, he like, got maced, right? And he had a knife and he couldn't see anything, he was blind and was like, "I'm gonna stab you!"
Daniel: It's a natural "fight or flight" kind of reflex...
Josh: Also in Seattle when we played New Years Eve?
Rion: Yeah...
Josh: With Loiter Cognition? There was that band, I can't remember what they're called, but they were throwing cinder blocks through their own walls.
Rion: And there was like, bullet holes everywhere!
Josh: Yeah!
Daniel: I'd say other than that, tonight was the craziest Conquer Monster show.
What does being an artist mean/ what does art mean to you?
Daniel: For me personally, I like to influence emotion and convey a certain picture when I'm playing music that people relate to and can kind of feel when they're listening.
*Two rotary telephones: the black one is an analogue synthesizer, and the white one is an analogue ten-step sequencer. The white one plays the black one.
It’s easy, as an artist, to turn
relating to the world into an unhealthy obsession with being represented. It’s
much easier now with the tool of the Internet. You can literally plaster
yourself all over it, and it becomes addicting. Getting some symbol of
acceptance such as a “like” on Facebook boosts your self-esteem, so why wouldn’t
you want more? The problem with this is it becomes less about quality content,
and more about pleasing a large number of people. Getting more and more
acceptance and attention. It’s really hard not to become a part of it,
especially when something you’ve poured your heart into gets little or no
notice, and something you felt little connection to gets more. Many artists’
favorite pieces are far from their most popular. So what’s an artist to do?
Especially if their income depends on it, can you blame someone for trying to
earn a little more cash? Does it make it less artistic if the purpose is to
make money?
If other artists are like me,
anything other than art as a living feels soul crushing. But it’s far from
practical or profitable in most cases, and most people will tell you that. So
there must be something that drives people to live in poverty for the sake of
art: what is it? What drives people to create? Recognition? Hope of change?
Desire to start a revolution? Perhaps it’s a lot more complicated than that,
but we hope to dissect it a little bit in this theme with interviews and discussion.
