There is a time and place for everything; for artist Ty Cummings, it is Venice, California. Now.
After creating on both coasts, Cummings has found his way back to Los Angeles and is taking full advantage of the enthusiastic and welcoming LA vibes that are at his disposal, including invitations to show at pop-up galleries and create in open studios while working on his latest series.
His medium is interpretive and unique; opposing devices fuse together bringing Cummings’ idealism to form. As of recently, exploring mediums within mediums has been his preferred method. From duct tape to latex to oil to puzzle pieces and lights, Cummings finds the allure: “It all communicates to the viewers in different psychological ways to kind of give them a reference point and guide them slightly based on different criteria that the work will have, but ultimately there’s still a wide range of experience that are up to the viewer. And when it’s all in the similar space the different mediums bounce off of one another in an interesting way.”
He is self collaborative, influencing and fusing present with past pieces as he seems fit; recycling original work to be taken in different directions. “They overlap to free-up the process, but also it shows reality for the viewer in that way,” he says.
To Cummings, unseen art is valuable too: “I’ve kind of built a mythology about my work that there are certain parts that are accessible or not. There are parts of my work that are hidden and not talked about,” like the obscurity of password-protected pieces accessible on his website at the artist’s license.
His latest work is an ongoing process of integration and personal growth. Within an eight-year body of work he’s found a point with which to start a new phase, a new series. “I needed a little breathing space to sort of separate it,” he says, “It’s about mood and memory and experience and desire, and I’m using a great deal of my autobiography to construct abstract narratives that are also ambiguous.”
“There are always little series within the series,” says Cummings, a staunch and distinctive artist not opposed to studying who he is for the sake of his art.
