My name's Will Rogan, and we are currently in my home,
which is also my studio
I kind of always knew that I wanted to be an artist,
even when I was in high school, I guess
Because It was pretty much the only thing I was good at
It was either that or skateboarding,
and I wasn't good enough at skateboarding
The series, "Public Sculpture," I titled in response
to a lot of this kind of rhetoric in the fine art world
that public sculpture is jewelry for buildings
or that it lacks meaning and personality
And I kind of subscribe to that
And so I thought of this work
as sculpture made by the public for the public
Inadvertently, without the intention of making it
but that by photographing it
and putting it within that context,
that it framed these things as sculptures made
by the public
The photo series was all photographs of things that
had gone, I guess,
wrong in some way in the urban environment
Like, a photograph of a car door
that got opened into a bicycle
that pinned it up against the bus
Or a bent post with a coffee cup on it
These moments where things that are meant to serve
a specific purpose
get either twisted or bent out of shape
into serving as a different purpose
And one that's more personal, I guess
One that's more directed by the individual
as opposed to the mass of people
A big part of that work grew out of me having a kid
and working a full time job
I was commuting to and from work at the San Francisco
Art Institute
to work in the library on my bicycle
And then when I was done with work,
I was heading right back home
to hang out with my daughters
That was the space that I was in
And that was my every day
Riding past a car that has a snail on it
And noticing the snail and then thinking,
wait a minute, that's meaningful
There's something really weird about those two things
together
The first photograph was a photograph of scaffolding
that had blown down in a windstorm
And it was a picture that I think
anyone who had a camera in their pocket would've taken
I wasn't a photographer
I'd carry this camera around,
but I was slightly indifferent to the way
that I made the photographs
I only ever took one picture of things,
because it was just about making a record of this thing
It wasn't about framing
It wasn't about composition
It wasn't about a second thought
It was about that thing
It wasn't about the photograph
It was about that thing, and a way of putting that thing
in a different context
Photography was just kind of the easiest way
The series, "Picture the Earth Spinning in Space,"
the title of that series came from a book
that I had around here
called, My Little Golden Book about whatever
This one was, My Little Golden Book About God
It's those kids books that have the little gold spine
with the dogs on it and stuff
They're usually like Pinocchio story or something--
like some kind of puppies that get in a fight
and then make up
But this one is really weird and existential
And there's one page in it that says,
picture our earth spinning in space
And it has this picture of just blackness
with the Earth,
which I thought, that is a crazy thing for a kid
to have to think about
That's really a big thought, you know?
And that was what sort of directed this series
of photographs
I do think that there is meaning in objects
We derive meaning from objects
The everyday objects around us, especially
And that we are on this planet that's spinning
around the sun,
and it's totally insane
And when you can connect that these really larger
thoughts
through these really small personal thoughts,
there's something that's really sweet about that to me
I think that that's a really interesting way of relating
to the world
And I think that that can only bring good things
into your life, you know?
It can make you more sensitive to what's around you
It can make you more sensitive to how we all commonly
experience that--
these large, meaningful moments
through these small, personal things