Emerging Selection 2011: US Artist William LEMON III
Multi disciplanary artist: Make up art, Opera, Performance, Installations, Collage, Drawings, Painting
Born in 1978 in Santa Clara, CA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
His website: https://williamlemon.com/drawings16.htm
WILLIAM LEMON III INTERVIEW by Beatrice Chassepot
Dance performance
William is truly one of a kind artist. Multi disciplinary, he explores genuinely every media with talent, creativity, imagination. His art is definitely different. Nothing to do with the Formatted art we see in art fairs throughout the year! BCh
WILLIAM LEMON III INTERVIEW conducted by Beatrice Chassepot
Beatrice Chassepot: Your drawings look like they are jotted down on the paper but when analyzing them they come from a maturation of your ideas. Could you explain your process when you draw?
William Lemon III: As when I do anything I start with an inspiration. The inspiration for my current work is the Parzifal myth that I’m am re-constituting using my own times and observations. I once thought that these flashes were divine but I think that now I could find my story in almost anything and it is my shifting moods that latch on so passionately to an idea or dream. I then ask questions this inspiration, what is it for, and what is its story? Step by step the legend is formed of myself and my time even though I derive a frame of metaphor from a past legend. I believe this derivative makes the viewing and hearing an immersive experience and generally more fun for all involved.
BCh: Can you explain to our readers what are those pieces of canvas behind the “Wishes” series. (above and left)
William Lemon III: I had lived in New York for about three years and was working in gallery storage to pay for rent and living etc. The job at first seemed ideal, but the spirit of claustrophobia was steeped in the paintings I was told to ship back and forth from white wall to white wall, and eventually to New Jersey, sometimes to sit idle and unseen for decades or until the financial wills deem it an appropriate time for the work to be seen, usually after the artist had died or had sold something to somebody and was officially retro. This feeling of unused beauty was a metaphor for the bubble and boil over of my art mind .. I decided that the only way out of this was to fashion, in true alchemy/style, seven wishes that would deliver me from that place of sorry mind and sorry body. 7 symbols were drawn and pressed as with block printing into heavy paper, the images of my wishes; Direction, Health, Home, Community, Protection, Work, Rebirth. These symbols were embossed without pigment. To give life to the wishes I needed the equivalent of eye of newt in its artistic manifestation, so I worked out that the best thing to do would be to cut bits of canvas from the backs of these paintings I loved so well and felt akin to in my imprisonment. I liberated the shards of canvas from my favorite and most expensive andy Warhol paintings ( I know he wouldn’t have minded) and I placed them just perfectly into the indentations of the wishes. I can say absolutely that this has worked for all of the wishes but one.
B.Ch: About Parsifal, drawings and the art book. What do you like in Parsifal? (above)
William Lemon III: Parsifal is an easily changed and morphed character. He has a youthful exuberance, and the literal way that he sees his quest and his world are such that I think many young and old could glean some teaching from his heartbreaks and realizations and triumphs. My story is only similar in the spirit of chivalry and duty to ones fellow man and obeying destiny instead of fate, and ultimately the joining together in a time of sorrow and upheaval and finding strength through solitary consideration of oneself.
B.Ch: Are you the same person when you draw, when you compose music or whatever multiple art you do or do you take those performances like complementary?
William Lemon III: I have three separate minds I think with, the brain word mind, ?ma tête?, my body dancing making love and screaming mind, mon spine, and my out of body trying to talk to my inner echoes mind, mon plexus solaire. From these three minds I can fill all the gaps and needed pieces for my various art pieces.
B.Ch: When you have THE topic in mind, how do you decide to express it in drawing rather than in music or vice versa?
William Lemon III: I usually express it in both.. Most of my ideas are expressed in every sense, all 7.
Los Angeles, October 1st
DANSE PERFORMANCE WITH IS HIS FRIEND DEVENDRA BANHART: Birthday suit dance for “taratata” (French TV program):
