Gavin Glakas

Demeter - Gavin is preparing for a museum show at the Ratner Museum in Bethesda.

1. Where and how would you display your work in an ideal situation?
A bartender would be slinging martinis and the Beatles would have gotten back together while my work was on display at The Louvre, Met, Great Wall, Buckingham Palace, Mount Rushmore and the Moon.

2. If expository writing is good at elucidating and proving a point and
descriptive geometry gives us the tools by which to map objects in space
in relation to one another, what kind of an apparatus does art afford us?
What does art do best?
Once we get to the point where we've stopped worrying about our immediate survival, we are able to start enjoying ourselves, and art is the enjoyment of life. Once cavemen stopped worrying about saber-toothed tigers, they started drawing. Once people have enough money left over to spend on something, they start buying paintings and going to concerts. Art is fantasy and reality all rolled into one

3. What can you expect from your audience/fans/viewing public? What would you
like them to know about your work?
I can't really expect anything or ask them to know anything. The work really does have to speak for itself. I've fallen in love with songs that I've heard in airports and paintings that I've seen on calendars. I just hope that what I create grabs people - I can't really ask for it to work the other way around. People aren't going to seek it out. They're too busy.

4. Marcel Duchamp said - "Enough with retinal art!" What is your reaction as an artist to this statement?
I would submit to Monsieur Duchamp that if all of the art in the world were for sale for $100, under the proviso that it would not go up in value, the abstract-expressionist junk would be left on the floor when the sale was over and everything else would be up on people's walls. I think that most people are tired of having to be told why they should like something or why it is "good." The moment that someone walked into an art gallery and said, "That stinks," and someone else said, "No, it's good. Let me tell you why," was the moment that visual art deviated from music, literature, cinema and whatever other forms of art, and became stigmatized as pretentious. Also, I think those who were told in graduate school that art that resembles things is worthless and have spent their careers justifying their jobs, are almost ready to retire.

5. Do you think that there is still room for art movements in today's
pluralistic climate?
Totally. Art is just someone trying to make a statement. Why could you do it in one medium and not in another?

6. What is one question you wished we had asked you about your art? Please
feel free to answer it.
Can I buy a piece? The answer is "yes."