Vendor Spotlight: Dante Ventresca
Written by Alyseah Simone
Tell us about yourself and your business or art practice?
As an artist, I maintain both a solo studio practice and a social practice (Theater of Inclusion or TOI). My solo practice is focused on methods and materials and concepts. My social practice is centered on the intersection of the creative process and collaborative action. In the studio, I am absorbed in the time-honored difficulties of mastering steep learning curves. The spark that is in each one of us leads us to different and overlapping insights. The only way to get there is by each of us taking the creative process, through methods and materials, into our own hands. You can’t know what kind of painting you’re capable of until you dive into the painting process. Just like, you can’t know what kind of basket you’ll make until you go through the process of gathering the materials and mastering the methods. Then you get to see what kind of basket you are capable of making. And, along the way, if you stay alert you’ll learn all sorts of things about yourself and the world. My studio practice involves me taking on the rigor necessary to keep learning. So, in the studio these days I’m painting, collage, building harvest tables from salvaged lumber. This week I’m working on a harvest table made of burnt wood and color pencils.
My social practice, TOI, is grounded in shared learning curves and problem-solving. These are projects that are born out in various communities serving a variety of purposes. However, all the TOI projects get at shared expression through shared experiences of learning with one another. The earliest projects were all large scale, original stage productions, involving labeled and unlabelled performers and technical crews. This evolved into years of workshops centered on using the creative process to overcome obstacles and barriers to growth. These workshops occurred in schools, church basements, out on the street, in theatres, community centers, art centers, galleries, and museums.
What's been the best part and worst part of owning your own business or art practice?
The most difficult part with both studio and social practices is the on-going struggle to gain access to the resources needed to bring each project to completion with a sense of truth and relevancy. The truth of the creative process is that it is non-linear and mysterious. It requires a lot of space and time, listening to others, hearing your own thoughts, surviving the open-mindedness of it. There’s plenty of discomfort in all this. So, whether it is money or time, insight or labor, materials, or access, there is always, always will be, a struggle for resources.
Which leads me to the best part of my twin artistic practices - I get to share this struggle with others. I encourage those I come into contact with, to take up their own creative yokes, and keep going. Any revolution requires the cultivation of insight in all people. All people need access to their own creative process like they need food and water and shelter, safety, and a way to contribute. Getting everyone’s creativity up and running is what the world is coming to. It’s what we’re about.
Tell us about your StartUp 317 window display. Where did the idea come from, how long did it take you to plan and execute, etc?
For StartUp 317 I created a public installation called Indiana Dream Tree Forest. The work consisted of 16 sculptures “Dream Trees” each made from repurposed and recycled rotary clothes drying racks and flagging tape. Flagging tape is the brightly colored ribbons you see at construction sites marking where everything is or is going to be. The “Tree” is an object designed to draw on the dynamics between sunlight and wind power and sound. They move with the slightest breeze. The tape makes a soothing sound as it makes contact. The changing light of the day alters the aesthetic properties of the work. It’s pretty simple. I began work on the Forest in March by converting the balcony at the back of my house into an outdoor studio where I harvested old trees, rebuilt the drying racks, and made new trees. This is how I’ve spent my stay-at-home orders. So it took about three and a half months of working every day to complete the project. (There are about three football fields length of flagging tape in each tree. Each tape is about six feet in length, folded in half, and tied at the midpoint to the clothesline.) And, it was displayed for a single day only. And, I did not send out any public invitations. These last two decisions were in response to our current health crisis and the continued need for physical distancing. I took some pictures and a few short videos which you can see on my Instagram account.
I know it seems like a lot of work for such a temporary experience. But, the reality is my life has been deeply and profoundly influenced by many people who do the work, day in and out, striving to raise us all up. And, there is no fuss made about them. But, for anybody who is awake, you can see all these folks all around us who are engaged and setting an example by climbing their own steep learning curves. This is family, teachers, preachers, the people we used to ride the bus with, and the nurse practitioner who gives your kid their immunization shot. The weird thing about being an artist is your somehow suppose to make a big deal about your ideas. And, I made a big deal about my Indiana Dream Tree Forest. It was a big project. And, it’s part of something much larger than itself. It’s part of a bigger process that is at work across cultures and countries. I’m guessing maybe fifty or sixty people came upon my installation over the course of the day it was up? I have no idea how it impacted any of those people. Well, I could see the looks on their faces which is how I got paid that day - kind faces turned toward me from a distance. My hope is everybody went home feeling just a little bit more in their own skin during a time when it’s all out of body experience.
What do you hope to get out of this experience?
The drive to create and install this project was fueled by my need, as an artist, for the resources of time and place. The empty lot at 836 measures about 60 feet by 120 feet. The balcony at the back of my house converted into an outdoor studio is 10 x 10’. There is no way I could explore the implicit ideas and materials of this project without access to a larger open space. So after the initial set up, I was able to convert 836 to a large open-air studio where I could play with the arrangement and relationships between the Trees. And, there was this outrageously iconic moment after everybody left and I was starting to take the installation down. Earlier in the day, a storm passed through destroying two of the trees. But now the sun came out as it dropped low in the western sky. And it, I don’t know, it was like a freight train of gold and yellow light filling up all the translucent flagging tape. I took the Trees off their bases and placed them, still open, on their sides like they were kneeling. The colors of one tree bled into the colors of the trees around it. And, it was suddenly like discovering painting all over again. And, I could remember all the early days of being an artist when inspiration was everywhere, in everything, in everyone. It’s the sort of thing you dream about as an artist.