Inhuman Bondage

Cody VanWinkle

Interview by L. Valena
April 3, 2023

Can you please describe the prompt that you responded to?

It's a painting/print on industrial brown paper. There's a classic, red-and-white striped circus tent, and coming out if it, in black, is a giant spider. I was very excited, because I like whimsical circus imagery, I like scary monster things, and I like the combination of the two. So I was pretty pleased. One of the first things I thought about is that I didn't understand the scale. Is this a giant monster spider coming out of a normal, people-sized circus, or a regular-sized spider coming out of a tiny, tiny circus? Like a flea circus. There wasn't really a way to know, and I didn't want to define it. I wanted to let the mystery be.

Since I didn't have the whole story, I didn't know if the spider was part of the circus and now it's escaping, in which case it would be the victim of the situation, or if it's a monster that's eating everybody, which would make it the villain of the situation. There really isn't a way to know. I was also struck by all the eyes. Spiders have a lot of eyes, and I was thinking about this spider's point of view. I thought that the way to understand the situation would be to see it through the spider's eyes, and the way to do that would obviously be to make a spider mask.

I cut out the face shape from a pizza box and painted it. As I went, I added some circus clowny makeup. I cut up some yarn and painstakingly glued all of these little fibers to it, thinking that the finished piece would be the mask itself. I didn't want to do a 2D piece of visual art because that's what I always default to, and I'm on this journey right now where I'm trying not to have a default. I don't want to rely on a plan, I want to let the process guide me. That doesn't come naturally to me, which is why I have to practice.

But as I was making this mask and poring over these details, it wasn't coming out as impressive as I wanted it to. I also didn't want to just take a simple, ordinary selfie with this thing over my face. My own fleshy, white-guy eyes coming through the holes would change the mood in a way I didn't want. As I was working, I started thinking bigger, and I actually let the process take me somewhere unexpected.

Wow! You mean this wasn't just an unplanned plan? It was an unplanned unplan?

Correct! I didn't want to get too specific with a plan, and I was accidentally doing just that. But I didn't have to force a surprise to happen; I just allowed it to happen naturally. That is not usually what happens with me, and I am thrilled about it.

I've been playing with photography lately, changing images to black and white, and then distorting it with severe contrast. I think I'm trying to take it to a German expressionist place. I thought that could work with this mask, and could be a fun way to showcase it. So I took a bunch of pictures with the plan of doing this with them. It came out pretty good. I overlapped them in Procreate, and made some of them more translucent so you could see multiple arms. I'm pretty satisfied with the result. It was a little hard to know when I was done though. That's one issue when you let the process guide you: the process doesn't tell you when it's finished, you still have to figure that out for yourself. If you're not the one driving, how do you know when to stop?

The first photo I took was me wearing the mask inside my dog's cage. From that photo all I used was the outline of the mask itself. You can see caged bars over the face. This was not the first time I've crawled into that cage for a photo opp, by the way. I liked the bars in it, but I wanted to go somewhere with better light. But in the photos where the light was better, and the German expressionist contrast was possible, the mask didn't look as good. So I kept that face and put it on these three bodies.

I love that you gave this spider makeup. It's really participating in this circus.

I didn't think about it until you just mentioned it, but in a way it's a mask wearing a mask. I still didn't want to be specific about whether the monster in my piece is a victim or a villain. Caged or uncaged. We don't know what the story is, but I think the viewer will have more fun deciding for themselves.

What's your relationship with spiders?

Pro. When I was younger, I was fiercely anti-bug. I would chase them around the house to kill them. Spiders were bugs, and so they were included. But at some point it dawned on me: spiders don't get into my food. In fact, spiders want to eat the bugs that get into my food. If I see them as providing pest control for me, then we're cool. So now I like spiders. When I see them, I tip my hat and encourage them to keep doing their thing.

So they're neither villains nor victims for you?

Right. I'm happy to ignore them if they're happy to ignore me.

You said you've been exploring what it means to let the process guide you. Can you say more about that? How does this relate to the rest of your work?

I've been working on this particularly in an art class I occasionally take. That's been really great practice to me, because I've always been so addicted to having a plan. Ordinarily, I need to make a plan, definitely not deviate from that plan, and it has to be sort of smart and witty. I have to show off that I'm clever. That's the kind of approach I traditionally take, and I think that's a bad habit. I want to integrate more improvisation into my work and allow for more happy accidents. When it does happen, I'm usually super excited about it, and I make much more interesting things when I allow myself to be surprised. This piece is in line with the things I've been doing in that art class. I was forcing myself to not have a plan, to figure things out as I go, and to play. I find that it's so much less stressful, because there isn't really a way to fail. I'm not missing a target because there never was a target. This piece also holds up to that new path in my journey.

Another byproduct of not having a plan is it can be hard to think of a title. I didn't stick to one initial idea, so I didn't really know what it was until I was done. Then I had to look at it and figure out what it is. Maybe it's like how you can't control who your kids are going to grow up to be. You just have to try to teach them to be good people, and as they age you just learn who they are by getting to know them. My artworks are my babies. This baby is called 'Inhuman Bondage'. It seems to be a creature that may be bound, and it's definitely not quite human. So I thought that would work.

Do you have any advice for another artist who wants to embark on a journey of not making a plan?

The most obvious thing is to try not to think ahead. Think of a place to start: a mark, a detail, something. Then just play with it from there. Another thing I've worked on is handicapping myself. I will draw without wearing my glasses, or work with specific limited materials. One time I made a face print by putting acrylic paint on my face and rolling it onto a piece of paper. Then I held a sharpie between my toes, and drew a portrait around the face print. Drawing with your feet is another great way to get started. If you take away the possibility of being perfect, it immediately becomes useless to try to be perfect. For me, that's a good way to force myself into improvisation.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

Don't be afraid to completely change it. I think that we can get so invested in what we've already made that it seems too sad to ditch it and do something else, or to change it into something that it was never intended to be. If I had stopped at just a mask, I think this piece would be a lot less interesting. But I turned it into a photo collage, which turned out to be more fun to make, and the finished product is a lot stronger. Radical, violent left turns can sometimes be a really good idea. Don't be afraid to try.

Call Number: M79VA | M72VA.vaInhu

Cody VanWinkle spent five years illustrating children's books at the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute. In 2017, he was published in And Lester Swam On, written by 21 rambunctious second graders. Someday, he would like to combine his passions for making ice cream and knitting.