LIghthouse

Kyle Mccarthy

Interview by C. VanWinkle

July 14, 2022

Can you please describe the prompt that you responded to?

It was a written piece about a woman's experience of going into Cape Cod just on a whim. It seemed she was just following each whimsical thing that happened to her, just going with the flow of the trip, running into different characters and having different interactions with them. Stuff like that. I really liked it right off the bat. I always like anything that has to do with travel, whether it be road movies or books that take place on someone's journey. So I was into it right off the bat.

I ended up making a video about a certain part that particularly stuck out to me. I found it intriguing so I wanted to make something about it right away. The particular part was when she meets this older couple who, at first her first impressions, are very sweet. They're both divorced and are in a different stage in their life where they seem more carefree or just down to have a good time. She likes being around them. Then the woman of the couple leaves and the guy makes an advance on her, and it really upsets the narrator. I just found that part so intriguing because she trusted in these strangers, just really enjoyed being around them, and then he betrayed that trust and it was a real turning point moment. Before that, she seems to be following each whim that happens and enjoying the trip, and then she feels deceived by the people she's interacted with.

How did you get started on your piece? Where did you go from there?

I also liked that she talked about the lighthouse there, so I wanted the imagery of that lighthouse and being on the shore. I knew I wanted to make a mixed-media video that used that as a set-in, and then also use different light collage elements to tell that. I had had this one very old magazine cut-out of a couple kissing and I decided to use that with the text, “Why are people so messy?”, which is a line from the story.

And it's a universal truth! That question has been relevant ever since people.

I love that about art in general. Our perception of people or what we want people to be versus who they are often come into conflict. That's what I was trying to achieve in this piece.

Why was the lighthouse important to you?

I dig lighthouses. I like nautical, ocean-related themes in my art in general. I grew up in Long Beach, NY, so I'm right on the beach and it's always been an inspiration to my work. Because this piece had centered around an area where a lighthouse was, I wanted to incorporate that. I really love going out to Montauk, which is the furthest part of Long Island where I live, and they have a lighthouse there. I don't know, there's something special about lighthouses. I guess, on a deeper level, it's supposed to be a safe haven that boats can see at nighttime, to know that safety is ahead. A lighthouse is supposed to be this symbol of trust and safety, and in the story and then in my piece, I was trying to show that our perception of a safe environment can often be an illusion. Sometimes what we think is safe can betray us.

That's a great interpretation! What looks safe isn’t necessarily so. Have you ever lived far from the water?

Only in college. I went to SUNY Purchase, which is in upstate New York. That's probably the longest I've ever lived away from the ocean, those four years.

Makes sense. No wonder your work stays close to the ocean, too. The protagonist of this story is pretty impulsive. Are you?

No. I'm very routinized and ritualistic. [laughs] I wouldn't describe myself as impulsive. I would like to be more. Maybe that's why I was attracted to this story. Maybe, deep down, I wish I could be more impulsive, especially in this stage of my life. I'm married, I have kids. I like the idea of being able to just jump on a bus and go somewhere. There’d be a lot of people with a lot of questions about why I disappeared.

Oh for sure. They’d noticed if you ran away. I know that you work in a bunch of different media. Collage, animation, film, music. How did you decide what medium to work in for this?

Most recently, the type of art that I make is mixed-media, visual-collage, video art. It just felt the most comfortable for me to make something in that medium. I thought about maybe making it as a print collage, but something about it made me want movement in it. And I wanted to create a loop, so it continually flows into itself. Something about it needed to have movement to it.

That’s cool. I also appreciate that, although the animation you made is new, you recycled an old piece of music that you made.

Yeah. It's a song I made a while back and it worked well with it.

Is that something you do a lot? Recycle or reintegrate things you've made in the past?

I like doing that. I make music as well as film, but usually with my passion for each medium, it's hard for me to do both simultaneously. I need to be either really into making music or really into making film. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been centered on making film. So it's cool to take things that I made when I was really feeling passionate about music and making all these different loops, and then try to use those in something that I made recently. I always like trying to make those things work together.

That makes sense since you're making collage. It’s another way you're adding found pieces to it, even if it’s your own stuff anyway.

Yeah! I never thought about that way, but I agree. It's another found object put into a collage.

And you found it where you left it, in your computer. I was making a photo collage a while ago, and I remembered that I still had a bag of sock puppets in my closet that I’d made for something else. I got one of the puppets out, took a photo, and integrated it into the collage. I was so excited to find a new use for them!

I love that! I've been trying to do that, too. A while back, I animated sketches from a sketchbook from ten years ago. It's cool when you're able to collaborate with a younger version of yourself.

How does this particular piece relate to the rest of your work?

It's very much in the vein of what I've been making recently. I've been making a lot of pieces like this. One aspect of the video I forgot to mention was that I took the actual text from the prompt and made the lighthouse and the water and stuff from it. I like using writing as a texture in a piece and I’ve been doing more of that recently.

I recognized it! And that segues nicely into my next question. Had you worked from a piece of written fiction before?

I think this might be the first time I've done a mixed-media piece based off of someone else's writing. It's funny because even when I make short films, they are usually based off at things that I wrote. It was a unique experience interpreting someone else's writing and I really enjoyed using that as a starting point. It was fun to make.

I think it's a cool idea what you guys are doing. It's so interesting that you could show that prompt at 20 other artists and get 20 different pieces. It filters through each artist’s brain and how they make art.

Thanks! And we don’t try to control which artist responds to which piece. We mostly just leave that to chance. And you just happened to be paired with this story. Now that you’ve done it, what’s your advice to someone else approaching this project for the first time?

I think the best piece of advice, I could give is to not overthink it. Try to approach it in an instinctual way. Whatever resonates with you, follow that thread. I tried not to go into it thinking, “Alright, how do I weave in different themes?” As I was reading the piece, I just made note of certain things that resonated with me, whether it was the lighthouse or this one scene, and I just followed that path and saw where it went.

Call Number: C75VA | C77VA.mcLi

Kyle Richard McCarthy is an award-winning filmmaker based out of Long Beach, New York known for his short films and mixed media music videos. His work has been shown on websites such as MTV, Sterogum, NoBudge, and BOOOOOOOM TV. His unique mixed-media style of filmmaking has recently drawn the attention of many on Tik Tok (@kylemakesshortfilms) where he currently has 49k people following his account.