Ole Howlin’ Dog’s Final Cry

John A Savoia

Interview by L. Valena

First, please tell me what you responded to.

I responded to a painting or an etching- some sort of illustration. It was this black rectangle with a number of energetically illustrated white figures, just done with a few brush strokes, but clearly meant to be these heads kind of thrown back. Eyes wide, mouths open, facing the sky, whether screaming or in ecstasy.  An indeterminate emotion, but very emotional.

What was your first reaction?

My first reaction was just to stare and stare at the lines. Just these figurative, gestural lines- the way this was created really hit me. It was emotional. There was a lot of there there. The actual piece is very simple, but there’s just a lot of depth when you get past the artifice of it.

What happened next?

Well, this is not my first switch. Depending on whether or not you count the prototype year, this is my third or fourth. Each one I've done before, I've made photographs. I wanted to not so literally translate my experience into a photograph, but I struggled with what to do, because really all the work I do is photographs.

What have you done in the past?

In the past, I've been someone who draws and paints- in physical mediums and digitally. Thinking about some of the work I've done, and seeing those lines, and some of the lines and textures that I used to kind of emulate, or capture. I wanted to see if I could maybe find a way to incorporate something similar into my response.

How did you do that?

I decided to take the concept of these heads kind of thrown back, and the emotion of unknown type. At first I did some drawings- I did some sketches in a little sketchbook, and tried to flesh out these faces and make them a little more realistic. To see if in doing so, one emotion in particular would appear to me. I did a few, and they felt- sometimes it seemed like laughter, sometimes it felt like rage or anger. I didn't feel clarity from it, and so I ended up just setting up my camera, with a white back drop, and setting up a self timer and just throwing my head back in a few different ways. Without any intention, or as little intention as possible, just assuming that same position, and seeing how they look. And so, I ended up with one of the shots, that felts kind of similarly enigmatic. It had an energy that felt connected with the original piece, but it felt different. I decided that instead of leaving it as a bare photo, to pull it into Photoshop and illustrate over it, to kind of make further connection to the original work.

So this piece is a photograph with a drawing on top.

Yes, it's an altered photograph, or a photo illustration. I duplicated the photograph a number of times, and kind of adjusted the layers in such a way, that almost felt like an echoing effect. Or as though you're seeing the same image, reflected back and forth over panes of glass, layered on top of each other. I made the same thing monochromatic, including the lines that I drew. I made everything black and white. It felt very graphical, and very removed from its original context as a color photograph. Something that kind of transends the literal definition of the subject that a photograph can provide, and the more gestural, emotional simplicity that I saw in the original piece.

After this exploration, what emotion do you ascribe to this?

I think in the end, the emotion I found was a non-negative exasperation. A primal scream of not joy or anger, just the need to let go. Let it out.

What are you exasperated about?

I think at the time, I was exasperated with a monotony in my work. I had just pulled an old sketchbook out of my closet that I hadn't touched in years. I had been flipping through it, and filled a couple of little pages with inconsequential doodles, and remembered that the breadth of the type of work that I make used to be greater than it is now. I was thinking about why that is, and whether that was something transient, or if I had made choices to distill my work down in a way, and whether I wanted those choices to stay.

Like you've been editing yourself, or something?

Editing myself, or... was I choosing not to make work I used to make, and if so, why had I stopped?

Is there something that was getting expressed, that hasn't been expressed for awhile, because it's a different medium?

Maybe. A lot of times I think about different mediums and different styles coming to the fore depending on my mood. Shooting a lot of black and white photos when I'm feeling a kind of melancholy, shooting more softer, tender photos when I'm feeling more of that subdued joy of life. I don't know if I was emotionally mature enough when I was mostly doing drawings, to see if that was true then. I would like to look back upon that time to see if I can recapture some of that.

That's really interesting. The idea that these different media are almost different languages that have different purposes for us. It's interesting to think that maybe it's not the same stream of consciousness, but maybe they have different purposes in our lives.

Yeah. I don't know if they have different purposes. It's hard to say if the media sets the tone or the tone sets them. A lot of times, what camera I pick up on a particular day has something to do with my mood, but sometimes its hard to say if the mood chooses the camera or the camera chooses the mood. What work I end up making, I might look back at the end of the day, and see that I was really processing something, or that it really wasn't about making work- I just had to press the shutter button a certain number of times to feel accomplished. It's probably both- the mood sets the medium and the medium sets the mood.

Because you're still choosing which camera to pick up.

Right. On some level, whether it's conscious or not.

Is there anything else you'd like to say about this process?

I really enjoyed the piece I responded to. I'm very excited for the time to come when I can learn more about it, and see its trajectory in the larger stream of art. This is the first time I've responded to something visual. I've previously responded to text and smell, and as a visual artist it's made sense that I haven't responded to visual work. So much of what makes Bait/Switch so interesting is being forced to kind of cross those boundaries. But it was cool to kind of find myself crossing those same boundaries when responding to a visual piece with a visual piece.

You've done this a few times now. Do you have any new advice?

I hope I haven't said this already, but have less preconceptions. I think the first two times I did it, there was never a question in my mind that I would be making photographs, and I still ended up incorporating photography into this piece, but my first blush was that it wasn't going to be a photograph, and that I wanted to do something different. I felt less pressure to do what I expected myself to do in the past. It felt like a more streamlined conduit to making art.

Call Number: M17.1VA | M21VA.saOle

 John Savoia (b. 1986 in Boston, MA) is a fine arts photographer based in Boston. His work explores the idea that everything we create is a form of self portraiture, with a direct focus on personal connections to the body that break down cultural and societal norms of beauty, privilege, and power. He lives with his inspirational spouse, and their large cat Tiny Henry in the scenic getaway of Jamaica Plain.