Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher Hall.
Hi Christopher, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Life’s journey can take you to some unexpected places. It would be nice if I could follow this up with something thought provoking, but right now, nothing comes to mind. To start, I was born with a crayon in my hand. It confused the doctors. Born to paint! There hasn’t been a time in my life where I wasn’t doing something creative, making art, writing, or making music. Sometimes this would get me into trouble, but I was mostly a good kid. I grew up in Gwinnett County. I spent the 90’s and aughts in Athens, GA, where I studied visual art and literature at UGA and was briefly a rock star. Next, I moved to Philadelphia where I studied at Tyler and earned my MFA. I tried to book a petting zoo to let loose in my graduate exhibition during opening night, but they were all booked. Probably best that this was the case.
Many ups and downs and success and failures later, I’ve found myself in my tenth-year teaching art at Kennesaw State University and at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. I have an eight-year-old nephew who used to think I taught dogs how to paint. Since then, I’ve unexpectedly found myself working with horses, but no plans to teach them how to paint, not yet.
I have my own art career outside of academia, but at present I choose not to participate in the gallery system. The days of wandering from art opening to art opening, the ever-evolving movable feast that is gallery hopping, I’ve walked away from it. It wasn’t healthy. It felt superficial. Instead, I am pursuing my own path. For all intents and purposes, I guess I am an outsider artist with an art degree.
When I walked away from the gallery scene I had to find something new to focus on. Those things ended up being horses and travel. Both helped with getting peace of mind, the latter helped shape a new career direction. Following the worst of the Covid days I began taking a lot of road trips. I reignited my love for the South, its mythology, the land, all the odd out of the way quirks and curiosities. I began documenting my journeys with photos and writing, and this has led me to where I am today.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve had some good fortune with my art, showing my work across the country and internationally. I’ve had some local success, too.
But it has not been a smooth road. Life has given me more than my share of dung, by the truckload. It has taken a lot of work using this material to fertilize the garden, to turn it into something positive. I am not the type to bleed all over internet, demanding everyone acknowledge my wounds. What good does that do? Instead, I’ll offer what lessons I’ve learned from these struggles. The world being what it is, it is best to spread only positive energy, to do what you can to make this place better.
One difficulty over the course of my life has been the difficulty of finding affordable, reliable housing. I think I’ve figured out that I have had 25 addresses over the course of my adult life. The lack of stability has greatly influenced me. I cannot rightly call myself a minimalist, at least not my own measurement, but I genuinely don’t care about owning much stuff. It would almost be a phobia if it didn’t have positive aspects.
I’ve had to shed plenty of things along my life’s journey, both items and ideas. The physical things, though, I try to think twice before purchasing anything, and I take regular stock of what I do own to see what I can shed. Physical objects, stuff, things, they tend to accumulate if you’re not careful. A cluttered environment often mirrors a cluttered mind. If you want to start something new, to reinvent the wheel, to reinvent yourself, you have got to start from an empty place. Emptiness is good for creativity. It may sound a bit odd, but I can’t wait for the day when I can own less stuff.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Well, I make artwork! And I’m known for being weird – but the good kind of weird. These days I make small drawings. Most of them are for my drawing subscription. It is an annual subscription where participants receive a small drawing in the mail each month, along with a small handwritten letter. These days it seems we only receive junk and bills in the mail. The drawing subscription is my way of putting some humor and wonder back into the world.
Sometimes I miss making large paintings, but not often. When you make a large scale painting you create a world you can absolutely lose yourself in. It is a kind of escape. “If I can’t accept the things in this world,” one could think, “I’ll create another world instead.”
These days I prefer making small work, or intangible work, like videos. When making small work I can still be a part of this world. Each of us, we are not the center of the universe. When making small work, it is easier for me to be grateful for what we do have. I prefer to see the big picture outside of myself. And for me that means making small art.
Sometimes I think about the Douglas Hubler quote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more. I prefer, simply, to state the existence of things in terms of time and place.” Well, I am not ready to put down my crayon yet, but the urge to make something to satisfy a lack, I feel it less. It is nice to think about things outside of yourself.
If tragedy plus time equals comedy, and laughter is the best medicine, then why should we wait to laugh, especially if we have a choice, and in times like these, when we desperately need laughter. But the truth is we don’t always need to make this transformation. For all its absurdity, or maybe even because of it, the world is a weird and wonderful place. I see beauty in it. Maybe it just takes the eyes of weirdos like me to find it and share it with the world. Maybe that is my job.
My latest venture is Savage South. My post Covid travels led me here. Savage South is my attempt at merging all my creative interests, visual art, writing, and music. Right now, it is a YouTube channel, and I am looking for supporters. Eventually I hope to grow it into a podcast, introduce some of my own original music, and offer my storytelling programs as live multi-media events. There are a lot of possibilities and I am really excited about it. But how do you eat an elephant? Small bites.
I’m just fascinated by our Southern oddities, and Savage South will focus on some of them: cryptids, ghosts, true crime, and disasters, unusual animals, plants, and people, history, mythology, folklore, and religion, UFO encounters, literature, music, food, and culture. On my website’s mission statement, I write that: We aim to connect you with the wonder that lies hidden inside the magnolia bloom, and the mysteries of a sharecropper shack devoured by Kudzu Godzilla. And why not. It is true that dinosaurs like triceratops ate magnolia plants, and Kudzu Godzilla just might be a real thing. I don’t have to make this stuff up. Anything is possible in this wild world.
Savage South was conceived a few years ago, but time and my perfectionism have kept me from releasing it. I’m not getting any younger. Life isn’t a race, but it is hard not to take stock of things on the eve of your fiftieth birthday. Typing the word fiftieth even now gives me a rather strange feeling. So, I guess there is no better time than now to start something as ambitious as Savage South. I hope some of your readers will check it out.
As to what I am most proud of, it isn’t one thing in particular. Maybe it is that feeling I get sometimes when I teach. I’d like to think I am pretty good teacher. Not that long ago Kennesaw State University College of the Arts honored me with the Outstanding Part-time Teaching Award. I enjoy helping others. I enjoy demonstrating leadership and being a good example for my students. I am proud of my ability to inspire my students to be the best they can be, not only in the creation of their art, but also in character, as human beings. I am most proud of these things.
At this point I can’t help but think of the artist and teacher Joseph Beuys: To be a teacher is my greatest work of art. The rest is the waste product, a demonstration. If you want to express yourself, you must present something tangible. But after a while this has only the function of a historic document. Objects aren’t very important anymore. I want to get to the origin of matter, to the thought behind it.
I think that is a pretty good legacy to aspire to.
What I hope my students will get from me, aside from the how to’s of making art, are critical thinking skills, to have the courage to be independent minded, and not blindly fall in line with this or that agenda, political or otherwise. I hope for them to be responsible contrarians. There seems to be a lot of pressure on everyone to take sides on various culture war issues. I only ask that they make good art, have good character, and that they are true to themselves. The rest will work itself out.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memory. It may be my first conscious memory. It was so long ago; it hardly seems like it is real. Whenever I think about it, I’ll get a small smile on my face – it is like an inside joke I only share with myself. I was in my crib, alone in a dark room one night. There were lots of explosion sounds, booming sounds coming from outside the window looking out to the backyard. The booming sounds then became popping and crackling sounds. They were new sounds in my experience, and maybe I didn’t think of them as anything to be concerned about. If anything, I was curious, so I climbed out of my crib and made my way to the window. And I saw all sorts of beautiful colors, cascading reds, greens, and golds, illuminating the night sky. Like accelerated life, they would shoot up from the ground and rapidly expand into blooming flowers made of fire. It was the first time I saw fireworks. I don’t think that curiosity or sense of wonder has ever left me. Purveyors of wonder, that is the job of the artist, yes? I love what I do.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://savagesouth.org
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/savage.south.art
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/SavageSouthArt
- Patreon: patreon.com/savagesouth
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Savage-South
- Other: https://christopherhallart.com
