Today we’d like to introduce you to Derrick Tyson-Adams.
Hi Derrick, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m from a small town in Georgia (U.S.) and my “first love” was Poetics/Language. Early in life, I wanted to be a professor of poetry or Literature, but I felt like being in Academia seemed a bit crowded or even overwhelming. I grew up around a special-effects makeup artist uncle (who I’ve collaborated with over the years) who introduced me to a variety of different things, including photography, cinematography and foreign film. After viewing the films of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini, Godard and the like, I knew that I wanted to explore this particular realm of the art world. I had already been working with painting and handmade analog collage-making, so photography was something else that seemed to open up an array of possibilities for a creative mind.
Over the years, I have worked in The Arts; most notably as chief editor of “Sinescope: A Journal of The Arts” which was affiliated with (at the time) Georgia Perimeter College (which later merged with Georgia State University) and have had many different publications and exhibitions.
I was recently married to the love of my life, Emerald Adams, who is also a fine art photographer and vintage clothing aficionado! We have been recently working on a new series of photographs that have yet to be shared but of which we hope to first submit to a group of galleries for possible exhibition opportunities. I feel like this new chapter in my life and our lives will be the most creative yet!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
A smooth road would make for a less interesting journey, I think! As with anyone else, there have always been struggles and obstacles along the way, but I’ve always felt like “working with what you have” has always been way more interesting and fun. It is especially most interesting and fun when there are other people in your life that can experience those struggles, obstacles, challenges, etc., with you while incorporating those challenges into your own art or with collaboration.
I have learned that self-evaluation can be quite detrimental to an extent, because one can err down two completely different avenues. 1) Making oneself ‘better’ than one is, or 2) Making oneself ‘worse’ than one really is. In truth, there can’t be prototypes or copies of you and I–we can be imitated, yes, but we can’t be copied. The flaws are what make all of us interesting. The heart of our identity stems from embracing the uniqueness of our existence rather than imitation. There are all of these different levels of distinction. To have integrity, you have to have some sort of belief system.
I have always been attracted to outsiders, underdogs, and personalities excluded from the mainstream, so I like happy oddness, like combining disparate ideas, or using the sense of the uncanny to make proposed alternatives. I think one should always pay attention to the disorganization in one’s head!
I heard someone once say that true art is a metaphysical signature of the unselfish consciousness of an individual that is driven by that individual’s ability, meaning and purpose. I feel like struggles come and go, but as with anything, the struggles make you or break you, and for most people, they’re purely beneficial, and this is how I have always viewed them.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I feel like Artists are always in a race with their own ability. However, if there’s too much focus on the culture, it’s a deathtrap. The culture always gives the wrong information, and it’s pretty astonishing at times. And the mere fact that we’re living in an impressionistic world that’s celebrating that it’s real, but it’s not real, has created a false sense of communication that engenders, fosters and profits off of these fantasies. So, in that sense, nothing sets me apart from anyone else (who am I to say that anyhow?!) because we are all capable of creating. I just feel like some people are more intuitive or more conscientious of their surroundings or have a kind of universal ‘interest’ in Everything.
I have always been interested in the psychological concerns of imagery–the uncanny, the ironic, the humorous, the antiquated beauty of things. Visual Poetry. Mystery. The Playful. I have always loved the “human condition” and the human mind, the way that they can be expressed in relationship to my own. I have always felt like less conventional thoughts often lead to the breaking of waves for creativity; the expansion into vast realms, leading into an entirely wholesome and refreshing architecture, leaving behind doctrines ever so absolute in all forms of expressions–soaring up and into unexplored worlds. The feeling of isolation, I’ve discovered, harbors room for daydreaming, which thus harbors room for the connecting of disparate thoughts, which thus harbors room for new ideas, for the bouncing around of ideas, for creative fuel. The rivet between communication and ideas is like a steel rod held to the sky in a thunderstorm. When inspiration hits like a wild, flaming current, it will arrive from the tossing outward of our reflective peregrinations, dictated by true, genuine, selfless engagements of interconnectivity and the openness of the freedom to exchange ideas and thoughts without reservation.
I feel that images should be complex and mysterious; a kind of a continual birth and re-birth, the Past, Present and Future all in one: bringing mental visions into physical dimensions. An image doesn’t need a definitive explanation as long as it speaks of something in its own space of residential beauty and mystery or provides one with an emotional experience.
I suppose I’m most proud of not really being so worried about what anyone thinks of what I create, but most importantly: Helping others’ discover that about their own ‘creative voice’, and encouraging other people to start creating and experimenting! I have always loved what Barbara Januszkiewicz once said: “Creativity is not being afraid to be different. It takes madness to jump at an idea that no one else believes in.”
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
SelfLESSness makes me happy. I think that the flipside of that, selfishness, is the most despicable and limited way of existing in this life because selfishness inhibits learning and it also inhibits creativity. It is the polar opposite of humility. Selfishness can lead to so many other crutches, and it has its roots in jealousy, envy and pride, amongst other things, which is completely destructive to true love, but also destructive to collaborative involvement. Patience, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, putting others before yourself (sacrificial love, the highest form! ‘Agape’ love’!) produces true ‘happy fruits’ of joyousness for true peace and allows the swivel head of creativity to spin in every panoramic direction so that nothing is impossible! Humility is the height of beauty and the key that opens the door to God, to Art, to everything lovely.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @derrick.tysonadams
Image Credits
All images are by me, Derrick Tyson-Adams.
