Bryce Parr –
Anthony Clementi is a fourth year studio art major with a concentration in sculpture. Clementi is from the Chicago area. He attended school in Milwaukee before transferring to the University of Wisconsin–Stout
What sparked your interest in art and design?
Mostly just working on whatever in high school. After school got out, I would stay in the art room with my friend and teacher for a handful of hours working on whatever. It was there that I explored with a lot of different medium and my teacher infected me with a sort of absurdist approach to art. I started off in computer science in college because I thought it was creative and fun. Which I still think it is a little bit, and it would’ve paid well. It ultimately was just a huge restriction on going nuts with whatever wack ideas I wanted to carry out, so I had to do art and design instead.
What styles or mediums do you prefer?
I’m really all over the place right now. Fruit skins and Maya are my two favorite mediums right now, but I’ve also been playing around a lot with video.
Do you take influence from any artists or designers in particular?
Ghost shrimp, the guy who did backgrounds for “Adventure Time,” has been a huge influence on me lately. Not in a stylistic sense but more of an idealistic sense. He lives in the middle of the woods in Vermont in a cabin he built himself and just makes what he wants to. Keeping himself afloat with freelance gigs. He could be super rich if he had stayed on Adventure time and raked in a Cartoon Network salary for as long as that show went on, but instead he quit because he didn’t want a boss.
Have you done any internships or projects outside of academia?
Everything dies, which is an art house festival in Eau Claire at a place called the Cherry House. I helped curate the art side of that whole event, which was great. The community that shows up for those events are great people, and I’m trying to get the Menomonie community to have a comparable crowd with their own flavor/spice to it. So, I’m working on organizing some art/music events here in the future.
What are your plans after graduation?
My main plan is to find somewhere that I can keep doing wack shit while staying afloat. So, either get a ton of residencies with fat stipends, work freelance or get a job where they can use my experience in weird ways. Because of that, Can Can Wonderland in Minneapolis seems like a good spot for me to go.