“Skateboarding and building ramps is the one thing that has had the biggest impact on my work,”said local artist Kyle Falzone, who recently received a $4,000 grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for his work in mixed media.
The grant, which the museum gives out to many artists on a number of levels annually as part of their fellowship program, was something the VCU undergraduate never expected.
“I was kind of just blown away,” said Falzone. “A little bit of a shock there. Just a lot of gratitude for that.”
For Falzone, art has always been an important part of his life, but he’s only been seriously involved with his craft for the last five or six years. His audience has changed ever since he decided to go back to school at VCU.
Falzone
Photo credit: Stephen Stalnaker
“I’m thinking more about the people at galleries and that kind of setting,” said Falzone. “But originally, it was mostly for my friends and skateboarding and stuff, and I’d done some stuff at a local skate shop at Virginia Beach. I was always kind of thinking about that audience, but now, I’m thinking more about bringing that sort of aesthetic and feeling to a lighter audience, kind of sharing that skateboarding culture and what surrounds it to a wider audience.”
A big inspiration for Falzone’s art came from his experience between high school and college working as an architectural designer, where he used AutoCAD, a 2-D and 3-D computer program that is used to draft blueprints.
“It plays a big role in the way I make paintings and sculptures too,” said Falzone. “I still draft them in the AutoCAD program before I build something. Even the way I approach painting them is similar to the way you would draft them in this computer program where, you know, you throw the lines out there and go off of that.”
Falzone thinks of himself as an artistic filter, taking in everything and keeping the parts that resonate with him. After that, he idealizes or aestheticizes them as art. For him, his surroundings alone are strong inspirations for the sculptural art he creates. One art project in particular Falzone did exemplifies this approach.
“It’s an assemblage of these sort of lamp things that I built, and some signs. It’s kind of an idealized version of this burnt down campsite I found. I’m pretty interested in going that direction, creating sort of these sculptural environments that are aestheticized versions of real sites.”
Despite the project being one of his favorites, it didn’t come to fruition by Falzone staying in his comfort zone. In fact, the exact opposite, which is a testament to Falzone’s desire to keep evolving his style.
“It’s kind of funny too, using that orange,” said Falzone. “I’ve always kind of hated orange and yellow, but I’ve been trying to push myself in those directions too, since it seems to be rewarding. It’s always a challenging thing to continue to, like, reinvent what you’re doing and not feel like you have to keep doing what somebody likes.”
Falzone said his education at VCU, where he’s currently enrolled as a rising senior studying sculpture and extended media , didn’t teach him how to be a better artist. Instead, it taught him how to communicate about art and understand his work.
The demands of his degree forced him to be more social in the art world, where fellow art students must critique each other’s work.
“One of the things somebody told me is you don’t go to school to learn how to make art,” said Falzone. “You learn how to talk about art or talk about your work. It’s still clunky for me to describe what I’m doing in an eloquent manner. Just being around people who do know the terms and how to describe what they’re doing, that’s been the biggest thing, and just being more social in the art world, too.”
For Falzone, he’s got several interesting projects in the pipeline. Working at an office has inspired him to begin a series of paintings about office supplies, after he found a bunch of old folders at work. He is also collaborating with a musician friend of his, incorporating a 3-D element to his sculptural art that is sure to culminate in a unique final product.
“He’s using a loop pedal to create sounds off my sculptures and turning it into a composition, a sound composition,” said Falzone. “So that’s pretty exciting. We’re having a lot of fun with that.”
Falzone’s art will be featured in an exhibition called “Game On: Sports in Ancient and Modern Art”, and will be on display at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, from July 9th to October 6th. It’s definitely worth a visit, as his artwork deserves being seen in person.
