Chair of the Department of Communication Arts TyRuben Ellingson talked to Broad Street Magazine about how his life changes have affected his artistic practice throughout his nearly 40-year career.
Broad Street: What were some of your other early influences, and how did you get interested in working on movies?
Ellingson: I was a big movie fan very young. I can remember that really early on, probably when I was seven, I saw Frankenstein, and it was so amazing, because I didn’t even know they made movies like that. Everything about it was scary, and cool, and weird, and it seemed so … stimulating. I incorporated those ideas into my drawings and into my imagination. It’s a pattern very similar to many artists’.
One of my interests was always that kind of supernatural universe where people were having dynamic experiences. You know, Frankenstein’s monster is made in a lab, and the lab is filled with all kinds of electricity. I was stimulated by the technology and the idea of putting dead people together and creating life. It made me think, even at a young age, That’s creepy but would that work, and how would it work, and could it work? It was an expansive kind of experience. I also liked, as most children do I guess, the stimulation of being afraid. It’s very seductive; it makes you giddy in a kind of horrific way, if there is such a version of giddy horrificness.
Read the full interview on Medium.
Image: At age 11, TyRuben took this photograph of his father, artist William J. Ellingson, in the studio. He added the embellishments for an exhibition at the Atwood Gallery in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 2012. Credit via Medium.
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