The members of Wilmington, Del.’s Spinto Band have been playing together since the mid-1990s, when they were still in high school. A decade and a half later finds Nick Krill (vocals/guitar), Thomas Hughes (bass/vocals), Jeffrey Hobson (drums), Sam Hughes (keyboards), Joey Hobson (guitar) perfecting pop sounds on the recent full-length, Shy Pursuit, in their newly built recording studio, scoring films, starting a record label and searching for the perfect cup of coffee. They will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Krill.
Krill: About four years ago I had the opportunity to regularly attend some MFA photography critiques. Each week, at the critique, a different set of students would present new photographs and talk about them with a panel of their teachers and visiting artists, as well as their classmates. I made it a point to go as often as I could because it was exciting for me to hear people talking in depth about an art form that was not, music or sound recording. I ended up becoming really inspired by all these photographers, because when they would talk about an aspect of a photograph, I’d try to think of a musical or sonic analogy. For example if someone mentioned that the way an edge of a photograph looked really made it a success I would think, “What is the edge of a sound recording, and how can I make it interesting?” In the end the weird changes and distortions that would take place transferring ideas from one medium to another became really special. The point of all this is there is a really interesting exhibition of Dan Flavin drawings right now at the Morgan Library and Museum. Dan is known for his florescent light sculptures, so it is interesting to see him working in another way here. What is really exciting is comparing and contrasting his studies for his light installations with his sketches of trees, boats and landscapes. The similarities you can see are kind of amazing when first you look at a sketch of a bunch of trees, then a study for a light sculpture, and then a light sculpture itself. On top of all that the exhibit has some drawings by other artists that Dan collected. Again, it is really fun to compare the art Dan was living with to what he created. Who knows if he was pulling analogies from boats and these landscapes into his light sculptures (but how could he not?!), but regardless, it was really neat for me to recognize again how two completely different ways of working and two completely different looking forms of art could potentially be giving each other feedback.
Drawings after the jump.
