Creative Circle Tuesdays: Louis Davis

Self portrait of Artist & Photographer Louis Davis

Name:  Louis Davis

Website: louisdavisart.com

Facebook Page: facebook.com/louisdavisart

What is your medium:  Photography is my base medium

What type of art do you do?  I construct new stories from my photographs to represent something usually totally different, in the tradition of collages, photomontages, digital art, activist art and storytelling.

The Encroaching Wilderness - by Louis Davis

What inspires you?  Almost everything, but mainly books and other visual images.  However, quite often i might be walking or even driving when I see an image and it triggers a memory or an idea.

What pieces did you include in the exhibit "L’éléphant dans la Salle" and why? I showed 3 images in that show. One was a cutdown from a larger piece called "maintaining our way of life", which deals with fast food and obesity and how it is exported throughout the world. The cutdown, which is a small section, is a remake of a very iconic image, and was used to illustrate the real role of the united states army. another image, still untitled after many years, is an image that just falls together visually, but which i have yet to find a reason behind. yet, it turns out that many people react emotionally to the work. the third image, "who is the terrorist?", is in response to how easy we label people and groups terrorists, while the word is simply based on perspectives.

Louis Davis - Who is the Terrorist

Louis Davis - Untitled

Louis Davis - Maintaining our way of Life

Self taught or traditionally trained?  I am not sure what traditionally trained is, but I am self-taught.

Abandon Hope by Louis Davis

Share one thing that has impacted your work?  My activism is central to my work.  So anything that affects the plight of the poor or the environment is likely to be seen in my work.  The computer surely impacts my work because without it, much of my work would take a different form and direction.  

Name one thing we may not know about you or your work?  That its not as easy as it seems.  Many people can create images but often, many images don't have a 'soul', a sense of being.  Achieving palpable meaning is not easy.

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? Aaah,could we delete man?  Ok,that's apparently not going to work for the purpose of this.  Remove greed.

If you had access to a time machine, where would you go?  Hm. Not sure I want to go forward because seeing the future might not be a healthy thing.  So it has to be the past.  Have to think about when, where and why.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring creative, what would it be?   If the person is visual, then I would asy, look at images constantly.  If the person wants to be a writer, I would say 'read voraciously'.  If the person want in on music, then listen.

If you could have one super power,what would it be?  Mass hypnosis, ala Mandrake the magician.  If you can influence people's minds, then you don't need a weapon.

Social Media drug of choice?  Facebook is the only social media I use though at times, I'm often loathe to use it.  Most of the others are too smart for me and twits shouldn't use twitter.