Butch Vig Remixes Art
So what does a rock star do to break up the daily toil of recording a highly anticipated album? Well, if you’re Garbage ’s Butch Vig, you curate an art exhibit. In case the “rock & roll thing” doesn’t work out, Vig’s got a pretty solid resume to fall back on. Aside from writing songs and playing drums for Garbage, Vig has produced albums by everyone fromFreedy Johnston to Soul Asylum to, most notably, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth . And in Garbage’s pre-Shirley Manson, pre-platinum-selling debut album days, Vig and fellow band mates, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker, remixed tracks for the likes ofU2, Beck, Alanis Morissette and Nine Inch Nails . Before all that, Vig received a degree in filmmaking from the University of Wisconsin. As guest curator for the online art Web site Guild.com, Vig stepped back into the visual arts this past November going through photos for the exhibit, aptly titled “Remixing Art.”
Based out of Vig’s Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin — where Garbage are currently working on the follow-up to 1998’s Version 2.0 — Guild.com is the Internet’s largest online art retailer. The site features a wide variety of art, including photos, paintings, drawings and sculptures by contemporary artists. “Remixing Art” contains eighteen images handpicked out of some five hundred by Vig. “After I was approached to put together a guest exhibit, I became attracted to the work by many of the photographers, particularly some of the darker black and white images,” Vig says. “The lack of color causes your mind to fill in some of the cracks — and it’s definitely more evocative and haunting,” he explains in his curator’s comments.
While black and white photos dominate Vig’s exhibit, there are several color images and all of the photos play with perception in a variety of ways manipulating space, depth and color. There’s Holly Bowers’ breathtaking and otherworldly photo called “Taos Hayfield,” which Vig compares to the moment color is turned on in The Wizard of Oz, and Karl Koenig’s utterly eerie “Fife Parasite Tree.” Vig describes this one as “Mother nature delivers another complicated mess, with stunning results.”
Alternately beautiful, surreal, haunting, the images share a dark undertone that matches Garbage’s sensibilities, finely crafted pop songs with a razor-sharp tinge. “I have several of the photographs from the exhibit up on my wall,” Vig says, “and along with some paintings by Dennis Nechvatel and Stick Vega, the vibe in my loft is pretty dark. I’m not sure how the images influence my work, but I still love a good pop melody juxtaposed with an atmospheric track or a dark lyric.” And like the inveterate knob twiddler behind Garbage, some of the artists featured in “Remixing Art” use digital technology to manipulate their images, but for Vig the process of art is always superseded by the finished product be it seen or heard. “Technology comes into play in the sound of an album, but I still believe that most people relate to a song, or any other form of art, by getting some sort of emotional response from it, whether it be the singer’s voice or lyrics, or a heavy groove, or a bitchin’ guitar solo.”
But even Vig wouldn’t hedge any bets on what that “emotional response” might be for Garbage fans. The songwriter surprises himself in the creative process. “With Garbage, I never know how a song is going to turn out. When we’re writing, I start to get a sonic image in my brain, but the song might take several detours before it is finished. Sometimes it’s frustrating, because the song never quite gets to that place I thought it would. But it’s the process that I find the most interesting. I’m sure many artists would agree, that by the time you’ve finished your piece de resistance, you just want to move on to something new.”
No word yet on when Garbage’s “something new” will be complete (though Shirley Manson revealed on Garbage.com that drummer Matt Chamberlain — ofTori Amos, Fiona Apple fame — has joined the band in the studio to work on the track “Over A Cup of Coffe”). In the meantime, “Remixing Art” can be viewed on www.guild.com and the photos featured will be available for purchase on the site until February 23rd.
CHRISTINA SARACENO
(February 7, 2001)
source: rollingstone.com