Chris Cruz is an artist, writer, and filmmaker who has lived in Chile, Vancouver, and, for now, Toronto. They have led a community-arts film-making program called Fright Film School over the past couple of years, and participated in the Make It Move! program at SKETCH. Here, Chris shares thoughts on their inspirations, current art projects and SKETCH’s Indie Studio.
My artistic “process” is that inspiration hits, and then I draw or paint or write a screenplay.
.The inspiration will tell me what medium and shape it wants to take. In practical terms, I paint using acrylics and water colours right now. I started with oil paints long ago, but they’re toxic and smell horrible. So acrylic for now. I also make films. I’ve made a few shorts including a stop-motion animation one. The goal is to make feature films in the very near future.
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Chris at work in the SKETCH studio
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My artistic process is random for me, but usually I obsess about something, and then something pops into my head. I don’t like to presume that it’s just myself getting these ideas alone–I feel like it’s something greater than that. Like the universe is putting these images into my head. I feel like it’s supernatural, I can’t analyze it too much or explain it in words. For others creativity could be straightforward, but for me, I’ll be dreaming and then some idea or image pops up. I have lucid dreams sometimes and other times very intense dreams just before waking.
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Right now I’m working on a series about the refugee crises in the world, but particularly in Europe and the Middle East now. I can relate from my own background: my parents were not refugees per se, but Chile was in a crisis and it was a horrible place to be for less-privileged, working-class people, so my parents really had no choice but to pack up, leave and go to a safer, “first world” country like Canada.
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Chris putting touches on latest piece
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This current refugee crisis is really affecting me. It’s been hard to hear the news of thousands of desperate people getting on flimsy boats only to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. Seeing the picture of Alan Kurdi this past summer, pretty much broke me and gave me nightmares afterwards.
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If I see something in the world that gets me emotionally, I’ll get a lot of motivation and inspiration, even though the theme could be something negative. It’s difficult for me to not be affected because I think being in the middle of a war and forced to go somewhere else…those are circumstances that are completely out of your control. It’s sad to me that it keeps happening in South America and Vietnam and Syria and so on. North America and Europe are complicit in all of this, although as North Americans we tend to be asleep at the wheel and not realize what’s going on in the world.
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We don’t realize that our governments are extracting resources from the “third world” and terrorizing the citizens of those countries when “we” can’t get our way. I find it so ironic that people need to leave their countries for Europe and North America for those very reasons. The place of salvation is also the place that caused your doom.
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But my themes keep moving around. Last year I focused on gender themes, for example women and the way they’re looked at in society, in the media and online, as well as the expectations we have for them and how traditional gender roles and stereotypes still exist. When I was younger, I did mostly non-political stuff like pinup girls and landscapes. I keep changing it up. That’s the way I am. Although I will stay with this series about immigration and refugees for a while now.
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Electric Lady by Chris Cruz
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I heard about SKETCH from word of mouth, that it was a great place to do art, so I started coming. Then I got an email about Indie Studio. I really wish Indie Studio was longer, like twice a week. Or five months long! I don’t have enough time to do all the stuff I wanna do!
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A landscape by Chris
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I feel like I’ve always been doing art. As a toddler I was always drawing on walls. Creativity has always been with me, it’s always been on my side. I think it’s been the only consistent thing in my life because everything else has changed. Even the perception of my “race” or “gender” can change depending on the person who’s looking at me. And I’ve moved from place to place to place so even my geographic location is hard to pinpoint. I may be physically here but my heart is somewhere else. But art has always been my first love and passion. I can’t imagine not having art in my life. I’ve always needed to draw, or tell a story, or even make a puppet show! As a kid anyway, now I can make animated films, so I don’t need the puppet-show theatre (a cardboard box with a hole cut into it) anymore.
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Now I just need a camera and maybe some funds (hint, hint!).
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