Core Memories: Joe Tsambiras
We believe the origin of our work as creators is important to consider and hold. In CORE MEMORIES, we ask artists and writers about their own creative beginnings. What led them to operate in their genre of choice? Was it a specific moment, an errant thought, a movement? Was it an insight, a person, a place? Years into their work, does it continue to resonate?
In this edition, we interview Joe Tsambiras.
Joe Tsambiras is a drawer and printmaker living in Savannah, Georgia. He received a BFA in illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in drawing and printmaking from Georgia State University. He was a founding member of the Atlanta Printmakers Studio (APS). Currently, he consistently works on new bodies of work as well as working as a Professor of Foundation Studies at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. He exhibits work nationally and internationally. His work can also be found in various private collections such as renowned fashion designer Guo Pei and in the collection of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art..
What is your CORE MEMORY?
I came to poetry first through falling for D.H. Lawrence’s words and thoughts in novels, but then I discovered his book of poetry, “Pansies.” “We Are Transmitters” became a manifesto of sorts for me of what it means to create things, and how we should put care and honesty into the things we make. Then, in my mid-20s, it was through Raymond Carver that I fully developed a connection to poetry. And then soon after, I also became addicted to a small book of poems by Julio Cortazar. To me, life is an indescribable thing—there are innumerable possible trajectories for getting to the truth of a situation. For me, the best poetry does not describe the truth head-on, but paints in the negative spaces until all that is left is your impression of what is missing in the description—the heart of something that you have to imagine or feel for yourself. I didn’t necessarily analyze this at the time of reading, but it makes so much sense relative to how I experience living, thinking, and feeling day-to-day. Nothing seems fixed. Everything stays in relative flux, and is shifting depending on personal vantage points, involvement, age, weather, etc.
How has that moment impacted your current work or current artistic practice?
Poetry has had a direct impact on my artwork. As poetry has its structural elements, I also carefully consider these factors in the creation of an image. For example, I pay careful attention to the positive- and negative-space relationships in a work, which relates to the structure of words in poetry, and the way they interplay to create a particular harmonic resonance. Furthermore, it is the speculative quality of certain poems that holds my interest. I always (hopefully) work through the poetic sensibility to shave off what is unnecessary in describing the content of an idea. My favorite poetry surprises me, to the point that I cannot understand it totally, but I am left with a feeling of something lingering. In a similar way, in my own work, I work through the idea of what visual components are juxtaposed, which unlocks a feeling that I do not understand, which in turn reflects the way I feel about the cosmos, or “the nature of nature.”