Irman Arcibal

What happens when you approach art like a scientific experiment, poetry like an act of observation, and a crumpled piece of packaging paper as a collaborator? 

For visual artist and poet Irman Arcibal, these seemingly different ways of seeing the world are deeply connected. A Bay Area native, educator, and longtime interdisciplinary artist, Arcibal moves between drawing, poetry, and scientific thinking in search of moments that feel both simple and complex. In this conversation, he reflects on the experiences that shaped his practice, the intersections of art and science, and his current Pounds of Flesh series.

How and when did you begin your artistic practice?  (Was there a particular moment, experience, or influence that led you to become an artist?) 

In my childhood I was always drawn to visual experiences. Sitting in my childhood church with my family, I can recall purposely focusing and unfocusing my eyes to look at the multi-pointed star-shaped chandeliers hanging from its high ceilings. Throughout my life I was “never not” drawing. As a professional art practice, it is rooted in my time between undergraduate and graduate school experiences - I took almost all the fine art courses, and a couple of poetry classes, at Solano Community College. My professors there really pushed me into experimenting in different mediums to find the initial notes of my artistic voice, which then continued to develop in the Art Studio MFA program at UC Davis. 

Your work brings together drawing, poetry, and science. How did this relationship develop, and what draws you to these intersections? (How do these different fields inform and enrich one another in your creative process?)

 For me, I feel like the most sublime artistic and scientific experiences are poetic in some way, and I think it is the common thing I search for when making art or putting words together. My drawings are very much experiments in terms of coming up with a hypothesis, making observations, and testing out what results might come out of the structures in place. My poems are either reflections of moments experienced through one or more of the five senses, or words strung using rhythm and sound (rhyme, repetition, alliteration, consonance, assonance). At times my writing is both. If my artwork or poem has achieved a sense of being simple and complex at the same time, I know it has neared the point for me to step back and allow it to then begin to exist on its own.

What concepts or questions are you currently exploring in your work? (Are there any recurring themes or ideas that have become especially important to your practice?)

Collaboration, conscious or unconscious, has been the motivation for my work for almost two decades. My current relief-like drawings first began on surfaces crumpled by family, friends, colleagues, and former students. My marks are responses to the way the paper was crumpled, emphasizing the co-creator connection. The most recent pieces are from my Pounds of Flesh series, drawn on packaging paper crumpled by whoever put it into a shipping box — an unconscious collaboration. My flesh-toned marks are scattered across the paper’s wrinkles. The surface itself is also the color of flesh, but at the same time, these colors are earth tones. The title of each numbered work, Shipped, refers to the practical, previous use of the paper, a short, speedy movement through time in a matter of hours or days; as well as the migration of peoples, forced or voluntary, across the earth, a longer, slower process over years, decades, or centuries. The drawings reflect these human movements in moments throughout history to the present day, and into the future.

For more information about Irman Arcibal and their work, visit their website or follow them on Instagram.