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Photo by Christine Taylor, Interview By Hannah Piper Burns

Chris Lael Larson is truly a jack-of-all trades. Juggling collaborations with his musical project, Deelay Ceelay, commercial work in both video and print, and an art practice, he is a fixture in the Portland arts scene. Recently, he and I met at Backspace, and as twilight fell over Old Town, we discussed process, inspiration, and his upcoming photo show at Igloo Gallery.

Chris Lael Larson will be showing “Photos and Photo Animations” at Igloo Gallery, opening September 3rd at 6 pm. He and his band, Deelay Ceelay, will be on tour with fellow Portland prodigies, Starfucker, this fall.

Music is really essential to a lot of your work, and the themes of harmony and unification and rhythm are so present. I know you’re doing a lot of stills in the show and I’m wondering, do you try to bring that musical element into stills somehow?

I think I’m still trying to figure out what that tie-through is. I feel like taking a photograph is kind of like doing graphic design or abstract painting in real time, in the real world. Rarely do I ever have a set idea. I just shoot for an exploration. When you’re finding things and compositions you come across, in a lot of ways it’s a much more passive medium. And maybe one skill is obviously looking and being a more active viewer, but also knowing the places to go to find those moments.

Would you call the photographs a visual diary?

Very much so. I’ve always gone through periods off and on where I try to journal because I feel like it’s a really good exercise and I develop ideas so much better, and I’m pressing myself to make it part of both my visual my music practice. I feel like they’re my way of keeping track of my own story, visually. In shooting these photographs I never thought that I would show them, and so I really don’t know what to expect as far as people’s reaction. Taking a whole three years of photos and culling them down to forty-eight and then finding a way that they could work together in a grid was a huge struggle, way more than I even anticipated. There’s definitely that kind of play between visually just balancing colors, and I think that’s the graphic designer in me. I thought, too, about if I went to my show and I didn’t know who I was, or anything about what I did, I would want to get some glimpse into a personal life- into not only the world as they see it, but their world.

Do you feel like your curation of these photographs was more conscious or more visual?

I think it’s both, actually, because there are so many images in there that really hit me more through the visual and there’s some that are more for the emotional content. But I definitely will filter if the composition doesn’t work, because it has to be accessible. And maybe that’s the same approach that pop musicians have: you can make a really complex song, just give it a hook, and people have a way to get into it and get themselves to figure it out, which I think is ultimately what you want. And maybe it’s even more important as attention spans get shorter and shorter and all our media is just more and more bite-sized, in these tiny little packets. I think you need that initial hook as a way to get into it.

Do you think as an artist you’re an optimist? Or are you a pessimist?

I would say I’m an optimist. I spend a lot of energy trying to find beauty. If I can’t, I try to create it. I think you just have to do what you do best and what you’re passionate about. You like to think that in some even tiny way contributing, that you could potentially make something that is kind of paying it forward.

What has inspired you lately?

I was actually reading this book called “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, which, it’s by Bill Brice and, in a way, a spinoff of “A Brief History of Time”, by Stephen Hawking. But it takes it one step further and makes it more available for a layperson. It’s basically this overview of everything we know about physics, and chemistry, and how everything that is seen and experienced has come to exist. And it’s just blowing my mind. And there’s always, always music and art, but it’s hard to put my finger on it, because with the Internet it’s like, seven new albums a week! And I have to say that this city, Portland, and the people who live here and work here, and just the immediacy of this community here has just been a huge, huge influence on me. It’s much more direct because you know these people or interact with them. You know, you can get a Radiohead album, but you’ll never have lunch with Thom Yorke.

In your experiences as a creative professional, what are the biggest things you learned through experience in the field that is really present in your work?

I feel like music is a collaborative experience, so very much switching into that gear, and professional work is obviously client-based, working in this informed creative realm where you’re not entirely working from your own aesthetic. It’s about communication and trying to get an idea across. I think the thing that they all have in common is the sensitivity to what you’re doing that lets you know if you’re on a good path, developing that really acute sense of when something’s working and not working and being able to put it into words, and be very specific. I think it’s incredibly important for anyone who’s going to work at all with anyone else, especially professionally, because you’re expected to have a really strong reasoning behind every single tiny thing you do, and you better be able to defend it. I feel like you need to be very conscious of the viewing experience. In the digital age, especially, anyone can shoot seven hundred photographs at a rock show, so a lot of the skill now is in editing. Most of the photos that are in this show, I had probably shot ten or fifteen different ways, and the ones that were selected were the ones that really worked, down to what edge was here or there. It can be really enjoyable to exhaust all those options as part of the exploration.

——————————Related Posts & Info

• First Thursday @ IGLOO – ‘Photos & Photo Animations’ | Work by Chris Lael Larson
• More Portland People
• Christine Taylor’s Website: Happyplayground.com
• First Thursday Events in Portland

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Hannah Piper Burns is a freelancer, video artist, and art writer who got her MFA in San Francisco and then promptly fled to the Northwest. She has only been here for three months, but she is already addicted to elk meat and Rogue ales. You can see her artwork on her website, hannahpiperburns.com, subscribe to her videos on vimeo.com/hpb, and follow her on twitter @thesubtlehustle.