Check out Samuel Aldape Art

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Aldape.

Sam, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My first steps into the art world were made on a sort of fluke decision. For a long time, I followed in my older brother’s footsteps of being invested in science and math, but in my junior year of high school, I decided to take photography as an elective, an off-handed choice, one made from hearsay that the class was easy and had a fun teacher. Quickly, however, I started to have fun just doing the assignments, a lot of fun. So much so that I decided to take the higher level the following year, and soon I began to understand what it felt like to take on creative expression and have agency in my voice; I felt like I could make what I truly wanted and there would be value seen in it.

This led to my decision to pursue photography as a major, as I thought to myself, “If I feel so happy doing this now, why wouldn’t I want to continue that at a higher level?” and thankfully after a lot of anxiety and crossed fingers, the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) took me in. CalArts is where my journey really began, as I was spurred on by the sheer magnitude of talent and imagination surrounding me there, both in my own department and the school as a whole. The concepts, ideas, and conversations were all so in depth and complex that it ignited a fire in me to experiment and explore more than I had ever before. Since my portfolio at that point was mostly traditional photography, it led me to get nontraditional. Through conversations I had with faculty, readings of movements like Bauhaus and the birth of post-modernism in the 60’s and 70’s, I took up abstract image-making, ranging from new digital processes to pseudo-alchemical processes in the darkroom. As time went on at the school some processes stayed, others drifted away, and I was left with a love for working in the darkroom with abstract images and writing poetry that I still have today. Many of my peers as well as some of the faculty had become writers and seeing their work and how it beautifully combined with visual media inspired me to do the same.

Practice-wise that’s the timeline, but emotionally and mentally, I really can’t sing the praises of the people I met at CalArts enough. I came into the school in 2015, graduating in 2019, and the person who entered and the one who exited were completely different. I’ve been allowed to glean so much insight and wisdom from the faculty and peers who were willing to listen to me ramble for hours about ideas I had, projects I wanted to make, and my general inquisitions. I will always be grateful for what they gave to me and I do my best each day to take what I’ve learned and apply it in some way, be it in art-making or just being there for someone. It’s been great fun these days too now that I’m an intern for an arts services company, Curatorial Assistance, where I get to be a part of a larger conversation outside of my own work and help to preserve the archives of many amazing artists.

Has it been a smooth road?
I would say that on the outside, yes it was a smooth road in the beginning. I had the privilege of being able to afford going to school, being supported both financially and emotionally by my family. However, I have a history of anxiety and depression, and it’s impossible to count the amount times I questioned my decision to pursue art. Of course, we’ve all heard about the stereotype of the starving artist, and while that reductive societal image did play a small role in my self-doubt, the real issues came up from thinking about my contribution to the world at large. It was a common joke to hear at school that while others around the world were working to become doctors, engineers and leaders, we were here essentially playing arts-and-crafts. Over the years though, I began to get rid of those views. While I still struggle with the general societal pressure to live via accomplishments and traditional productivity, I wholeheartedly see art-making and art discourse as one of the most valuable things on the planet. We need people to “play arts-and-crafts” so that we keep imagination, joy, and healing alive and normalized in our society. Right now, the journey to be an artist isn’t an easy one simply due to the fact that the systems in place in the world have slowly started to push against the act of art-making, so every day I try to push back with something even just as simple as writing a few lines in a journal. Something like that goes a long way to help keep it all alive.

Please tell us more about your art.
My specialization currently is Old Norse art, or viking art, specifically dealing with their carving styles and their poetry. My journey to study the Old Norse people began in 2017 as an attempt to better connect myself to my Norwegian heritage. I didn’t have a direct connection, like knowing family lineages, so the door was left open to enter from any angle I wanted, and as a fan of stories and storytelling, I began reading the myths and legends. What began as light reading turned into a grand passion, and I soon started to feel an urge to spread the stories I had read to others, and in a sense, teach others about the Norse people. No one in the art world that I’ve been able to see is talking about the vikings, and I thought it was a shame since their works are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated.

Since then, I’ve spent the last three years dedicating my time to learning their culture, histories, and language to better take on the task of speaking about them and teaching their practices. More than that, however, I want to take what they did and bring it into the contemporary landscape. Settling for preservation would keep them frozen in time, and I think there’s so much that can be done to push the envelope of their visual styles and poetry meters. So my most recent project aimed to do just that, in that I decided to teach myself their language and write an epic in both English and Old Norse, an original story that would be about more modern ideas like self-care and toxic masculinity with a woman in the lead role. Accompanying this were murals I created using light in the darkroom to create what I called “light carvings”, or designs on the paper that mimicked the act of carving in stone. All of this was an attempt to actualize that goal of progressing their timeline with new techniques and concepts.

Now while I don’t consider myself to be anywhere near the level of expertise that others in the academic fields have attained, I’m happy with what I’ve done so far to push the conversation of the Old Norse people in the art community and hope to continue to do so for years to come by learning more and honing my ability to teach and make.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I think my favorite part about LA is how well is fosters community for the arts. There is a massive variety of spaces that exist on an independent level. On top of this, there is a constant growth that occurs inside the scene from people newly entering it, like new collectives being established, or spaces that once existed for one purpose or another being converted into galleries and the like. Areas like downtown are just amazing to be in because there’s a diversity that is hard to come by in other areas around the world, and it’s just awesome to see.

Though I love seeing the art scene grow in LA, I’m not a big fan of the outspoken necessity to live there. There’s an idea in the art community that if you really want to “make an impact” you have to be in LA, and I don’t agree with that. I believe that the arts should be able to blossom from anywhere and deserve that recognition. Art scenes exist all over the world and should be seen and given proper credit. As a personal aside, I’m also not a huge fan of the heat as I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I’m more used to the cold air and fog.

Contact Info:

• Website: samuelaldapeart.com
• Email: s.d.aldape@gmail.com

Image Credit:
Rafael Hernandez

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