A Visit to Wade Guyton’s Studio
Oct 4, 2011

Youth  Insights (YI) participants were invited to visit the artist Wade Guyton’s studio on Monday, December 3. Guyton’s work is currently on view in an exhibition of his work entitled Wade Guyton: OS. The show mostly consists of large works the artist refers to as paintings, even though the images have been printed from a computer onto canvas or linen. Many of the prints are purposely left with imperfections from the printing process, which can cause things like ink running down the work or parts of the image to break apart. These “mistakes” make the work more interesting and abstract.

When I walked into Guyton’s studio, two things caught my eye. The first thing was his work hanging on the wall, and I mean huge works hanging on multiple walls. The other thing I noticed was probably the biggest printer I’ve ever seen. We got to see the printer up close and Guyton explained the process of making his huge artworks. For his large-scale black canvases, he folds the linen in half, runs one side through the printer, then flips it and runs it through again. He also mentioned that one of the ways he gets the ink to run is by canceling the current print job halfway through.

In a quick Q&A, we learned that Guyton doesn’t want to control what viewers think about his work. In other words, he seemed open to people finding different meanings and significance in the pieces—that’s what stood out to me the most. I thought this was cool because it allows people to respond to his work in their own way.

By Rae Ann, Youth Insights Leader