141.5 John Wiens, Fine Artist and Architect

Hi Everyone, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Wiens, a fine artist about his creative art journey. His son, Andrew Wiens was kind enough to introduce us.

 
What inspired you to become an artist? Although I was drawing Disney caricatures when I was in grade school, it was after I received a degree in architecture and was moving into our first house, that I was faced with blank walls and little money to buy art, any art.  It was then that I gave myself the challenge of putting my art on those blank walls.  By that time, I had developed a skill for travel sketching in conte, ink, and pencil. In my third year of architecture school at USC in Los Angeles I received a traveling scholarship paid by the Architectural Guild of Los Angeles, which allowed me to travel in Europe for a year. During that time I carried the History of Architecture by Sir Banister Fletcher and a paperback edition of Kidder Smith, Modern European Architecture. I visited twenty-two countries, and did over a hundred sketches.
 
What type of art technique is your favorite? For the past fifty years I have experimented with the basic watercolor, acrylic, oil media, and for the past ten years I have been producing monoprints with etching ink on paper.
 
How do you market yourself? Most of my marketing comes from hanging my work in various venues including libraries, artist co-ops, banks, restaurants, community lobbies, and entering competitions.  I also have a URL, showmeartbyjohn.com.
 
Artists that inspire you? I attended the University of Southern California majoring in architecture in late 1970, and the Bauhaus was very influential in my architecture designs and in my admiration of the artists that taught there, including Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Other favorites include Toulouse-Lautrec, Egon Schiele, Isabel Bishop, Henri Matisse, and Richard Diebenkorn. I think the common thread is their beautiful, creative, inspiring drawings.
 
How do you stay motivated? I have always been a person who is curious, about everything. ie. history, religion, economics, art, music, interpersonal relationships, different cultures, politics, the ecosystems, etc. I have recognized that my driving motivation is to stay creative.  My latest adventure is exploring the results from my new monoprint press. At the moment I’m doing abstract architectural images on the press and adding black / white chalk for accents. The possibilities are enough for a lifetime. I’ve attached several abstract monoprints.
 
How do you manage work life balance? I’m not a person who gives up family and marriage for career.  I think that decision has given me fifty-seven years of marriage, and two well adjusted adults. A good portion of the success of my marriage should be given to my sweet wife who had her own career and recognized how important it is to me to stay creative.
 
What would my advice be looking back on my career? When I look back at my career, and I find that I have been true to my convictions, and with that came a career where I struggled as a young architectural student, was lucky enough to receive a travelling fellowship for a year from USC, received a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, spent five year in the Navy Engineering Corp, managing construction in Laos, opened my office which survived for 30 years, designing mostly health facilities and large custom houses, taught watercolor at a community college where students had no background in art yet became watercolorist after doing 60 paintings, retired to Bainbridge Island to live with my daughter’s family for five years, and developed monoprint skills, and have recently moved into a retirement community that has a very active art component. I have always believed that if opportunity opens a door, you owe it to yourself to walk through it.
 
Where can we see your work? My web site is: showmeartbyjohn.com. Unfortunately, my work is mostly in my apartment. I do have photos that would give you a glimpse of the variety of size, media, and subject matter. And thank you for asking.
 
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND – CREATIVE EVENTS
 
There are many architects who are both designers and teachers. The interests seem to be in their blood, and I am one of those.  From early in my architectural career I have been bring the joy of architecture to young people, and later to older architecture enthusiasts.
 
My initial program was at the Fresno Art Center with the creation of a geodesic dome out of cardboard for 3rd and 4th graders, including my kids. From that event I created a weekly program at the Art Center to explore various shapes with milk cartons. We even built a table out of milk cartons.
 
My next program was inspired by Mr. Salvadori, a structural engineer from NY City, who put together a simple structural paper bridges that could hold rolls of pennies and could approximate the structural characteristics of failure when overloaded.  He wrote a thin book on how these bridges could be made out of seven sheets of copy paper. Mr. Salvadori, taught engineering to college students at Columbia University using this same exercise.  I was inspired to use his materials to teach 4th and 5th graders in an inner-city elementary school in an after class club.  The principal was very supportive and the results were minority kids who began think of architecture as a possible endeavor, while having fun building a true bridge and testing it to failure.  The look of excitement on their face as the bridge began to twist and fail was so rewarding for me that I continued to offer the short version to school kids, adults, where ever I moved.
 
When I moved to Bainbridge Island to live with my daughter’s family I joined the Thursday Oatmeal Club that has a membership of around one hundred, of 70 and 80year old retired men who are quite accomplished. When I was asked to provide the program, I was complimented yet nervous about what I would talk about. I decided that the subject I knew from personal study and experience was creativity. And that I could use the paper bridge exercise to have them experience how creativity works. I mostly used Betty Edwards book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, where she lays out the step of being creative. The steps start with an idea, goes to exploring the idea, being frustrated with the exploration, a new solution emerges from the frustration, and finally a new product is created. I have experienced these steps, especially the required frustration.
 
I have included some pictures that show the excitement in the faces of these old codgers, and it is exciting. The winner of the bridge that held the most weight, was a man who made paint formulas for a living. His bridge held 33lb!  At the end of the program I promised the club members that the following morning they would wake up to find a new way to build their bridge. And they did.
 
One of my most profound art experiences for me happen when I was challenged by my UU Church to think about the trauma of 9/11 which happen ten years earlier, and was a trauma of vulnerability for the whole country.  I thought that by focusing on this tragedy I would experience an emotional connection with my expression. Wow, I still get teary when I think about the experience.  I’ve included some photo of the series of ten three minutes drawings that still hold power.  I’ve tried to bring this experience to the wider public at the Bainbridge Museum of Art, but they don’t see themselves as promoting live art.  My thought was to have the videos of 9/11 going and the public putting title descriptions on my and others drawing, in this way to deal with naming their feelings through art. What do you think?