RG: Yeah, there was this professor Richard Waxberg, he was awesome. He said three things that I remember very distinctly. He was the first person to use the word gestalt that I knew of. He talked a lot about the overall feeling of something. It’s like another way of saying, does it work or not? But gestalt is so much more German and nice. I like saying that. He also said that you have to take things on their own terms. That concept is the basis of a really constructive critique. You start to say, “What is the artist trying to do?” And you really empathize with the artist. That to me is the basis of constructive criticism and I can thank Richard for that. And the third thing I learned from him was that you’ve got to be ruthless. Ruthless in the sense that if you’re drawing a figure, and you really get into the details of the knuckles... You gotta be willing to be really hard on yourself, and not be precious, and do what needs to be done to make it happen.
DR: I remember how crazed his paintings could be. He was a walking gestalt. RG: He was a walking gestalt. And what else could you hope to be?
put Prince in prison to make him come out with a four-track jail album, where he can’t use a lot of cheesy synthesizers. He’d have to use really simple materials to make a straightforward good song. He can’t just rely on his old studio tricks.
[My professor, Richard Waxberg] was a walking gestalt, and what else could you hope to be? DR: You’ve been an outspoken Prince fan for many years. We know what Google would do, but more importantly, what would Prince do? RG: (Long sigh) Um, I’ll tell you what I would like Prince to do. ‘Cuz I don’t know what Prince would do. I wish Prince would go back to basics. I have this fantasy of having, like, a Court TV show where my favorite artists who have disappointed me would be put on trial, and I would sentence them to a project that they’d have to complete to get out of a prison. And I want to
DR: Would it be a purple prison? RG: That’d be fine. That’d be great.
DAN REDDING ’03 runs Magnetic State (www.magneticstate.com), a design and illustration studio located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and teaches art and music classes for visually impaired teens at the Lighthouse International. RYAN GERMICK ’03 is a designer at Google as well as a cartoonist, Web designer, Indiana native, and Prince enthusiast (www.ryangermick.com). Both graduated in 2003 with BFA’s in Illustration from Parsons and BA’s in Writing from Eugene Lang College.
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