Rikki Kasso: On Creativity
Marianna
Do you have a routine for entering into a creative headspace?
Rikki
I’m pretty much always switched on. Creativity is a fancy word for problem-solving.
Marianna
What sources of inspiration do you use to foster creativity in your work?
Rikki
I am hypersensitive to my environment and my work always reflects an exact place and time in the material and subject matter.
Marianna
What creative projects are you most proud of?
Rikki
I am quite proud of a variety of creative projects that span a spectrum of expression and execution.
- Receiving an award for Photographer of the Year in the UK at the Erotic Awards for my Tokyo Undressed series. As well as publishing my first photography book “Tokyo”, A 280-page definitive volume of my Tokyo Undressed series of photographs. by a respectable art book publisher. Alongside some of my favorite contemporary photographers such as Daido Moriyama and Mark Borthwick.
- Creating the world’s largest ASCII art installation with a permanent public artwork in Mejiro Tokyo. A 5 story multi-dimensional artwork composed of 3000 stainless steel letters adorning the facade of the Mejiro Institute of Child Education. The piece is visible from both the Mejiro train station and along the Yamanote line in Tokyo.
- A 16-foot painting commission on permanent public display for Collins Square, one of Australia’s largest commercial developments in Melbourne Australia.
- Creating Australia’s first superfood for dogs brand and successfully selling the business after 18 months of trading.
-Creating a viral news sensation with my advertising and copywriting work and being banned by the Australian government for it.
-My feature film/documentary “Somewhere in the Middle” which explores hidden dimensions of identity, sex, and suffocation.
Marianna
Do you have habits you've built for yourself to foster creativity?
Rikki
I’m really more in need of habits of detaching from incessant creativity. I should be fostering my pragmatism.
Marianna
Where do you think ideas come from?
Rikki
Survival. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Marianna
What does creativity mean to you?
Rikki
Besides the opposite of destruction. It’s a way of living. An exploration of possibility.
Marianna
When do your best ideas hit you?
Rikki
Exactly when they need to.
Marianna
How would you describe your creative process?
Rikki
A labour of love.
Marianna
So many creatives are pivoting and finding ways to adjust their creative process during the quarantine.
1) How have you been channeling your creativity during this time?
Rikki
In the beginning, it was difficult to divert my attention to anything else besides twitter or medical journals. Then my Aunt in Queens caught the virus and sent our family on edge. Thankfully she recovered but it was not easy to stay in a creative place for the first few months of the year. Now I’m back in the studio refining all of the scattered ideas from the end of last year including paintings, drawings, video, and writing. With an occasional DJ for entertainment.
Marianna
2) Discover anything new or surprising about yourself?
Rikki
How completely nihilistic I could be at times. I usually maintain a certain level of optimism considering my lifestyle of uncertainty but this time I had more doubts than hopes.
Marianna
Art and creativity reflect the current culture. How an artist wields the power to tell stories can be an effective act of rebellion.
How have you been creating in the current cultural climate?
Rikki
I have just returned to the USA after 16 years of living overseas. So the cultural temperature was already abnormally hot and bothered when I arrived in 2017.
Gender, race, and sex were the tentative topics in the USA. And in many ways, I thought that a progressive first world society that prides itself on personal freedoms had those things worked out, evidently not.
I choose to stay slightly detached and subjective to all of the societal issues. I’m sure the work I create during this period has a story, it’s just not on that is totally obvious to me now.
Marianna
Discover anything new or have you been channeling your creativity in new ways?
Rikki
I’ve realized I need to make a podcast.
Marianna
What unexpected turns did your life take to lead you to become who you are today?
Rikki
Honestly, my entire life is a series of unexpected turns. This is exacerbated by my willingness to let go and let live. I have been to places I never imagined, met people that I would have never crossed and I am committed to staying on the same trajectory of collaborating with destiny.
Marianna
How do you make sense of chaos in your life?
Rikki
Ultimately I’ve stopped trying to make sense of the chaos in the moment and appreciate it in retrospect.
Marianna
Why do you think people get stuck on problems?
Rikki
Sometimes you can be too close to a problem to be able to clearly identify it. But more often than not it’s usually a lack of effort stemming from laziness or comfort stop people from trying past the first failure. Especially growing up in a society where all remedies that don’t come quick and easy are deemed inefficient.
Marianna
What advice would you offer those struggling with creative blocks?
Rikki
Rediscover the real purpose of why you need to do what you need to do and focus on that. If that doesn’t inspire you nothing will.
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About Rikki Kasso:
Rikki Kasso b.1979 NYC, is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist and tireless producer who is not afraid to explore new lands, new cultures, and new mediums. It’s that fearless childlike experimentation and freethinking that has Kasso working fluidly throughout many expressions and mediums while maintaining a consistency of vision. The combination of Kasso’s observations of his surroundings and his almost photographic ink wash style produce stunning, almost voyeuristic images in which with a lot of his works, the viewer can identify themselves as the subject.
The self-taught Artist and award-winning fine art photographer left his native NYC for his first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 2003 where he found himself living and creating for the next 9 years. While in Japan, Kasso was immersed in the traditional and underground Japanese culture which not only influenced his art, but permeated it’s way through his entire being. It was during this time he developed his widely recognized and published Tokyo Undressed Series (an award-winning photographic volume filled with honest emotion and raw human sexuality.) It was also during this time Kasso discovered one of his preferred mediums of Sumi Ink which is most known for traditional calligraphy and classical Asian arts.