Leap Year Special: Hump Day Q&A Revisited with Steve Daly
Hello Fellow Humpers!
In honor of this unique day, Leap Day, which happens but every four years, on February 29th, we are honored to reblog our very first Hump Day Q&A with Steve Daly.
Since it’s first posting, on January 18, Daly’s group exhibition “Second City Psychasthenia” at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in Chelsea, has closed to much praise and a nice write-up by The New Yorker.
We too have some praises, by our Tumblr followers, reaching 99! So, for you first timers, welcome and enjoy the first Hump Day Q&A and to the old-timers, we hope you re-enjoy! Happy Leap Year Celebration !
1. Who are you?
Artist.
2. What do you do?
Generally speaking, I wander around with a very large, outmoded camera looking forthings in the external world that spark some kind of dialogue with what’s going on in my interior world. Sometimes it’s the other way around.
3. When/Where/How did you get your start?
I am a recovering journalist and television producer. I realized my life was an ever-expanding black hole of despair, drift and boredom. It seemed to make some sense toharness that.
4. How long have you been at it?
In a live-eat-breathe-it way, about five years.
5. What is the most important thing we should know about you?
Cautiously optimistic.
6. Is there anyone else in your field who you particularly admire?
Thomas Struth makes my heart sing.
7. What types of art are you into?
The good kind. I like it all: painting and film, especially, and printmaking.
8. You got any crazy hobbies or unique talents?
Being in the right place at the right time. It’s seriously fucking weird how many times that’s happened.
9. What’s your favourite vice?
Kodak Portra 160.
10. What is your most prized possession?
An anxious mind. A Linhof Technika III, manufactured sometime between 1956 and 1972 in West Germany. The support of others.
11. You eat food? What kind? Like to cook?
YES! As a recent transplant to Amsterdam, I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession withmussels, and buying whatever weird Dutch cheese is on sale at the supermarket (note:Dutch cheese with cumin = yuck), along with bizarre cured meats, like ossenwurst. Myother favorite things to cook these days are various ethnic soups and stews because theyare cheap, healthy and last a few days (and always taste better the second day). But I’llpretty much eat anything you put in front of me. Except tripe: We don’t have to use thewhole animal. Though I do like tripe as an adjective.
12. Truth or Dare? Elaborate.
What’s truth? Dare to wear women’s deodorant. Dare to experiment, and to make processintegral to practice. Dare to embrace the work of others in pursuit of yours rather than just react against it.
13. How do you make it over the hump on Wednesday?
Did you get this question from the side of a cereal box?
(Steve Daly is a photographer and all-around-good-guy living in Amsterdam. He is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA program and a 2011 recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Arts. His work is on view through 2/18 in “Second City Psychasthenia” at the Andrea Meislin Gallery, 526 W. 26th Street, #214, NY, NY)
