Clint Imboden

Artist Statement:

I come to making art with the perspective of a therapist. Just as a good therapist can act as a catalyst for change in a client, good art should elicit a strong reaction in the audience, provoking them to explore the reasons why they've been affected.

I usually find my materials at local flea markets. I start with the artifacts of daily living, things that most people discard or overlook: battered globes, worn shoes, dilapidated tools.  I’m drawn to old materials because they foster purposeful imperfection in my art, an attribute that’s connected to their previous lives. I use them for their connotative, associative or narrative possibilities. My installation work is tactile and handmade; as an artist, I focus on process and on topical, issue-based content.

Viewing my artwork is not meant to be a passive experience; it involves reading, deciphering, taking the initiative to engage physically and psychically with text and objects.  I use materials that challenge my audience to consider multiple references in order to understand the full meaning of a piece. I want people to be caught up in the experience of my work, just as I am, in making it. My goal is to have them come away from an encounter with the work knowing something new about themselves.

Clint Imboden is a self taught artist born in St. Louis Missouri. He grew up in a house full of stuff; although neither of my parents were artists, they were both collectors. His father had his tightly defined area of interest and was methodical when collecting while  on the other hand, his mother had much more eclectic interests, with a voracious but impulsive almost  obsessive collecting strategy. 

Over the years Clint has nurtured two diverse careers, working as a mental health professional while making art. His way of seeing as an artist has been shaped both by his parents and by his experiences in the field of psychology. Like his mother, he can be drawn to new objects, without a conscious idea of why or how they will fit in to his work. Conversely drawing from his father, he then takes time to step back  and try to balance the emotional attraction with the overarching then of the work.

As a self-taught artist, Clint has acquired skills from classes taken all over the country. His resourcefulness and desire to create teaching himself to weld, how to make urethane rubber molds and cast polyester resin.

A central element from Clint's psychology background has become an intricate part of his art: his belief that viewing art is equivalent to therapy. The individual is as much an equal partner in the art-viewing process as they are in the therapeutic one.  Through the use of text, Braille, or Morse code he challenges the viewer to commit the time and energy it takes to read or decipher elements in his art to discover it’s full meaning.  As in therapy the individual has to meet him half way.