Best Laid Plans 18: Time and Space

Scott Anderson is a designer and artist from Fort Worth, TX and spends a lot of time in Dallas. After twenty years in the design and advertising industries — for which he begs to be forgiven — he's now working on art that is not meant to make you want to buy products from someone else, feel good about a certain company, or feel bad about yourself. Quite the contrary; Scott wants you to feel good about yourself.

A largely self-taught artist, Scott has his mother and a handful of teachers to thank for teaching him much of what he knows about creativity, though usually it was in the context of creative writing. Also, Scott plays in a jazz trio, which has trained him to be creative on the fly, without filters or blinders and with only the roughest sketch of an outline or plan of action. As he puts it: Genuine high-wire-without-a-net stuff.

The artwork Scott now creates is a direct result of his dual creative pursuits in music and writing. There's a certain amount of "no mind" in his artistic process. He loves taking the familiar and twisting it, shattering it, stretching it, or distorting it until you can see the underlying structures – the bones, the arteries, and the nerves – of the world in some new way. There is a direct connection to a jazz standard played in some new, inventive, and unusual way. You know the song, but in the performance you are shown something in the song you didn't realize was there.

The method is constantly evolving – itself a song that is never played the same way twice. And, Scott hopes, never resolving.