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<\/a>Laskarin explored how the maps he used were made, and that got him started on the work he now loves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started approximating the way maps are made using photography,\u201d he says. \u201cI would take 300, 350 photographs of a single subject and composite them together to make an overall image.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other aspect of Laskarin\u2019s former profession that informed his current one was the fact that he worked on the physical structure of the helicopters he piloted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also worked as an aircraft maintenance engineer,\u201d he says, \u201cand that furthered my interest in the making of stuff and the materiality of stuff, just working with tools and materials.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laskarin keeps his pilot and maintenance hands at work in the studio, doing everything from sculpting to robotics.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy work is in one way or another really connected to the physicality of our being,\u201d he says. \u201cIn a way, art-making might be more like a form of athleticism than a form of language-based philosophy. Good athletes are thinking through their bodies, and it\u2019s a very particular way of viewing the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside Laskarin\u2019s emphasis on the physical side of art-making is the philosophy of existence and personal creation. He says that a lot of the works he makes are, in a way, \u201cother selves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI tend to work on things that are about the size of a person,\u201d he says. \u201cThe pieces come together, the way a self comes together the way a personality and an individual comes together; the piece has its own identity that\u2019s not like other things.\u201d<\/p>\n
ruins and reclamation<\/i> seeks to capture the makeshift, unstructured nature in which our lives are assembled. The exhibit piece \u201chow a thing is made,\u201d for example, was inspired by an old pile of wood.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome pieces of lumber fell in a very awkward and precarious way on an old work table,\u201d Laskarin says, \u201cand I was just curious by it. I was fascinated at the precariousness of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laskarin says that coming up with ideas is easy, but acting on it is what matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeas are coming from all over the place. Sometimes they come from an ethereal source. Sometimes from a philosophical one,\u201d he says. \u201cIdeas are crap. Ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is what you do with the idea. If you wait for a good idea before you start to make art, you\u2019ll never make anything, so you have to just take a crappy idea and try to make something good out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making art and sharing it with the world is never easy. Laskarin says opposition is ongoing for an artist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think success as an artist is just managing to keep making it,\u201d he says. \u201cYou constantly go into and go out of periods of wondering why you\u2019re doing this, but I keep coming back to it because it\u2019s the only way I can think about things.\u201d<\/p>\n