BENJAMIN BALO SCOTT

Life is hard, and success as an artist often seems hopeless. It’s certainly characterized thus — by teachers, peers, even paragons. I am in the middle of a long journey, and I hope my art and my effort speaks for itself, but here is all I can tell you about where I’ve been.

I am an artist, musician, and designer. The scope of my work includes illustration, painting, textiles, audio production, and web design.

I studied fine arts and audio production in college. I spent around 12 years finding sporadic commission work until I fell into embroidery. I spent several months making regular visits to the makerspace at my local library to use their machine and software. I found myself making something that was wholly different from any previous output in other mediums - it was a product. With a loan, I bought my own machine and started a small embroidery business. I produce commercial work, personal commissions, and sell at local markets and events.

I’ve been writing, recording, and producing music since 2010. I’ve released 5 albums with 2 bands, and 2 albums myself. All the while I’ve made a huge amount of electronic music that remains unreleased.

I also built this website using Astrojs. Popular website building services like Wix or Squarespace limit creative freedom, lock basic features behind subscriptions and paywalls, and offer cumbersome and cluttered editing interfaces. I refreshed some old HTML/CSS acumen from my days on MySpace and Neopets, and tought myself some basic JavaScript. The background here on the homepage slowly fades through several different edits of the same photograph using CSS keyframes. The masonry galleries for my art and embroidery have no dependencies and are custom built using Javascript and CSS.

What is my art about? I’m not sure. I hope that I come through as a personage in my art, but I don’t feel like my art comes from me. This is a common sentiment, but I feel all my creative output is found or uncovered. It exists somewhere and I know what it looks like. An empty page is a void of noise and dirt, and somewhere inside is an idea. Maybe an idea is a lighthouse, or a voice in the distance, or a fossil in the ground, or buried treasure. Maybe an idea is life growing inside you, seeded by experience and incubated in your mind. Maybe an idea is like death, and you can’t turn away from it, and you will always end up there no matter where you go.