By: Hannah Wynn
Living between two countries, the UK and the US, has shown Blake Wise how different places handle different cultural situations. He has spent most of his life however living in the US. Blake plans to move back to the UK to continue his work and find an artist residency or a studio position near Birmingham. He knew that he wanted to be an artist because of an open moment he had with his art teacher in high school. He had opened up about some of his problems with dealing with his identity and she recommended that he put his emotional stress into a form of making.
When asked why he wanted to pursue a degree in art, he replied by saying, “All my life I’ve been interested in working creatively, in my recent years after high school and beginning my career in university, I’ve started to explore themes in my artwork that I haven’t really touched on before. Expressing vulnerability, leaning what I can about emotion, how those emotions are accepted or denied, how to build a relationship—all of these things started to become clearer to me, and I’d hoped that my work could start to make it easier for not only myself, but for other people to understand as well.” In regard to his style of art, it varies between ceramic and 2D works. In ceramics , he is inspired by storybook illustrations, fairy tales, and fantasy imagery things like that, but in his 2D works, mostly in print and graphic design, he prefers a more conceptual abstract approach to themes, such as emotional expression and love between men. He says that, “Not all of my work is abstract, I’d say I prefer to aim most of my work towards interactive forms in media. Coloring books, sculpture, etc.”
Blake’s slideshow starts out with a silkscreen and mixed media print called Always just passing through. This print depicts the silhouettes of two nude male figures with the words, “If only a home could feel as warm as you”, behind them. On top of the silhouettes is a color version of the faces of the two male figures. The next piece in the slideshow is a ceramic piece called Untitled. This piece looks like a mushroom. The third piece in the slideshow is a variation of his piece Always just passing through.
The last three pieces are all ceramic works. The first of these three is titled Babe, you taste like honey…. It is a ceramic sculpture that resembles a honey pot. The next is called Pigeon-Toed Boy and this ceramic piece is the legs of a boy. The knees appear scratched and bruised and the feet up to the knee is clad in white socks. The last of the final three ceramic pieces is his piece titled Allowance. This piece depicts two hands grasping a human rear. Each hand appears different, but both are tree-like in a sense.
All of Blake’s works in the show share a common theme, body acceptance and sexual identity. When asked what he is trying to convey with these works, he says, “I want people to understand and begin to accept the lives of homosexual couples and relationships as normalcy.” In terms of his own struggles he says, “Living in a very conservative environment that has so many contrasts as to how people like myself are treated back in the UK, I wonder if raising the voices of people like me could possibly change not only the hearts and minds of others, but also with homosexual men themselves.”