MEET ignacio escobar

“If you see a piece of art that moves you,

You’ll see things in it that resonates with you that transcends basic reality.

buy it. It’s life changing! ”

- Ignacio Escobar

Interview Ignacio Escobar
by Joness Jones, Andrew Myers Art Gallery

How did you start making art?

Ignacio :

I've been a tinkerer since I was a kid. I would take things apart to see how they worked.  I attended Emily Carr University of Design and thereafter had a room full of design experiments in my house. I tried painting but my impatience required more immediate, 3 dimensional results. One day in 2018 I found myself  hand forming a soft piece of aluminum sheet and that's when making "art" began.

AMA : Was it a tinfoil hat?

Ignacio : It could be! It’s about 10 tinfoil hats put together. It came to me out of the blue, out of the aether. It’s soft enough to form, but heavy enough to keep its form - it’s not tinfoil.

I’ve always been in the design field, and I had a piece of aluminum I was messing around with. I bought a roll and put a bunch of pieces together and liked what I saw. I decided to powder coat it to protect it and give it integrity .The powder is applied with an electrostatic charge then baked in the oven where it flows like a liquid leaving a perfect coating. It's great for color too.

Chrome Aluminum Sculpture
Ignacio Escobar
30”x40”
2018

At the same time, I was designing a full Pablo Escobar Spanish Hacienda for a friend of mine in Nicaragua. We worked in film together, and he became quite a successful writer and producer. He bought a property and asked me to help design and manage the build back in 2018.
I had just left the film industry in Vancouver.

AMA: So before you were making art, you were in the film industry?

Ignacio : I was in Set Decorating in Vancouver, Canada for over two decades.

AMA : How cool! Any favorite projects?

Ignacio: Yes! 7 Years in Tibet - I was the props guys, and I really enjoyed working with Brad Pitt. That was a life changing movie, I went to Argentina and lived in the Andes and stayed in the wine country Mendoza for months. It was unbelievable.

I met a woman, and obviously, Argentinian women are gorgeous. I ended up moving there for two years, we got married, and then moved back to Canada. That was definitely one of the highlights of my film career, but there were a lot of other great projects.

We were really fortunate to be one of the top decorating crews in Vancouver so we got to do a lot of big movies, big American movies that come from LA because the dollar was cheaper in Canada.

I loved doing sci-fi and fantasy movies. I loved the challenge of creating things that didn't exist or going back in time creating fantasy. In the fantasy  movie  "World of Warcraft" we made dwellings out of elephant hides - and you can’t get elephant hides - so you have to figure out how to make elephant hides. It was a blast being around super creative people all the time. It was like there was nothing we couldn't accomplish. ( With money of course).

If this gallery was a movie set, everything but the walls and paint I would have to go find. Andrew has done an amazing job of curating this place. Everything is fantastic, the art, furniture, jewelry, etc.

AMA : So you were a sourcer. A sourcerer?

Ignacio: Yes sourcery was my specialty. I was a set decorator/ buyer, so I got to run around, buying, conceptualizing and being creative. We worked well as a team and did a bunch of X-Men movies, Mission Impossible 4, etc, more than 40 pictures.

By 2007 my marriage had long ended and I met a girl in Los Angeles.

I would visit LA a lot because one of my best friend lived in Santa Monica, so I would come to his house and hang out between movies for months at a time. Our relationship was long distance, back in 2007 during the time when you had to  buy phone cards with time limits and no FaceTime.

AMA : That’s dedication. You know it’s real if you survive with no FaceTime.

Ignacio : Well that phase only lasted a year or so. We remained friends and started dating again in 2012. Still  long distance but now we had FaceTime. It was a game changer, we ended up getting married.

AMA : You and phone card girl?

Ignacio : Yes, her name is Maria, she's Italian. I call her Cietti. In 2014 after years of long distance, we had the DTRC - the “define the relationship chat.” I gave up the film biz and volunteered to move to LA to be with her. In 2019 we eventually bought a house in Long Beach .  After I finished the house in Nicaragua I needed a creative outlet. I’d been tinkering around in the garage with aluminum and discovered epoxy to help hold it together in a colorful background. I soon realized all I wanted to do was make art. I reno'd my garage into a home studio and I've worked every day since.

AMA : So, you started in film, then aluminum and ended in epoxy. What’s a day like for you in the studio?

Ignacio : In the mornings, I’m usually forming the Epoxy that I poured the night before. In the late afternoons, I’m pouring the epoxy that I’ll form the next morning. By mid-day I experiment, frame pieces and anything else that needs to be done around the studio.

Years of love for design  and a curious mind has helped me realize my art. Form, flow, depth, shadows, light, nature, harmony, experiences and emotions are all elements working together to create a piece. I'm never completely sure what it is I am creating when I start. I'm not relaxed. My nervous system is elevated, I'm on the clock because the epoxy will harden. It has a mind of its own, sometimes stiff and stubborn or soft and supple. I stop when I'm looking at something pleasing and I begin to relax.  The story begins to reveal itself slowly as I sit with it. It usually feels like a part of me looking out at the world.

Perhaps a cross section of my subconscious. It's euphoric, I must do this.