Robert Scampton's photographs confront trivial and trite concepts. Hackneyed, prosaic and dull, they also challenge our innate perceptions of relationships that may confuse viewers. Born in Des Moines Iowa, Scampton earned a BFA from Fresno State and an MFA from UCLA. His 1981 exhibition at Diameter Gallery, Blue Memories White Envelopes, was followed by exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Whitney Biennial, and a retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His recent series of works, Pushing The Envelope and Other Body Parts, displays his continuing disposition for the boring and pedestrian.

Duncan Shaw III: Your work addresses the communicative dynamics of relationships. This is evident in your early series Blue Memories White Envelopes, in which you transformed Picasso's Blue Period by juxtaposing white envelopes in the positions of his blue figures, and in latter works such as Letters I Never Sent My Mother, where you gracefully placed envelopes in a stream. You seem to be fixated with the way people communicate. And by your account it is through letters. What is the significance of the "letter" to you?

Robert Scampton: In many ways, my interest in letters can be traced back to my childhood. My father was a fragrant soap salesman who loved me dearly and in spite of his endless travels was always there in my important moments of growth. My mother was a housewife who had a particular fondness for the arts, especially the cinema. She and my aunt Margaret used to take my two sisters and I to the Drive-in every Friday night during the summer. Those, I believe, were the experiences that turned me on to the possibilities of the camera and photographed images. At the age of 16 I lacked all of the stereotypical male clichés for leaving home, but did so anyways. It was when I left home that I began writing letters to my mother and father. I did this religiously. Every day I would write one letter to my mother. On Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday I would write letters to my father, unless the month had 31 days in which case I would write them on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and every other Sunday. I never mailed any of those letters. I kept them all in boxes until about the age of 20, one year after I started working for Nicholas Crup. He was the one that encouraged me to do something with them.

DS III: What influence did Crup's works and thoughts have on you at that time and how do they relate to your work today.

RS: After leaving home and knocking around for a couple of years I found myself in Los Angeles. Needing some money to buy paper, envelopes and pens for my letter writing, I applied for a job as a photographer's assistant. I knew nothing about photography but that was just the kind of assistant Crup preferred. He always used to say "Give me two eyes a lens and a subject with two eyes and I will show you five eyes." Crup was a highly regarded passport photographer of many of the Hollywood elite. It was under his tutelage that I developed my "fifth eye" for the subtle and banal.

DS III: Your series Delivery of the Cross which dynamically portrays the communicative relationship between Christ and the cross and the apostles aroused some controversy. Much has been writing about the drama surrounding the "Fellowship Exhibition". Looking back, what is your account of that ordeal and how did it influence your work?

RS: Well, it was quite an ordeal and certainly a difficult time of trial. As I recall, I began Delivery of The Cross in the spring of 1986 and completed it in the fall of 1987. I was awarded a NEA Fellowship

DS III: Do you feel that had your work arrived to the proper address you would have been scrutinized along with Serrano?

RS: I really don't know. Probably, given the attitudes of the time. But, I must say C.O.D. or Second Class were certainly more edgy than Return To Sender.

DS III: Your latest series Pushing The Envelope and Other Body Parts has received much praise. The notable critique Arthur Dante writing in Art In America had this to say, "Scampton is saying something very fundamental about the state of art at the precipice of the twenty first century and inside his gentle white envelopes are his words. But, these seemingly boring, pedestrian, tiresome and dull forms only speak with a soft voice. So, listen with your left ear or with your right or both at the same time, just listen." What are we to listen to?

RS: That is really a subjective question. The form of my work is the envelope. This is not to say that the photographs themselves are not

DS III: What is the seriousness of the language one might find in your envelopes.

RS: Mostly English with a little Spanish.

DS III: Are you a serious artist?

RS: Yes, but only on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, unless the month has 31 days in which case Monday, Wednesday, Friday and every other Sunday.

Duncan Shaw III is the Director of the Museum of Civil Form

If you would like to comment about this interview or any other interview with Duncan Shaw III you may do so at:

duncanshaw@museumofcivilform.com