Red Door Magazine 23

But back to The Man in Camo. On Episode
#14 of the Red Transmissions Podcast, I
asked Ethan to take us all the way back to
the beginning of his career as an artist and
to explain how he evolved into the style and
independent creator methods that he uses.
Ethan grew up in Washington DC during
the 70’s and 80’s, when violence was escalating,
and his dyslexia learning disability
led him to be picked on and lean on the
punk rock scene and the creative community
to cope with this, where by doing small
fanzines he could find his own space. He
moved to NY to go to the school of Visual
Arts where he studied Fine Arts and Film,
and afterwards worked in various jobs, such
as bartending, doing film production, art
handling, and most recently, working as an
editor for cable broadcast television.
“You move to NYC and you have these
hopes and dreams of making art but
then you realized you are enslaved to
your work to pay rent. (...) I felt that
there was an overwhelming need for
other artists to be able to create without
the limitations of the monetary
things connected to the Art Market
of the city, so I banded with other
creative types and seeked out venues
and locations that would be donated
to us to put on art events”.
This is how the Antagonist Art Movement
was created, which featured over 3000 artists,
many of them who moved up through
the art world. Ethan says this was a great
way to service a community, it gave him the
network to work on his projects, but then
later created an international network of artists
where shows resulted in Berlin, Australia,
Portugal and other projects, including 8
feature films based on group collaborative
projects. Although the group officially ended
in 11, additional projects have been created
by Ethan Minsker, who names Francis
Bacon as a compeller to make art, Lakes
McNeil and Bukowski as some of his writing
influences, and the combining of writing
workshops with film and exhibitions in
those events as very influential to his work.
“When you are creative, I feel you
should exercise those creative muscles
every day. When you do that over the
course of many years, you build a huge
body of work. Currently I have a feature
film I am working on, a fanzine, a
script, the NY I love you, and little dog
heads I have been making out of paper-mache,
as well as Isolation TV”.
Ethan Minsker says that he has a psychological
compulsion to express his emotions and
feelings creatively, from September 11 to the
current times, art serves as a therapy to help
him move forward.
You can listen to the whole episode of Red
Transmissions Podcast by subscribing on
Spotify, iTunes and most podcast providers as
well as on the magazine’s website, and follow
Ethan Minsker’s work via the instagram link
below or by googling his name. His current
film, “A Man In Camo”(find it on amazon) a story
of his crusade to make art, is a must-see for
those seeking to be inspired and in need of a
fresh source of ideas and true, gritty, colorful
motivation, of the type that actually gets you,
gets to you, and gets you out of the darkness.
Follow Ethan Minsker:
https://www.instagram.com/ethanminsker/
ISSUE # 23 - LANGUAGE
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