Caleb Garcia provides in black and white
At a coffee shop in Soddy Daisy (yes, there is a hip coffee shop in Soddy Daisy but we’ll get to that in another issue), I glanced over to find such intricate hand-drawn, detailed wall hangings that warmed my spirit as much as the cup of hot joe warmed my hands.
Pointillism is a form of art using dots, usually of color, placed distinctly in a pattern to create a bigger image. Coined in the late 1880’s, it was made famous by Seurat and used by artists like Van Gogh. With his main influences being Gustave Dore, M.C. Escher, and Wayne Barlowe, artist Caleb Garcia finds himself drawn to communicating a complex meaning with the single simple point.
“Each moment is an opportunity for freewill to execute an act of choice. Every choice is important. I choose to make one dot. Then I choose to make another dot. I choose to be precise in the placing of a dot,” Caleb said when asked why he chose the medium of pencil. “Sometimes I choose to hurry and am not precise with my placement of a dot. As a human, I am the direct cause of any flaw in the goodness of the picture. Every dot is important.”
Although his resume ranges from driver to diver, his fulltime passion has always been to draw. Like most high school students, he did take art class but has not had much tutelage beyond that.
For his skill, he creditz his parents, who were very encouraging, as well as his uncle who gave him some good shading pointers early on. For 2020, he does hope to improve his abilities with color and get faster at producing small/medium sized originals using color.
A former marine, he moved around quite a bit between 2014 and now. In almost six years, he traveled six states from California to Colorado to Oregon to Washington to Louisiana and planted roots in Tennessee.
Originally, he moved here for work as a commercial diver with the Underwater Construction Corporation who works frequently with TVA. Although it is good work it didn’t seem like something Caleb wanted to do his whole life.
“I wouldn’t want to always be out on the road especially if I am to have a family someday. So after saving up a bit, I decided to go back to school,” he said. Currently in his third semester at Chatt State, he plans to continue his art education with a possible intertwining of philosophy. “Maybe I’ll get a job at the philosophy factory someday,” he jokes. “But seriously I’d like to incorporate it into my art.”
One of his most amazing creations, in my opinion, is the “Ontological Locomotive” which is also known as “The Choo Choo and Things” which reminds me slightly of M.C. Escher with the gray wash as well as the abundance of hidden imagery.
“Ontology is that which deals with the nature of ‘being’. It is interchangeable with metaphysics. According to my philosophy professor, it’s mainly a good word to use at dinner parties to sound sophisticated and lose friends,” Caleb chuckled as he explained the piece. “Some ontological themes explored here are time, space, matter, information, life, death, causes, minds, beginning and end, and God. This was a commissioned artwork in which I was requested to draw a train yet was given permission to have complete creative liberty. So, needless to say, I had a fun time with this one!”
Just finishing up his first artist pop-up in October, Caleb still has some fresh art coming to the table and now has prints available ranging from 9x12 to 18x24. Some of my favorites are “Norman” (the old school diver) and “Chimera”. With no shows planned for 2020, he is willing to accept any commissioned challenge.
He did mention that his favorite things to draw are dinosaurs, monsters, and sci-fi stuff. He would like to draw more philosophical and biblical images, but the sky’s the limit.
Besides Coffee Community Collective (affectionately referred to as C3) in Soddy Daisy, you can get a firsthand experience of his simplistic yet powerful point work at Rolling J’s Mobile Bistro & Sandwich Shop on Riverfront Parkway and the spot next door to Rolling J’s called SpaGo Hair Studios. His completed and works-in-progress are available to scope on Instagram @calebmarcelo.
If you’re interested in any of the prints or wish to commission your own permanent penciled artwork, contact him at caleb.marcelo.g@gmail.com or call/text (509) 724-1868.