Inside a Multidisciplinary Mind: Grant Auber on Art, Music & Creativity

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I am Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today it's my great pleasure to speak with Grant Auber, who is really a multidisciplinary artist and creative, and I was fascinated to hear about the different ways in which you bring art to life. So welcome. Thanks for coming in.

Grant Auber: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Lisa Belisle: I'm excited too because I often will speak with people who are in one realm, visual art primarily, or people who are musicians or people who are writers. And it seems like you have interest across the spaces.

Grant Auber: For sure.

Lisa Belisle: So that's a little unusual.

Grant Auber: I think it stems from a broad range of inspiration, whether it's getting inspired from music, or paintings or even buildings and architecture. I find that translating that into my own stuff really helps keep a broad range of creative practices.

Lisa Belisle: Tell me about growing up in Rhode Island and the types of things that would catch your attention.

Grant Auber: So I initially wanted to be a sneaker designer, specifically a Nike sneaker designer. So super obsessed with shoes from a very young age, in fashion in general, but specifically basketball shoes. I played a lot of basketball growing up and I would wear test the most recent models and then go and redesign them how I would think could be an iteration of the next year's model. And I found that they were actually tweaking similar things to what I was doing as just drawing them at home. I would go to school, but I would have a little notepad that I would be drawing sneakers all day long. And then that stemmed into more of a streetwear obsession in middle school and high school. So I would buy and sell sneakers or clothing so that I could accumulate the rarer ones and the more niche pieces. But that was kind of what started getting me into design and art in general, was the sneaker obsession for sure.

Lisa Belisle: And you're actually wearing some art right now that has a pretty significant story.

Grant Auber: For sure. Yeah. So this is a piece from a brand called Off-White, and it was started by a designer who had worked with Kanye West on music early on. He was a big creative person around Pharrell, but then he stemmed into his own higher end streetwear kind of stuff. So many of the pieces were bought and sold, but I have specific ones that I still keep that I feel special wearing.

Lisa Belisle: So what is it about sneakers or about streetwear that you think has caused people to become more interested in it over the last, let's say, 20 years?

Grant Auber: Influence, not necessarily in culture in general, but more in a hip hop scene. A lot of the early two thousands hip hop artists were way ahead of their time in terms of the verbiage they're using and the clothing that they were wearing. And it still stems today. The largest collaborators for the big athletic brands come from the hip hop scene. So I was really engulfed in that from a young age. I actually had a little iPod, the no screen iPod that had all of our music on it from iTunes, and my dad had early two thousands rap on it. So I inherently started to learn all the songs. I'm really good at it. I can listen to a song a couple of times and remember all the words. And so that definitely started that hip hop influence from a really young age. I don't even know if he knew I was listening to the music, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Lisa Belisle: So he didn't hand you the little iPod and say, here.

Grant Auber: I just had our music library loaded up on it.

Lisa Belisle: You now incorporate music into your creative practice. You now do music videos. So tell me about that. You went from enjoying the visuals and the music to actually creating the visuals and the music.

Grant Auber: So the first time I made any music was with a friend in college. 2017 is when we started, and he would do majority production and I would be more vocals and lyrics. But I picked it up last Thanksgiving, so it hasn't even been a full year of me getting back into it, and started to do all the production myself. I found this really great website that has people playing a piano on it because I don't know how to play any instruments. So I'll use samples and then build up with my own drum pad, the one with all the little squares on it that you can play on. And so I made two projects back to back near last Thanksgiving and I just came out with my third one. But I found that the creative flow state that I get into making music is exactly the same as it was drawing the sneakers or painting or editing a video or doing graphic design. So it's kind of like a plug and play system for all the different mediums with the same mental space and mental practice that I'm utilizing.

Lisa Belisle: So describe to me this creative flow state. I know that this has been documented and there are people out there who specifically talk about flow and have researched flow, but what does this feel like for you?

Grant Auber: So it started to really become something that was built into my day-to-day life when I started painting in 2018, and I was painting in an apartment with five other guys in Boston and I would paint in the living room. So I really built up this tolerance for being hyper-focused on the work. I would have a friend playing video games next to me. Two guys would be doing homework next to me, one person might be talking to another friend, and I was able to a hundred percent dial in into the present moment, which I think is the key to a very long lasting work period. So I would work and work and work hours on end, have a cup of coffee, walk down the street and get a slice of pizza and then get right back into it for hours. So I think that mental training of having a lot of what people would say distractions around me actually allowed for an inward focus onto the work itself.

Lisa Belisle: You have quite a range of inspirations for your work. Anyone from Jackson Pollock to Kanye West to Andre 3000. So is there a theme that emerges from any of these? Is it the people? Is it the art? What is it for you?

Grant Auber: So a lot of it is about taste and how I perceive and intake other people's art, and then how I can translate that into my own. So the majority of the music that I listen to when creating, I'll know all the words, I'll know all the beats, and it just kind of clicks me in. It doesn't take a lot of time. It is usually just a couple of seconds of looking at whatever I'm going to work on, having the audio focus on it. And I found that when making music, or intaking music, anything around music, I have a very different reaction to it than painting. So music is much more of a visceral emotional reaction where painting is much more of a visual stimulation. And I found that people want to know the why more behind a painting than the music. And so when I look at a painting, whether it's Pollock or Jean-Michel Basquiat, who's my favorite artist, I get into the painter's head. If I was to approach a painter, I wouldn't ask, what is this? I'm completely fine building my own narrative from the visual experience that I'm having.

Lisa Belisle: So I don't want to put words or thoughts into our conversation, but to me it comes across almost a little bit like the concept of entrainment, where musically when you play certain types of music, people can actually get physiologically in sync or entrained.

Grant Auber: Or even seeing colors and stuff from it as well, the synesthesia. That's pretty cool.

Lisa Belisle: Exactly, exactly. So as you're describing this, not needing to focus on the intellectual, that which almost would pull you out of the state of flow.

Grant Auber: For sure.

Lisa Belisle: You're just connecting in aesthetically or entraining it and then just kind of going with it.

Grant Auber: Yes. Yeah, I'm completely fine building my own narrative around songs and other visual art experiences.

Lisa Belisle: So when you are listening to a certain type of music, will it influence you to paint in a specific type of way?

Grant Auber: For sure. So if I'm listening to more upbeat hip hop music, there's going to be a lot of vibrant colors, very quick actions. I'm usually singing and dancing along with the music the whole time. I have the big over ear headphones, so I am not paying attention to anything around me. Sometimes my parents will come up the stairs into my studio and they'll be screaming my name, and then they get right next to me and I kind of have a jump scare because I'm just so locked into that. But say I listen to an artist like Bon Iver or James Blake or something much slower, I find the paintbrush size shrinks, the amount of actions per minute shrinks, and it's a very intimate process with the work. So I kind of have that duality that I can swap between. If I want to work on a really big canvas that's completely blank, and I don't like gesso-ing my canvas, if I'm stretching it myself, I love the raw canvas sitting as that backing, that really nice tan earth tone. And I'll put on the fast music and make whatever. And then usually we'll switch to a slower one for more of the refinement when working.

Lisa Belisle: So you grew up in Rhode Island and you have a connection to Maine, Southport, and grew up enjoying the water and kind of the classic summer Maine.

Grant Auber: For sure.

Lisa Belisle: And now you have a Charleston connection for the winter.

Grant Auber: Yes.

Lisa Belisle: Does the seasonality impact the way that you work or what you're working on?

Grant Auber: I'd say location more than seasonality. Up in Maine, it's a very large space that I'm able to work in, and I have a lot of old work there as well that I'll sometimes just put up and look at to get a different visual experience from the one that I'm currently working on. But yeah, I'd say Charleston, it'd be more from music for me, whereas up here in Maine, the painting is much more of a dominant factor of creating.

Lisa Belisle: And is it because of your access to materials that causes that to happen?

Grant Auber: Yeah, access to space primarily. My music setup is nothing more than a microphone, a little interface and a computer, and then a piece of equipment to make synth sounds or drum beats on. So it's much more accessible for travel, whereas the paintings that I usually like to work on are quite large. I think with my wingspan it's a little bit easier as well to make on a larger piece. So 3 by 4 feet probably minimum for stretching my own up here in Maine.

Lisa Belisle: I like to write. I also do visual art. I also like music. And it's interesting because when I talk to people who are able to slot into one or the other, but not all of the above, it seems like it can be a little faster for them to actually move through a creative time because they're able to focus on, I'm only going to do this one thing for this amount of time. Sometimes what I find myself doing is almost like engaging in this sort of matrix-like approach. So it's kind of multidimensional, which is quite a bit slower than if I was just to say, I'm going to work on this one thing for this amount of time. But what you just described is you get into a place where you're like, oh, I'm going to focus on this thing. So it sounds like you have these different interests, but you typically do this or this or this. Is that true?

Grant Auber: Yeah, I'd say the only parallel is listening to my own music while painting, but yesterday I went and made a song and then went and painted afterwards. So it's a very fluid process between the different mediums. But I'd say graphic design, even though I went to school for graphic design, I find that the abstract nature of the stuff I like to make isn't as suitable for a traditional design job where I would be working in a space trying to make a pamphlet or trying to make these different accessible pieces where traditional graphic design is usually used. And I'm pretty sure that stems from this experience that I had working in the fashion industry. So at my school at Northeastern, we do co-ops, so it's like six month work periods, and it's basically a trial for the field that you think you're wanting to go into. So at that time, I wanted to do fashion design based off of my sneaker design from middle school, high school days. And so I went to work for a men's and women's dress wear company, and they were like, oh yeah, you'll be able to do designs along with our two designers. And being in the space, I ended up not really doing much design, and they kind of just put me in the retail store to work the retail, and that really turned me off of a hierarchy of design work. So that's when I swapped to graphic design, and then the painting came and the do it myself attitude has been very prominent, I'd say. After learning all the different ins and outs of design and then translating that into painting and music.

Lisa Belisle: Are there certain design elements or approaches that translate across the different disciplines?

Grant Auber: I'd say having a good concept of taste is the primary one, whether that's using a mixed media element in the painting or using a sample in a song. I'd say the way that I choose those specific elements that aren't fully processed out of my own imagination is quite similar. Making a painting, I'm not afraid to have a very stark color against a piece of newspaper next to it. And there's no real visual correlation other than the space that they create together. And the same kind of thing happens in music. The song I made yesterday has a really nice soft woman singing, and then the drum hits in really aggressively, and then I start to go off and rap. And it's using that duality that I've learned through a visual space, but translating it into the structure of the music and songs as well. So not being afraid to have that contrast.

Lisa Belisle: That's really interesting. So the other thing that I'm always fascinated by in talking to people who do a lot of creative work is the sense of knowing when something is finished. And so if you're talking about the significant duality, then you're always having to navigate both sides of that and the balance, or the lack of balance, between the two. So have you come over time to a place where you intuitively know that the end is now here?

Grant Auber: So it's different for each medium. For painting, if somebody wants to buy it, I'll stop, but if it's not at a point where I want to sign the piece and name it on the back and write the date, then it's still technically an open work. And then with music, I find it to be a lot more concrete. And I'd say once it goes out into the world, it's almost a completely inverse relationship from when it's just in my own computer and in my own head. I'll listen to it over and over and over. It's kind of the only thing I'll listen to. I won't listen to outside music much, but the second that the album or the project gets put out into the world, I really don't listen to it at all. I'll listen to it once or twice to make sure the sound levels are correct on the different distribution services and then onto the next for that.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I can relate to that because I know having written for publication and even creating these podcasts, and I look at them as sort of different versions of the type of art that I'm doing, but pretty much when I'm done, I'm done, and that's it. And because after I'm done with it, they go through an editing stage that actually is the creativity of another person entirely. I will go back and I'll be like, what can I learn from this? Is there anything else? But that's it. I think in order to move to the next thing, you kind of have to be able to do that, to shut that door.

Grant Auber: Yeah. I can relate to that because when I'm painting with friends, I love having other people working on the same pieces as me at the same time. It really turns on my design problem solving part of my brain where I'll see how they're manipulating the visual space and then actively build around what they're doing. But I did do a couple pieces with a friend in Rhode Island, and she has them now in her studio, and if she wants to sell it, fine. There's a very different kind of feeling when it's sitting in my own hands rather than sitting in somebody else's hands.

Lisa Belisle: So one of the things that has influenced you is a significant health challenge back 2020 to 2023, which you've been pretty open about, and it continues to be something that you navigate now. Would you mind talking about that and what this has meant as sort of a creative influence and an intersection?

Grant Auber: Yeah, sure. So the first major event was January 3rd, 2020. I was in Boston by myself, and I had this very odd sensation click on from my jaw to my temple. It's kind of like this electrified locking feeling that clicked in. And I was thrust into the most intense flow state I've ever been in my life. I started to freestyle and sing and actively construct narratives around the words that I was saying and the tempo and the melodies. And it was like 25, 30 minutes, and then they clicked off, and I didn't have the full capacity to be like, whoa, what was that? I was kind of thrown onto the train track of a train of thought, but literally a physical railway train tracks that I was put on. And then I was thrust forwards. And so that led and snowballed into a space where I was living a very duality of existence. So I had my normal self side, and then I had a Rolodex basically of every person that I've ever talked to or seen on video or heard about inhabiting this secondary side, which I grew to call the mirrored side. So the technical diagnosis is schizophrenia, but I take it as Grant's disorder. It's a very intuitive process that mirrors almost every single part of my external life. But as I grew more able to explain it to people and talk about it and not keep it all to myself, it's a very freeing feeling. And also having input from other people that have dealt with different mental states, like my psychiatrist, who's been a huge game changer for me because he really accepts that what's going on internally is my internal truth. But then he offers different avenues of thought or different avenues of an alteration internally. And now today, I'm basically existing normally outwards, and then this side is still present in some sense. But the severity of how it's gone up and then back down on how much influence it has over my day-to-day life has been a pretty constant curve. And I'd say it's time. And also talking about it outwardly and then also creating has really been a helpful point for me to not only express internally, but also feel emotion when making stuff. I feel as though my emotions have been quite diluted in terms of person to person interactions, but myself to an art interaction is still at peak of enjoyment and also internal processing.

Lisa Belisle: It really makes a lot of sense to me that you've come to a place where you call it Grant's disorder, because I think when people hear the label schizophrenia, there's all kinds of things that come with it.

Grant Auber: I still feel it myself. I feel that exact same kind of feeling as well.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. I mean, it's a significant enough label and it has associations around it, and you have no idea when you show up in a space and say, this is the label that's been put on this, how other people are going to come to it. As opposed to, well, this is actually my experience. They're calling it this over here, but that's just because somebody needs to call it something. But over here, this is how I'm experiencing this in my life and how it impacts me.

Grant Auber: So I actually did a series of paintings exactly revolving around that feeling. So I took a whole bunch of paintings that I had that were somewhat finished, but not a hundred percent finished. And initially I was doing 0 1, 1 0, 1, 0 1 just over the painting as a visual structure. And I was like, well, why don't I figure out how to spell stuff in binary code? And so I searched up schizophrenia and binary code, and then I plastered over eight, ten paintings with the 0 1 1, 0 1, 0 1 spelling out the name of it, and it's completely over the figure. It's emulating that initial experience that somebody would get when expressing a diagnosis, and almost that wall immediately shoots up between the two people. And you can't almost unsee the veil afterwards.

Lisa Belisle: As somebody who's been in healthcare a long time, been a doctor a long time, I've seen kind of the simultaneous relief that comes from having a diagnosis. People are like, oh, that's why. But then also having to live with that as a label that gets put on them. So as you're describing the veil that drops when you say, this is the diagnosis I was given, that makes a lot of sense to me. And also in this day and age where hopefully we're talking about how we experience life mentally and emotionally a lot more, you'd hope it wouldn't be true, but it still kind of is.

Grant Auber: For sure. I mean, I feel it myself, and so that's the biggest validator that somebody else would feel it for sure.

Lisa Belisle: You're your own complete self. You've always only existed within yourself. Do you feel like having this kind of partition that you experienced back during that timeframe and how it really impacted your creativity in an interesting and different way, I guess nobody could say, well, would you rather not have this or have this? But do you feel like you've gained experiences that are worth having as a result of it?

Grant Auber: Yeah, so I've really held on to the saying, everything happens for a reason. It's on my phone screen as the main text block that I have on my home screen. And no, I don't wish of any other way. I just think about so many unknowns that we just casually take throughout our normal day. And I completely equate that to my own experience as well, where I really don't know. And being okay with that and just riding the wave is the most important thing.

Lisa Belisle: Grant, how can people learn more about the work that you're doing, about the things that you're producing and putting out in the world? Is there a website they can go to?

Grant Auber: Yeah, so grantauber.com has all my stuff. It has the paintings, graphic design, poster design, the music's on there now, links for the music. There's a final little internal story. So in college, maybe even high school, I started to have an artist's name. The first one I came up with means method in German, and then studios in French, but it was a little bit over the top. I was trying to probably be a little too cool for school with that name, but I came up with the new artist name, it's called Abstract Order, and so it describes not only myself, but also the work that I make in general. So that's on Instagram as abstrakt order, and then website as well, and all the streaming services for music. It's out everywhere. It's out there under my name.

Lisa Belisle: Okay. I really enjoyed our conversation today. I love talking to people who have a variety of different ways that they explore their own creativity, because I think it just shows how multidimensional each of us has the capacity of being, and the fact that you've completely embraced this is really very refreshing. So thank you for sharing that with me today.

Grant Auber: Thank you for having me. So nice. Thank you.

Lisa Belisle: I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you have been listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore creativity and the human spirit. Today we've been exploring it with, well, many things, but painter, musician, designer, multidisciplinary artist and creative Grant Auber. I encourage you to reach out to Grant, spend some time learning about the work that he does and learning about him. He causes me to think about creativity in a really different way, and I suspect that he will for you as well. So interfacing with his art might bring that to the next level, and maybe we can convince you to come to a Portland Art Gallery opening at some point in the future so people can meet you in person.

Grant Auber: For sure. For sure.

Lisa Belisle: Alright, that sounds great. And in the meantime, I look forward to seeing you at a Portland Art Gallery opening, and thank you for joining us today on Radio Maine.