Spencer Tracy

Spencer Tracy is an interdisciplinary artist working in the Southern United States. Tracy earned his MFA at Sierra Nevada University in 2019 and serves as Director for The Oklahoma Museum of Modern Art, Curator for Redlands Gallery, and teaches Studio Drawing and Art History at various colleges and universities in Central Oklahoma. Tracy has exhibited work across the United States and is a prolific “gig” poster designer producing work for bands like Roky Erikson, Mac Sabbath, Steve Earle, Dean Ween, Bowling For Soup, John Mooreland, My Brightest Diamond, and more.

Current art and/or research interest:

Dissect, evaluate, and reconstitute the concept of the graphic narrative (ie. Juxtaposition of sequential images and words) through the exploration of interdisciplinary concepts and mediums to create an atheistic experience. Implement an autobiographical narrative that works in tandem with a variety of histories and theories to create the base of these reconstituted versions of the graphic narrative.

Overarching praxis statement:

With the iconography of collectable culture burned into a dissatisfied mind my praxis works in tandem with my personal history and musings on modernity to fuel a vehicle for subversive nostalgic laced introspection. My work is essentially a mix tape. Curating an assemblage of thought and ideas of isolation, addiction, disconnection, malaise, sexuality, rock and roll, escapism, ego centrism, absurdity, and the passage of time. We instill sentimentality into objects transforming them into time traveling talismans with the ability to take us anywhere. My work is an extension of this thought process. Using nostalgia as a vehicle creates a sort of familiarity and a bonding occurs that couldn’t happen using anything else. It brings down barriers and creates a more receptive state to forge connections.

The only way we can grow into something else is to gain multiple vantage points to understand where we are, have, and can be. I am a latchkey kid. I come from the last generation to steal Stooges records from Hastings. I was there for the birth of the Internet and watched it destroy my parent’s marriage. When I was real young my dad owned junk shops he sold records, comic books, and baseball cards. I was raised on commoditized culture. When I say it's hard to exist in a world we recognize less and less every day you may know what I mean. Courtesy yields to convenience and the way we share becomes so passive. When does an object that holds value cease to hold importance? My praxis informed by history and theory and ideas of romanticism absorbed through the works and acts of the following: Andy Kaufman, Ray Johnson, Porter Wagner, Richard Brautigan, Henry Darger, and Howling Wolf as well as the use of reverberation and heavy fuzz.

More about the artist: HERE