Kent Watson knows things are going to be different.
His four years of work in the Peck School of the Arts haven’t simply led to graduation day. The compositions and installations he’s assembled are inspired by big events or moments, he says, “when everything changes.”
Growing up in an eclectic and artistic family, one of the first big changes came when Watson’s family moved from Boise, Idaho, to Waukesha eight years ago. After high school he enrolled in the Arts/Tech track in the Peck School’s Inter-Arts BFA program.
“It took me a while to like it at UWM,” he now admits. Sophomore year he took a break from college and returned to Waukesha.
After one semester away from the university, says Watson, “I couldn’t wait to get back.”
“Professors like Nathaniel [Stern] are among the people I’ve met at UWM who will shape my practice, I think, for the rest of my life.”
Watson resumed his coursework, and began working as an assistant to visual artist and Peck professor Nathaniel Stern.
As project manager for Stern’s solo exhibition “Giverny of the Midwest” (opening in Johannesburg, South Africa, in summer 2011), Kent crops and manipulates mural-size images that Stern captures with a custom-made scanner as he wades into small bodies of water – à la Claude Monet’s Giverny series.
“It’s performance art – interacting with the landscape to capture a style of movement,” says Watson. “My role is piecing Nathaniel’s images together and making decisions in the series, seeing how the images correlate with one another.
“Professors like Nathaniel are among the people I’ve met at UWM who will shape my practice, I think, for the rest of my life.”
Another formative faculty connection is Martin Jack Rosenblum, whose music courses helped Watson integrate his preferred art form into his coursework.
“My final project represents the first time I’ve incorporated songwriting into my schoolwork,” says Watson. “It was kind of frowned upon, I think, as a higher art, but I was interested in it and kept doing it.”
He’s had lots of practice as the singer/songwriter/vocalist for two bands: Atlatl – an established presence in Milwaukee with airplay and live shows around the Midwest – and a newer venture: Sun Rock Man.
But these last few weeks have been dedicated to his final Peck performance. Writing the lyrics for “Apples With Peanut Butter,” composing the music, rehearsing and videotaping has been therapeutic but nerve-wracking, he says.
“Performance is a hard thing in that you present something to someone, they can dislike it and they can tell you they dislike it,” says Watson.
Don’t look for Watson’s live performance at Arts and Technology Night, Dec. 15 at Kenilworth Square East. He’s got his own ideas of how a final performance should unfold.
Look for a stack of television monitors that disassemble his recorded performance into body parts of a whole that, synched together, play his solo performance of “Apples With Peanut Butter” in a loop.
“I always thought it would be interesting to have a final performance,” says Watson, “but the performer isn’t actually there.”
