Andy Arkley makes art designed, at its core, to make people happy. He says so himself, and the work backs him up: hand-cut wooden shapes, airbrushed color, lights that blink along to music, and buttons that beg to be pressed. Based in Seattle, he works across sculpture, light, animation, and music, and almost everything starts as a drawing, which he considers the most direct line to his imagination. From there it grows into jigsawed plywood, acrylic paint, programmable LEDs, and sound systems that respond to whoever is standing there.
A collection of things that make me happy.
He studied expressive arts at The Evergreen State College, and he has been one half of The Bran Flakes since 1992, a Seattle experimental pop band that builds songs out of vintage records, children's music, and found sounds. His visual work has gone to WNDR Museum in Boston, where "You Can Do Most Anything" was called "the most loved, most talked-about exhibit in our collection right now," and to WNDR Chicago, the Starbucks Art Program, the Museum of Northwest Art, and Bumbershoot. Artist Trust has backed him with a GAP Grant and featured him at the Seattle Art Fair.
At Hopscotch San Antonio, Happiness is a wall of 60 wooden sculptures, each cut by hand on a jigsaw and airbrushed one at a time, fitted with colored bulbs. Sixteen buttons sit in front of it. Press one and the shapes light up in a sequence timed to music. Press a different combination and you have composed something new. Kids go for the buttons immediately; adults watch first, then join in, and groups end up dividing the buttons and trying to coordinate. In Portland, Are You There? is a different work entirely, a sound and light exhibit built for that city, not a copy.
Behind it all is a daily hour of walking, often at Seward Park, watching light, water, plants, and birds. Flowers, cats, rainbows, clouds, as he lists them.
