Artist Spotlight: Rico Imus

ORIGINALLY FROM THE PHILIPPINES, Rico Imus spent his childhood and his early teenage years living in an orphanage. At the age of 13, Imus and his brother were adopted by an American family and lived in Gillette, Wyoming, while he attended middle and high school.

He started his creative path as an artist at a young age, inspired by the few TV cartoons that he was able to watch in the orphanage. Once he entered high school, his parents encouraged him to take art classes. He mentioned that he took those classes, first grudgingly.

“I thought I already knew it all, until I entered high school art classes…” he admitted.

High school art classes introduced him to a lot of new materials and mediums for his art. For instance, he would focus on portraits and vibrant pieces with new color techniques.

Imus also participated in track and field during high school. His good participation in the sport was what brought him to Aberdeen. A friend recommended him to Northern State University, and they recruited him. He participated in NSU’s track team from his freshman year until his junior year.

At first, his major was Art Education. Since his interests were directed more towards college education, he decided to fully focus on the base studio art with an emphasis in 2D studio. During his first years of college, he kept his interest in portraits, but also discovered a passion for new mediums like the Chinese and Japanese art of origami and its representation of emotions and abstract concepts. Imus has been working with it since then, creating some large-scale works of mini versions of origami. He shared that making these large-scale works was not easy due to the thickness of the paper and its stiffness when it’s folded. So, he had to use other methods, studying the way paper folds in a normal-sized origami piece before replicating it by cutting and pasting larger pieces of paper to replicate the folds of the paper.

Receiving a college education introduced him to new questions and ways of thinking. He mentioned that his art was very superficial and flat during his high school years, admitting that, if it looked good enough, he would receive good criticism. College brought him new questions and ideas that made him reflect more on the meaning and reasons behind his art. College professors introduced him to a lot of “hows” and “whys” that made him see beyond beauty and aesthetics.

“Explaining the how and why of a portrait was too hard…” he admitted. This guided him to start experimenting with other media that represented more meaning for him.

Rico Imus creates kinetic sculptures that are triggered by the movement and sounds of people viewing his art. Photo courtesy of Rico Imus.

While he stands that he mainly does mixed media, college also introduced him to new mediums and techniques, which helped him to discover some of his favorites, including Prisma, pen and ink, lining, watercolors, paper sculpture, and printmaking, from which he has been recently introduced and now uses Northern’s printers for his art. However, one of Imus’ main purposes is to stand out as an artist, stepping out of the traditional and old style and, instead, looking for more innovative and progressive ways to make art. A way to do this is kinetic art: art that shows movement, usually pushed by a motor or internal engine.

Imus discovered an interest in motors while working at the YDC with children and their toys, observing some of the toys’ internal motors.

Later, when he discovered that some fashion shows were incorporating kinetics in fashion, he decided to start incorporating it into his own art, getting inspiration from its mechanism and movements, and applying them to his art pieces.

He uses wildlife, especially insects and bugs from the Philippines—butterflies, fireflies, and some other animals constantly present while he lived in the Philippines, as the main concept of inspiration. For Imus, the process that people experience as they grow up and are exposed to different situations that make them change their minds and mold their personalities can be compared to the way bugs go through their metamorphosis: every bug experiences different types of transformation, just like human beings. He uses his art to express his own “metamorphosis process” from his childhood in the Philippines up until now.

Motor art takes place in his metamorphosis project, expressing how a hint of movement can form a piece by changing its angle. The piece will take different forms and shapes depending on different movements and motions, just like how insects transform during the stages of metamorphosis.

Imus’ creative process starts in the very back of his mind. He usually finds inspiration in small details and objects he observes in his daily life. Inspiration for a project can occur at any moment, after seeing a shape or shadow that he likes, especially things that hang from the ceiling. He can find inspiration in the gym ceiling or while running on the track trail. Color, shape, lines, combination of objects, aesthetics; there is no limit for his inspiration.

Rico Imus

Sometimes, he feels overwhelmed by all the inspiration he receives that it is hard for him to organize his ideas and set a straight path on how to organize his process. However, a method provided by some of his college professors had helped him and made things “harder but easier at the same time”. He will make a list of the top three or four of his favorite references for inspiration and try to use a limited amount of ideas for each project. Sometimes that is hard because he wants to put more and more concepts and techniques in the project, but doing this can also make the work look unfinished and confusing.

Imus is always attentive to feedback on his work and consistently asks his peers for their opinions and advice. Although Imus’ art is very different from the traditional style of his peers, he still listens to their advice, suggesting he try different shapes and colors, techniques, and methods. He uses this feedback to improve his art with new alternatives while adding his personal style.

This summer, Imus is taking a break from the studio so he can focus on new ideas for projects for his senior show next spring. He highlighted his enthusiasm for it, especially after receiving generous funds from the art committee for materials. For his senior show, he doesn’t want to present projects and works assigned in class. Instead, he wants to take full advantage of his inventory and create new and innovative works of art. This not only will show his capabilities and help him get discovered by other universities – it will also help him share his talent as an artist and spread a message of self acceptance and compassion. After graduation, Imus plans to look for Master’s degrees outside Aberdeen where he will focus on improving his motor art techniques…