Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Aug 01, 2024, 06:28AM

I Used to Read to Relax

A 2019 Art Spiel interview with artist Altoon Sultan vs. a 2021 Rolling Stone interview with actor LeVar Burton.

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LeVar Burton: Right now I’m stuck on the SiriusXM soul station because it’s the music I grew up with.

Altoon Sultan: Skowhegan was a more conservative place close to 50 years ago.

Burton: It really was. [Laughs] Yeah.

Sultan: Even when a piece gives me a hard time, or fails and ends in the trash, I am not terribly discouraged, but take it as part of the job.

Burton: Always. We have no resilience if there’s nothing to bounce back from, right?

•••

Sultan: It’s no longer in print but used copies can be found, and it’s available on Google Books as a free pdf download or an ebook.

Burton: Words have power in my universe. I used to read to relax.

Sultan: I love the sumptuous surface of parchment, and love the intimacy of small images.

Burton: I felt the love. That’s how powerful the medium can be.

Sultan: It made an artist’s life seem more real.

•••

Burton: Me being able to see myself in [original cast member] Nichelle Nichols was not simply inspiration, it was validation.

Sultan: The most wonderful thing she did that semester was to invite the class to a figure drawing session at her loft residence.

Burton: Can’t argue with that.

Sultan: And because I return to some of the same nearby farms year after year, we’ve gotten to know each other casually.

Burton: That’s when my soul gets replenished at a real elemental level.

—Raymond Cummings has contributed to Splice Today since 2010.

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