Michael Stipe

Portrait by Marlene Marino

portrait by MARLENE MARINO
interview by ALEX GARTENFELD

 

ALEX GARTENFELD — At what point did you decide to shift from music to visual art?
MICHAEL STIPE — It doesn’t feel like a shift at all. I guess music comes naturally to me, and most everything I’ve done publicly has come through the band. But if you go back through it all, everything that isn’t credited to collaborators like the video artists, photographers, visual artists, and graphic artists — and I have always credited every single contributor — everything not credited was done by me. So for me, there isn’t such a great distinction between music and other media.

ALEX GARTENFELD — People treat celebrities who make art in kind of a funny way, don’t they?
MICHAEL STIPE — I don’t think “funny” is the operative term. It’s more “dismissive.”…