Perhaps you’ve seen this man's work before? Not in your waking life, but in the subconscious dream realm where thoughts mingle with alternate realities. At least, that was the case for Vincent Fink...
Atlas Metamorphosis STAGE 2 of 4: “Praise Lord Worm”
A highly detailed illustration of an Asian street scene with crowds and people carrying a large box with a worm inside it. But what does it mean? This warped-perspective image came to the artist in a dream. He saw this piece lying against the wall in one of the rooms down the hall of his art director, Mitch Different’s house. On the way to the studio in the dream something caught Vincent’s eye and immediately pulled him off course.
Locked into orbit of the piece, Vincent stood there perplexed by this massive artwork in total awe of what his eyes beheld. Different finally realized he wasn’t being followed anymore, and in fact was ranting to himself the whole time whilst Fink’s fixation was still in the previous room, totally consumed by it.
“Where’d this come from?” asked Vincent as if it had fallen out of the sky from another world.
“Oh, that’s just some piece Anne bought from a local artist. It’s pretty cool huh?” Mitch replied in a hurried, brushing manor. He was eager to show off the new setup but Fink wouldn't budge.
“Man, this guy is amazing. Who is it?” Vincent inquired earnestly.
“I dunno, some guy. C’mon.” Different began walking again in attempt to push forward to the studio.
“Okay, this guy’s making me look bad. I mean, wow.” Vincent was a bit envious of the craftsmanship and dedication and reflected that he had never even thought to do something so ambitious. Truly in love with the image, there was something wrong... It kept changing. Suddenly the fabric of this reality began to deteriorate. Vincent couldn't tell if he was speaking aloud or thinking or...Dreaming...
...This is where a dream normally comes to a screeching halt and shifts into A: another dream, B: stops entirely and/or C: where the realization is so strong that you wake up entirely. In this case, Vincent has a lot more control than many. Possibly because, as a younger lad, he spent some time exploring the Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda.
Vincent feels that dreams are like the back doors of your mind and perception. You can find correlations, deep hidden thoughts, and ideas that, in your waking life, your ego will become somewhat of a nuisance as it attempts to filter out unwanted rubbish. We actually hide quite well from the things that are going on, not just at the subconscious level, but also the metaphysical level. There was this idea of our souls being fixed all on the same “assemblage point” that the rest of this universe runs along. One could shift their assemblage point enough to encounter other realities and this was done by Dreaming. That's also possibly where dreams sometimes take us. If not anything else, Vincent found dreams to be problem solvers and this one solved the mystery to his existence.
Back in Different's new home, the story almost crumbles but Vincent suggests that he is perfectly fine with the dream and wants to continue with it. He repeats to himself “I want to remember this image when I wake up so I'm going to look at it as long as I can” over and over, staring at the immense detail, seeing something new with each blink. It feels like he's been stalling for about fifteen minutes now, but time is irrelevant in dreams. This asian street scene is amazingly full of life. People everywhere, confetti, and a large Chinese palanquin being carried though the city by many people. This box-like structure is a carriage for kings and queens, lifted and paraded through the streets by their servants. In this particular image the palanquin is incredibly large and takes at least fifty people to carry it. What on Earth could it be that big for?
Vincent starred at the complex illustration for as long as he could analyzing every detail and eventually he had to move on. Different was stuck in a loop of telling him to hurry and walking back and forth. The dream was about to end out of obsolescence. Vincent finally pulled away to see the new studio and the rest faded into the white of lost memory.
When he awoke the general idea for this image was still intact. Vincent immediately grabbed the sketchbook on his nightstand and drew a box along two poles with an asian munchkin tossing confetti. Going throughout the day the image was all he could think about. Most importantly he was conceptualizing and trying to fill in the gaps. What was inside the box? What could be so massive and get so much praise?
He informed his closest friends that he'd for some strange reason was thinking of putting an other-worldly large grub worm inside the box. They immediately showed enthusiasm and from this resulted in further searching for information not only on asian architecture, which is something he never tried to draw, but also what are some of the biggest beetle larva in the world? It came to be an Atlas Beetle larva that attracted Vincent the most. Chalcosoma atlas is a species of beetle belonging to the Scarabaeidae family and it's larva is known to be very big and aggressive. The more Vincent studies the curious creatures the more he's intrigued. He started conceptualizing on this idea of metamorphosis as well.
Beetles live through four stages of life; there is the egg stage, the larva stage (where this asian worm image takes place), the pupa stage where they go into a cocoon to sleep as they change into the final stage of a beetle. The ideas of showing the other stages and all kinds of mini-series could feed off of this growing work Vincent was studying. Feeling something like a larva himself, still shedding skin, Fink would work hard to improve to reach a defining point with his art. He needed a break through.
Lord Worm will go to sleep in a cocoon for it's third stage where it transforms. Growing horns and other beetle-like features until he's ready to break out of his tomb to rise again with enormous fold-out wings on his back and three horns on it's head like a Triceratops. Vincent depicts them almost like beetles wearing battle armor ready for war.
Vincent sketched a couple preliminaries and employed for his first time, the three point perspective “worms eye view”. It is very tricky to draw complex objects or multiple people doing all sorts of different things in this distorted manner. After preliminaries and researching he primed and sanded forty-eight by thirty-three inches of masonite for the image to be manifested into real existence. The thought of not creating it almost felt selfish.
How could he love a piece of art so much and be the only one who gets to see it? If Fink didn't reproduce it to the best of his ability, the rest of the world would never get to share in the same wonder. The possibility also occurred that the original creator suggested in the dream would come out and try to sue Vincent for copying his work. Perhaps Vincent had seen it before in a gallery and pieced it together in the back doors of his mind. This could either make or break Vincent's career as an artist. This lucid interval was making even the waking life seem surreal.
Finally, five months later, after many sacrifices, break throughs, and much needed week-long breaks, it is the piece that has carved a named out for Vince in the local art scene. Now one can see the worm logo and his t-shirt designs all over the city, especially around local artist hangouts and small music venues. The worm has become synonymous with Vincent and his highly detailed ever evolving work. It took him out of the lost, searching phase into the “I have a concept and a plan” route with his talent. Something he'd been searching essentially all his life since he started drawing at three years old and never gave up on. After high school he attended The Art Institute of Houston and got a degree in Media Arts & Animation where he found no jobs in his exact field but through student services got a job two months out of college which started him in a graphic designer position for screen print graphics. He somehow managed, over a couple different employers to stay in screen printing but now doing t-shirt design. He uses the t-shirt as another medium to express himself and explore the Metamorphosis Project which seems to transcend the fabric of t-shirts, reality, masonite, canvas, paper, and space-time.
Lord Worm hails from another world on another time line, all of which remains a mystery. In the somnambulisms of Vincent Fink, he feels, the piece came to him from the universe it’s self, and there’s no scientific explanation proving nor disproving his claim. For Vincent says he could never have conjured something so immense in imagery, as well as concept, yet, no one else did either, so how is it here? What does it mean?
It’s pretty obvious to the viewer among hundreds of other things going on, there is a celebration in the streets for a large worm being carried in a palanquin, or carriage on sticks lifted by servants. The Worm is a symbol of some great religious and political power that is to be adorned by many and conspired against as well. Furthermore, a grub worm is just a stage in the life cycle of a beetle. So we also have this element of something large and time-consuming that eventually forms into the next stage of existence. Much like how the balance of power in the world has shifted from one stage to the other, each time there is growth and our idols change as well, but universally there is one being. The worm idea came more as an after thought, for, in the dream Vincent couldn’t tell what was in the box. Thus, he created a whole supporting concept as an explanation of Lord Worm. Where the grub is going? This is to be told as Vincent's art follows his subconscious directions.
It is also being made into Vincent’s premiere progressive rock/metal album to be released this year. It attempts to fuse his ever-growing music style of voice, bass, guitar and percussion with his mediums of art as one cohesive mass that can be appreciated in parts or as a whole. The most haunting reality is this concept requires four parts and all of this is only for one of them. This project will not be over for years to come and one can expect as the artist grows, so will the intensity of each piece. One can only imagine what might come next if the Metamorphosis Project ever truly ends.
Vincent Fink might consult his Dreaming experiences further, or maybe now he can find what he's looking for in his waking life.
