david quick
Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by Nick in culture
words > JASON DILTS
Capturing the attention of your contemporaries, harnessing the energy of your time, and manipulating creative thought so that it dares to be compelling decades later—these are the ingredients for making a legend. They also happen to be the ideals of David Quick, an unassuming yet decidedly adroit artist who just might be the most legendary person alive in Wichita today. Legends are defined in part by how their meaning tracks back to today. For Quick, art has always been about defining the times.
Raised in a quiet Riverside house, he befriended beat poets as a youth in Wichita and later had a front-row seat to the pop-art revolution in New York City. He has taught photography, video art, and art history for decades, both locally and in Philadelphia. He has won awards for his acrylic paintings, collages, filmmaking, and photographs. His work has been shown in dozens of exhibitions—from ICT all the way to Tel Aviv. Yet, recognition isn’t what drives him; for Quick, absorbing the microcosm of the moment is what truly defines good art.
The burgeoning journey from art-maker to art-star required a defrocking of pretentiousness. Dave is “quick” to point out that he has little time for talking up himself or his art because he spends most of his available time creating. “You can go to as many art parties as you want, but unless you’re in the studio creating, your talent is going to waste,” he says.
Anyone with an appreciation for culture would find a conversation with Quick enthralling. I first met him under the torchlight of the Keeper of the Plains last summer. The shirt I was wearing was an imitation of the screen-printed images of Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s “superstar” muse. Quick turned our happenstance encounter into a photo shoot. I later learned this is commonplace; he is always looking to freeze-frame contemporary culture.
Listen to his stories, and you’ll understand why. Quick doesn’t study history, he lives and helps define it. He was present when Allen Ginsberg was transcribing the famous Wichita Vortex Sutra. “Allen looked up and asked me how to spell Douglas,” Quick recalls, “I told him it had two s’s. It’s a good thing he had an editor!” He also hung out at The Factory with Andy Warhol. “Andy was fascinated with my old, worn Kansas cowboy boots. He offered me money for them, but I declined.” Later, he struck up a friendship with William S. Burroughs and takes credit for capturing one of only three known photographs featuring the famed beat-king emitting a smile.
For someone so ensconced in times gone by, Quick has his pulse very much in today. In 2000, he unveiled his Y2K-Youth 2000 project at the downtown Wichita library, showcasing photo images and video footage that captured the thoughts, looks, and lifestyle of modern young people. He has continued his cultural spelunking into the Wichita youth culture ever since. Many of Wichita’s up-and-coming musicians, artists, and performers have found themselves shot by Quick’s lens. It’s not uncommon to find him at Zoomdweebie’s asking the indie kids to pose for a photograph or at the skate park by Commerce Street shooting videos of multihued skaters. His ability to capture the zeitgeist of ICT culture even caught the attention of Mayor Carl Brewer, who remarked to me during a showing of Quick’s photographs last summer that he was impressed by his capacity to poignantly showcase the variety of the city’s traditions.
Legends aren’t orchestrated: people, places, times, and events become legendary organically. Legends also aren’t dated—every moment a new legend unfolds. Although, often we fail to notice its significance. David Quick isn’t legendary because he makes great art, but because his art makes for a greater appreciation of the moment it captures.
