Growing up, Eric Hamlin wasn’t the only artist in his family. However, he was encouraged to be creative while exploring the arts, which led him to his career focus: sculpture.
“It’s not just because my parents are artists, which is why I wanted to be an artist, but it’s because I was encouraged to explore that and ended up loving it too,” Hamlin said.
Sculpture didn’t originally draw Hamlin in, but he soon found that after taking a sculpting class along with his original major, which was Culinary Arts, he knew that art was where he wanted to be.
“What actually happened was I came in that first semester, I took safety and sanitation—fun class I know—and I also took sculpture along the side of it and that was just a fun class,” Hamlin said. “It ended up sucking me in.”
Hamlin has been a Sinclair student since 2011, one year before graduating high school, and he’s at the end of the road this semester and will graduate with a fine arts degree with a concentration in sculpting.
“I’ll be going to Wright State, continuing with their sculpture program they have there. After that, get a Master’s somewhere in there—that’s more for teaching purposes, which that’s the real practical career when you go into the arts,” Hamlin said. “It’s not necessarily my dream, but it’s still something within the field, which that’s all I care about.”.
Hamlin isn’t settling at the idea of being an art teacher because his major dream would be to be a self-sufficient artist. However, he constantly finds inspiration and motivation from his professors at Sinclair.
“That’s the thing I love about the teachers here, all of them are all artists working in their field,” Hamlin said. “You can see the sparkle in their eye that they love what they are doing.”
Hamlin was nominated last semester to exhibit a few art pieces at the Dayton Visual Arts Center for The Cline Show.
“It’s a show where they pick faculty from the schools around the Dayton area and select a few of their students to show their work,” Hamlin said.
Aside from art, Hamlin also expresses himself through music. He is self-taught on the guitar and took piano lessons for a few years as well. He describes the genre as Indian ambient, which resulted in starting a band named “Are They Above Us?”
“Me and my friend one day, we started jamming, and stuff started to happen and we thought, ‘let’s record this,’ and then we were a band,” Hamlin said.
Art and music compliment each other in life, according Hamlin. He said whenever he gets frustrated with art, he will turn to music and then if he gets frustrated with music, then he’ll start sculpting again.
“It’s nice to have the two kind of extremes,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin sees art as a career, while he views music as more of a hobby. He said even though local gigs are an option, music is harder to make a living off of, but he still enjoys it as a creative outlet.
“Music? I’ll probably be doing that for the rest of my life and if something works from it, great, and if nothing ever comes from it, it’s still an outlet, and a way to express myself,” Hamlin said.
Between the two, Hamlin doesn’t have a lot of free time. Most of his days are spent working on his art and sculptures after classes, and then goes home in the evening to play guitar for three hours..
Recently, Hamlin has been learning how to weld with a local artist, Michael Bashaw. After interning with Bashaw last semester, he offered to help him this semester since he learned so many welding skills. Most of what Hamlin learned was “the nitty gritty things,” such as trade-based work and less of the artistic work. However, Hamlin said he enjoys working with Bashaw because Sinclair doesn’t offer metal welding in the art program.
“Welding is new for me—that’s been one the things I’ve been really wanting to do,” Hamlin said. “What’s amazing about metal is that you can do these delicate looking things, but in reality it’s metal and it’s not going anywhere. That’s the direction of my future work at least for now—who knows where I’ll be in ten years.”
Currently, Hamlin is preparing for the “Graduating Fine Art Portfolio Exhibit,” which shows artwork that the graduating class has worked on in and out of the classroom. Each student must choose four to five pieces that relate to each other for a cohesive exhibition.
Education is important to Hamlin, but he believes it’s more about learning about the world, and less about a degree. School helps force people to get in the mindset of putting yourself out there no matter what, according to Hamlin.
Hamlin said he’s constantly changing, but one thing is certain that he leaves his artwork open-ended. He prefers when people can acknowledge his art, and see it in their own way, rather than being pushed to see the intention.
“One of my favorite things is when someone looks at one of my pieces I’ve done and they talk to me about an interpretation that I have never have thought of, but it’s equally valid because its something they saw when they looked at it,” Hamlin said.
Inspiration for Hamlin is generated by a light sculptor named James Turrel, who created an installation with different colors and light intervals winding up a staircase, as well as built light pieces inside a mountain in Arizona.
“I’d love to do something that extreme,” Hamlin said.
Geometric and minimalism is how Hamlin describes his art. He said for any artist, it’s important to just keep making art. It’s easy to get caught up in your mind and doubt yourself, but the more you make art, the better you’ll get.
“The artist’s biggest enemy is their own head saying, ‘you suck, don’t keep making art, and go get an accounting major,’” Hamlin stated. “If you really want to be an artist, the only thing you can do is just keep making it and eventually you’ll get better and eventually you’ll feel more comfortable.”
To see Hamlin’s work, and other graduating students, visit the Burnell R. Roberts Triangle Gallery from April 18 to May 5, in Building 13.
Gabrielle Sharp
Executive Editor