The artist and co-founder of Horse + Hero and The Big Crafty, Justin Rabuck, and the filmmaker and owner of West Ashe Creative, Colby Sexton, are taking you inside the artistic spaces you don’t typically get to see through their new film project, SoundsPretty.
The ~6-minute films provide an intimate look at local artists’ processes with a sensory and meditative journey through their home studios and creative spaces. Sexton shares that the space itself is intentionally supposed to be another character of the films.
“We’ve both been here now for a lot of years and remember an older Asheville — him an even older Asheville than me — and it was like this foundation of basement studios and these artists kind of eking by but making this place unique and crazy with pop-up concerts and art shows,” says Sexton on the inspiration behind the films. “We need to find a way to capture that same thing in its newest form but in a celebration of what made Asheville the creative thing that it now is.”
The duo joke (or perhaps admit) that the undertaking was somewhat selfish, giving them a creative outlet to document artists they admire — but its impact is much greater. The project is a labor of love that it serves to uplift Asheville-area artists deserving of recognition. Rabuck adds that the videos can even help artists bolster applications for grant funding or aid their efforts to feature work in museums.
The pair talked for two to three months about starting the project before diving in with a short film about Edwin Salas. “Happy Dark Place” showcases the puppetry, printmaking, and other mediums the artist works in, but also the collection of items valuable to Salas and influential to his style. Currently three films in total are out, the other two highlighting the spaces and artistic processes of Candler-based musician Tyler Ramsey and illustrator Kaleb Duggan, aka Toasty Tuna.
To watch all the films released so far, head to the SoundsPretty YouTube channel — and to get a behind-the-scenes snapshot of the filming process, keep up with the duo on Instagram.
