Meet The Artist: Clark Whittington

Clark Whittington is a world famous artist known primarily for the creation of the Art-o-Mat. His work is featured everywhere, dispensing art to everyone from his 90 different art dispensing machines all over the world. In fact, you can find the machines in over 11 different countries, giving out art of over 400 different artists.

Radio Camper Olivia Santos has more.

Clark Whittington showed up for our interview with a page boy hat and a t-shirt featuring an old cigarette vending machine. The machine on his shirt is actually one of his own artistic creations: the Art-o-Mat. Art-o-Mats are refurbished and recycled cigarette vending machines that dispense art from artists all around the world. His first machine originally started as part of a small art show at Penny University in downtown Winston-Salem in 1997. As soon as we jumped into the interview, I had to ask him how the ingenious Art-o-Mat came about.

Basically, a lot of my art over the years were based on observations. I had a friend who would go to a     vending machine when we heard the crinkle of cellophane. So I drew that in my sketchbook and that's where I came up with the idea of Art-o-Mat.

During the interview, Clark and I got deeper into the roots of the Art-o-Mat. We discussed how he grew up surrounded by art, and he told me the philosophy of Art-o-Mat and why he loves it.

That's the goal, is trying to get art in people's hands so they can live with it.

Art-o-Mat features artists of all ages from all around the world. Anyone is welcome to join.

It's amazing. Sometimes we receive work that is just jaw-dropping, like we've never seen anything like it before. You'd think it'd become repetitive over time, but that's my favorite part, actually. Seeing how artists take what we do and make it their own and just have fun with it.

Clark features his machines everywhere, including nine in the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. The art in his machines ranges from jewelry to sculpture and paintings. For more information visit www.artomat.org.

For 88.5 WFDD Radio Camp, I'm Olivia Santos.