About the artist:

Seattle-based multimedia artist Burchard draws inspiration from problems. His natural inclination to seek solutions invariably leads him in directions that require a spark of creativity. “There is art in everything you look at,” he says. “And I try to treat every project as an opportunity to recognize what’s beautiful or useful in an object and bring it out the best I can.”

After spending his early childhood in eastern Washington state, Burchard moved with his mother and stepfather to a remote part of Montana, where amenities were few and far between. The experience of going from the relative comforts of civilization to the brutality and loneliness of life in the wild had a profound impact on his creative development.

“If I wanted something, I had to make it,” he says, describing the conditions of his adolescence in Montana’s hinterland. “The vortex of nothing forced me to create something. Imagination became my only friend.”

That early lesson in existential austerity also paved the way toward an element of craft in much of what he created, and also toward becoming a multimedia artist. “At the start, I always wanted the things I made to have a function, to be useful in some way other than just to be seen,” he says. “As I’ve grown as an artist I’ve moved away from that to some degree but it still influences my process. The medium doesn't really matter at that point, it’s just whatever is in front of me,” he continues. “And if I don’t know how to use the tools that are necessary, I know I can learn. That’s never a barrier to entry for me.”

Despite having a demanding career in the business world apart from his function as an artist, Burchard doesn’t believe in the strict separation of his work life and his creative life. “Creativity manifests across the hemispheres of the brain,” he says. “Right brain, left brain, whatever, it’s all bullshit. Math can be creative, language and communication are creative. If you live a life of art, that’s that. In my business I have to create solutions to complex problems and it’s all connected to how I feel as an artist. I’ve incorporated all those elements to achieve the balance I need, business as a means, and art as the end.”

Burchard’s influences, perhaps unsurprisingly, cut a wide swath through creative disciplines and are often unexpected. “Some of the most amazing artists I’ve ever met or that I’ve admired aren’t always what would conventionally be described as artists,” he says. “I’m drawn to thinkers and creators, problem solvers. People who take basic conventions, master them, and then deconstruct and reconstruct them in unexpected ways. I admire artists that leave space for you to have to cross to get to what they mean.”