Carl Rubino is a powerhouse.

I last saw him on Facebook, a “selfie” of his first go at playing drums because it’s something he hadn’t done yet. Drums will be a fine addition to the list of Carl’s other accomplishments: songwriter, acoustic guitar act, painter, and photographer. I finally pinned him down for an hour and asked about all these things. 

I first encountered Carl’s abstract paintings on Instagram. At the time, I was working on a piece inspired by the view out an airplane window over Iowa, and that’s what I saw in his paintings. He told me I wasn’t too far off. 

Me: How do you know if an inspiration is going to be visual or aural?

CR: Some idea comes to me, and when it does it comes as … a few notes of melody or a lyrical phrase, or it comes as something visual. Sometimes I pick up the camera and start farting around and the idea comes. Especially with painting – I was more experimental.

I began painting while “locked in at home” during the pandemic, but I’d focused on intuitive, non-representational abstracts and never outdoors. A friend talked me into painting plein air with her. I had no idea what I would do with a landscape.

“What the f*** am I gonna do outside?” so I did it, and that’s what happened. Painting’s new to me, I mean really new. Like last year.

Me: But drums are newer?

CR: That was an accident! I watched a documentary on Netflix: “Count Me In” – not just about how cool rock drummers are – but it was really inspirational.

In the space Carl Rubino rents for music & art  – two different rooms in the same building – there was a drum kit set up. He thought he’d try it. And it was rough. So he thought he’d try it again, remembering what he’d seen and heard from the drummers in the documentary. He went for feel rather than thought. Here’s the result.

CR: I’m gonna tell you where some of this comes from, I think.

When I was about 5, my mom put me on a couch, put on some symphonic music, and told me, “close your eyes and listen…and you can see the music.” I took it to mean that you can experience it in your own way, whether you’re looking at it or creating it. I think that’s why I learned guitar the way I did – after college, with a Europass. This was around ’69. I picked up a $15 classical guitar in Spain, chord charts in London, some hash in Greece, and I sat on the beach trying to think how all three came together.

Me: That was ‘hash in Greece?’ This sounds like a song.

CR: After learning a little bit about how to play guitar, I went to law school. And the music was gone. 

Carl picked it up again in the ’90s in Vermont. He made trips to Nashville, earning spots at invitational songwriter nights, hawking songs on Music Row. There was a song that got significant play in Australia. Carl’s music was aired on several radio stations, from his own neck of the woods on down to Tennessee. He stopped pushing his CD and playing out to focus on songwriting. Then he was in an auto accident – broke bones in his right hand and screwed up his left shoulder.

CR: I was playing enough to support the lyrics I was writing, but the muse disappeared. So that’s when I took up photography.

CR: I think of my work as multidimensionality – we exist on multiple levels in our lives & I try to reflect that in photography; conflicting impulses…conscious or subconscious…I don’t know. Everything happens withing the camera, unless I adjust the contrast or something. Nothing is in Photoshop.

Five framed photographs from the series will be exhibited in “A Spooky Showing”, the work of seven artists with a common theme, at ADK Art Rise in Saranac Lake, NY with a gallery opening on Saturday, October 29^th. “Reflections Of Our Other Selves”  is a photographic look at what might be viewed as our hidden, confined, denied personalities, thoughts…or maybe even desires…the human form, in another dimension, as reflected on Mylar paper…like a fun house mirror – black background; manipulate the Mylar a little, change it as we’re shooting. I work with another photographer – the images are mostly single figures, totally naked except for one where she’s wearing a fairly sheer shirt. I shoot with a handheld camera, of the reflection in the Mylar. Very tricky because any change in movement alters what you’re getting. With ‘Tangled Up in You’ I worked with the same photographer and her husband. Really great working with a couple; obviously working together you have to be careful with what touches what – used the Hasselblad with that.

  “Multiple Entendre” is another in-camera photograph, composed on film with a medium format film camera, using a couple in multiple poses, all “fused” on a single frame of film. In this type of work, I use human form, shot in multiple exposures, to create photographs that convey emotion, sculptural form, or a feeling of movement.

Me: How does multiple exposure work in digital vs. film? CR: Digital does it automatically. Film you have to do all the math in your head:  which frame you want to favor via exposure. Normally, when you advance the shutter it cocks the shutter and advances the film at the same time. Multiple exposures all on the same frame. Depending on the camera, there’s a button or something to press to allow the film not to advance. The digital does it with a built-in computer. With my Nikon, when you go to take the 2nd shot you can’t see the first shot that you’re overlaying. My multiple shots are intentional. I’m not just pressing the button. What’s more complicated than not being able to see it is that they’re not in order. Lighting & grey tones determine what appears to be on top. Part planning & knowing how it works.

Carl said his hands started to come back after a few years. His guitar playing got better, but the lyrical muse was completely absent.

CR: In 2018, starting to feel like I could do this again, so I went to Falcon Ridge. Some of the coolest stuff that happens at Falcon Ridge if you’re a songwriter is people set up tents and play until the wee hours of the morning. Looking up at the sky and saying “holy f***, you’re back.” I started booking some gigs, and then the pandemic hit.

The most exciting time for music is when I start writing a song, and I do a quick recording and play it back and I know I’ve got it. The next is when I play it for someone and it moved them. There’s a relationship to the visual art, too. A lot of times I don’t title my individual photos; there might be a series name. I don’t want to assign their idea or their understanding or interpretation of that piece of artwork. There’s that feedback.

There are three parts:

• Visualize before taking the photo
• The next is what I turn it into when I see it on screen and print it
• And the third is what the viewer gets out of it.

I really want to encourage getting house concerts and I really don’t know how to go about that. To me there’s no more intimate way to hear the kind of music that I do.

Please invite Carl to play a house concert at your place.

Ask him some questions of your own. He’d love to hear from you.
about music:  carlrubinomusic@gmail.com or art: carl@carlrubinophotography.com.

I recommend you get comfortable and spend some time inside Carl Rubino Fine Art Photography & Abstract Painting. I promise I haven’t even scratched the surface here. Follow him on Instagram and Facebook, too.