Indiana artist merges industry and nature

Once a musician, now an abstract painter and carpenter, Christian Fillippo works with nature — in aerosol, acrylic drips and industrial gears.

He creates depth with layers of paint, the contrast and intensity of which elicits a powerful response in viewers each time they are seen. But Christian is humble.

Originally from northwest Indiana, he is the son of a steel worker. He learned silkscreen and graphic design to market his and other bands.

“Being a musician was great,” Fillippo said. “I got to meet a lot of my idols, and that inspired me to make more art. But I just couldn’t support myself as a musician. It took its toll, and I eventually replaced music with art.”

Inspired by natural themes, Fillippo spent his time as an undergraduate at IU working on sculpture and craft design. He said the definitive moment happened while he was taking a drawing class. Before he had to turn in a drawing, a cup of water spilled onto the graphite, blurring and distorting the image.

He didn’t have the time to fix it — but he did discover his love for the natural pattern that emerged in place of the image. Recently, Fillippo has been filming the materials in his studio as they run and mix together in magmatic patterns. This is indicative of his passion for rediscovering and reassembling images and ideas from his work in the past and in other media.

Some of the videos became part of the GLACIER LAYER installation at The Murphy Art Center in Indianapolis last February.

“During my undergrad years at IU, I had to paint and draw things realistically, and I just wasn’t into it,” Fillippo said. “I love just letting things spill and run. It can be really liberating because I can let it happen right there before my eyes.”

In Bloomington, he created a reception desk from walnut, cherry and white marble for the Showers Inn Bed and Breakfast. He has also done remodeling with The Fillippo Hall Group.

Fillippo said a perk of his work is the fine woods he ends up with after a job is completed, which he uses for painting surfaces, his own furniture design and even a series of wood art sculptures. Being a carpenter allows him to paint and work in equal parts of time.

Christian’s own furniture design is sleek and modern, but classic. His coffee tables use arrangements of wood for their aesthetic beauty and have incorporated walnut, pine, cherry, maple, cedar and birch. His work can be seen online at
www.christianfillippo.com.

This type of deliberate visual arrangement is recreated in the wood sculptures, which use stained shingles assembled within a frame and are designed to stand against a wall.

As a student, his passion for natural subjects turned to trees as sculptural centerpieces. A particular vein of work he explored was in dissecting and preserving tree trunks and then utilizing their beauty in displays.

“I always notice how the environment creates things, there’s natural artwork everywhere,” Fillippo said. “Cities grow and decay. Overall, my work is more industrial than dark or daunting.”

The natural processes of growth, decay, erosion and time are the most intense themes of his work — but they are not as bleak as some might assume.

“I think that everyone will take something different away from my work,” he said.