Carl Scharwath has appeared in Penumbric regularly since our restart in June 2020—in fact, he’s had art in every issue but that first one (and that’s only because we hadn’t met yet). His unique way of combining layers of photography (and, more recently, painting) has fascinated us all along, and we finally had the chance to interview him about not only his process, but his philosophy.

*     *     *
You had written in an essay a few years ago that there are “1000 ways to take a photo.”

Correct.

So do you have certain preferred styles and techniques and that sort of thing, or does the subject itself sort of tailor what your techniques are going to be?

OK. Well, thank you again, Jeff, for publishing my work for over two years. I want to say that first, I really appreciate being in your journal consistently and I hope we can continue our relationship. I do feel like I have a home now. So I moved into your publishing sphere, and I only use the bathroom once in a while, so don't worry. But anyway, with 1000 ways, I ... real quick, I'll back up a little bit. I started writing poetry and then short stories, and I had a friend, Jenny Link, who lived in the town I'm in now, in New Smyrna Beach, who prompted me to start taking pictures. She said, you used to paint. You told me you were a painter once in college, why don't you try photography? I will model for you. So I said, sure and I started with just a cell phone. So we went out, I took some pictures of her. And actually I think it was one of my best shots of her.

Oh wow. Just on your cell phone.

Yes, she did pass away about six years ago now. So I'm always indebted to her. I mean, I think she got me started in photography, so it's almost like she's my guardian angel of photography. So I always thank her for getting me started on this journey. She would laugh at me when I said, well, all I am is a button pusher.

So when I said 1000 ways to take a photo ... I did an essay where four different people will take a picture, say, of a tree outside. One might take it straight on. One might do an angle. One might lay on the ground and take it up in the air. So that's that. There's a million ways to take a photo. Nothing's truly the right way. With me it's experimentation. I do like using abandoned buildings. To me, that's the best thing to take pictures of. I know it's cliche. A lot of people do, but it just makes me think, what is the history of the building? After I take it and look at it, you know, who might have lived there? Why did they leave? Things like that. So it tells a story, and that's what I try and do with my photography is tell a story.

After just taking straight-on photos, I started experimenting with overlays, where I take a photo and it's called double exposure, but not like in the 1920s, where they actually did double exposure. It's just placing another photo over it. I started experimenting using models as well. I would take a picture and then put a model in it. Now I'm unique. I'm on Facebook a lot and I use that for networking and I have so many friends around the world who are artists, photographers, etc. They would reach out to me. They started saying I want to write a poem for your photography. You inspired me. And that was like, oh, wow, that's amazing.

That’s cool.

Sure! And for you doing that, since my job was easy—you had to write the poem—I'll send it out for publication. So I've done a lot of collaborations that have been published. And then I started getting people reaching out to me to be a model, so they would just take a picture of themselves, send it to me, and I would include them in my photography as a double exposure.

Oh wow.

One thing it accomplishes, I help them get published as a model, an art model, we'll call them. And then I don't have to go out and actually meet people and set it up. It's done quickly. And I think it's cooler because I have models in Hong Kong and Indonesia and India and around the world. And as I post on Facebook that it’s published, more people reach out to me. So I just love the collaboration that photography has brought to me. That's the most important thing.

To finish the conversation on photography, I started painting again. I used to paint in college, and at one time I thought I was going to major in art. But I remember on a semester break I went with a friend to New York City. We walked around Central Park and I saw artists with their paintings on the sidewalk. I said to my friend, wow, they're a million times better than what I'm doing. I'm going to switch to a business degree. That was like an epiphany when I saw that.

That's quite an epiphany.

So my dreams of being the next Salvador Dalí went out the window, and I really never painted again for about 35 years. [But then] I started painting again, and I'll be honest, I don't think I'm a good painter. But what I discovered is my photography hides my painting. So I started what's called paintography. I thought I invented a word. I looked it up and it is a word, but not a lot of people are doing it. What I do is, I usually do an abstract painting or sometimes semi-realistic painting. I use a canvas that's about a 5 by 7. So I do them quick. It takes me 20-30 minutes to do a painting. Sometimes I do “pour paintings,” abstracts where you actually pour, it's called a pour medium, and you kind of move the canvas around. It gets nice effects. Then I put my photography over it. When I first started doing it, I said wow, this is a brand new world for me. And I started getting it out there, I started getting it published. And again it tells a story.

I do it actually in reverse. I think the logical way is take a photo and then in your mind say OK, what painting would go with it? With me, I do the painting first and then I look through my hundreds and hundreds of photos and match it up and do a little experimenting and a little bit of enhancing. But that's what I like because it's combining painting and photography, two arts together, and then when somebody writes a poem for it, it’s a collaboration, and then we have three arts.

I'm trying to innovate all the time. I'm also starting to do double, triple paintings, or I'll either take two paintings and stack them up on top of the other one and take a picture. Or just combine two different paintings with my photography. So I just take a picture of the canvas, another picture of a canvas, and overlay it.

It’s all physical media, then, as opposed to all in Photoshop or something like that?

Yes. And I have people ask, can I buy your paintography, and I go well, I'm not into art. I don't really want to make money in art. That's not important to me, and I say honestly, I can't, because it's a photo. So even though it's a canvas and a photography, I'm not sending it out. I mean, one day if an art gallery is interested, yes, I'll put them on metal or, you know, have them done professionally, which I can from the camera, but it's basically just photography-painting is what it is.

So you had said, in an interview with Wise Old Owl, both your art and writing sprang from what I interpreted as inspirational or serendipitous moments. Can you speak more about how that sort of inspiration sort of unlocks a subject or an idea?

Yes, it kind of ties in with my other passion, which is running. I do 5Ks maybe once or twice a month. I run three times a week, and to me it's like the old troubadour poets: I'm out there running and all of a sudden ideas come in my head. By the time I get home, I forget. I go wait, what was that good line for that poem, the idea for that story? But sometimes when I'm out, I'll see things too, especially if I do races, I'll see an abandoned building while running on the course or whatever, and I'll go back. So I think running inspires me, but I believe that quote, it's says “art is everywhere.” I can't remember who said it, unfortunately. So if you just go out in the world and just think, that's always in my brain: Art is everywhere.

I usually have my cell phone with me. I do 50-60% of my photos through the cell phone, and I do use a camera as well. But here’s an example. I was just walking. And it was in an alleyway with two garbage cans. And it had rose petals or some kind of flower petals that somebody threw on the ground in front of the cans, and it had a piece of plywood that was cut out like a half a moon. So I said, this is a piece of art. You know, it's a still life. I took a picture of it. Yeah, it's got garbage cans. But just the way the garbage cans and the flowers. ... So inspiration is really just having an eye and looking, and I think that's what a good painter has or a photographer. It's the eye. Again, anybody can take a picture of a tree, but it's the artist who sees something in front of the tree, behind the tree, or the angle of it. ...

Right. I think that happens with short stories as well, or poetry. Like with the tree, you can see a story in the way the tree is lit, or the way the branches are, or the way it moves in the wind.

Well, I'll tell you a quick story about inspiration on a short story I wrote, where it comes from weird places. So, I was out on a run and I'm in Florida. It was in the summer. It was 90-92 degrees out. A couple blocks from my house, there's this medical building. So I was running, and I ran behind a building because of the shade—you know, the building created some shade for me and it was pretty long building—so I'm running behind there and a police officer slowly goes behind me. Kind of looks, I'm just jogging along, and it passes me. So I'm running and as I'm running, I'm thinking, you know, that would be a cool short story. I called it “Running in Sin.” What the story was, real quick, was a guy who had two daughters ready for college. He just got laid off, [lived in] an upscale neighborhood gated community. Trouble with his mortgage, trouble saving up for his kids’ education. And he was getting overweight, you know, because he lost his job. Just staying on the computer ... and he decided to take up running. And he ran through the neighborhood. And as he was running, he goes well, I know when this neighbor is leaving. I know when that neighbor's leaving. And he started breaking into their homes. So just from that cop, because it's like, look, a cop went by. I could been back there breaking into a medical building. You know, it just looks like a jogger to him. I said, damn, that’s a good idea. So that was my story. And I also had the guy almost get caught by a homeowner and, you know, the homeowner’s in the back of her house. Because she was home, and he thought she wasn't, [and] she said, “What are you doing back here?” And he says, “Well, it's hot. If you don't mind I’m just getting a drink from your garden, you know, the faucet back here.” So I had a kind of built-in excuse too. So that is a good example of just paying attention when you're out there.

I know when I first started seeing your work, it was more of the overlays, and then more recently the paintography. You mentioned that you're sort of moving on to double layers of paintings and photographs, a sort of multi-layer paintography.

Correct.

Not that I want your secrets [laughs], but are you just sort of always looking for new ways of combining art and painting, photography and painting?

Yes, again, that's what an artist does. They're trying to innovate. Again, I'm not the first doing it, but I don't see many people doing it. So I'm always thinking of different ways, different techniques. And that's the beauty of art. It's almost infinite. I'll give you another example. I buy these little canvases and once I left the plastic on it, you know, it's wrapped in plastic. It's a little small canvas.

Right.

I took a palette knife and just started mixing colors in it, and when it dried it separated and it looked really cool. I had to put it a little dark in the corner because it actually had the information about the canvas. It's like this brown corner protector and I had to layer it a little heavier over there. And I said, well, if I don't like it, I'll just take the plastic off and I’ve got a new canvas! But doing it on this plastic actually separated it. And I had it published in a local magazine here and it looks like flowers. And I just use a palette knife for about four different colors, green, yellow, and a couple of colors.

That's what I like about painting, is sometimes when you do abstract, you see things in it that you didn't see when you did it. So you'll be done, and “Oh my God, I can see a, you know, a person in it.” Or I could see a face. Things like that. So I am experimenting, I'm always trying to do different things. I also, I’ve never submitted it to you, but I work with Jeanette Skirvan out in California. She's done seven different video poems for me. So we built a friendship. I'll send her my poem and she'll do a full blown video, and some are really pretty cool, like mini movies. We've been published together. I guess my theme is now, you know from painting, writing, I'm doing more collaborations and trying to help people. I really am excited about helping others, especially in other countries. I always reach outside the United States. I like talking to people around the world. I think that's the coolest thing.

Oh yeah, definitely. I noticed that a lot of your models are from other countries.

And my number one country for publications is India. For some reason, I have a lot of luck in India. I'll say India really loves literature, I mean, I wish America was like that. They’re really into it, and there's so many poets and writers, and they have all these groups and everything. Someday I want to go over there and go to a reading or something. But I’ve had a lot of luck in India. Glomag in India is like your magazine, Jeff. I have been published in every issue for over two years, and Glory the editor always supports my writing or art and asks me to submit every month. I like when you get to that point, when publishers are asking you for your work.

Yeah.

You know, sending it out and getting your rejections or not hearing back ... When you get to that point, it's nice, you know, that people are reaching out to you.

Oh yeah, definitely. You're also the art editor for Minute magazine.

I was for four years. It was an interesting magazine. I volunteered to be an art editor and I didn't know when I signed up it was a 10th grade high school student out in California. I said, wow, that's amazing that you're doing this. So she graduated and went to college in a couple of years, and then her sister, her younger sister, took it over for another two years. And then when she went to college, I think it was one of her friends who then took it over, and then it just kind of died out.

I enjoyed it. I'm a guest editor for ILA Magazine as well. I do interviews for Annette Nassar. Every quarter, she'll send me somebody and I'll interview them, not on Zoom, I do it through e-mail. And then I also do interviews in my area where I live. I live in a complex called Venetian Bay. It's about 5-6 thousand people. They have their own little kind of online magazine. So I interviewed local people in that as well. And also I'm reaching out. There is an art museum in New Smyrna Beach called the Hub, and next month I'm going to offer a beginners poetry class. I've never taught per se that. I've taught and worked as a financial advisor. I did classes on all that, but this will be my first time teaching poetry.

Oh, that'll be interesting.

In September, there's another great art place here called Atlantic Center for the Arts, and they have me scheduled in September to do one class on what is in my wheelhouse, which is networking on Facebook and social media.

Oh wow.

My granddaughter goes—I'm going to be 69 tomorrow. Tomorrow's my birthday—she goes, “For an old guy, you really can work that social media!” But it's just fun meeting people.

Oh yeah. So do you find it, I guess, synergistic to be on both sides of the publishing line, both a contributor and an editor?

Yes. And to help you, I'm sure you have it ...when I talk to people, I always let them know. It's like a resume, when you submit to a magazine or a journal, just follow the directions. I'm sure you see it where you say, you know, don't put your name on the work you're submitting, or [use a] 12 point font. Whatever they say, that's what you do. I know it's tough to read everything before you submit. They always say, “You know, you should take a look at least,” because again, like you have speculative fiction. So I'm not going to send you a love poem. ... I mean, these editors don't have a lot of time, so please just whatever they say, you have to do. And that's where people get rejected. And I say, don't worry about rejections. Everybody gets rejected. If I send out 10 pieces, maybe my average now is one or two get accepted, maybe three or four will reject it and the other four or five you don't even hear back, which I don't like. I was an editor. I'd always, I mean, I'm not going to make a comment on everything. That's impossible. I do when I can, but at least let them know. It seems like the standard answer is “It’s not a good fit.” But no, it's important to send out if you want to be published. That's what I like. I mean, I'm not doing this to be famous or make millions of dollars. I just like getting my work out there, and as you get it out there, people see it and you never know what could happen. Maybe you get different opportunities.

Right.

Here's one here. Tamikio Dooley. I'll do a shout out for her. We're friends on Facebook. She saw my art and just out of the blue, she says, “Send me 50 or 60 of your photographs and I'll put together a book for you.” This book she just did. It's online, it's free, and then it's also on Amazon if you need to buy it. But also she's doing another one for me with just nature photography. I'm not a big nature photographer, but over the years I got so many of them. So she's doing another one, and that's just from her seeing my work on Facebook, basically.

You just sort of make connections by submitting things and being around.

But also it's good to just reach out. When I see somebody coming out with a book, I'll message him, you know. Do you need any help? Do you want me to help you with anything? You want me to read it? I think an artist should always reach out to other people. It's not a competition. We're here to help each other.

Right.

And you help them, not to get anything in return. Sometimes you do get something in return, but you do help them because they're on a journey as well. If you have some knowledge, let them know. Another thing with my photography I didn't mention was that I've been on a lot of writers’ book covers. So I have Luzviminda Gabato Rivera in the Philippines. She loved my work so much, I’ve been on seven of her book covers and we did a collaborative book together with her poems and my art. Christine Tabaka has a new one coming out. It's been three different books with my art on her covers. And to me, that's the best honor, because this is somebody's personal art, and they're reaching out to have my art on their cover.

It's sort of the introduction to their work.

People ask me how much I charge. I don’t charge anything. I wish I could be on more. I mean, I love being on other writers’ book covers. So that's another thing that's grown out of photography, and I will say my photography-art-painting is doing a lot better than my writing now, and I'm still writing, but it's just kind of exploded more. So that's where I'm putting my emphasis right now, but I do write still, I'm working on some short stories. I like essays. I’m starting to write essays.

Yeah, they each exercise a different part of your brain.

Yes. And maybe it's just I'm getting lazy. I mean, I could just do a photo and make it. Or 20 seconds and then a painting. It's done. With writing, I'm just editing and reading it. Poems I can knock out, but the short stories and essays, they just seem to never be completed. I'm always going back and changing things, and sometimes I have trouble with tenses when I write, and it's just so much, and I know I’ve got to work through that myself. I don't type. Which is funny to some people. Throughout my career, people always made fun of me. Like two-finger typing. I was never a good speller. Thank God for spell check. But no, I struggle through stories. I mean, not only the grammar, the spelling, the tenses. I took English, of course. But I do struggle. It's difficult. You'll write a sentence that's in the past, and then the next one is in the present; it’s like, OK, let me catch that. It's not only the mechanics of the story, but the most important thing in a story, at least, is the idea.

Right.

And as you said, back to inspiration, that's the hardest part. You couldn't tell me, “Hey, write a story about or write a poem about a mountain. I can't do that. Something's got to come to me when I'm out and about.

Right. Like if somebody tries to give you some sort of guided prompt. Like, here's a lamp. Write a story about the lamp.

Yeah, that's why I was never good with prompts. And poetry or stories, but if they give you like the beginning sentence.

Right.

But anyway, going back real quick, I'll mention that ChatGPT I sent you that poem about. I did a reading and they loved it because it showed [this kind of struggle]. It showed me struggling to write a poem and knowing I could just click on ChatGPT, and it'd be done for me. ... I have just regular ChatGPT, and it is amazing that it can write poems, but the downfall is that they're all rhyming, and they're all the same style. I kept typing “free verse, free verse,” and nothing. It just keeps rhyming. So I actually sent an e-mail and said, hey, you guys got to set up a ...

[laughs] It has to learn what free verse is.

Have you looked at it yet?

I haven't done anything with it personally.

It's amazing. I mean, I actually used it just for my class as an outline. I said write me a beginner poetry class outline, and boom. And I figured that's OK. I mean, it's not being published or anything. So I could use that, but it has all kinds of stuff. It writes essays, short stories, you ask it questions, and just the way it does it so quickly. It is amazing.

Yeah. No, I ...

I mean, kids using it in college for their essay, I mean, I think there will be some cheaters out there.

Yeah, that's one of the issues.

That's the issue, yeah.

Like Clarkesworld was recently shut to submissions, at least for a while, because they were getting so many AI submissions.

Yes, I know that. You can kind of tell, I mean, I looked at a short story that it wrote and you can tell.

Yeah, I think at this point it's interesting because the part of AI that I've worked in has been in trying to create human-like personalities for characters in games, and making the personalities more human-like, you know, developing in the same way a human being's personality or emotions would develop over time. And in a way, it scares me because you could try to link that with the ChatGPT and you'd end up with ... ethically questionable things.

Well, I mean, if anything, it's a good tool maybe for prompts. I mean, maybe if you'd say, yeah, you write me a poem about being lonely and there might be a couple kind of lines that would trigger you to say, hey, that's kind of a cool concept kind of thing.

Right.

I just used it one time for that poem, and when I did a public reading, it was an older crowd like myself. Nobody knew what ChatGPT was. I had to kind of tell them what it was. But yeah, it's interesting.

So would you ever use something like that as an art prompt?

No, I mean I would just use it for, like I said, the one time I used it was for doing a class instead of me sitting there and saying, well, I've never taught poetry before. What's a good syllabus? I forget what this was, it's been so long. I mean, I know what it is, but what [a syllabus] looks like. So that’s what I use it for, you know, instead of me struggling here for two hours on the computer, 5 minutes I got it and then I'll do my own notes on how I'm going to talk about each one.

Right.

So it's good for that.

So you've given some advice for artists and photographers. Do you have anything else you'd like to add to that?

Yes, just keep doing it. Keep improving. And again, don't forget to help others. That should be your main goal as an artist. We're all going through the same thing, so you might build a great friendship and work together on things. So to me, that's the most important, and that's what I love doing most, collaborating, teaching, and helping.

*     *     *
You can find Carl Scharwath on Facebook at carl.scharwath. His books can be found on Amazon: Playground of Destiny at amazon.com/Playground-Destiny-Carl-Scharwath/dp/1914130308, Abandoned at amazon.com/Abandoned-Carl-Scharwath/dp/1548592994, and his latest photography in The Man Behind the Brush at amazon.com/Man-Behind-Brush-Tamikio-Dooley/dp/B0BSJN9ZJL.