Recently, Shaun Roberts had a chance to sit down with C3 for an interview about his show Before The Sun Dies Part I “Tempest Horizon” opening up this Saturday. The interview for Hi Fructose includes everything from his upbringing in Oklahoma to drawing inspiration from antique photographs and David Lynch films. Below are some photos and excerpts from the interview…

Don’t forget to join us this Saturday for the opening, RSVP here.

More after the jump!

When the darker, macabre side of the world begin to interest you?

I think it was after watching the end of Children of the Corn, it was so long ago I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was the part where the land is coming up and it’s like the devil coming through. I didn’t know what was going on because I was so young, but for about a year I kept thinking about that scene. I didn’t know what movie it was from so I kept trying to describe it to people to find out what movie it was that we were watching. Years later, someone put that movie on again and I finally got a chance to see it from the beginning, when the last scene of the movie came on I was like “This is it! This is the movie!”. I got all excited and I started to seek out movies similar to that, I got obsessed with horror films.

You’ve set out to make “Before the Sun Dies” into a trilogy, how did this idea come about?

My last show “In Search of New Land” felt really solid I was happy with it. There was a lot of experimentation with that world and I was seeing what I could do with the ideas from that and expand it.  That world is like an ongoing movie in my mind, so I’m kind of finding pieces of the movie and freezing it and saying “ok, that’s what I’ll draw”.

Everyone is telling me to write out a narrative but I don’t want to give it all away. I like the idea of a person finding these images and not fully making sense of it. I may know what’s going on for me, but for that person it could be totally different. That’s why I like David Lynch so much too, he’s a huge inspiration. When I watch his movies, he doesn’t give things away, he just wants you to watch it and then come out of it feeling however you feel.

It’s more about the emotional experience of the work, each piece is supposed to have some sort of emotional impact, not necessarily a literal narrative one.

But I will say that part one of the trilogy is titled “Tempest Horizon”, it’s the beginning of the storm.

It’s inspired a lot by how people used to worship the sun, I wanted to go back to that instead of people worshipping God or Satan or something like that, I wanted it to be about the sun and people worshipping the universe. The sun is actually more of a symbol about hope. There are those with hope and those who just want to do away with it and maintain control.