Cultivation Of A Polished Rune

Aoi & Her Work

~ INTRO ~

After calling Aoi and three text messages later we’d decided to meet up at the Lake Merritt area of Oakland because it’s a fairly easy landmark to locate. Originally built in 1953, the lake is described as “a focal point, it stands as the jewel of Oakland, even crowned with lights” by oaklandnet.com. Sun setting behind the lake provided a spectacular backdrop to capture some photos of Aoi’s calligraphy work. Tons of people were jogging by and we even had to ask a couple people for help to hold some of her larger work.

Following the ‘photo shoot,’ we headed towards a nearby area to escape the encroaching dark cold air. At first thought the local Starbucks appeared a solid location to conduct an interview. Closer inspection revealed it rank with chatter. Across the street, Colonial Donuts proved a more hospitable interview environment. After ogling the pastry selections we both settled on apple turnovers, with she an Earl Grey tea and I a ‘Milk Chug’ to wash it down. We sat down in the middle of the shop snacking on the goodies while discussing what calligraphy entails for her.

~ BACKGROUND ~

Moments Of Truth ~ Today is Thursday, October 18TH, 2007 and I’m here with Aoi Yamaguchi. Please describe your main mode or medium of creative expression.

Aoi Yamaguchi ~ Primarily, I do Japanese calligraphy. I’ve been doing this since I was six years old.

MOT ~ Are there specific differences for Japanese calligraphy in comparison to say Chinese or Western forms?

AY ~ The Japanese form is really unique, based on traditional culture. I use special brushes and papers. Like if I was just to draw the alphabet, it’s very simple lines, while there’s a lot of curves and three different styles of characters [in Japan], hiragana, katakana and kanji. Kanji is the most complicated one and consists of [a] bunch of strokes. It’s really hard to write, but that’s what really makes me want to do it and learn it because it’s hard. If it’s easy, I can be more creative, it takes time to learn it but we need patience to develop the skill.

Any of the three characters can be used, but we don’t use katakana that much. It’s more for foreign words, like English, to describe the sounds. The kanji has the meaning itself. Each character has it’s own meaning, different from the English alphabet, A, O, Y don’t really mean anything on their own. The kanji character itself has different kinds of meaning depending on how we combine them with others. I think it’s really interesting.

MOT ~ Are there any other mediums that you also like to work in?

AY ~ Music, yea, I spent ten years learning piano and I love singing. I took jazz singing course before. Even when I was little I loved singing, was in choir. Also the music industry interested me, so I learned how to make beats, how to set up the microphone, pressing CD’s from the recording studio, using the console and stuff.

MOT ~ If you had that ideal life where you could focus entirely on whatever you wanted what do you think that would be?

AY ~ I think I would do calligraphy, but if I can play some music that I made, that is if I could write calligraphy while listening to music that I made would be great.

MOT ~ Where exactly did you grow up?

AY ~ In Sapporo. My fathers job as a teacher had us move around to so many places, only in the northern island, Hokkaido. I went to so many different places, but mostly grew up in the suburbs, like a little town. There was lots of beautiful nature like trees, flowers, the sky’s so beautiful, great mountains. So I was in touch with nature when I was little. That’s maybe why I got more creative about how we see nature. Then I moved to Sapporo, the largest city on Hokkaido when I was fourteen. Since then, I’ve lived in the city and learned different stuff. I experienced two different worlds.

MOT ~ So your father is a teacher, did your mother do any art, or anyone else in your family?

AY ~ My mom would draw a little bit. My father is more creative with words. He was a Japanese literature teacher, kind of a writer of books and poems. He is like a philosopher, loves to think, wonder about things, and bunches of books to read. Also, he was very interested in psychology too. I was kind of a difficult kid when I was little (laughs at the thought of it), I didn’t like to fit into society. How do I say…. I didn’t like the strict rules I wanted to be free all the time, like a little bird, flying around everywhere. Needless to say my parents had a hard time with me. This may be part of my interest in philosophy, psychology, those abstract areas, same as with art.

MOT ~ Have you had mentors, teachers, especially in calligraphy that have helped guide you?

AY ~ When I started my mom took me to one of those places to learn calligraphy and he was an old master. His wife and he were both teachers, it was like private lessons with other students like me; starting out in elementary school to high school as well as adult level too. There’s a bunch of different levels, so for like a year span, every year – I was pretty good at it I guess – I’d get to the top. The next year we would start from scratch and I would get prizes and trophies; this encouraged me.

When I started, I lived in that town only two years. Generally my mom would drive me, maybe one or two hours back to the town after school, once a week. When we finally moved too far away to drive, I would write calligraphy at home and send it to the teacher so he could do the corrections with red ink. He would write where I needed it to be thicker or stronger, send it back, and I’d fix it.

MOT ~ So you did have to do it on your own for awhile?

AY ~ Well, yes and no. My mom does calligraphy too and she would teach me things as well.

~ INSPIRATION ~

MOT ~ What do you think is your main source of inspiration for creating your work? I notice some of the words or phrasing used in your work reflects a kind of global and peaceful perspective. Could you elaborate on the ideas you work to create and express?

AY ~ Well, I work to have a message to tell people. If I was just a stupid person, not thinking about anything, with nothing to say and not conscious, then I would not have found fun in calligraphy.

For example, growing up in the countryside among nature inspired me. Today, many of those same towns have become more modern with buildings, so it’s kind of like people destroying nature for their own profit. It’s just that money mind, not caring to appreciate nature. That’s how we can breath you know, oxygen, the trees produce it and we forget such a little thing. I think that people should remember the important things, not just focusing on how to get A’s in school or something, which also has its importance, but just stop and think about some of these basic things for a moment. Why do you live in this world?

When I feel like people are forgetting about these things, or am angered by something, I am motivated to put those feelings and thoughts into words. People then can see it and hopefully influenced enough to change their actions. My hope is that through my efforts I am making some little change in this world.

What I envision that I’m trying to do is challenge the limit of words. Take emotion for example. It’s really difficult to describe, right? We can’t say I’m happy but a little sad. It has to be a bold statement. There are some little feelings that can’t necessarily be put into words. So I’m trying to challenge those possibilities using my vocabulary to describe them.

MOT ~ Are there specific creative goals you’ve set? Some kind of five to ten year plan, things you’d like to learn more, or anything like that?

AY ~ Just simply I want to keep performing, in more places if possible. I’m also planning to travel around the world, maybe some three to five years from now. I’d like to bring my brush and paper with me and demonstrate in front of people in other countries and see their reaction.

You know, Japanese calligraphy is a really traditional culture we learn in school, but there are fewer people who carry on afterward. Most students just do it for class, not on their own. I don’t want people to forget this beautiful traditional element of Japanese culture. With computers, text messages on cell phones, you don’t really even need a pen to write anymore.

I think I’m pretty young, and do have a few friends still doing calligraphy who also do some teaching at the calligraphy school, but I’ve chosen not to focus solely on calligraphy like them. With my broad interests I’m working to explore my limits in all of them.

MOT ~ These elements can overlap, yea? So when you were training, moving in Japan, working on your own, how do you and did you keep yourself energized? What keeps you motivated?

AY ~ I think I just love words. If I’m just living a daily life, I feel like I’m lacking something. It’s this feeling that I’m not doing something important, something’s being forgotten. We all have thoughts, and think everyday, if we don’t write it down we’ll forget. I personally don’t want to forget little moments like that. To save them, I like to keep them on paper, or even on computer, keeping a journal. Sometimes I draw, or random words, even glue movie tickets or other elements of my life.

Imagine driving a car. If you don’t drive it for a while, you forget elements of it and are not as fluid anymore. To keep from having my skill level atrophy like an unused muscle, I have to keep doing it.

MOT ~ When you write regularly do you write in a calligraphic way? Like while you’re journaling do you consider or naturally consider layout and positioning or words and letters?

AY ~ Yea, yea yea, I do.

MOT ~ Do you work out ideas for future projects in that book?

AY ~ Sure, but it’s mostly just random ideas. When I come up with some kind of cool expression or a random order of words that hits I’ll think “Oo, that’s cool!” and write it down. Then if an art show’s coming up, I have to write something, I’ll go back to my notebook and “oh, this is cool!” and start working with that. It’s useful for me to keep a journal like that.

MOT ~ Do you think dreams or memories come out in your work? For example, some people might look back at a dream and try to paint that.

AY ~ Aaah. . . I have a bunch of weird dreams but no, I’ve never tried to express them. For example, I imagine something, set up a story in my head and try to draw a picture of it in my head. Then describe that picture with words, not dreams, but yea, I can see that.

~ TECHNICAL ~

MOT ~ Could you describe the main tools you work with?

AY ~ Brushes of course. For calligraphy brushes there’s certain kinds of animal hairs used. The hard ones are generally made out of horse tail. There’s also brushes out of monkey hair, sheep which is really soft. That’s what I often use because I can get more creative about the line. Beyond that, there’s soooooo many different kinds of sizes HUGE to tiny, and the price can be extreme as well. Some little ones can cost 8000 yen like about $80 USD. The low quality ones are still about $30 USD.

MOT ~ Is there a noticeable difference?

AY ~ Oh yea! A really good brush will allow for a really smooth line as well as listen to my direction. If it’s a bad brush (she starts illustrating with her hands just what happens) and you go in one direction the brush won’t return to a natural position but remain in the previous direction. It keeps the shape and I have to fix it before each new stroke. Also bad brushes hair come out and “beep” stay in the work. I hate writing with poor quality brushes for those reasons.

MOT ~ Well, you take it to another level though too. I’ve seen you use a mop and other things.

AY ~ Oh yea (laughing at my mention of it or something), I’ve used a mop, plants. They make interesting strokes. I don’t mind trying new things. It’s fun to use those things. I’ve even thought about using my own hair.

MOT ~ Really. Still attached or detached from your scalp?

AY ~ (she just laughs at me) that’d be kinda cool though. I don’t know, it’d be hard to wash it off. I’d like to try it with braids, which may make it easier.

MOT ~ Maybe somebody could hold you as a brush and write. The living brush.

AY ~ Hahaha… yea some strong person, that’d be cool.

MOT ~ Are there any books or stories on calligraphy, novels, philosophy or anything that you may go back to, that may inspire you or keep you motivated?

AY ~ I like a lot of philosophers, psychologists. . . I love Freud, he’s weird, but I love him. I love reading poem books. I especially love reading the Japanese poet Iyumu Takahashi. Tokio actually got to meet him. Sometimes he lives in New York but he basically lives in Okinawa. He traveled around the world with his fiancée for two years, taking a bunch of pictures, and kept a journal along with poems that he later turned into a book. There were several series of it and I found it extremely inspirational. Sometimes I’ll write the words from the book. It just really makes me want to think about the meaning of life, making me really creative.

MOT ~ Do you think you could explain your overall process, in general that goes from idea to real world?

AY ~ For example if there’s an art show, and a theme for the show, I’ll first think about that and have to go to some place by myself. I can’t be with a friend or anything. It’ll be some place quiet, alone, and think; developing the idea. During that process I’ll write down what comes out. Then I’ll go home, put on some really abstract music – say Jazz or experimental, absolutely no words just music – and try to write with brush and paper. This is practice.

I generally have to do a lot of practice to figure out the layout of the words. I’ll try several times, and unfortunately dump lots of papers even though papers are so expensive… because they’re special hand made ones, but “aaahhhh, no not this one,” until I reach the right one. Calligraphy paper should be dry completely so I leave it out for a day or two. Once it’s dry I’ll put another thicker paper behind it, which is hard but regardless. Sometimes I’ll frame it, or use different colored paper, adding those finished details.

MOT ~ Do you think you use techniques that are particular to you, that may distinguish your still from others?

AY ~ Other peoples styles? I guess so, but you know, calligraphy is originally unique depending on who writes. Sometimes if I write the really fine lines, really beautiful, perfect and neat I have to keep myself calm. On the other hand, if I’m writing a big one, than I have to maybe dance for a little bit, exercise, or move around to get excited and then I will “yeah” be ready. So I just let it go, let things flow. If it looks cool, then it looks cool to me.

MOT ~ When you’re working on something, preparing for the work, what is it that tells you that’s where you want it, that it’s complete? What’s the message from your brain to your stomach to your hand that shouts “yea, that’s how I want it to look!”

AY ~ Calligraphy basically uses the white paper and black ink. So on that basic level, the important esthetic element is how we use the space. How should the white be out and the density of the black should cover the paper. If there are a lot of words, like in a long poem, I’ll have to look at it from a distance to get the perspective. I have to see if it’s too black or too white. The balance is really important. It shouldn’t be 50/50. It can be 30/70 or 1 to 99, but the placement of the letters is extremely important. The order of the words, it’s kind of hard for me to say. For example if I’m writing “art is beautiful” I can think about it, it’s more we can do this in Japanese, and break down the word and chance the line for balance purposes.

When I’m writing a long poem, I’ll first dip the brush into the ink and start writing, eventually it will run out. Where to start the next section is important. At the start it’s thicker and rich in ink going to more vague and thinner. In the middle I will start the black. That way it flows darker to lighter to darker, so it doesn’t look like the top part is all black and the bottom all white. That’s the traditional technique. I have to think about the timing and adjust the use of the brush and ink.

MOT ~ How do you acquire the funds to purchase brushes and paper? It sounds like an expensive medium to work in.

AY ~ It’s super expensive. Well for me, because my mom does calligraphy too, she buys a lot of the equipment and ink. If I ask her, she often helps out because she appreciates that I keep doing calligraphy. I don’t have to worry about it unless I want the super good product. I just do a part time job and pay for what I can, but I’ll generally need to ask her. I feel sorry about it sometimes, but she’s actually happy that I’m keeping at it. My teacher is also happy about it too. He’s sick now, and can’t really teach any more. The last time I went back to Japan, I showed him pictures and he was like “wow, that’s good, you can do it in America.” Maybe that’s part of what makes me still want to keep doing it. I’ve received something important, that’s what I’ve learned from my master, my teacher, my parent, and if I stop, what’s the point? To make them happy is probably also one of the purposes.

It’s also great to sell some work. Sometimes I can sell them. Right now the Japanese restaurant Ozumo near the Embarcadero center (a very high class Japanese dining experience) has some of my work up. And also, the last time I had show in New York, one guy who just happened to know the artists in the show sent me a message via myspace interested in buying my work. Randomly it can happen. Another opportunity grew out of my involvement in the music industry. A rapper in Oakland asked me to do calligraphy for his website, and people who go to his website see my work. From that I get messages from people about my work that really encourage me to do more and better work. I’m not really too worried about that element of it though.

MOT ~ Say you were to sit down with someone, Freud, whoever, someone you’re into and have the opportunity to ask them some questions. Would you have any questions for them?

AY ~ If it’s an artist, or even any of those philosophers, I’d ask them when you wake up in the morning, what is the first thing you think about? I want to know what the first thing they think about is.

MOT ~ Do you wake up thinking about calligraphy?

AY ~ Ahh, haha, no.

MOT ~ Do you ever do calligraphy in your dreams and wake up with your hands in painting position?

AY ~ No, no, it’s weird though? Hmm. Maybe I don’t remember. I often have a dream of flying in the air. Maybe that represents I want to be free.

MOT ~ You’re not free?

AY ~ I guess I am, but I’ve got things to do. I’m not like completely free.

MOT ~ I also have a question about creative freedom. Do you imagine that you have creative freedom?

AY ~ Yes, I think so. Since I’m doing this in America, most people don’t really know about calligraphy, leaving me to do whatever I want. Even though I’m not satisfied with work that I do, people still say “Wow, it’s beautiful!” I’m like “really, I think this is crap.” But that crap is so beautiful, I guess it all comes down to how people see it. And also, I don’t mind if somebody asks me to write for them, “I’ll pay for it, could you write something for me?” I don’t mind taking their requests. I want to write the art work to fit their needs.

I like my style, I don’t have to like my style but I like it. Sometimes I think I suck, that I’m no good anymore. It’s all about patience, a lot of people lack that, and sometimes I loose mine. I want to challenge my patience until I find the best, to reach the goal.

MOT ~ So to go back to Japan, do you think what you’ve been doing here would not be as accepted as here? Maybe because they’re more knowledgeable there?

AY ~ Maybe? But there’s so many masters over there, 60 or 70 years old who know so much about calligraphy. They can judge me based on those traditional elements, or style, but they can’t judge me when I write creative writing, more modern work. So it’s not about judging or that.

When I took the class in high school, thinking I could get an easy score, the teacher was a totally different style then the master I originally learned from. My master was very traditional. Good at writing beautiful letters in a perfect way. I’ve never seen any work better than his. My high-school teacher was much more modern. He’d say “do whatever you want, just think about the words and if that’s favorite words, just write it.” Even though I may think it’s not good, he’d say, “look at this, so awesome.” He would find the good part from the bad. If I’m a teacher, I’ll be like that. Kids may say they’re no good, but I’ll find that positive elements of the work and we raise it from that point.

MOT ~ Do you imagine teaching in the future?

AY ~ Yes, I will. Well, I kind of am already. Not like on a continuous basis but people have asked me to show them things. I’ve gone over to there house or them to mine. One time, a graphic designer was learning about typography and thought it would be helpful to learn a little about calligraphy so he asked me. I think every thing is related.

See more work by Aoi Yamaguchi and bulletins of upcoming events and shows at Glamourous Monochrome and some photos at Freedom Blue Birds

A tool of some sort will always be required to communicate via the visual form with some kind of character, but how much longer will it be standard practice to use pen and paper? Is it even standard practice any more? Even in countries that may not appear to have all the comforts of the ‘advanced’ nations cellular phones are affordable by the masses. More often then not, the least expensive way to communicate is to send text messages. Has the era of passing notes in class ended, or using ‘post-it’ notes to remember something? Many people may be relieved by the standardization of text. Some handwriting can be like trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics. The development of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 1430’s may have heightened the move toward a non-hand written form but block printing existed even prior to this. It has been mentioned that the use of film for photography is fading away. Could the use of paper and pencil to write ‘long hand’ be heading the same direction? It may depend on the political power of the paper and pencil lobbyists.

In all seriousness, what is called art today can be traced back to those original forms of communication like cave paintings. Much like modern letter forms can too. Eastern calligraphy is an element of traditional culture that displays character, patience, flow, and creativity. Handwriting analysis is based on practitioners abilities to read characteristics of an individual in the way they write. As far as I know, you can’t do the same by deciphering how they type. What’s my point? Maybe nothing more then observations. The written word has always been one of those things I’ve enjoyed viewing, especially calligraphy. I love the way lines can move and blend from thick to thin and take all different kinds of shapes. I’d just hate to see that fade away into something only read about in online textbooks.

* UPDATE *

She is now part of the collective ‘Sureality In Reality.’ You can check them out at www.sir-sf.com

A Blue Note: Sketched In The Raw

Blue Note: Sketched In The Raw

In the land of Daisuke Maki, everything around him could be a seed that may develop roots into a project. Working in the field of graphic design is for him the opportunity to “make things better both visually and functionally.” Unbeknownst to me, I’ve stumbled into his Lower Nob Hill apartment this Wednesday October 10th, on his birthday. Apparently, because it’s a weekday, he has kept it under wraps, planning to celebrate with friends over the weekend. Not wasting any time, we crack open a pair of ales and set to some question and answer as city life continues on the streets only a few stories below his opened window.

* BACKGROUND *

Moments of Truth ~ How would you describe the creative medium(s) you focus in?

Daisuke Maki ~ Graphic design. It starts from sketching with pens and paper. Then after making rough sketches, I’ll go on the computer and execute my idea. I used to be a fine artist before. . . or at least I wanted to be a fine artist before. After studying fine art for two years, I spent the majority of my life wanting to become a painter – since I was little even – until I met a guy in Japan who did graphic design. He showed me his stuff and it clicked, “oh shit, this can be my job!” I didn’t know how successful a focus on fine arts would be, so that’s the time I switched to graphic design.

MOT ~ Would you like to get back to what might be considered “fine arts” work in the future?

DM ~ Yea, definitely. [In regards to what I do now,] graphic design is about having the subject first and our job is to make it better and more appreciable. Let’s say there’s a cell phone, there are so many cell phones around, and you want to make a better cell phone. That became an icon. Our job is to make things better both visually and functionally.

Graphic design is based on business more, always money related before you start doing the job. Also, you have to think about the target audience, budget, among other elements. It’s more challenging in a way because you have to put your creativity into [the existing concepts]. I’ve found that pretty interesting.

MOT ~ Where did you grow up?

DM ~ Tokyo. Well, actually I’ve moved around a lot. I was born in Tokyo, then moved to Kawasaki. For middle school I went to Chiba, which is basically the middle of no where pretty much. After I got tired of it, I moved to Canada, spent five years there including high school and two years doing fine arts in college.

MOT ~ Do you think living in and experiencing these different communities has influenced your work?

DM ~ Definitely! Not just because of the environment, but also meeting different types of people. The friends that I had in Japan are a lot different than high school friends. Meeting people in different countries forced me to totally open up to different perceptions about life. Like to everything essentially.

MOT ~ Do you think it comes out in the way you create your work?

DM ~ I hope so (said in a questionable voice). (Then we both laugh, why…? Hmm, that’s everybody’s hope right?)

MOT ~ Do you have any particular memory when it really struck you to work in a creative medium/field?

DM ~ Yea, well, when I watched movies [as a kid], say a movie about fire fighters, I’d want to become a fireman. Or I watched ‘Top Gun’ and want to become a jet pilot. Those are real temporary states, although I’d always wanted to become an artist. I liked to draw when, let’s see. . ., I was less then four, even three. Like in kindergarten, I kind of thought this was going to be my job some how and never changed my mind since.

MOT ~ Have mentors been a factor in helping guide you in the graphic design industry?

DM ~ In both skill ways and mentor ways. For example, one of the guys I talked about from Japan, he was a year older then me, had a real strong idea what design was all about. Also, a couple teachers from school had really good ideas of what graphic design is all about. I got really impressed with how they think about graphic design. He was the one always fighting to show what was happening in the world by working to find a direct way to incorporate real world occurrences in his design work. Incorporating these concepts in graphic design magazines, posters, and other communication materials with super visual graphics. I was really surprised how people could do that, and [thought] how I’d really like to do that.

* INSPIRATION *

MOT ~ What inspires you to express ideas in some creative way?

DM ~ It could be just everyday things. Anything I see in the world like here, stuff in the news, camping.

MOT ~ On certain projects do you try and explore different subject areas, or is it more about preset guidelines?

DM ~ Well, it always starts with research about the project. For now, I research about the project, the company, what they do, their target, competitors and think about how we can sell the idea making them better. This generally requires a fair amount of research because things are constantly in flux.

MOT ~ How about any creative influences, or styles that you really like or think about incorporating into your own work?

DM ~ Pretty much everything, like music, graffiti, fine art, photography, yea, it’s everything for me. I’m trying to expand my style more and more. I don’t stick to one style, I want to keep pushing myself constantly develop something new to me. It’s tough to say, I read books, look at magazines, graphic design books, but I think it’s all connected.

Once something hits me, it hits me. I’m not trying to seek from everything, but when I like something it automatically comes to my mind. It just gets stuck in it. I think that’s how it works.

MOT ~ Can you explain your over all philosophy?

DM ~ The big plan is I just want make things better then they are right now. Did that answer your question? I mean, there’s so much shit around, not just product wise or visual thing but overall concept of like, . . . everything has to be a certain way, all about commercialism. I don’t believe in it, so I kinda want to put more independent or more street stuff into, but I don’t want to just show them “Hey, this is what’s happening the streets.” I want to filter the streets through me making a completely new stage then show it to the public and let them know this is one way of showing stuff. I try to always come up with something making things raw, I just don’t want to be following some style, be a follower. That was good question though, maybe we can come back to that later (obviously not entirely happy with his answer).

MOT ~ Are there specific creative goals you’ve set for yourself, or have you had any in the past that you’ve accomplished?

DM ~ No.

MOT ~ No, nothing like that?

DM ~ No, I’m still seeking my goal.

MOT ~ When you work on something creative, it can take a lot of energy, physical and mental. Does this happen to you, and if so do you use any strategies to keep yourself charged, energized and on point?

DM ~ Not really. When I start, I need time to come up with something good. I don’t have any ritual, when I get tired of working on it, I just need to go back to nature, go camping or sit in the park on the weekend and just relax. . . . And drinking helps too (hahaha… we both laugh).

MOT ~ Can you, you’ve kind of already explained this a little, but could you expand on how your process works from beginning or idea stage to its material release?

DM ~ I try to make rough ideas in an organized way, but when I come up with something good it’s more of like a gut instinct. Trying to be more stable, because sometimes I can’t come up with what I want by the deadline. But I always meet it in the end, but still, I want to be more consistent. I believe all creative moments are like that. When [the idea] comes, it comes, when it doesn’t it doesn’t. I just follow my instinct.

Dealing with deadlines isn’t really that stressful, I just get stressed out dealing with overtime work. I don’t mind, I like the job as a graphic designer, the overall job doesn’t make me stressed so much, but when I have to handle three or four projects at once and have to work overtime even when I have something else to do after work, that makes me stressed out.

MOT ~ Do deadlines, stress, whatever, do they cause you any hindrance in your ability to develop ideas slash create viable concepts? Or maybe a better question is what are your strategies for balancing stresses with creative flow?

DM ~ It’s usually the same, getting back to nature, slow myself down. Get relaxed. Also switching between my different jobs, say company logos to package designs helps refresh me too.

Do you want more beer?

(Speaking of which, Daisuke grabs a couple more brews for us to continue to relax, celebrate his birthday, and quench our thirst. Kumpai!)

MOT ~ How much creative freedom do you have? How much is it your idea and how much the clients?

DM ~ Not much [creative freedom], to be honest. There’s like certain projects that I’m so confident about and I get props in the firm, but that doesn’t mean the client’s going to like it. Even though [the firm may] push it, the client may say it’s not viable, so it will just die. It’s a tough part of graphic design for me, but I think I can live with it, get used to it. Any designer faces the same problem. The clients are not the creative people, that is they’ve hired us for our creative abilities. But at the same time they have certain minds, and they are good at doing business or explaining the philosophy of their company, etc. Even though the graphic is really tight, and we think it matches the company, if they say no, that’s it; the end of it.

MOT ~ How do you continue to put your fullest energies into projects that may just be rejected?

DM ~ I hate to say this, but I get money constantly, I mean I’m paid to do my job regardless of the outcome. Let’s take painters for example, there’s no limitations so they can do whatever they want. . . but… so it’s nobody to critique the work, it’s all by yourself. Sure, sometimes you do a shitty job even though you’ve spent a month possibly painting it and sell it. For me I can do creative job still, and if I can’t sell the idea I still get paid. So I really don’t want to blame, or focus on that kind of stuff. It’s not all about money, but I still need to eat and drink, ya know. (Laughing as we both look at our fermented beverages nodding in agreement)

Also, I know what I like in my gut. At the same time when they reject my idea I might get angry for a sec, but then I remember ‘hey, this is going to be in my portfolio and I’m not going to just work for one firm my whole life. So whatever I do is what I do. In a way it’s fine art too, because I follow my aesthetics, I can keep those ideas and apply it to the next time.

Yea, I can get stressed out for a real short time that a client didn’t like my concepts or direction, but I think it happens in any job. If you make music, you still have to sell it. I think any creative job is pretty much the same.

* TECHNICAL *

MOT ~ Do you have any particular techniques, programs, … you use?

DM ~ Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator. I try to do my own drawing, like my ‘Blue Note’s’ project, which was a really fun project. I try to put drawing in my design whenever possible. I tend to aim to keep it more raw.

Other then that, I just look around the city, go shopping, see new stuff, clothing, shoes, anything. Music helps me a lot too. I read books a lot, constantly read two or three books at the same time, which helps me get through what I’m thinking and narrow down all that’s going on in my head. Or get new information and try to put it in my way, filtering through it, express the way I want. That’s the way I work.

There’s a poet I really like in Japan named Shinkaro Tanigawa. He writes about nature, freedom of the soul, and I really respect that.

I try to enjoy everything, and think it impacts me. Anything that I feel is exciting can be influential to me and with out even knowing about it hits me. I tend to automatically put it in my designs, almost subconsciously, so I don’t even notice. Yea, music is like a big thing for me. It’s two totally different mediums, design is all about the visual while music is auditory.

When I listen to music, it’s supposed to have nothing to do with the visual. With music I can see certain colors, styles, hmm, maybe not style. How can I put it? Yea, maybe I can say style. Like when I listen to jazz I think “how can I express myself in a visual of jazz?” When I listen to hip-hop it’ll be totally different, or techno, classical, whatever. My point is to capture and point out the music, I can’t really explain how I process it in my brain, it just works out that way.

* CONCLUSION *

As soon as we finished, our conversation leapt on all other subjects from wrestling masks, more on music to all kinds of conspiracy theories. As sagging eyelids signaled this guy needs his sleep, Daisuke mentioned that our conversation after the interview seems more interesting, and a more fitting discussion of ideas to post. Possibly, I agreed, but it didn’t really match with the format of this project (nor had I recorded it). Still, it was a lot of fun spending his birthday chopping up ideas and putting back some suds. Thanks Daisuke for taking your time to share!

Historical findings index a long trail of the creature called homosapien’s forays into design. Possibly starting with tools to hunt, basic characters to communicate with, to aqua ducts, pyramids and musical instruments. Human beings build on ideas to make something else, often under the guise of ‘to make something better.’ I suspect it is just what we have been designed to do. When someone decides to do something and believes some kind of tool will make it happen, they will work to make one. As material availability and circumstances alter, following generations will adjust the design to fit current needs. Adaptation to one’s surroundings will continue.

Daisuke Maki’s website is dmdsign.com “In Art We Trust” to see more of his work or inquire about him designing something for you. Also, feel free to post questions for him in the comments section of this post.

* UPDATE *

He is now part of the collective ‘Sureality In Reality.’ You can check them out at www.sir-sf.com

Brokering A Shutter

Specimen

Friday afternoon, before he has to take off for work, Mathew Scott took a moment away from watching his new born daughter to set us straight on what his photography is all about. We’re at his new apartment where he’s working on editing and uploading some photos from a shoot with Hiero Jeans for XXL magazine.

October 5th, 2007

^^ BACKGROUND ^^

Moments Of Truth ~ Please describe your primary creative endeavors?

Mathew Scott ~ (exhaling a stream of smoke) Take photos.

MOT ~ Has this changed over time?

MS ~ Well, I started out painting graffiti, and got into photography during high school.

MOT ~ Why do you prefer photography versus other mediums?

(He prepares to answer as the roar of jet planes booms through the sky. It’s ‘fleet week’ in San Francisco and those oh so patriotic fly-boys the ‘Blue Angels’ are practicing their routine.)

It’s kind of hard to conversate with the Blue Angels causing all this racquet.

MS ~ I hate these airplanes! Umm, what was the question?

Oh yeah, I like what’s real; take things that are out there and through the eye of my camera, even though it’s real I can still project what I want people to think what’s going on; it could be false or true. Everything interests me, I’ve tried a lot of mediums. That’s the whole point of being here. I chose this photo thing, that’s my path but I’m always going to have other things going on, maybe they’d be called hobbies; other creative outlets.

MOT ~ Where did you grow up?

MS ~ Portland, Oregon.

MOT ~ Do you have a memory when it struck you to get into photography?

MS ~ Well, when I knew I didn’t want to work for someone and knew I would do something for myself; and I knew it would be art related. After that, I mean I’ve always been taking pictures, and I just decided to look more into that and decided that was the way I’d like to express myself and make a living at it at the same time. I knew there was nothing else I’d rather be doing than that.

MOT ~ Do you think the community you grew up in influenced you, the way you do your work and how you express yourself?

MS ~ Well yeah, the people I grew up with, and like having somewhat, well. . . I don’t want to say eccentric parents . . . but having interesting parents both being art related in what they do. My dad was a lot of it, he’d shoot bands back in the day. So I was always around it, and always felt the need to capture what was going on like a visual diary I guess. So I’ve always been doing that anyway, and there’s always been a lot of interesting stuff going on around me; always had the urge to capture that on film.

MOT ~ Have you had any particular mentors that have helped guide you?

MS ~ I wouldn’t say mentors, I’d say peers. People that I’ve gone to school with, shot with, that I hang out with on a daily basis. I tend to think we feed off each other. It’s always good to have people like that around to throw ideas at. And it’s your good friends who’ll be the ones to tell you if you’re on a good path or doing something stupid. Or if you throw out ideas, they’ll be the first to tell you if it’s a good idea or a dumb idea.

So, I wouldn’t say mentors, just advice and influences of friends and people that are creative around me.

^^ INSPIRATION ^^

MOT ~ What do you think it is inside you that leads you to communicate your ideas in a creative way? Taking pictures over and over again, . . . how is it different? What holds your attraction?

MS ~ What inspires me? I’m never satisfied with my latest. If I do something good I always look at it and see a way I can do it better. Or think of ways to explore something else. My mind Is always moving, changing my mind, coming up with new ideas, always over criticizing myself. So that pushes me to continue that need for satisfaction to create something. I might find that satisfying, but it only lasts a minute, I go on to the next thing or else I just feel stagnant and stale.

MOT ~ Any particular influences you’d note, photography, or styles you may emulate in anyway shape or form?

MS ~ That’s a good five part question….

(I break out in a rattle of laughter to that and the annoying roar of the jets flood the sonic spectrum once again)

…. I guess growing up in an urban setting, I’ve always wanted to see what’s out in the middle of no where, I always like to go see what’s outside of the city. As far as urban dwellings go, life in cities, I’m always impressed by what people do to get by. Even more impressed by how simple things are when you’re in a hub of technology, in a setting that’s always on the go. Then you take a road trip out into the middle of nowhere and find people who don’t even use a washer and dryer, they even use a generator instead of paying PG&E. You know, finding those kinds of people and talking to them, I find that interesting.

I guess that’s what I look for in my personal projects. What ties America together between the cities? Where I’m at now, possibly my biggest influence, graffiti. I pay attention to it all the time; that kind of street art. I wouldn’t say much for photographing it, but it’s just this separate form of inspiration. They have this burning drive to go and do stuff like that. I try to push that in my photography, try to go out and never get lazy, fall off, don’t make excuses why I couldn’t do something, because people are always doing. Everyone can have excuses, you just have to go out and do it, always stay busy.

MOT ~ Graffiti is an angst driven visual medium, anti establishment, like art for the people in a way. Do you try to find a way to develop that element in your photography?

MS ~ Of course I want a compelling photograph. That’s what I try to make. One that makes people ask why, or what they’re doing, how they’re there or how I got there. You know, I want images that leave people with questions. So, I guess, yeah, in a way.

My color palette, I definitely work with color. I can’t really tie it in with graffiti art, that’s not what I’m trying to do, it’s just something in the back of my mind. Maybe not so much the art, but more those questions you’re left with when you see it in some location. How did they get there? What did they have to go through to do it. In my work I’m trying to explore that mind. I try to not let things stop me, if I want to get an image I’m going to get it, some way or another.

^^ TECHNICAL ^^

MOT ~ Any photographers whose work really strikes you?

MS ~ Joel Sternfeld (American Prospects (1987) is Sternfeld’s most known book and explores the irony of human-altered landscapes in the United States. To make the book, Sternfeld photographed ordinary things, including unsuccessful towns and barren-looking landscapes.*Wikipedia), Alex , William Eggleston (widely credited with securing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries. … “fearless naturalism—a belief that by looking patiently at what others ignore or look away from, interesting things can be seen.”*Wikipedia). All the people who’ve been around for a while, I really respect what they do, they’re amazing photographers.

MOT ~ How do you translate that into your own work, learning what you can from them and developing that into your own voice?

MS ~ I wouldn’t say I quite have, just that they are people who I admire and leave it at that. I guess you could say they are the ones that started this style of photography, documentary slash, well…. Walking that line where it could be fine art, it could be photography, documentary, editorial, commercial, almost any direction. It all depends on the subject. Their style is distinguished by the way they light, which is natural light, their locations and what not, allows them to be pretty universal. I go for that. The way the lines of all different genres can mesh, thus allowing me to fit wherever I need to.

MOT ~ Can you discuss a little bit about your overall philosophy?

MS ~ I do things instinctually, I try to have a rough idea of what I’m doing, but I never know what I’m really doing until I’m there and doing it. Philosophy, well I guess, everyone can say “Oh, I want to change the world.” It’s kind of bullshit at the same time though, I just want to take good pictures, I like creating things, I like getting my hands dirty, being in the darkroom as well as doing digital.

Essentially, I just want to be happy and make a living off of what I do, and make people notice it, maybe it’s just to stroke my own ego a little bit, whatever! I can’t really go into it and say. . . well, I just don’t really like it when people get all deep on their stuff. I find it pretentious.

MOT ~ Well, to rephrase, how do you approach your ideas, where does it start?

MS ~ Seriously, the idea starts as I’ll have this one little flicker, and I grab my camera and go there. I just go there, shoot, and as I shoot it starts developing. Like I try to go in with a clean slate. Of course I have an idea of that ‘money shot’ in my mind, what I imagine to be the shot, like the hero shot. Other then that, I just let it flow, freestyle it when I go in. I know what I’m going for, even with the idea of a project I’m trying to come across, it unfolds itself as I’m shooting as well as when editing the images later.

MOT ~ Some of your work is personal, and some is for assignments for ad agencies, magazines, or what ever. How much creative freedom do you feel you have in-between those different realms? Do you feel you have to adjust your way of thinking from one to the other?

MS ~ I think the work that I have has led to the assignments that I’ve gotten. Generally, they just send me somewhere and tell me to take pictures. They leave it up to me, and I think that’s because of the work on my site www.mathewscott.com. What they see lends itself to that. Everyone I’ve worked with has just trusted me to get the image, and that hasn’t failed me thus far.

Everyone always has this and that, a couple things they want to see, and I just shoot a shit load, send everything to the editor. I’ve never had any complaints, so it’s always been my own creative freedom, ya know. I ask them to at least give me an idea of what they want, a very rough idea I can develop from.

I approach everything differently, but in my same aesthetic though. By always trying to keep my head clear and just not know what I’m going to get. When I over think things I’ll fuck it up. If I don’t over think it, go in calm and cool I’m going to get a good image. So I just trust my instincts, let the lighting and everything else fall into place.

MOT ~ Have you envisioned specific creative goals, past ones you may have achieved, or what you’d like to accomplish for the future?

MS ~ Well, the main goal is to get shows, I don’t care so much where they’re at. Every show is fun. I enjoy doing shows and putting them together, working for magazines on assignments, meeting people like that, going off to weird places meeting random people you never thought you’d meet before. I have more career goals than creative goals right now. Creative goals I’m fine where I’m at. Right now I want to get more work to fund more creative projects. Just knuckle down and focus on that. As time goes, I’ll quit thinking about it for a while, let it reset in my brain and eventually, just the way I think, ideas will pop up, I write them down and will get to them later.

MOT ~ Did you have anything that you’re really proud of achieving? Did you anticipate that it’s evolved the way it has or surprised by it?

MS ~ When I was first starting out, the goal was to get a cover of a magazine and I got that and have just gone from there. A really simple, small goal. From there. . . well, I don’t really dwell on goals, I might just get depressed about them if it doesn’t happen.

MOT ~ Are there any methods you employ to prepare yourself for a photo shoot or to start a mindset from which to develop ideas?

MS ~ Usually I just put my headphones on and go grab a cup of coffee. Just listen to some music, whatever I’m feeling at the time, which definitely varies. So sit for like an hour, headphones, music, cup of coffee, somewhere quiet. I’ll clear my head, jot some notes down and go from there.

MOT ~ Any books, tools or resources, I mean, of course you use a camera, but things you may refer to frequently to do your work, inspire it, etc?

MS ~ (blurting out without any hesitation) The Internet!

Constantly researching people, ideas; if you have a good idea, you have to make sure it hasn’t been done yet. I’d say the Internet is the most indispensable tool, I doubt I could do with out it any more. If I see an image I like, I’ll google their name, check out their website and see their work. It keeps me in touch with what’s going on around me. I mean I can do that by going outside too, but that’s only San Francisco. I like to read a lot of the news, current events, just keep up to date with shit.

MOT ~ How do you acquire the funds to work in this medium? Photography is pretty expensive with the cost of lights, cameras, film, printing, paper, and all that.

MS ~ Still I bartend, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get cash. So I’ll bartend, stack up some cash, and go work on a project. Usually, everywhere I’ve worked at has been really cool, always if I’m like “hey, I need some time off for this” they’ll do it. You work at nights, and have your days to do whatever. Bartending was key when I was first starting out. Now that I’m making more money from my work, which is good too, but the service industry in general is flexible hours, work at night, yeah.

^^ OUTRO ^^

You do what it takes to get things done, that is how you arrive from point A to point Q. Sometimes it may appear like progression happened randomly to arrive at a point that may not have been the intention. Acts of creativity generate spontaneous combustion of the senses at the speed it takes to steal a moment; shutter whirs open and shut. Life is a juxtaposition of illusions. Or is it the illusion of a juxtaposed dichotomy? Definitely take the time to view www.mathewscott.com. Let’s get the ball rolling.

* Check out mscottphoto on Blurb to see his latest books for sale. He has just released “PHOTO GRAPHS… A collection of images by Mathew Scott.”

Furnished Reverberation

~ An interview session with Nata Lukas also known as Nathan Taylor ~

Nata Lukas Painting Close Up

Tuesday September 17th, 2007

Pulling on a loose thread, I began to unravel veins of the fallen leaf. Luckily, it was not difficult to locate my second Eugene interview. Clear skies and even clearer directions by Nathan Taylor aka Nata Lukas brought me directly in front of the orange VW travel van – similar to a vehicle my dad imagined I’d use for this trip through the Western Coastal areas – parked in front of his new living space. After a brief tour, taking some photos of paintings not tied up in storage, and general chitchat, we adjourned to the back yard.

“I am working on several projects: sound installations,
impromptu actions, poems, and paintings. Lately I have
been mostly distracted by transitioning to a new
community (I am originally from Bellingham, WA, but
have recently landed in Eugene, OR, thus I am just now
getting situated looking for studio space, community,
etc.) With my most recent series of paintings I have
been trying to tap into the urban vibe. They are made
using spray paint and stencil techniques. The colors
are vibrant and energetic. The patterns are both map
like and analogous to circuitry. “ Nata Lukas

BACKGROUND:

Moments Of Truth ~ Let’s open up with a break down of what your primary forms of creative expression are?

Nata Lukas ~ I’d say I started off as a painter, although I’ve explored lots of mediums. I like to play with sculpture, I write poetry sometimes, sometimes sound and video installations. Currently I’m really getting into cooking food, it’s definitely a way I can express myself creatively. I also like to make beer.

MOT ~ What do you focus the most time and mental energy on?

NL ~ I think it kind of flows from different time periods, I’ll just be really interested in one project or another. I’d say the one I come back to the most is painting. It’s like my home base, I tend to feel grounded when I’m working on it. There’ll be times when I don’t paint for a good long period because I’m distracted by other things.

MOT ~ Any idea why you tend to return to painting? What is it about expressing yourself this way?

NL ~ Well, I think it’s just that I feel really comfortable there and I don’t think I’ve explored it to the extent that I want to. I also feel like I can do really beautiful things with that medium. My work is non-objective giving me a place to really breath, while my other work isn’t, it is more taking on issues. Not as free I guess. Painting is like a freeing experience, that’s why I like to come back to it.

MOT ~ What about cooking, what is it with cooking that you’re getting into?

NL ~ I’m just enjoying exploring the different ingredients. I kind of feel I have a talent for finding out what the essence of something is and being able to combine different things in different ways. Ya know, I know some people can cook via the recipe and I tend to if I haven’t cooked something before, will look up four or five recipes and figure out what that dish is, see what I have and figure out how to make it with that.

MOT ~ Are there mediums you haven’t yet gotten into you anticipate trying?

NL ~ Umm, I definitely want to do more installations, specifically sound installations. I like sound as a medium, it can give a time dimension to things that I really like. It can really transport you. The sound that I’ve used in installations I’ve felt like that’s a very key element to making that installation otherworldly. It kinds of gives it that extra depth. I’d like to do that.

Very recently I’ve been struck by the idea of movement. I met some dancers and they were choreographing some stuff, and I don’t know how to incorporate it into my creative world, but it’s an interesting thing. I used to be a skateboarder, you know, and I totally related to some of the stuff they were doing, it’s cool. I don’t know how, but. . .

MOT ~ So where exactly did you grow up?

NL ~ In a suburb of Salt Lake City.

MOT ~ Do you have other family members who also do creative activities?

NL ~ Well, my grandma was always an artist and painter. She still paints, a little more on the crafty side of things, but definitely creative. My dad was always too busy to be creative but when he got a little time, from what I remember he would create things, do some pretty creative stuff with woodwork.

MOT ~ Would you describe the community you grew up in as one that fostered creative expression and exploration, or do you think it’s more of an inherent drive?

NL ~ Yea, I’m not sure. When I was young, I was always doing creative stuff, but I wasn’t thinking about creativity, or art, or anything like that. Then when I was in ninth grade I had a really good art teacher who just could see that I was tuned into creative things who turned me into all kinds of art. That lit up my world, and I was like ‘yeah, art.’ He took me to lots of galleries and museums, giving me exposure that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

MOT ~ Would you describe him as a mentor?

NL ~ Yes, absolutely. This was when I was in high-school. I moved the year after I had the classes with him to the Seattle area. And it just stuck with me. I took a lot of art classes after that. He’s kind of one that lit my fuse.

MOT ~ Are there any particular memories that stand out where you were just really fired up doing something creative, and how you felt during that process?

NL ~ I actually get a big kick out of collaboration. So I think my best creative energy comes when I’m hanging out with other people that are really creative. Certainly could tap into that on my own, but it just seems like when I’m doing collaborations or just in the same space as someone else, when you both get that energy going it just seems to intensify. You work nonstop, sometimes you forget to eat, it’s a real high. It’s fun.

INSPIRATION:

MOT ~ What are your main sources of inspiration?

NL ~ I just try and be open to everything. So, I wouldn’t say there’s anything I could point to as a main source of inspiration. I guess, if I’m looking at my paintings I could say Hunderwasser? was something that turned my boat for a while. I’m not sure if when I was younger Van Gogh was a big thing for me. I definitely like bright colorful things, it’s kind of exciting for me. But I also work in drab dark color things also, depending on how the mood is, I don’t live in between though. I tend to work either really bright or subdued.

MOT ~ Any styles or philosophies of thought? You mentioned skateboarding might influence your work or the way you work with your ideas.

NL ~ Yeah, definitely. As I was developing in college I really started to develop an environmental awareness. So that has really affected a lot of the way I work. I slowed down production for one, I was producing like a madman when I was younger, so I’m definitely more intentional about what I create. And then I also try to make things out of reused materials, taking that into consideration whenever I do anything. It’s also from the point of being resourceful, you can’t just throw money at art unless you’re rich, and I’m not rich. Be mindful of the planet, don’t create trash and try to create things from trash.

Whenever I go for a walk, I’m always picking up little items from the side of road that interest me; for their texture, shape, whatever. Then gather that kind of stuff and make assemblages.

MOT ~ Do you have specific concepts or symbologies that you try to work with on a regular basis? Some of your paintings that I’ve seen are very organic, almost like cells colliding or multiplying. . .

NL ~ On that series, I was illustrating the macrocosm versus the microcosm; an attempt to get both of those worlds into one image. It was this thought, that our universe is like an atom or something, spinning around inside a larger being or something like that; just a smaller part of a bigger thing. It’s all connected somehow. Those thoughts certainly pass through my head, I wouldn’t say, especially with the nonobjective stuff that I do, I just kind of do it because it’s fun and it’s pretty, and I have thoughts about what it means later. Other series I’ve been working on more recently are more busy, layered grid light stuff. I relate that to urban energy, technology and mapping along with all those other things. It’s not like I set out to do it that way, it’s just how it happens.

The only time I actually try and do something is when there’s an issue I’m pissed off about or something. When it seems that somebody needs to say something, sometimes I’ll create art from that perspective. But I’ve found that not to be as successful for me. I feel better about the pieces I let happen, and they tell me what they’re about. Really, I try to let the art tell me what it’s about, not force my view about what my art’s about on people either. It seems to be, most people tend to point to the same things over and over whether I tell them about it or not. Every once in a while someone will surprise me and say something and I’ll be like “oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s cool.”

MOT ~ Do you take into consideration a particular audience with your work, or is that also more intuitive?

NL ~ Definitely I take into consideration audience. Especially with, say my beer. I brewed a beer for the Bonneville excursion. I knew who was going to be there, and knew the conditions would be hot, so I didn’t want too high an alcohol content, needed it to be a fairly light beer. And I was doing it specifically for one of the motorcyclists who commissioned me to do it. I knew what he’d like, and basically made a beer that I knew would make him happy.

But, yeah, even with my art I do consider audience. More of just the simple fact of who would I show this t? What would be my venue for this. For the most part, I’d make the art to satisfy something in me, and then after I’ve done that I need to satisfy something else in me by sharing it. I try and find who would be receptive to this art, and try to find a venue that would work for that.

MOT ~ Any elements of life, I noticed you have a lot of seashells, you mentioned sound, being into sound, influences or inspiration from those things? Tapping into their essence or just being appreciative of them?

NL ~ Sure, I pay attention to my senses, and I think that comes out in my art, cooking or whatever. One thing I’d like to mention is the affect of jazz music or just lively improvisational music has on my paintings, has had and probably will have in the future. It really just swings me, moves me, and I think the way I approach my paintings is a lot like improvisation. I lay down a track of sorts, essentially playing a game with myself. It’s like having a multi-track recorder, only it’s visual, not audio. I play with rhythms, textures, opacities, much in the same way you might if you were laying down music. Kind of a tangent there but. . . . .

MOT ~ Let’s take, for example, that you just relocated, not necessarily a totally different vibe – I mean it’s still West Coast and still Northwest. . .

NL ~ Oh, I chose Eugene because I knew it would be a vibe I’m in line with.

MOT ~ Do you have particular kinds of exercises or strategies to prepare yourself, mind and body, say… especially before painting?

NL ~ Well, I do a number of things. I like to go for a long hike, which sometimes will help loosen me up a little bit and get my mind in a different spot. Also listen to music that’s high energy, whatever’s fresh for me at the time. Something to keep me going, yea I like caffeine, caffeine helps. Yerba mate, especially in the summer, iced yerba mate is the best. Maybe a little alcohol in the evenings, but you’ve got to watch out, that’ll get you sloppy sometimes.

TECHNICAL:

MOT ~ What books or resources do you often refer to? Or maybe even a novel your might reread just to fire you up.

NL ~ I have a few years worth of art magazines that I’ve collected, maybe seven or eight years worth. I’ve kept those and if I’m really feeling slow I will go back, flip through them and try to find something that will excite me. Sometimes I surprise myself and find things I hadn’t seen before, “oh, how did I miss this all these years?” That’d be one of the things I like to do.

Right now I’m rereading Grail Marx’s “Traces” which is firing me up. It’s basically an account of the Sex Pistols, comparing it to Dadaism and all this pop culture craziness. An interesting read, I definitely have different perspective now then when I originally read it in college.

MOT ~ Have dreams you’ve had or childhood memories or experiences manifested in your work?

NL ~ A lot of my early paintings done in high-school and early college were specifically about dreams. I had this whole series of flying dreams when I was 15 or 16. My mom had started talking about these flying dreams she had when she was younger, and I thought “man, I want to have a flying dream.” Then I started having all these crazy flying dreams, every night for like months. Until it finally climaxes, in a block area I’m able to fly over everyone’s back yards. Within the block it was lighted, but outside of it was completely pitch black. Telephone wires were going around the block and as soon I leveled with them I’d be shocked. So I was trapped, I could fly, but was trapped. That was the last flying dream I had for a long time. I’ve had them since, but that was an intense period when I was having those. And I’d done a whole series of paintings about that.

MOT ~ Could you break down your process, take painting, beer or making installations if there’s any ways you might approach each differently, from idea to working it out, testing it, to actually producing it?

NL ~ With painting it’s pretty much just experimental. I always have a lot of paintings going and keep extra materials on hand so I can just screw around. If something works on one of those screw around things it might get incorporated into some of the other pieces. With installations it’s definitely serious planning process. You have to figure out what the space is, how you can utilize it and what you want to do with it. So it’s the whole process of trying to figure out how to make different things work. It’s a fun challenge, I like doing installations a lot, but also the big challenge is to line it up. You have to find a way to fund it, if I was rich I’d be doing a lot of installations.

MOT ~ Do you have any particular techniques that might distinguish your style, even if two paintings side by side may appear exactly the same, maybe what went into them was totally different?

NL ~ The series I’m working on now, I started it a year and a half ago. I know what I need to do to finish it, it’s just a matter of the circumstances of combating time or the proper space set to complete what I’m doing. But I know it’ll come together at some point, it’s just a matter of finding my way back onto the track. I am happy for the side trips, so it’s not disappointing or stressful in any way.

MOT ~ Could you expand on that a little? Like how you manage to keep on track or come back to an idea?

NL ~ I’ve been pretty haphazard about that. If I’m working with somebody else, we’ll brainstorm. For the most part just because the nature of what I’m doing is fairly free flowing I don’t need to document the ideas so much. Part of the problem may be that I have so many ideas and competing hobbies I don’t find time to do nearly as much as I’d like. If I was going to take the time I might sit down and write about that sculpture that I saw. Plus I have to make a living, that’s the thing I find I’m having to devote too much time to. I’ve been fortunate enough to not have been put inside a cubicle for 40 hours a week. My employment allows for big breaks between, when I have some money, allowing for solid blocks of time to actually work on my art. Every once in a while it comes and bits me and says “hey, you need to get a job; put some money back in the bank.”

It’s kind of like having focus over the long term. A big picture perspective. When I was younger, I might just float from this to that. Now, I still float, but I always come back, cycle around.

MOT ~ How do you go about garnering funds for installation projects, that’s a lot of work?

NL ~ You can pursue grants, which is a lot of work in and of itself. Sometimes you the space itself will have a certain amount of funding to help it out. Benefactors, I need a few of those (both break out in hysterical laughter. Don’t we all!). Yeah, sometimes there’s city, county, state funds for different things. There’s some good resources on the net, I think a Washington State one is called the ‘Artists Trust’ that puts out a notice quarterly that has opportunities on it. ‘The Rack’ in Portland has a webpage where they post different opportunities. You’re competing with a lot of people, but if you have a good idea and perseverance – this is definitely where you need perseverance if you’re going after money in the arts – if you have a good idea, able to document your idea well, you’re just on the ball. It’s a full time job in itself just trying to get money. I’m sure there are some artists that hire people to do that. It’s hard being an artist, it’s a fun road, but it’s not the easy road. Making a living as an artist, unless you’re doing crafts, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily easy either I’m sure there’s lots of competition, changing tastes and all that. You can be hot for one season, and not anymore.

I think an interesting question you could ask people would be how do you fund your art? Is it due to your lifestyle, a rich aunt, how can you do this? Do you sell enough stuff?

MOT ~ How do you fund yours?

NL ~ Ummm, by not having health care, squeaking by, this past year I’ve been flying to Park City, Utah and doing high-end faux finishes for the super rich. That’s how I’ve funded my life recently. You’ve got to find some way to make an income while still finding time to make art. And energy too. Like that Sex Pistols song. . .

MOT ~ Who are some of the jazz people you like to listen to?

NL ~ I really dig Mingus, his stuff really. . . something about it gets me. It’s got a flowing quality about it or something. I like all sorts of music like punk rock, electronica, bossanova, Sometimes I’ll be intentional about what kind of music I’m listening to when I’m working on a certain project.

WRAP UP:

Interview session complete, Nata offered to share some of his awesome ‘dry ginger mead’ to quench our parched throats. It was so good I jumped at the opportunity for the recipe. He also demonstrated his creative cooking, exposing me to something called a lobster mushroom. If you haven’t heard of it, read about it, and see if you can’t hunt some up. Thanks Nata!

After spending the day with some very relaxed cats, speaking in low voices I exited stage left on the off beat, underestimating my schedule. To try and make it to the Florence camp site from Eugene would take a couple hours at least, and it was already past sunset. Not looking forward to gropping around in the dark to set up camp, I assessed my options. Both my brother and sister spent several recent years in Eugene at the University of Oregon, they have to know somebody, right? Lucky for me, my brother put me in touch with his former housemates off Kinkaid Ave and I headed over to campus to interupt their large game of capture the flag. I almost wanted to join in, but decided it best to retreat to my basement sleeping quarters in ‘the house of pain’ to rest up for the long journey ahead.

Stop by his site and check out more of his work, drop him a line, and find a way to try some of his awesome fermented mead! www.natalukas.com

Stacked & Finished?

Stacked & Finished?

After watching the months of August and September melt away into shorter days, autumn colors, and impending winter weather it does not take much to know it is time to hit the road. Another Portland night, summers usual pleasant humid stickiness has turned to a crisp fall coolness. Still not completely secure in what items to pack and what to leave, I throw my hands up in frustration, not wanting to begin yet also wanting to set sail. Inevitably, I force myself out the door making some calls over the weekend to schedule appointments for the coming Monday September 17th; one in Salem and a couple in Eugene.

Well, being the laggard that I can be, come Monday, I’m still debating what items to leave in and what to leave out until I just bite the bullet and cram in what fits. In my anxious state, caught up in my thoughts and potential adventures that lay ahead, I start out in the wrong direction wasting at least a half hour road time. By the time I make it to the first location, paths have already been crossed and the meeting has to be postponed until the return trip. It’s straight on to Eugene to sit down with painter John Holdway.

John Holdway,
http://www.johnholdway.blogspot.com

Background:

“Mainly I do painting, in oils, but sometimes acrylics. Maybe lean a little into sculpture, especially when I’m working on some paintings in still life because I might build my own props. Sometimes I do think of my paintings more like sculpture, objects. I also do printmaking, block print, monotype.”

MOT ~ What do you think it is that draws you toward painting?

JH ~ It’s hard to say, I’ve been painting for a long time, it becomes somewhat habitual. It’s a little weird that way, so I find it hard to think about it, why do I do it. Why can’t I stop doing it might be a better question.

There are a lot of practical things that are nice about painting. If you have paintings, you can hang them on your own wall. In college I did some steel sculpture, but there are problems with that. You need lots of tools, a big pile of junk in your yard, a yard, if you don’t, well… and now I do have a yard, but I’m married and have a wife. She’d probably be pretty unhappy with that.

So I would like to do some steel sculpture again. I like doing all kinds of stuff. With painting, you don’t use your muscles as much. If you spend time building your own canvases or something that might be the extent of it. I like to be a little tired after, more active instead of just all in your head. It’d be nice to have a little of that. I remember that about steel sculpture that there’s a physical-ness not necessarily there in the same way when painting. It entails forging, hammering, cutting, using all kinds of different tools. With painting you have your brushes and your knives. It might be that [brushes] are so natural to me know that I don’t even think of them as tools.

MOT ~ So where did you grow up?

JH ~ I grew up in Maryland outside of DC, College Park, pretty close to the University of Maryland.

MOT ~ Do other members of your family also do creative types of activities?

JH ~ Yea, well my dad’s always been an artist on the side, a print-maker, doing etchings and those kinds of things. He often drew and has done some illustrations, presented some gallery stuff. His main job was mechanical engineering, never fully giving that up to try and be an artist. My grandmother was also very artistic too.

MOT ~ Do you think they, or your over all community may have helped foster some of your creative energies?

JH ~ Definitely, I think a lot comes from my father. He is the kind of person who would have ever kind of tool, think of ideas and try to build it himself. Also, he would take me to art galleries and museums growing up. Living near DC we’d go to the National Gallery and those museums.

MOT ~ What brought you over to the west coast from DC?

JH ~ My wife and I just decided to move out here. No good reason really, we just wanted to live out here. We first moved to Eugene, lived here for a few years, then moved to Portland for a few and back to Eugene. So about 10 years altogether.

MOT ~ What do you think, this west coast community compared to the east?

JH ~ Well, I like it a lot better. I mean I don’t know about the art community part, but I just like the attitude and it feels more natural to me. Maybe I’m more of a relaxed person. There’s so many people and so much traffic, it’s just hectic (referring to the East Coast). I like the outdoors. As far as art goes, there’s not as much as an art happening as say a Paris or New York. That’s the only bad part.

MOT ~ Have you considered if the relaxed laid back atmosphere affects your paintings in any way, your subject matter or anything?

JH ~ It impacts it just because I can feel more relaxed so I have less angst of feelings to want to get out of the city. That was a lot of the feelings I had then. I don’t know how it affects my studio life because I don’t think of myself as a regional type of artist. I just live here and paint here. Just over all life style type thing, I’m happier.

MOT ~ How much time do you think you put in at the studio working on your paintings?

JH ~ Probably about every day, I also teach some art classes, among other things. I work every day, I don’t know how many hours it is, but probably a lot.

MOT ~ Any mentors?

JH ~ I’ve heard about people having mentors, but I never had a mentor. I’ve had teachers that I liked, but I don’t think I’ve connected with anybody like that. It seems like a nice thing to have…

Inspiration:

MOT ~ What would you say are your main sources of inspiration, for ideas, to get in and work every day.

JH ~ I don’t even know about inspiration any more. It’s almost like I just have the desire to continue to work on painting. Some times I have visions of ideas of something completely different that I’d like to try, but I don’t know if they come from anywhere. It’s hard for me to think about inspiration, I’m just always trying to do new stuff, and if I’m not making something I start to feel depressed. I feel like I have to always be working. If something’s not going well, if I’m not coming up with the ideas that I like, then I’m just struggling. It may be the opposite of inspiration. What I would think of as inspiration would be something easy. This is hard!

MOT ~ Do you find that a certain part of the day, or through dreams these ideas might arise more often then other times? The things you’d like to try, the new experiments. . .?

JH ~ I constantly have ideas. I write them down generally in sketchbooks. For twenty years I’ve kept sketchbooks, some of my ideas are crap and I don’t want to do much with them. Some are similar to others, I’m always looking for new ideas for some reason, but as far as where they come from. . . I have had some dreams, or seen things I thought would be better if I did it, inspired by that kind of thing. My ideas tend to come from everywhere. What matters is beginning to work on it, the ideas are good and I like to have them if I can, but if it doesn’t work I just continue to plow through. So I make what I can and try to let it be made.

MOT ~ Do you have any particular influences in painting, work habits, or styles you may emulate?

JH ~ I am interested in lots of artists, and looked at different artists work, sure. I’ve done pseudo apprenticeships to artists where I find ones I like and try to emulate their work. I would call that ‘apprenticing myself to a completely new idea’ and just try to work in that style. If I felt stagnated in my own work, I might choose something and work that way.

One idea was the still life when I was starting to work that way. My idea was to sort of imagine myself going back to the first day of painting class and tune into the energy of “how can I kick ass in this class.” How would I do in a painting one class. In that class, a lot of time you paint still life. I’ve explored a lot of still life that I’ve liked, for example Morandi who has a lot of meditative quality to his work that I like, but at the same time I’m more interested in something with more realism then his abstraction. And play back and forth with these methods.

Paul Klee has been interesting to me. I’ve looked at his work for years, . . . there are so many artists that I’m interested in, but I haven’t necessarily tried to work them all or anything, but I’m interested in the ideas. When I get a hold of it, it starts to change anyway.

Being in your workspace ready to start working, you don’t necessarily come up with anything. And I don’t always have the expectations to make something good, but if you’re always working, even if you’re making crap, you work through that. It turns out probably like most peoples jobs is that they have a hard time stopping thinking about work. I have a hard time not painting, even in my head, not thinking about painting.

So even if I work in a drastically different way, I start to see similar patterns in the way I organize space and the geometry of the composition. The different elements of how a picture is put together,

A lot of people have said that realist paintings are more abstract than abstract because you approach them by dissecting what you see. Putting together a paint by numbers thing, or breaking it up into shapes, and thinking about it in an abstract way, adding the right color to the right spot becomes an abstract approach to the application; all this to make a painting that doesn’t look abstract but representational. And so in my work I can see a common thread that others may not. It’s just the decisions I make, regardless of the style.

MOT ~ Do you tend to consciously consider an audience or various audiences while developing your work?

JH ~ It’s hard not to. The paintings never work if I think about an audience, so I have to try not to over think it. I just try to remember to like it myself. What I do think about is how it’s going to look with all of the different pieces together in a show. That’s another element I consider, besides being an individual piece, I want them to come together as an impressive whole for a show. Eventually they’ll be separated, but I do think a lot about how they’ll work together. I think it’s helpful to put a group of work together because each piece can inform you; what’s working and not.

MOT ~ What elements do you consider to decide how pieces fit together into a cohesive whole?

JH ~ It’s just a basic theme. Some things look like they go together and some don’t. I don’t think I can show some abstract paintings with realistic ones. I’ve been trying to think how I could do that and keep them cohesive.

MOT ~ Half and half lined up to juxtapose, maybe.

JH ~ Yea, . . . yea because these have a lot of geometry to them
These have all these blocks in them, kind of abstract symbolic looking (he says while pointing at these cool portraits of wood blocks). I might be able to. Similar types of frames are a way to bring them together as well.

MOT ~ Have you set specific creative goals for yourself, be them from now into the future, or any time in the past?

JH ~ Career wise, I have definitely had to work really hard to find galleries, and galleries to have shows. That’s been a kind of goal, to make it into some commercial galleries. I’m still working on that to have a more steady income. They expect a certain quality level, no shoddy workmanship. One gallery even wanted me to have the wires on the back for hanging done a certain way because they wanted it taped so when they’re hanging it up they don’t get their fingers poked.

MOT ~ Do ever feel drained and think “why am I doing this?” And if so, how do you recharge?

JH ~ You know you have ups and downs, emotional doubts and all that. Especially when you are doing something creative. This can effect how you work, and you can always have times when you feel like what’s the point, maybe I should just get a job and forget this crap. There’s plenty of that. I think just keeping in good spirits, like what any one would do to keep involved in their work. And try to fight depression, get exercise, get sleep, just do normal things that doctors would probably tell you. I ride my bike here sometimes, and used to go to the gym more, but that’s been replaced more with bike riding. I think what’s more useful then anything is just the physical exercise. And like I said, if you just develop a routine and have that set schedule when you’re going to work, and not beat yourself up too much.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to. I’ve been married for 12 years, and luckily can talk to my wife. She vents to me about her job and I vent to her when I’m feeling frustrated about my work. Sometimes, she can tell if I’m getting down and draw it out of me, and even if I feel like it doesn’t make a lot of sense she’ll understand it. It’s good to have someone you can talk to like that.

Technique:

MOT ~ Are there any books or particular sources that you refer to regularly, or for any specific purpose? Or any tools you keep on hand and focus on.

JH ~ (With a chuckle and drawing it out a bit) I have tons of books. I like to read.
I have a book by Birge Harrison, I’m not really into his work but it’s interesting to hear his writers voice about being a painter. He’s kind of inspiring just to read. He wrote one book called “Landscape Painting.” Another is a book called “Art and Fear” written by a couple art professors, they write about why people have a hard time working and their hang-ups. Recently I’m reading a book about sketchbooks. I’ve been using sketchbooks for a long time, but sometimes I use them more as a place to play and less a place to work out all my problems. I am trying to get back into the fun part and just drawing.Damian Gregory wrote the book “Creative License” and it talks about illustrated journals. He has a blog to you may find interesting. I think it’s a neat, fun, and interesting book because it has lots of images and makes you think twice about making a cool journal. At the same time I try not to put too much emphasis on it because I can end up spending too time. I tend to end up with lots of sketchbooks that are only halfway done.

MOT ~ What do you think about art education and spending time earning a degree?

JH ~ Spending time studying art is definitely part of doing it. It’s difficult to learn everything you want to. I think about it a lot, all the painting classes I took.

On the one hand you get to develop a critical way of thinking about your work going through all these critiques, and I want to a modern not a classical kind of art school. It was definitely more critique driven and less technical information. It can build an objective eye, and put you in the shoes of the galleries and their attendees. In some ways a gallery may be less critical, a lot of times when you’re in art school, and they are talking about your work, in actuality they are really talking about themselves. Like most of the time when you talk to people they talk about themselves in one way or another. You might not always get honest feed back as it could just be something they’re thinking about. But it’s good to hear. Sometimes they’ll point out flaws that you might not see. Like errors in your drawing, proportions, or it may just not come off like you thought. There are rules in making images that until you get to where they are more instinctual, you run the risk of missing the different qualities that make it art.

MOT ~ Can you break down your general process from head to sketchbook to color selection, canvas size, then painting.

JH ~ I can tell you how I do a representational painting, which is pretty straightforward. After I make the surface, either board or canvas, I start on the tones. I look the on it to have a neutral tone, a little value in the range so I can go lighter or darker. When you are doing a realistic painting, white is the lightest it can be, and of course black is the darkest. With light and reality, a white paint isn’t the lightest thing you can see, it’s more a light, an actual reflection of light. Then I’ll draw the whole thing, lined in charcoal, basic shadow mapping. To hold that steady I put down a layer of clear coat so it doesn’t smear while painting. Then I generalize all the colors and do a wash in and paint the whole thing, so it’s essentially done, but really messy. I will then go back and repaint the whole thing adding variations, build up some textures. If I’m doing a realistic painting I’ll build up the white spot to be thicker, I might add a few tiny details, which can have the effect of making it appear that there are a lot of details. And then, it’s done after a coat of some kind of finish like wax or varnish after it has dried for a while. Sometimes paints have different absorbencies, so in one area it can look really wet even though it’s dry. A layer of wax serves to balance that. I work really hard to have an even look while painting, but it also serves to have a little protection.

MOT ~ How do you know when something is complete?

JH ~ I try to pay attention, I do all kinds of tricks with myself to look at it fresh all the time. Either put it away, or maybe have two or three things working so I can always have fresh eyes and that’s how I can tell. If I do over work it, I always destroy it. And then there’s always the last resort of sanding it down and starting over. There’s no fear really, if I do screw up I can always rub it out and do it again, and that’s just part of it.

With each interview, I keep noticing similarities that set these folks apart. Eugene seems to be a very soft spoken kind of place. Laid back and slightly isolated with Portland the closest city. This is the kind of environment that can really make or break you as there might be less competition, there’s also smaller group of a people to support your work in the local vicinity.

Thanks John for sharing! Keep plugging away, and I’ll look forward to seeing some new work when I get back! Stop by and check out more of his work and up coming shows @ ~
www.johnholdway.blogspot.com

“Blue Angel”

Cocktails and Interviews

A city like Portland has all kinds of hidden neighborhood gems where someone can go and fade away into the din. The Basement Pub on SE 12th Ave is just one of those kinds of locations. Andrew Warnecke suggested we meet up at one of his preferred happy hour locals, they have that $1.75 PBR special. When I rolled up he was reading a book by Tom Robbins called “Villa Incognito.” He’s been working on a film titled “Blue Angel,” Blue Angel Movie and excited to have wrapped up the actual filming. Now he’s has to get out and put on the push to get it viewed. We chatted for a bit about general things that eventually led into this…

Andrew Warnecke ~ Every time I’d make something I’d hate it immediately, I’d say “Wow, that totally sucks, I’m no good at this” but ya know, if someone likes it, they don’t want to hear you tell them it sucks! I‘ve gotten a lot better at looking at it and [telling myself] “yea, that didn’t work out the way I wanted it too, but it’s not bad,” I just know I can do it better. And then trying to find opportunities to then find another film or scene where I can explore that further, or correct my mistakes, because once the films been made you don’t want ot be George Lucas and go back and tinker with it over and over and over again. People will either like or they don’t! And the people who like it, they don’t want you to change it.

[Editorial interjection: how often does the painter go back and paint over the painting, or retake the photo that’s been published?]

Leave it at that, and improve on it on your next project.

Moments Of Truth ~ How do you prepare? Do you do a lot of story boarding, free writing or something?

AW~ My storyboards don’t make any sense, so I stopped doing them. I think a lot of people do story board, what sucks about film making, film making education and any book you read is like this is how you do it, this is how you prepare, and you go about it in that way it doesn’t get you any where, everybody says “do story boards, do story boards” and I say “no” because if I do them it’s hard for me to draw the frame I want to see.

MOT ~ What about using a Polaroid camera? I know they’re discontinuing a lot of that film but….

AW~ Yea, actually have a filmmaker friend who does that, but no, I haven’t done that myself. [Story boards] depend on what you’re working on. On ‘Blue Angel,’ the one I just finished, there were storyboards but not ones showing camera angles or that. It was completely for art department. Working with the art director who does story boards we sat there and talk through every little prop and detail, the color palette of the film and try and draw sketch’s you could show to say the location scout, to select a location that fits our color palette. So it’s more from an art department or art direction standpoint.

Working with that storyboard artist was great for me because he was very detail oriented. He’d ask me how do you want this to look? What do you want here? Do you want this person with a prop, yea…?… okay, now what color? What kind? I remember, we sat there discussing this scene where this guy should be eating an apple. He said, “Well, what kind of an apple, what color, size, ..” and I’m thinking “dude, I don’t know.” He’s like “do you want just a normal green apple or should we find some kind of exotic apple that looks really weird or. . . ?” And this is really good for me, because this forces me to clarify what I want to see. As you go along, thinking up these details, you start seeing a pattern emerge. In what you’re looking for, that you hadn’t talked through yet, and all of a sudden this entire vision that was in your mind, you hadn’t really totally thought through is like “oh, wow I have this huge plan here I didn’t even realize.” So it’s helpful for me to clarify what I need to see, and obviously from there sketches can be made, and I’m very clear on what I want to see, and I want to communicate that to every one I’m working with. Like well, shit, I focused on “Blue Angel” for all this time and now I have no idea what I’m doing next!

Background:

Moments Of Truth ~ Please break down those creative things that you do? Obviously film is top, but anything you may like to mention…

Andrew W ~ Film making, directing and writing are the primary things I’m involved with now. Every now and then I’ll decide to do pencil sketches on a large scale, and it takes me two or three weeks to finish one, because I’m not very good and I have to work at a square inch at a time to make it look any good. Other then that, I don’t really do a lot of creative endeavors… (finishing with a solid chuckle..)

MOT ~ Soooo in this film “Blue Angel,” or working with film in general, do you know the point where you began with it? Were you taking shots, clippings, or what? Did your interest in film just evolve?

AW ~ I think I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do something creative; something artistic or whatever. I mean, I took all the art classes all the way through school and things like that, wanted to attend one of the art institutes but didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I just figured that was the place for me, I’ll figure it out later!

Throughout high school I did a lot of photography. I wasn’t very good. It was basically if I’d get really lucky I’d have a good photo, but the rest of the time I don’t think the concepts of framing or composition made any sense to me. I didn’t really get that so I couldn’t really apply it at the time. That was an early interest in artistic kinds of things, but I think it was senior year when I actually took a class that focused on creative writing and film. [breaking away to clarify that times have changed] Film is actually video in high school, and they’d give you camcorders and send you out to make your “music video,” and it was terrible, but I had a really great time with it. So that’s when it clicked that that’s what I should pursue. Any time I had an option to do a project on video, that was the direction I went. It was more fun and it wasn’t really work. I think that interest was always there, I just didn’t acknowledge it could be a career.

Greatest video ever though was…, I was supposed to do a project about “Lord Of The Flies.” What it was, was a ‘60 Minutes’ type program where they were interviewing the kids that survived off the island after they got back. I did reenactments of the horrific things that happened on the island.

MOT ~ That’s a good idea. [I’m laughing because that sounds seriously bad ass, and maybe he’s laughing for the same reason. Maybe?]

AW ~ It was high school video though, ya know?! There’s the part where the character in the book, Piggy, gets squished by a rock because the kids push a rock off a cliff and kill him. That was a little hard to reenact so it was Lego figurines. That was probably the most takes I’ve every done, …. To date! It took so long to get that little rock to hit the Lego figure.

MOT ~ So where exactly did you grow up?

AW ~ Milwaukee.

MOT ~ Milwaukee, Oregon? Do you think ‘Dark Horse Comics / Publishing’ had any influence on you?

AW ~ I knew they were there, I wasn’t really into comic books. I was into comic books for a very limited amount of time. I remember reading “Sin City” pretty early on, and that really kind of messed me up at the time. But I wouldn’t say they directly influenced me or anything.

MOT ~ Where there any elements of the Milwaukee community that influenced you in your way of thinking, or your approach to your projects now?

AW ~ I think probably. That’s one of those things where I’ll look back at something I did, some little moment in a scene and when I watch it I all of a sudden connect that to something from growing up. It’s not something I consciously draw on, but I discover later that I did. It’s not a conscious thing, but it’s there!

But yea (laughs thinking about it), I did know my neighbors well. Everybody in that neighborhood knew each other well, and you couldn’t get in trouble with out everybody knowing and telling your parents about it. So it was more of a sense of community then I think most people grow up with.

MOT ~ Any body else in your family focused, or now focus on creative type of work?

AW ~ In my extended family, there’s some creative types, musicians and that, basically, no though. My moms a teacher and my dad’s an engineer, and engineer’s are about as far from the creative end as can be as they’re a lot more logical. So you don’t see eye to eye very often. My sister is a school councilor, so they’re pretty far from the direction I’m going?

My family’s been really supportive. I think when I first told my parents I wanted to do film making they were like “maybe you should go to community college and check out some other things.” At a certain point they realized that community college wasn’t going so well and that wasn’t where I should be and that’s when I started pursuing filmmaking at the Northwest Film Center. Since that time they’ve been very supportive. They just looked at it like “that’s not a very realistic career, maybe you should have something to back it up with.”

MOT ~ In the process of learning film making, photography, and honing your eye, have you had any mentors that you’d count as having influenced you? Leg to stand on kind of thing…

AW ~ There’s been a lot. Some times I think they might not realize how much they’ve influenced me. It may be some small little thing they said at one point that clued me in. An example is I was talking to another film maker who makes a lot more then what I do, he made the statement that pretty much, if you don’t have an audience, or if… if there’s nobody who likes your film, it doesn’t matter how artistic it is, it doesn’t matter, nobodies going to watch it. You’re making films for the audience, not yourself.

That adjusted the way I look at it. No matter what art form you’re working in, there’s this idea that it’s all about you. Well, you might have all the talent in the world, but if you’re not making something anybody likes, what’s it matter? Sure, you’ve satisfied your needs, but aren’t you wanting other people to look at it?

[Not meaning to disrupt you like the guy who just about ran his van up on the curb to pull out and dusted us with copious amounts of foul smoky thick exhaust fumes, but it’s all about creating a visual experience to go along with the conversation]

That was pretty close (noting the van)!

Just a little thing, I think he was completely hammered when he said that to me, but it sunk in. I’ve been making this work because it makes me happy, but what I’m discovering trying to promote this thing is that it’s all about the audience. And if they don’t like it, well, who cares.

There’s been others who’ve since pissed me off because I feel their point of view is pretty warped, but they managed to say a couple good things that helped me along with what ever I was working on at the time. A lot of my first mentors were into experimental film. When I first started film, that was what I was into. So I took their advice to art then, and some of it has carried through to more narrative work. I reached a certain point in experimental film where it felt like I was just taking everything from my influences and mixing it up and doing the exact same thing that everybody else had done. So now, when those same people try and give me advice, it doesn’t sink in as much. I kind of feel like, okay, …. Ummm, I’m loosing my train of thought.

Inspiration:

MOT ~ Well, let’s move on to inspiration. Do you have a particular source you draw from?

AW ~ Kind of all over. I think my inspiration comes from a ton of different sources. I don’t think any of my work is autobiographical at all, but I definitely take things from my life and mix them up and throw them into something. So that’s there. I’ll take things from some weird job I’ve worked that most people don’t know anything about and write that into something that I’m doing. I also, of course, have some friends that do really dumb things, or better said make bad decisions… (we both laugh because, well, who doesn’t or hasn’t, right?!)

It’s not like in an insulting way, you hear about one stupid decision that somebody made, and it’s not like I’m trying to poke fun at anybody, but that’s a whole story right there. That could stem an entire story. I think inspiration from real things in life, like I’ll steal somebody’s life story I know because that’s a good back-story for that character. It doesn’t actually make it into the film, but I know where the character is coming from and can go from there. I wont name any names ‘cus I’ll get in trouble, but….

It’s kind of weird for a film maker, but I take a lot of influence from literary sources.

MOT ~ That’s weird?

AW ~ It is I think. Because most film makers I meet don’t seem to read a lot. Or they read books on filmmaking or that’s about it. I listen to DVD commentaries and they’ll say something like “well, I don’t really read, this book was the first book I’d read in like 20 years and I decided to base a film on it.” Yea, I think it’s kind of weird. It’s a great place to take inspiration from.

There’s one short story that stuck in my mind, called “A Rose For Emily,” a William Faulkner story with this really subtle eeriness, a general sense of unease. Even though at the time I couldn’t remember the name of it or even what it was really about, I remembered the feeling it gave me. Stuff like that is a big influence on me. When I can do films like that, something not in your face, nothing strikes you as uneasy right on the screen, but it [may leave an uneasy feeling in you]. Stories like that always stick with me, or stories that were so subtle I just didn’t get them at the time and hated them [for that]. Then I think back years later realizing what they’re about and it messes me up. That’s an interesting direction to go in film, because it doesn’t generally go in that direction.

MOT ~ Your film “Blue Angel” is based off a short story, correct?

AW ~ That was exactly the kind of short story it was, a subtle story. A lot of people read it, and didn’t really get the sub text of it. There’s this whole sub text the narrator is saying. I knew there was more to the story than what [the author] was telling. It was really interesting to me in that sense. It was an ideal story. Making that really helped me find a direction I’d like to go in the future.

MOT ~ How’d you come across the story.

AW ~ About five or six years ago the author sent it to me and wanted me to consider making a film of it. Immediately I wanted to do it, there were some things in it that reminded me of someone I knew back in school, so strongly I knew; as well as recognizing the subtle aspect of the story. I wrote back to her and said I’d really like to do this, and that’s when she let me know that she’d also sent it to some one else. Apparently they were interested as well. I had to duke it out.

What she wanted from both parties was to get the idea about why we wanted to do it, and what our impressions were of the story. What’s some other work we’d done and that sort of thing. Apparently they didn’t get the subtext. So it was a pretty easy decision after that. That’s how that came about.

Then once I had the story, I didn’t really think I was skilled enough to make this movie. I didn’t tell her that, but I was thinking that. In my head I could see it, but didn’t really know how to do that. So I put it on the back burner while I goofed around with some other stuff until once I felt I was ready, it went into production. This took some years.

I shot a film called “Voyeur, “ that didn’t get done. It went through a couple of editors, but none would get done with it. Eventually, I was so far removed from it, I just didn’t have the energy to keep working on it. It was tough, I cared about it when I started, but now I don’t feel anything for it. So it was hard to keep working on it. Which I think pissed a lot of people off that worked on it. They felt like “we’ve put in all this work and now you’re not going to finish it.” You know, …. What are you going to do?

I did another really short project called “Tiffany’s Bad Day.” It was really short decent into action. I’m probably never going to be an action director, but I did get to have a car stunt with a limousine done, kinda cool. Nerve wracking though!

This limousine barreling down the street, skid in a half circle around the actress who was running; which was bad ass. It’s pretty freaky when you’re watching this little actress running down the street, and this huge car is supposed to spin around her, yea, I really, really felt sick to my stomach, feeling like something bad was going to happen. In there was a few other things, like “Works For Hire” that didn’t really pan out, until I quit goofing around with stuff that wasn’t important to me and focus.

(Here we took an interlude for beer and WC break, . . . take a deep breath, you can do the same but get right back!)

Oh and just another note on preparing for and making a film, I mean, doing the other film was a really good thing in order to connect with new crew members; a good way to test out people who I’d never worked with before. They were a lot more on the professional end than I’d worked with before. That was a good way to find out who’s good and reliable. So many crew members, when working on low budget projects are more likely to ditch out on you. When it’s something you don’t care about it is a little easier to take.

MOT ~ A lot of technology allows people to work on various subjects on their own, like music. You might be able to do that with some films, but you still have living characters. Filming seems to be a collaborative form of creative expression. How do you develop your own sense of what’s yours in these projects?

AW ~ Really you can do film making now with a minimum of collaboration if you want. I don’t think it’s the best thing. By myself, I don’t feel like I do anything to the best of my ability. I wouldn’t recommend it to any body, but some people do it, and can actually do it pretty well.

MOT ~ Maybe these other forms of expression aren’t as individual as people would like to think that they are.

AW ~ Such as…?

MOT ~ Well, like with painting or drawing, you read a story or see a moment in time and illustrate some basic natural element(s).

AW ~ Well, you can [lose your sense of self], pretty easily. I feel like I have dealt with that exact issue a lot. Usually I’m quite a bit younger then the people I’m working with, and some take it as a sign that “oh, that person doesn’t know what they’re doing. They’re younger, I know what I’m doing, I’ve been around longer.” Not to discredit those people, as they do know what they’re doing; but some bring the attitude that they’re going to have to take over for you and do directing for you. I’ve had directors of photography who will change a camera angle after I’ve walked off. Then, back in the editing room it’ll come up and it’s not what I wanted, it doesn’t really work with anything else that I have.

Also, people will bring their own ideas and just do that, and you let them because they’ve explained their reason and it sounds reasonable. Later though, you realize that it doesn’t work well, it wasn’t what I wanted at all. I mean you definitely can loose your sense of what you need to get when you’re shooting, then it can end up feeling like not your own film any more.

The only way you learn not to do that is from having it happen to you. You’re pretty naïve when you first show up on your first set and try to tell people, this is what I want, this is what I need and expect every bodies going to do it just because you said it. You know, you’re in the director’s chair, but it doesn’t really work that way. I think part of it is that people have a pretty good sense if they can trust you in that position. If they don’t think you can handle it, they try and bring their own ideas and try to “save you.”

I used to get really pissed when people would do that, take it as a personal insult. Now I don’t because I look back, and can see that I wasn’t always communicating clearly what I wanted. And yea, I was young and you can’t blame them for thinking they knew better. We you have to face that and deal with it a couple of times, you realize that until you take control of that, it’s just going to happen. As the director you need to be the one confident person on the set. They need to feel that you know what you want and if you don’t get it you’re going to let them know. I think it’s all about confidence, they’re relying on you to show them where to go. That doesn’t mean I always know where I want to go when I show up, but I try to pretend like I do. I also try and have a specific plan when I show up, but no matter what, you have curve balls thrown at you and can’t do certain things, or what ever, and you have to adjust. I just have to pretend it doesn’t faze me, even though it usually makes me panic. It also comes down to getting to know the crew-members as much as you can before you get on the set. And feeling them out and seeing what they’re like, so that they have a clear idea of what you’re looking for, and you have a clear idea of who they are and whether they can trust you or not. Whether they can trust that you know what you want.

On “Blue Angel” I took to having discussions with the directors of photography especially. Just pulling them aside and saying “Okay, look, so I’m directing, I give the actors direction and you don’t, is that cool, you know.” Establish the boundaries. And sometimes you might sound like a jerk to say it, but the professional ones take it just fine. Once I find some one who works very well… basically I look for someone who trusts you but isn’t afraid to bring an idea to it and say “hey, if we frame it this way, this accomplishes what you want and allows us to cut this shot.” I love it when people can bring suggestions like that to it. I mean, nobody knows everything. . .

MOT ~ Wait, what? Are you sure… (both laughing)

AW ~ Well, maybe I can think of a couple [people].

Yea, so I don’t think there’s any director worth anything who shows up on set and thinks that they have all the answers. Any great director can take suggestions from anybody on set. I mean, you hear stories about some of the really great directors and they try and take the suggestions from everybody and you never know, it could be a production assistant or an intern that might bring an idea, and if you let them know it’s okay to tell you what those ideas are they might give you something where you’re like “oh, you know what that accomplishes my vision better then my original idea.” The idea is to know what you want well enough to know when somebody else’s idea accomplishes that better.

I think that’s how you make your center. It’s to know the feeling you want to get across, and know the different places you need each scene to go well enough to where when some one brings a suggestion you can identify it as either fitting or not, or even being better then what you want.

MOT ~ Do you set aside specific creative goals that you are working to accomplish?

AW ~ Kind of. I have about three projects that I’d like to do. I think all three of them I want to do because they all have little aspects of things I haven’t felt have gone as wanted in another film. I’m juggling two screenplays at once, and there’s a novel I’d like to adapt. I’m always just looking for projects that allow me to improve on something that I was not as happy with before. But other then that, story wise, I don’t think there’s anywhere I’m trying to go in the future.

Technical:

MOT ~ So how do you go about researching and figuring out the ideas you want to use?

AW ~ Experimental film for me was more an intuitive way of filmmaking. I didn’t necessarily have a story, just try to set up some parameters for it where I was free to shoot what I wanted and follow intuition. One of the masters of that is David Lynch. I love his work, I think he does it very well. At a certain point I got really bored, and lost interest in that style. It definitely helped along the way to develop things I’m interested in now. Being able to shoot something very intuitively comes in handy. So much, even on a narrative film, requires you to think on your feet.

When it comes to selecting a narrative story, it differs. If I’m writing it myself, I couldn’t tell you necessarily where that comes from. It depends. When I start writing, it can be for a million different reasons. Sometimes I heard a really good song or something, and somewhere during listening to it an idea occurred to me. Or it pulled together a lot of ideas that had been running through my head that I wasn’t sure what to do with and then got clued in on the path I’d like to take with it. If I’m writing, the things that interest me are character development, to create complex characters who do what real humans would do, and not what you’re used to seeing people do. There’s a very set way of developing characters in most mainstream film, and it’s not necessarily what real people would do. When you’re trying to create very realistic characters you have to figure out “where’s this person coming from, and what would they do here.” When you actually watch a movie like that, it’s surprising when a character just seems to do what they would do. Any time I can take something that’s like a normal genre and put that spin on it, it’s very interesting to me. I have a feeling though, if and when I start shooting stuff like that I’m going to piss some people off. Audiences sometimes don’t like what’s different.

MOT ~ Do you think that’s part of the point as the director? That you have the opportunity that you can take them down a path they wouldn’t necessarily go?

AW ~ Well, yea. Fingers crossed I can do that. Like I mentioned a novel I want to adapt, what drew me to that is that the characters are so well developed, characters that in most stories would be either cut and dry good or cut and dry bad, and there was nobody in the novel that was completely evil and nobody that was completely good. It’s a story about a girl who goes missing in a small town, and all the characters are to blame in one way or another to varying degrees. But you understand their motivations and why they make the decisions they make so well that you have sympathy for everyone in the story which is kind a bizarre thing in that kind of story. And that was interesting to me because any time I hear of a child going missing that kind of messes me up. For a long time I’ve wanted to do a story in that vein. I’m hoping I can pull that off, but that might be another one where I wouldn’t want to do it right away, but shoot something else first to get up to par before hand.

MOT ~ So it sounds like you like to align your projects to prepare for the next project. Are you consciously considering that while you’re working on one?

AW ~ Not really, no.

MOT ~ So how do you know when you’re ready?

AW ~ Usually it when I’m pissed off with what ever I’ve been doing. Then it’s time to do something I want to do more. When I was working on “Blue Angel,” that was all I was doing. There was no thinking ahead to what was next which kind of sucks now, because I’m scrambling to figure out what’s next. Once you put a film out in the world, that’s a question that comes up a lot. Any film maker who’s had any degree of success with a short film will tell you “every body wants to know what you’re doing next and you better have an answer.” So while I was working on that one I didn’t plan ahead at all.

Right now, if I’m writing it’s what I want to, what feels right, and not really planning ahead. The deal is, I haven’t worked in feature film at this time. It’s one thing for me to have my first journey into feature film be a script I wrote, because I’d rather screw that up then say, a novel I really respect. Make all my first time mistakes with that one. I guess that’s what I meant when I said that novel wouldn’t be one I’d necessarily want to do right now.

MOT ~ Do you have any books that you use as resources, say potential sources for your trade, your projects?

AW ~ Nothing comes to mind off the top of my head. Every time I refer to books on film making or web sites, like I mentioned earlier, they all tell you “this is how it’s done, and this is how you do it.” That usually ends up getting me really really stuck more than anything because what I’m trying to do doesn’t really fit into that. Then I’m trying to figure out how to relate what ever I learned in that book to what ever I’m doing. It usually just makes life a lot more difficult.

MOT ~ Do you have anything you do when trying to make a decision, or to get loose, or to reconnect with your original idea, and energy?

AW ~ All the time, it’s never ending. Usually if I feel like I know exactly where I’m going or where I need to be, I am not doing anything creatively. So, are you asking ways to recharge creative batteries?

I’ll go through phases where I wont touch a screenplay I was working on for months. I might think about it, but I can’t bring myself to put in any time on it for whatever reason. Things that recharge creative batteries, I have friends I hang out with to just go have a good time, and usually they have some great story about something they did, and a lot of the times there’s just something in what they said that makes me go, “oh, there’s an idea.” A lot of times it’ll send me back to what ever I was working on to explore an aspect that I hadn’t thought about for the story. You know, just something like that might get me excited about the story again.

Going to the bar, (laughing because that’s exactly where we are) and no I’m not joking, that’s serious. I wouldn’t want to encourage any one to start drinking, you know, in order to be successful creatively, I have to admit that writers block can be fixed at the bar. I’ve sat here and, well, one time I actually wrote an entire music video treatment during ‘happy hour.’ The deal is, if I’m working in a quiet environment, I’ll get distracted by every little tiny noise I hear, where as if I sit down at a bar and try and write for a while, it’s so loud, noise surrounding me, it’s easier for me to tune that out. There’s that energy around you, but you’re tuning it out at the same time, (imagining a great distraction) the only thing likely to distract you is the really loud drunk chick that comes and sits on your lap (laughing and we’re both looking around for that one. . . nope, not today). But uh,

MOT ~ A welcome distraction right?

AW ~ Nah, a lot of times if I just don’t feel like I’m getting anything done, something about the atmosphere that sometimes works for me. More often than not, if I choose to do that, it works.

MOT ~ If you had the opportunity to sit down with some creative individuals that inspire you, what would ask them?

AW ~ These questions come to me all the time but now I’m drawing a blank. I think they might be questions that might sound dumb to any body else . . . Probably if I met any film makers or writers that…

Well, here’s an example, I wrote a letter to Chuck Palahniuk who wrote “Fight Club” and I felt like I had so many question to ask and I couldn’t really think of any of them. And I think I ended up asking him a bunch of stupid questions and telling him some story about how my letters to Santa were sent to my grandma and she responded. I didn’t get any of my questions answered because I didn’t really ask them. Of course he responded and sent me this big box of toys and stuff. And I thought “Oh man, why couldn’t I think of anything to ask him?!” I think if it was somebody that I admire I would freeze up and draw a complete blank. So something really simple like “how the hell did you come up with the idea to shoot it this way, because I’d never think of that?” What gave you the guts to shoot it like that?

Wrap Up

Thinking back to high school and early college, I was involved in a communications, radio broadcasting, and filming a campus television program. When Andrew mentioned how he had fun doing that in school, and finding ways to create projects around that I remember just how much fun that is. A lot of folks are creating all kinds of short videos, telling stories, humoring people, music videos and all that. Most of them can barely be considered C quality, but the seed has been planted. Everyone has to start some where, right. Well, a larger production sounds a lot like being an organizer slash project manager slash company director. I imagine working a film is a lot like creating a short term business, each one a new and interesting challenge. I’m looking forward to more!

Thanks Andrew for sitting down and sharing some thoughts!

Watch the preview below and if you’re on the my space add him as a friend Blue Angel Movie

“Blue Angel” Trailer

“Don’t Read, It’s Precious”

September 10, 2007

Sitting under the shade of a nice size tree in the back yard of his friends North Portland home where he keeps his studio, he has spread out paintings of various sizes. He unrolls several large canvases he’s been working on, some painted plywood boards and blocks. The studio space, he mentions that it’s also known as a garden shed, is tight, full of work in progress and energy.

Born and raised Portland, Oregon artist Donald Olsen takes some time to sit down and discuss drawing, destruction as beauty, painting, and what inspires him to create an artistic dialog with society.

Background:

Moments of Truth ~ Please describe your primary creative endeavors.

Donald Olsen ~ Probably drawing is definitely my primary, that’s like an everyday thing. Actually, I was thinking today, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to make things, that I didn’t have that pressure, but it’s something just inborn. I go nuts if I can’t express that. So it’s usually drawing. I also like to make music and paintings. I think they are separate, somewhat separate endeavors. And I guess a little bit of writing, although it’s usually not visual.

MOT ~ Which one of those do you think you spend the majority of your time in? Has this changed over time?

DO ~ No, it hasn’t, it’s been drawing for as long as I can remember. I guess when I say drawing I am usually thinking of sitting down with a piece of paper and not having any idea, just letting it come out…

MOT ~ Like free writing?

DO ~ Yea, stream of consciousness.

MOT ~ Do you remember one of the first times you started doing that, how old you were, what you might have first drawn?

DO ~ I definitely can’t remember the first time, but lots of times getting sent to my room (deep chuckle) When I was a kid I used to love to draw surfers, basketball players dunking, and some architecture, like birds eye views slash floor plans of mansions, like my mansion (hahahaha). Some battles, draw the battle lines of each side and then over the top view. And I’d like to play with the G. I. Joe guy’s.

MOT ~ So do you think it worked as escape for you, to live in your imagination and visualize it?

DO ~ Oh yea, definitely an escape. I think paper served as a place to stay while I could brain storm around it. I could kind of like create my own reality, like pornography before I had access.

MOT ~ And music?

DO ~ Music was a later thing, as a kid, I got ruined on piano lessons early on. Mom nagging me on practicing, and I had shelved all of it until I turned 19, listening to music made me start to want to make music at a certain point. So I found myself playing air guitar too much, so I finally bought a guitar. And then learned… I’m left handed and I ended up taking this guitar class in college. At the end of the class the teacher confessed to me that “I could never look at your fingering because it would always mess me up.” So I never really learned the whole reading music or notes, but I got playing cords. And that was enough to have a lot of fun.

More recently, for my brothers wedding, we put together a band. That was a really cool experience that I’d never had before. Probably the most collaborative art making I’ve ever had is working together with people on music. Pretty novice, but I enjoy it a lot. Ya know, three or four basic cords is generally enough to play your average pop song, I kind of dink around and do that. For this band thing though I picked up mandolin. A lot of the people in the band (at this point my cell phone rings and I make a mental note to put that thing on silent) were along those lines of trying new things and new instruments. One of the other guys was a guitar and bass player, Brad, in the band picked up trombone. It was all about trying new things and exploring.

MOT ~ Do you think there are other mediums that you would interest you in the future?… like say sculpture or carving….

DO ~ I’ve done some sculpture and carving, I mean my masters degree was in printmaking and drawing, so I’ve done printmaking too, but unfortunately I don’t have a set up for it now. I guess that’s what I appreciate about drawing is the materials are so basic that you don’t have to … printmaking requires the press, various tools, etc.

And I am writing a book, which is sort of a different medium. I am integrating computer more into what I’m doing lately. I don’t know, I guess I’ve always seen drawing as the foundation, a way I gather and figure out my ideas so those ideas can go in any media or direction after that. I haven’t made very many videos but I don’t count it out as a way to make art.

MOT ~ Where did you grow up? And talk a little bit about that community and if it influenced you in any way.

DO ~ Well, I grew up here in Portland. Which now is like an oddity, every time I tell someone I’m from Portland they’re like “really, you’re like the first one I’ve ever meet.” (Which brings a good laugh to us both) It’s kind of weird, I feel like it’s now this town of ‘out of towners,’ and I don’t know how I feel about that. On one hand, it’s made this town a lot better place, bringing a lot more things to do especially for younger people, but on the other hand there’s a character about Portland that people don’t understand. They don’t understand what it was like before.

I think Portland and the Pacific Northwest has definitely influenced my work, but it’s more about this place then the people. Just being able to get out and see all these different types of areas. The beach has been a place that inspires me, being able to get to the desert or forest easily. Access to really changing your environment easily… I don’t know exactly how that’s influenced me, but I’m sure it has. It’s part of me, so it comes out in my work.

The other thing is this is such a fertile place, it’s like a place that has been creatively fertile since the Native Americans were here. A place, at least to my understanding, that you could fish for a few months and have enough to get through the winter, then have enough time to make art. I think that’s still here to some extent. It’s cheaper to live here, so you can get by on less, and make more time for your own interests. I think the rain can make people pull inside themselves, especially during the winter, and that’s a good thing.

MOT ~ Hibernating…

DO ~ Hibernating, yea, and focusing on your own unique weirdness, what ever your thing is, ya know.

MOT ~ Would you say you had any mentors that helped guide you? Or folks that may have just given you encouragement?

DO ~ There’s been people, … yea, my next door neighbor growing up influenced me, and she wasn’t even really one to even call herself an artist, but she was. She’d make these Christmas cards every year that were insane, insanely processed, just complex. I’ve always been more of an observer than an inter-actor, and just picked up things from people without them even knowing.

Drawing for me has always been a very solitary thing. Also, just other artists that I admire, I usually admire from afar, from books or things like that.

Inspiration:

MOT ~ Do you have any particular sources of inspiration?

DO ~ There’s been a couple recently. Most recently I’ve been reading about this area of the ocean between here and Hawaii, where huge amounts of plastic have ended up. Have you heard about this?

MOT ~ Nooo…

DO ~ It’s twice the size of Texas where the currents go in a vortex like whirlpool, and all this stuff ends up there. That’s been really on my mind a lately, as far as how gross that is, and what it must look like. This tangled mess of all this stuff. I think about that as far as my work, and [find it] inspiring.

Another thing that’s been going a little longer then that is an interest in these floods that happened about twelve thousand years ago in this part of the country. There was an inland ocean [near] Montana area, and this massive amount of water flooded through Eastern Washington into Oregon and they think it may have occurred forty times. Like ten times the flow of all the rivers that exist on earth today, crashing through. Basically stealing all the top soil from Eastern Washington and depositing it in Oregon, which is partly why this is such a fertile green place. So, trying to imagine what that looked like, or imagining what the after math of that could have looked like has been inspiring to me.

I think it comes through in some of these pieces. What would a 200 acre forest look like all just in water stranded on the side of the moon or something like that. And that beauty comes from violence over time. Tremendous violence brought about this tremendous beauty. Thinking about those issues… I like to find inspiration in science or environmental things.

I think art is a language and you have to find something to talk about. For me I like to find subjects outside of the art world. Art tends to be such a mirror ball just looking back at ourselves so much and I try to jump out of that.

MOT ~ Man, yea, that’s good. There you go. (I’ve got to work on this thinking thing)

Do you have any specific concepts or symbols that you like to work in? (Didn’t the man just break it down… I’ve also got to work on breaking away from the outline.)

DO ~ Kind of on that flood tip, I’ve had a lot of log jams popping up, or tornados flying around messing everything up. Those have been popping up. What else. . . I always think that’s interesting because I never try to control the symbology. Like, alright, these are the seven symbols I use… I always thought that was restrictive so my symbol library just happens by accident, mostly by looking back at what I’ve done, kind of intuitively. I’d say log jams, and tornados, and thinking about that huge pile of plastic, like a lot of stuff, just tremendous amounts of built up stuff all piled up.

MOT ~ Like natural imagery.

DO ~ Natural, but that’s not really natural.

MOT ~ Well, maybe unnaturally natural. (Both trying to make sense of it)

DO ~ Well, yea it is kind of natural the way things just get stacked up like drift wood on a beach; just how things kind of end up. I feel like I paint that way too. I do control things, but I do want it to have that look that it ended up that way. Which is probably why it’s really hard to finish them. When is the pile of the beach ever finished, it’s continuously changing.

MOT ~ Well, there is that moment when you see it, or take that picture, captured that moment, that’s all, it’ll change again.

Do you think you have specific goals you’re working toward?

DO ~ I do, yea, I do. I’m working on this book. That’s been my main goal recently. I find it hard to have, …with these paintings, it’s been hard to have a goal because the way I work is pretty intuitive. So, umm,

MOT ~ So you’re able to work with out specific goals , just relax. .. Well, the question is more to delve into, like a lot of people in the business world have to have the goal. With out the goal, they have no direction, is there a way that allows you to balance your direction, err?

DO ~ Hmm, balance my direction…? I don’t know. (laughing) I think I’m at a cross roads. I don’t know what my direction is right now.

MOT ~ But you’re definitely working.

DO ~ Yea, I find that I have to work, I have to keep going, but I guess I don’t know where it’s going to go. The motivation is always there so I always keep moving forward.

MOT ~ It’s an internal motivation, you don’t need external end point, you just work from the inside…?

DO ~ I guess with these paintings yea, I just keep going. Now, say having a show scheduled is good. But that’s more about finishing, forcing me to finish. Or decide that this is where I let it stop. Right now I don’t have anything scheduled, so I’m not working in that way. Just kinda keep it none players paint. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

MOT ~ Do you do any exercises to stay energized or other methods that you may use to prepare your mind and body prior to painting or like, once you feel like you’ve drained your creative energies, is there any thing you go do to recharge?

DO ~ Well, one thing, with this studio, I almost always ride my bike here. I almost always have a few ideas I’ve thought up on the ride, and know once I get here. I find that having that distance and that time between my home and studio is a practice that helps clear out [my mind]. Now I’m leaving real world behind and entering studio world where (just getting excited thinking about it) possibilities are endless. I don’t have to worry about finding a job or doing the dishes. Physical exercise in the form of transportation, I find works for me. I find it hard to just exercise for exercise sake, so I have to trick myself. I like that my home and studio are far from each other so it forces me to do that. Mentally it’s good. Walking, I take walks, I find it helps recharge me too. I always attribute that to our hunter gather-ness from way back in our evolution, that walking around helps us think. I definitely find that I can think better when I’m moving.

MOT ~ Some people, artists, graphic designers – I know you do some graphic design work – bouncing from one element to the other you probably have to take into consideration the audience. How do trigger those elements within you?

DO ~ While I’m painting I’m always considering composition, stepping back and thinking about how somebody might find their way through this painting. I think a lot of my work is about is about how we receive information and how we deal with HUGE amounts of information that we’ve never had to do before. Like right now we have the whole world at our finger-tips, and what do you do at that point. And when you’re faced with a river full of logs, or like, ya know that board at the airport with all those different lines; how does your eye figure out where to go first and decode all that stuff? That’s how I picture the viewer dealing with these paintings, and I want them to have to come back more then once and see different things or not be able to always have the same path through the painting; for them to be able to take different things away from it.

MOT ~ Have you been able to witness the reactions?

DO ~ That’s the hard part. With paintings I’m not always there with them, you can put a comment box, but it’s like whose gonna . . . hahaha. What I’d really love is to video tape someone’s eyeballs and what path they take. But, so no, I haven’t, I think that’s something that’s been triggering this interest in interactive work is to get that feedback. I’m putting out something and I need that feedback, and it’s hard to get with traditional work. Maybe putting plexi-glass over my work and providing dry erase markers for people to draw on it or have blocks that can be moved around and rearranged.

I think the challenge with that is the stumbling block of “don’t touch the art” that most people have inborn, “don’t touch that, it’s precious!” That’s something I would like people to get over. I treat my work like… I sit on it, tear it apart, sand it down. For me it’s not precious any more, I think the challenge for me is how to get the viewer past that and gauge the reaction.

Technical:

MOT ~ Do you have any books, resources, or particular tools on hand regularly that you turn to?

DO ~ Well, there’s a graphic designer named Tibor Kalman, that’s totally my guru for… everything really. There’s a book I think just called “Tibor” that I keep handy. He did a bunch of Talking Heads [album] covers and designed products like a black umbrella with the underside clouds. He did this whole series of paperweights that were crumpled up graph paper. Things like that, he took the every day and flipped it over and handed it back to you.

There’s an artist named Tom Freidman, I really love his work. He does a similar thing, he takes everyday objects like paper and pencil and obsessively works with it. He took all these pencils, cut each at a 45-degree angle and stuck them back together until he created this mound (doing some motions with his hands) like this, a tangled mess. He’s done some other stuff with paper. He did a piece with bubble gum, he used 1500 pieces of bubble gum that he sculpted into this perfect sphere and he pressed it in the corner of the gallery at head height. And he did another piece, where he had an empty gallery and stretched this gum from the floor to the ceiling.

MOT ~ Damn, that’s got to be a lot of gum!

DO ~ He had another with this pencil in the shape of a lighting bolt that went from the ceiling to the ground. So I keep his books around, he’s influencing me. Ummm, Basquiat, he’s been an influence. I’ve found at times I have to put him away because he’s too good, too influential. So I’m kind of off of him right now. He was ahead of his time.

MOT ~ Can you talk a little about your process? You mentioned riding your bike and coming up with ideas. Like your process from idea, dream or where ever in your head or like reading about those different natural things that are occurring and how you may work with that in your brain, consciously or subconsciously, and how you work on bringing that out into a final product.

DO ~ I think that’s just usually happens on paper. I keep sketchbooks, and make sketches on paper a lot. Sometimes I’ll have little flashes a lot and scribble it down and usually just develop it on paper. Just last weekend I had this idea about how tied to laptops we are, and thinking about – this might be like a t-shirt design – having a person and a laptop in love, like “you complete me.” I don’t know, a lot of things just like that, having little flashes and scribbling that down. The floods and stuff like that, I think, “Oh, I’m thinking about the floods,” okay, so I’ll just start drawing endless log jams on paper. I think that’s my main process is thinking on paper, thinking through drawings. I’m not sure if you answered the question…

MOT ~ Any particular technique’s to you that allow you to distinguish your style?

DO ~ With painting, it’s all about layering, I almost always paint with just one color at a time. I’ll often paint on multiple paintings at once with that one color. So I don’t know if that’s unique to me, but that’s how I’ve always done it. I do a lot of covering up of other things, or covering mostly and leaving little parts to show through.

Let’s see, I also like to use rags, and be really rough. Using wood panels allows me to be really rough, and getting back to that element of not being precious. I think about painting as scrubbing a floor. Except I don’t like finishing things, so it’d be like scrubbing about 75% of the floor and leaving the rest. I think I do that a lot. My drawing style may be unique to me, but it’s hard to put that into words specifically.

MOT ~ Are there drawing tools. . .?

DO ~ Yea, I mostly draw with ball point pens. Ahhhh. What’s the kind I use, just Bic’s maybe. I like ballpoint pens because you can get a wide range of marks. If you push really hard you get a deep mark or you can barely touch it and get a really fine hair mark. I haven’t found another art material that can be so far ranging in marks. I don’t know, I guess I might like them because they’re cheap, always around, and leave money out of the equation.

MOT ~ True. So, we’ve talked about this a little bit. You’ve been working on these paintings for quite a while. How can you tell when something is complete? How do you keep from (said in almost unison) working it to death?

DO ~ Oh man, I think some of these I have worked to death. I’ve just not worried about finishing and just kept going and going and going. Some of them have reached a point where I think they’re just fucked. It’s over! Over worked. Maybe they’ll come back around on the other side if I keep going. I don’t know, that’s the question. I don’t have an answer to that yet. I think it’s finished at midnight the day before you have to get your show up.

I guess I could talk about the mural in Brazil. It was this all over style and that’s one way to get around that problem. If the style itself is to fill up the wall to a certain level of density. That particular mural crawled out and stopped at a certain point, it was almost like a virus or bacteria that stopped at a certain point. It crawled up to the wall, onto the ceiling a little bit, around two or three corners and then stopped. I consider the shape that it becomes. The finishing is “is it dense enough everywhere? Yes, okay it’s finished.” But as far as these paintings I haven’t found that or let myself go that way.

MOT ~ With graphic design or say the book you’re working on, how do you know you’ve completed that?

DO ~ Well, graphic design I feel is different. I feel more of a corner that you turn and it finishes. Or I guess with graphic design I’ve figured it out more, or have more of a sense “okay, this is finished right here.” And that happens once in a while in the paintings.

So, I don’t like to finish. I don’t like to finish anything in my whole life. I’ll read a whole book and leave the last ten pages. Or do all the dishes and leave a fork, knife and bowl. I don’t enjoy finishing things at all. There’s probably other examples of that I’m sure. Finishing anxiety. Once it’s finished it has to be on its own.

MOT ~ Say like with Tibor, say you were able to sit down and ask him like three questions. What would you ask him?

DO ~ Maybe something about how you deal with failure. How do you deal with getting your idea chopped off, something like that. One of his things was ‘you’ve got to go out and find the client that will let you do what you want.’ Like, he did that magazine called “Colors” which was paid for completely by Benetton’s, they took no editorial control over that How do you find that? How do you find that sponsor or person that sees your vision and let you do what you want. Another paraphrase of his I thought was cool, “You want to find clients that are smarter than you, not stupider. Because if you have clients that are smarter than you, you’ll be able to expand. If they’re stupider then you, your time will be spent trying to catch them up or just being frustrated they wont let you do what you want.

I’ve never been good at talking to people that I’ve admired that way. I feel like (changing voice) “duhhh, I really like your work.” Like seeing the lead singer after the concert and saying, “hey, great show,” (almost seeming slightly nervous just thinking about it) but what do you say after that.

MOT ~ Do you want to talk a little about how you were selected for that trip to Brazil and about that?

DO ~ It’s a funny story. A student of mine, sort of, well when I was in grad school I was a teachers assistant and this woman Alana was in two of my classes. She got this scholarship to go to Brazil. She went down there for a year, started talking to all these different artists and hatched this idea of ‘artist as ambassador.’ So she organized this exchange of five artists from Brazil that were part of this gallery called ‘Al gen shil Carioca’ and carioca is a person from Rio de Janeiro, like a Portlander from Portland, so like a gentle person from Rio.

They’d just started this gallery and their whole mission was education. Putting contemporary art in front of the average person and building a creative community. Five artists from Brazil ended up coming to Portland and doing a show at PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art). It was great stuff.

One artist had a piece were she wove feathers on to live chickens in Carnival style costumes, with a whole chicken coop that was built in the gallery. For a month these chickens were there in PNCA gallery, squawking, laying eggs and all this stuff. And some really experimental sound art that was happening. A video of this guy slow motion biking on the beach in Rio, he had a gut. Ernesto Neto (Ernesto Saboia de Albuquerque Neto) had a sculpture there, that was awesome. He does this kind of soft sculpture.

So that happened in August 2005, this last January 2007 5 artists from Portland went to Rio and put on a show at this “ Gallery”. I ended up getting selected I think because I knew Alana, and they liked my mural work. The all over murals, I’d done a couple.

I had done one at ‘New American Casuals,’ do you remember that shop? Do you remember ‘Poker face?’ Anyways it was a clothing store under the Morrison Bridge, he was a real proponent of street art and sold aerosol and sold all sorts of clothing. He cleared out his whole shop and I covered all the walls, 15 foot walls with this all over black lines on white wall. Dense covering on every inch of the wall. That’s what I showed the selection team and they liked that.

I ended up making drawings that were both things from Portland, flood themes, log jams, and also stuff that I saw in Brazil. It was interesting because some of the imagery was decades old and some of it was seconds old. Some of the artists from Rio would come in and… like this one guy had a rubber stamp of his face, and just stamp that on his work. It was just constant on everything, and I put one of those stamps in the mural, and I put the chickens with the colored Carnival feathers. So it was like everything and the kitchen sink idea, it’s all going in, no editing going on.

We went there with 8 students from PSU that were there assisting us, which was great, I’ve never worked that way before with so much help. I had all these drawings created and we used digital projectors to put’em up on the wall and I had all this help tracing them with black paint. It was a really fun experience to have all that help, it was kind of overwhelming at the end how much work had been down.

MOT ~ Did you notice any cultural elements that would allow them to do one thing versus here where there are cultural elements to do another thing?

DO ~ Probably the coolest thing we saw there was these kids. Rio is surrounded by these slums, favelas, and we got to go into one which is pretty rare. Mostly tourists don’t because they are pretty dangerous, yea

MOT ~ “City of God?”

DO ~ Hahaha, yea, that’s what we saw before we went and we were scared shitless, hahaha. This guy that was staying at the same place as us had come to work on this project in the favela. So we got to go in and see that these kids had taken bricks from the surrounding houses and with a little hammer had pounded out little windows making a mini-favela. All of a sudden one brick had become one house. They had made this scale model, they had everything, even little lego guys, toy cars, police… everything. They had built it on this hillside.

That would have been cool enough, but now these kids have traveled all over the world with this. And they were in the most recent Venice Biennale (Biennale di Venezia) where they flew over there, flew a bunch of Brazilian bricks there and built this whole thing. They’ve been to France and Barcelona, all over the place. That was just insane. It’s such a cool project but it’s cool to see these kids who looked like all the other kids in the favela, except they had gold chains around their next and would be talking on their cell phones constantly. And here are these kids that are basically way more famous as artists then any of… I mean a lot of the people I was with from Portland were some of the best artists in town. Much more distinguished then me, most of them. And you have these little kids who’ve shown in Venice Biennale, climbed half the mountain.
Just seeing how what starts off as play and is a good idea can just, well, there’s no end to what that can become. That was an inspiring trip.
That was like our last day and awesome to finish on that note.

It was so inspiring to see those kids doing that really making it happen. You watch “City of God” and think it must just be a horrible place to live. If you ask those kids “so you make a little bit of money now have you thought about moving outside the favela?” Their response, “no, I love the favela, it’s great.” I can see why, it’d be like if Multnomah Village was on top of the West Hills. They had the best views of Rio, they could see the whole thing. It’s interesting to flip the script and see the other side of things.

You have these conceptions of how something is, that living in a favela is a horrible thing, but maybe not necessarily. Just incredibly nice people. But violence was a way of life, it was there. Luckily nobody in our group had any problems. Another girl staying in the same place as us got robbed. Her camera, passport, everything stolen. It is a totally dangerous place, but they’re also the nicest people you’ll ever meet. There’s definitely creativity in that kind of environment, like all or nothing. The stakes were raised or something.

Then we got back to Portland and it snowed. From 90 degree weather to snow. That was hard. Tremendous culture shock when we got back even though we’d only been gone for two weeks.

Notes:

Thanks for joining in on another installment. Hopefully these are getting better or providing some interesting reading for you. Let me know what you think. To see more work by Don stop by
www.donolsen.com