Fresh Fish Heads

–> Quality Time With Señor Yamamoto

~ INTRO ~

Who knew it would take more then an hour per interview not including travel time. It’s possibly ambitious overestimation scheduling four interviews in distant locations of Los Angeles, or just plain insanity. Regardless, after spending some quality time with my cousin and her son at the Long Beach Aquarium, followed by a leap to Venice Beach to meet with Frank Rozasy, I found the day half over and the schedule totally off. Maybe counting the miles between locations on my map would have helped. A workers demonstration severely backing up traffic around the Civic Center area right outside my destination in the Little Tokyo ‘hood really threw a wrench into my plans. Running hella late, I checked my cell and noticed numerous missed calls. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins driving me to complete the days mission. Yoskay had been patiently waiting and doubting if I was going to make it, especially when he realized I’d been given the wrong address. This initial sputter corrected, we finally connected at the spot Yoskay Yamamoto prefers to relax, sketch and take in the LA scenery.

~ BACKGROUND ~

Moments Of Truth ~ What’s your main form of creative expression?

Yoskay Yamamoto ~ As in medium? Like mainly, well. . . I don’t know. I like playing around with a lot of stuff. Mainly it’s paintings but I do sculptures on the side, like installations. And I do freelance graphic design.

MOT ~ How do you float between them? Do you have to change the way you work or anything?

YY ~ There’s definitely a similar aspect that I can apply to each. Like while doing some computer graphics I’ll come up with an idea I can apply to painting. Same thing with painting to another medium. Lately I’ve been taking pictures of a background or abstract images and bring that into Photoshop or Illustrator and mess around with it. So it works vice versa, even sculptures. . . well it’s good to have different outlets because I can get bored easily. I might paint for three months straight and come to a point where I have to sculpt something. It’s nice to have that option.

My main medium or focus is probably painting though. I think that’s my strongest skill.

MOT ~ What is it that always draws you back to painting?

YY ~ I think I just enjoy colors a lot. That’s a good question. I’m a big manga geek.

MOT ~ What, like ‘otaku?’

YY ~ Well, I wouldn’t quite say that I am but maybe on some level. So I think that shows a lot in my work, what I read and what I’m into.

MOT ~ Where did you grow up?

YY ~ A small town called Toba, 400 miles near Tokyo closer to the Osaka / Nagoya area. It’s right by the ocean.

MOT ~ Do you think that community had any influence on your ideas and how you express yourself creatively?

YY ~ Not necessarily art. Coming out here [to the U.S.] definitely because I just got bored. Watching two of my older brothers go through high school like everybody else, then college, then on to whatever. I don’t want to do that. So I came out here originally just to attend high school then I was going to return to Japan for college but I just had too much fun. You know, high school, the city college program, it was good.

MOT ~ Have you noticed any major cultural contrasts, say between urban and small town, U.S. and Japan…?

YY ~ Ahhh shit man, I haven’t gone home for like six years so it’s kind of hard to recapture what I felt.

MOT ~ What about from your childhood, does that come out in any way?

YY ~ I had a show in January called ‘Slanted Pigeon,’ the title referring to me being an Asian and Japanese and all that. That whole show’s subject matter was paying respect to my old cartoon heroes that I used to watch, like vintage forgotten heroes. Did you know that in Japan cartoons are so popular that every couple of months there’s a new show and the old one gets pushed back and you’ll only see it late night on the re-runs kind of thing. So I wanted to give a shout-out to all the characters I used to watch.

MOT ~ So there’s a high turnover rate for cartoon characters in Japan. Are they different characters or are the same ideas being rehashed constantly?

YY ~ There are certain continuous shows, take the ‘Power Rangers’ for example, that’s been going through since the late seventies. Or the ‘Masked Rider’ Kevin Rider has also been running since the seventies, but they change the main character each time coming up with some new names and new motorcycles.

MOT ~ Does anyone else in your family put a lot of energy into a creative medium? How did you get into it?

YY ~ Like I said I’m a big Manga geek so I used to copy a lot of the Manga I used to read. When I came over here, at the first high school I went to, I became friends with this guy JJ who wrote graffiti in Santa Barbara, which is like a pretty small town, and he took me around and showed me spots. We did graffiti here and there until finally it lead me to search. . . because I was never good at lettering, the only thing I could do was really characters. With that realization I kind of got over that whole graffiti scene and started looking into ‘Juxtapoz’ a lot and do more character based work.

Now I’m trying to step out of that whole base because when I look through that magazine everything looks kind of similar. I’m trying to switch up a little bit.

MOT ~ How are you doing that?

YY ~ By just being patient, trying not to rush it. I think style is one of those things you can’t just change with a finger snap. Sure, I wish I could, like go completely abstract or something else. I think I should just be patient and find out what my strengths and interests are. From there, narrow that down to a fine point. Right now I’m still messing around with characters, figures and landscapes, but I’m pretty sure eventually it’ll come down to some key things that I’m really interested in.

MOT ~ How do you go about identifying your strengths?

YY ~ It’s funny because the stuff I like always has a hard time selling. Those things that I’m like ‘whatever’ sells easier. So I don’t know if my self-critique is right about my style and where to go with my direction. When I finish certain work, some just speaks louder to me. When that happens I want to try that and maybe mix it with something else. It’s like I’m doing it because it grew out of a hobby, I wasn’t trying to be successful or anything. I was just trying to enjoy it. It’s weird because a lot of time people will look at a work and ask “what does this mean to you, what does this fish head mean to you?” I’m like not that deep, I just want to make images and share them with people. If people enjoy that, great, it’s mainly for myself actually.

MOT ~ The clip you have on your page of you working out the fish head image on that piece of wood, that’s pretty sick, how’d that come about?

YY ~ My buddy picked it up from a flea market and gave it to me. My friend Megan was attending Brooks Institute and had an assignment to shoot somebody doing something showing their progress. I said “Oh, I can paint and you can shoot me.” And she’s like “Oh, that’d be great.” It took some two hours and she had a gadget that took pictures every five or ten seconds so you end up with hundreds of hundreds images. She converted that to a Quicktime and gave me a copy. It’s fun, I love that little media. I think it’s funny because I look like I’m working really fast, like in some kind of sweat shop. I enjoy projects like that where I get to collaborate and it works out.

MOT ~ Have you had any mentors or guides for any of the mediums you’re working in?

YY ~ The person I can think of is the artist J. Shea nai, he does great work. He works a lot with found objects and assembles them making sculptures out of it. When he paints he puts all these wooden canvases together so as not to paint on the square stuff. That got me to experiment more and also a major reason why I started sculpting too. Before that I was strictly painting, then I had a show with him and was like “Shea, dude your sculptures are fucking rad man.” And he said “Oh, it’s just something called ‘model magic,’ you should try it out.” Then I started messing with it. He’s been a big influence on me.

Another guy is David Flores, pretty well known for stain glass style portraits and landscapes. Nowadays he does more design work then fine art work because I don’t think he’s had a show in a while. He used to be my mentor at my internship and is the one who helped me get into group shows. Without his help maybe I wouldn’t be as successful as I’ve been. Because it’s nasty, but it doesn’t seem so much about what you can prove out of yourself, as who you know, sometimes, to get into shows. I’m glad he helped.

Who else? Well, all these other artists, even though I’ve never met them in person, if I read an article about them it’s inspiring, giving me confidence to do my own things. Just recently I met this artist Kofie One and he’s really cool. I met him in the Seattle group show. Meeting with artists in different situations is pretty motivating too.

(We’re sitting outside Groundswork Café on the cusp of Los Angeles Japan Town area. I’m having lunch, two espresso’s, and hanging out just long enough for this interview at Yoskay’s think tank area. Unfortunately at the moment we’re semi distracted by a table nearby that is in a heated nonsensical conversation. Normally this would be just the spot for the ‘Psykoo Babbler’ to join in the urban madness but the day is rapidly revolving out of sight, I’m way behind already and there’s still two more MOT appointments in totally different parts of the city to meet. So although the digital recording is a little garbled now, the magic is in the air.)

MOT ~ How do you go about approaching different artists?

YY ~ This show in Seattle was hosted by Scion. Do you know how Scion does installation tours? I was invited this year. This particular touring show started in Seattle and is headed for Miami in December ‘07. The show displayed works by Kofie, Chris Yarmick and myself. The curator took us to dinner so we got to meet each other.

The gallery owner at Project art directs me sometimes, because when I have a hard time finishing a piece I’ll take it to my friends to get some feedback. Often I’ll do that with him because he seems to give me solid direction.

~ INSPIRATION ~

MOT ~ Do you follow an overall philosophy that you work by, something you find helps you stay creative?

YY ~ I just uhhhh…. Oh MAN, you lost me. I see a lot of artists get to one point and they start to do half ass work. Primarily I have to satisfy myself before anyone else.

MOT ~ Before or after, anywhere in the process, do you take an audience into consideration in some way?

YY ~ Not really, I like changing stuff a lot. Like, when you go to my website, it hasn’t really been updated for a couple years; maybe not since ’05. I may even have some stuff on there from ’04. What I’m doing now is completely different from where I started. I think my work is constantly changing and I like that. I’m not trying to paint my fish head character for the rest of my life, I’m not into that. I’m not into painting Space Monkey or Bigfoot for the rest of my life. I’m not dissing those guys, I’m happy they’re happy doing their thing, but I like change probably because, like I said before, I get bored a little too easy.

Some of the greatest artists like say Picasso had so many different styles, always coming up with new stuff. That’s a trait I really admire, that drive to always question your work, trying to change your style and subject matter. Artists who show progress and growth I really like, instead of just picking one style and stretching that over the next twenty years or whatever.

MOT ~ Is that something you can do on a conscious level or is it just built into your psyche? Or is it more like what you were saying about just being patient?

YY ~ I’m not really sure. One philosophy I do have is to not paint a character in the exact same way. Sure, I may paint a fish head, but he’ll be from a different angle or different perspective. Little tweaks help keep myself interested in my characters. From the extent that I get bored [of that character] even though I change the angle, I know I’m over it and it’s time to do something else.

For example, the fish head character I started doing it in ’04. Then I didn’t paint it for maybe a year or year and half because I’d just gotten sick of it, ya know. But people would ask me “aren’t you going to paint more fish head, more fish head?” Eventually, last year I started working with him again. Before that they were all from the torso and up, profiles essentially. Then I started doing this infant like, kinda weird proportion of the head being one and the body also one, a ratio of one to one. So it appears to be a baby with a fish head on it. That kind of progress makes me happy to see that I can take an old idea and create something new. That always puts a smile on my face.

Certain times I’ll get an idea but I can’t execute it because my technique isn’t there yet. So ideas that may be two or three years old, somehow I’m finally able to do them. That’s a signal to me that my skills have progressed. I don’t know, it seems that just because an idea is old doesn’t necessarily mean it’s outdated or a bad idea. It’s just an idea you had before but never got to use it to its fullest. Even Japanese stuff, I used to do a lot of Japanese based theme work then got over it, but now I’m coming back to it using more of the design aspect. For example I’ve been incorporating traditional textile design into my work. Like a full cycle, starting out doing the manga thing then got into graffiti then got into Ukoe-e and the Japanese tattoo style into more of an urban pop type of thing… just going around and around.

MOT ~ Sure man, life’s kind of like that. Do you ever feel drained of your energy to create? What brings you back to feeling creatively energized?

YY ~ Oh yea, sometimes I’ll get that thing people call ‘writers block.’ What’s that…? Certain times I just can’t do shit, so when that hits I’ll just try to at least sketch, even if I can’t sketch my own stuff I’ll try to sketch a picture out of a photo or something just trying to keep active. Here, I’ll show you my sketchbook.

See, a lot of stuff I just doodle. I may pick an image out of a photo and try to do that. This sketchbook I started in San Francisco two years ago. Sometimes I’ll sketch out other peoples work to just figure out what they’re trying to do, like Space Monkey. . .

MOT ~ Like Dalek there?

YY ~ OH MAN, he is technically crazy. Have you seen his painting in real life? It’s completely flat, you can’t see any brush strokes or anything.

MOT ~ Some people use that black sandpaper that’s used to sand metal with a little bit of water.

YY ~ Oh, water sand it, right, right. Well, lately I’ve been trying to experiment a little more. All these were pencil and pen sketches and I’ve started trying to paint into it a little bit. I’d never tried to do that in my sketchbook before, so it’s been kind of fun just playing around. Certain pages I might not like, so I’ll just paint it over and start again.

The sketchbook has always been like the backbone of my work. When I get metal blocks I’ll go back to my sketchbook. Even when flipping through old sketchbooks I’ll find an image that I may have never liked before – the same thing with music, you develop certain tastes along the way. I never really like The Beatles, but now I love them. The sketchbook is a good gauge of one’s progress too, it’s right in front of you.

~ TECHNICAL ~

MOT ~ So would you describe your process from beginning to end starting with your sketchbook?

YY ~ The way it sometimes works for me really depends. Each work comes out or starts out differently. I’ll sketch something and if I like it, it’ll work into a painting. Sometimes I’ll just start painting and in the process of enjoying working it out something cool may appear. This [sketchbook] is where I brainstorm and try to figure things out. I guess everything comes out of here and makes its way into my paintings and sculptures.

MOT ~ How can you tell when you’re working out an idea or painting that it’s reached that finish point?

YY ~ Well, I have a few unfinished paintings. Certain things sometimes are puzzles to me, and, as I work, it’s a search for the solution to fix the problem. I may do backgrounds and certain colors may not be right. It takes me a little while to figure out the colors.

So when it looks good to me, I know it’s done. Sometimes I’ll submit a piece thinking it’s finished and looks good. When it doesn’t sell and I get it back it may strike me “Oh, maybe this was lacking this, it’s missing this, that’s why people didn’t respond.” Certain times I’ll get a piece back and rework it and submit it again kind of thing.

MOT ~ When you’re working it out do you loose track of time, where does your mind go?

YY ~ Oh dude, when I’m in the mood, I’ll be sitting down at my desk for hours. Like certain times, it totally depends on my mood, I may get irritated, can’t focus and have to just take a break. When I’m enjoying mixing colors, just working on it time passes really quickly. That’s when I know I’m enjoying it too. It’s kind of a great feeling.

MOT ~ You’ve worked with a lot of different images and like to keep evolving. I’m curious how much creative freedom you believe you have from the perspective of it being intrinsic versus the society around you?

YY ~ Man, that’s interesting. New ideas are sometimes hard for me to come up with, something ground breaking or whatever. But like I said, I know it takes patience, I know every piece is not going to be my masterpiece. I know I do some crap work, some shitty work here and there, I just work through it. I mean, mistakes make perfection. Even Picasso, I’ve seen some shitty paintings he did. It’s not that big a deal for me, sure it’s frustrating but I try to tell myself to be patient, just work through it. It takes time.

MOT ~ What do you think it is that keeps driving you to make art instead of finding some other thing to do, or not doing anything at all?

YY ~ Dude, I can’t imagine doing anything else. That’s truly it! I get such a kick out of all of this. I think this is the way I can enjoy my life the most. Because having shows, sharing my work with people, getting feedback and people buying my work agreeing to the value that I put it out at… that’s such a good compliment to me. And it’s a weird kind of natural high that I get. It feels good. And I can’t imagine having that same kind of achievement or good feeling from just selling a car. I might sell a car and get excited knowing “hey, I’m making this much commission,” but it’s not really mentally or soulfully filling you up like you get to do with art or music.

MOT ~ If you had the chance to sit down and talk with any artists, or anyone you might find interesting, are there any questions you’d be interesting in asking them?

YY ~ Noooo, not really. I would just love to ask those dead artists or musicians how life was like during that time.

My main focus is pushing myself forward and not worrying so much about the outcome. So far I’ve had good luck. Everybody has up and down times. Without the down times I don’t really think you can appreciate the up times. Of course there’s inspiration in both emotions. When you’re happy you’ll likely create something that looks pretty. When you’re negative, sad, or whatever, you tend to create something darker. Both sides have important emotional inspiration embedded into them. It’s funny that a lot of what I consider my good work comes during down times. In up times I end up doing cutesy little things, and I’m alright with it, but when I do something that speaks a little louder, it has a greater impact. Too me, it seems that negative emotions tend to have that more powerful impact. I guess I just have an easier time transferring that emotion to an image. I mean, all the great songs are like sad miserable songs ya know.

Check out more on Yoskay via these links below

Yoskay’s homepage ~ www.yoskay.com

See more about the art and artists of the Scion traveling ‘It’s A Beautiful World’ installation project ~ www.scion.com/installation/

Yoskay’s profile on the Scion page ~ www.scion.com/installation/yamamoto.html

Become his friend at ~ www.myspace.com/yoskayyamamoto

A little blurb about the upcoming release of Yoskay’s fishhead vinyl sculpture ~ www.vinylpulse.com/2007/07/yoskay-yamamoto.html

Some of his work from a show at Think Space Gallery ~ www.sourharvest.com/thinkspace/east2west/index.php

Ground Up In LA

~ An Interview With Frank Rozasy ~

~ INTRO ~

On a daily basis, you encounter countless creatures doing what it takes to survive. Is survival simply getting enough to eat and protection from the elements, or does it go deeper? According to the commonly accepted breakdown, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it evolves to a certain level. More levels could yet be uncovered. Winding down the classic Highway 1 into Southern California and dodging raging wildfire mayhem, Moments Of Truth has arrived in Los Angeles.

As we’re all too well aware, this rotating hunk called earth is in a state of constant flux. Winds that hurl flames in any and all directions is current proof of that. Some of us may fuel the fantasy of bodies frozen in stasis while the mind establishes believable illusions of a life. Though that doesn’t provide an answer, questions abound about life, from youth until adulthood, as a person seeks to comprehend their purpose on earth. Maybe it’s a lot simpler than we want to believe. One factor that seems to remain constant, no matter how much oatmeal you consume, is that certain geographic locations are attributed a particular status. A person who survives and achieves success in New York, Paris, London, or Los Angeles has. . . well, ‘made it.’ The rest of us, well. . . I guess we’re still trying to figure ‘it’ out.

In a cozy Venice Beach one bedroom apartment Frank Rozasy lives, breathes, and dreams among the materials he develops into expressions of his passions. Is your purpose survival, and survival as simple as following your passions?

~ BACKGROUND ~

Moments Of Truth ~ Hello Frank, thanks for taking the time to share with us. To start off, please describe the creative medium(s) you focus on.

Frank Rozasy ~ I’m a painter, a photographer, computer graphics artist and I do installations.

MOT ~ Has this changed or evolved over time?

FR ~ Oh yea, absolutely! It’s always been figurative, but it’s evolved especially with the computer. Once you start working with the computer, it’s like a pencil or anything else, it opens up infinite different venues and creative ideas.

MOT ~ Is there one you really enjoy focusing on? I see you have a lot of nice wood, do you use that for your paintings?

FR ~ Well, yea, if you’ll walk up with me I’ll show you. . . (Frank takes the opportunity to introduce me to his studio space. I love getting into workshops, I don’t know if it’s because of growing up with my dad as a carpenter and his woodshop being a place to explore with adult equipment and ideas or what.)

I’ve been working with my friend and model, her name is Doe, doing art of her for the last 25 years. That’s her, that’s Doe. I don’t know if you went to my website but I have hundreds of pieces of fantasy art and it’s all her. I’ve taken probably tens of thousands of pictures with Doe and make a lot of fantasy art. Also, I do nostalgic stuff which is – my father was a photographer – I take the old family photographs and do a whole bunch of different crap to it and then paint those.

Then I’m a jazz photographer, do jazz and I like old bebop (jazz brought out in the 1940’s that is described as fast tempo and improv based on harmonic structure rather than melody) Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and that kind of stuff.

MOT ~ Did you take all of those pictures?

FR ~ I’ve taken some of them, but more so I work with a famous jazz photographer called Ray Avery (Murray “Ray” Bertrand Avery) he gave me the use of his archives to do all of his stuff in my style. And the same thing, I got hooked up with Tom Kelly who did the naked Marilyn Monroe and the Michael Lopes archives, which gave me use of these other Marilyn Monroe photographers so I got the copyrights to use. Then I do beach scenes, landscapes, wilderness camping… I like to go out and camp, take pictures and my passion is the beach. I do long distance ocean swimming and I’ll take a ton of stuff on the beach and make art of that.

So basically that’s what I do. There’s my little art attack thing which shows all the shows I’ve been in since 1990.

MOT ~ That’s a cool map, I’m gonna have to get a photo of that! What do you think it is that draws you to this… this element and medium?

FR ~ The jazz, I’ve always liked jazz. My parents were into jazz and they introduced it to me when I was real young. Along with rock-n-roll and all that. Doing the woman fantasy pieces, I hooked up with this lady and we’ve been together and making art for 25 years sooooo, that’s that. The old nostalgic stuff, that’s family stuff. And the Marilyns just happen to hook on. It’s basically I just do art of my passions, where the passion is. It’s sort of a no-brainer, you do what’s in your heart.

MOT ~ Awesome. Joseph Campbell said it best, right?!

FR ~ Yea. And I never try to make anything for sale. I try to make it for art, and if I luck out and somebody buys it, cool, if not. . . ya know. Cause I tried one time to do stuff that I thought would be sellable, and it didn’t sell. So I let that go early on. Why bother to try and make things sellable that don’t sell, might as well make what’s in your heart and have that not sell and at least get some sort of reward out of it.

MOT ~ Where exactly did you grow up?

FR ~ I grew up here in Los Angeles, so I’m a native. At 18 I moved to London for awhile, then moved to the East Coast living in New York for awhile followed by Massachusetts, back to London, eventually around 1980 returned to L.A.

MOT ~ Did you notice different creative communities while living in these locations?

FR ~ Where I grew up was right near the hub of Los Angeles during the 50’s and 60’s. Like the Ferris Gallery there, and all these galleries. When I was real little, Thursday night they’d have these art walks. I remember leaving my house at the age of 12, 13, 14, with my parents and going out and checking the art. (His voice changes to express the awe of a young man) Seeing these artists, their galleries, and their lofts and everything. I was like, “Oh yeah, I wanna be an artist.”

MOT ~ So that was the moment when you really knew the direction you wanted to go?

FR ~ Well no. My earliest memories are drawing from going through “World Book” encyclopedias. I always knew that I was going to be an artist but it helped when I saw their lifestyle. I was like “yeah, this is cool.”

~ INSPIRATION ~

MOT ~ How have you managed to stick to it and continue to make art? Have there been obstacles?

FR ~ It’s like “why do you make art?” And the answer is “well, why do you breathe?” You just make art.

MOT ~ To put it succinctly, it sounds like your passions inspire your life of art.

FR ~ Yes, yes, it’s just whatever the passion is and it serves as an outlet.

MOT ~ How do you think swimming long distance in the ocean influences you?

FR ~ The long distance ocean swimming has something sort of magical about it. Basically I’m just a poor artist – not a struggling artist but a poor artist – sometimes when I get down I go out to the ocean, swim a mile. Before I may be thinking “man, life sucks,” and after finishing it’ll switch to “oh yea, life’s good.” It’s good, I swim on my back so my face is always up and there’s dolphin and sea lion encounters, along with pelicans and a lot other sea life out there in the bay. From swimming there for years I know a lot of the people out there. Overall, it’s sort of magical.

That’s just one of the reasons I would identify to make art, it sort of rejuvenates you. It doesn’t cost anything to swim in the ocean, and I’m on a reeeeal low budget (Frank breaks into a chuckle as he reiterates) I gotta find things for a low budget. There’s nothing to hurt you out there: no sharks, no jelly fish. Well, there are, but they’re all juvenile and not really going to do anything, these guys are afraid of the sea lions. Seeing as the sea lions are afraid of me, there’s nothing to hurt you out there. The only thing that could hurt you are boaters, but since I swim with my head up I know when the boats are coming.

MOT ~ Through the process of growing into art from a young age have you had various mentors or specific folks that have really helped guide you?

FR ~ When I was 18 and first went to Europe it was with my friend and his father. His great uncle was a very famous artist named Leon Hindenbaumer who went by Leon Hinden. He lived in Paris and was a contemporary of Modigliani (Amedeo Clemente Modigliani an Italian artist known for his work in painting and sculpture) and they knew all the Jewish artists that were living in Paris at that time.

When we got there he was about 89 years old; we lived with them and hung out. He took us to the museums there and was just a poor artist who had been very famous. One thing was, he couldn’t speak very much French, but what he said that stuck with me was that you have to persevere. It wasn’t until years later when I realized in college, reading art history, that his name popped up all the time. I was like “wow, uncle Leo, he’s the man!” No matter what happens you just persevere. He was an influence and I also like to read art history.

MOT ~ Any particular stylistic influences that before you settled into your own brought you closer? Can you describe how you came into your style?

FR ~ Probably the style that really caught me when I was young would be Edward Hopper. That American Realism, and I paint realism: photo-art realism, computer art realism, etc. I liked him because he was sort of loose but distinct and realistic.

MOT ~ Could you touch on your overall philosophy that may not just encompass your work but how you approach life?

FR ~ Like I said before, the most important thing is to have time, not necessarily money. If you have to work all the time then it’s extremely difficult to make art. My whole life I’ve either tried to sell my art or have a day job that I could make some money; as a cook, a packer, did landscaping. I’d always find something that allowed for free time to do my art. As long as that’s arranged and create the art from my passions, as far as working it out to make the art the pieces fall into place for me.

I’ve never had an art block or anything like that, I mean look around, I’ve got more then enough shit piled up to keep me creating. Although I know I’ll never fully get there, just make [art] and not get bitter about when you get all the rejections. Being an artist is worse rejection than being a baseball player.

Being a baseball player you get what, … three out of ten your batting .300, you’re an all-star, okay. An artist you send in your slides… well you don’t generally send in slides anymore, you send your jpeg’s and whatever to try and get into galleries and if you get one out of twenty you’re doing good. The rest of the time your receiving these rejection notices. Everybody who comes and looks at art – say you’re a brain surgeon, nobody’s going to say (Frank alters his voice to a duh) “Eh, you’re not a very good brain surgeon.” But everybody’s got an opinion about art so you need a thick skin and take the good with the bad, just don’t get bitter.

~ TECHNICAL ~

MOT ~ Even though you’re creating for yourself and expressing your passions, do you ever have an audience in mind that comes into play? Like do you consider who might be interested in viewing your work, or how to capture someone’s attention or change their mind about something?

FR ~ On some things, like my installation. It’s called “Walk On The Art,” and what I do is put these hundreds of pieces of art on the ground and make people walk on them. Walking on the art, destroying the art. . . for example I had one focused on species man has killed. The images are of species man has killed and folks are walking on my rendered images destroying them. I do one of my muse and model Doe. I’ve got thousands of pieces of art that range from 8’ x 10’ to 3’ x 5’, framed or images of fantasy’s. So besides walking on art and destroying art you’re walking on naked women and people get all bent out of shape. But, that’s the only time where I’m doing something for an audience. The rest of the time, I’m just doing it with myself in mind.

Sure, of course I know there’s a lot of people that like jazz, so there’s that audience there. I also know there’s a lot of people that like Marilyn, so an obvious audience there. Of course tons of men like the naked lady fantasy, another audience there. If you can see that picture there of Doe, I just finished it. I remember at that photo shoot I had her like that, screaming, and another, where her eyes were up looking very angelic, and I thought to myself “oh, the angelic one looks really nice and people would like it.” Then there’s the crazy one, and the crazy one was better for me, so I painted that one.

MOT ~ How do you go about gathering and building your relationship with your materials? Has what you use evolved over time?

FR ~ Usually when I take a picture, this here is a painting where I took a picture of Doe, then I had some other drawings and pictures from NASA and put them on the computer to work out the composition. From there I printed it, then drew it and painted it. That was the process on this one. Another is, I take the photograph and print it out in a half-tone photo screen, then paint it, and glue it on the wood or gater-board and you can see how it makes it crinkly giving it a textured surface. Some others are pastel images I’ve painted on. (Frank starts to rustle through his various works leaned against his walls to find one illustrating his description) Here you can sort of see some of the graphic art style, there’s one, there’s a sort of surrealistic type and there’s this one and this (imagine you’re sitting in his apartment getting to see different pieces, or flip through this posts accompanying photos again).

I’m always doing this, sort of the end result of the computer art, also the painted photography, and then the paintings with either oils or acrylics or both. I’ve got three main mediums or forms that I’m working in. The other ones are a series in oil pastels. As you can see it’s from the other image (blend of photography and computer graphic manipulation),  but I did it where it’s crinkled. After doing about 30 of these I haven’t really done any more the past couple months. There’s lots of texture involved. Sometimes up to three layers, colored ink, oil pastel, and another oil pastel and I’ll crinkle it and press it out building up a nice texture. That’s that ‘push pull’ shit they’re always talking about. Although the base images may be the same as the photography and computer graphics, these are in the painterly style. They’re all just real personal for me.

Lately, I’ve been making art videos of my art and posting them on the internet. That way you can get people to look at your shit. On one site I get about 40,000 hits a month. Which is pretty good for art, nothing for porno, but for art that’s good. That means every month, I’ve got like 16 of them, folks are checking.

MOT ~ What do you think about the transition from art in the physical realm to the internet? I’ve noticed a general trend to really push the Internet, I mean, that’s what I’m doing here a little with this site. When I see some images on the net it might look great and then in person not so interesting, or vice versa.

FR ~ It’s funny, I’ve got a website and people will visit it and say “Oh, do you ever sell any art over the internet?” No, never. Why does anybody have to buy from there? It’s hard enough trying to sell from the gallery or studio. The Internet is sort of an in-between thing. Here in Los Angeles someone may see my work online and I’ll actually be able to get them over to my studio so they can truly see the art. I guess it’s like anything else, the better you know how to use it, say to make art or get it onto the Internet, make the jpeg image clear, nice, compressed, fast to come up, etc. I like all the Internet stuff, but just as another tool.

MOT ~ The titles on those works posted on your webpage are pretty interesting. I’ve had the question of how does one go about deciding on titles come up recently.

FR ~ Just the titles is what they sort of look like to me. Like I remember this piece where Doe is in these gears being ground up and I thought “Oh, that’s like Los Angeles, it’ll just grind you up.” Okay, ‘LA Will Grind You Up’ became the name of the piece.

MOT ~ Have you tried working around specific goals, say to build styles, techniques or anything really?

FR ~ I was pretty sure that if I put in a lot of time, that say by 30, that things would happen after I’d made all this art. That would lead to me being this blue chip artist by 60. Well, ya know, I ain’t the blue chip artist and I’m sixty now, still struggling, . . . well no, can’t use the word struggling, still poor. It’s like that’s the way it is. The one goal was to just be able to make art, and if I couldn’t make art, that’d be just horrible! Everything is about making art, if that means I’m poor but then I have time to make art, so be it.

MOT ~ In the process of you making art, how do you know when a piece is complete?

FR ~ Historically that is a problem with a lot of artists. For me it’s pretty straight forward since I’m doing realism. I sort of know when it’s done and probably like only one out of 20 pieces I do, those few I can still look at and say “that’s a great piece.” One piece here, I’d been looking at it and looking at it and somebody came over trying to buy some art, had looked at that one and mentioned they could see all the brushstrokes in the background and wouldn’t want it because they’d only see the brushstrokes. I thought I’d finished this one like two years ago, but after that person had left began to notice just how distracting those brushstrokes were. Right before you came up I was repainting the background. That’s usually not how it happens. Normally I’ll finish a piece and then go on to another. That creates the problem of having so much art. I have a storage unit, 6 ft by 12 ft and it’s just packed with art that I never even show anymore; I’m not really into destroying it. I know lots of artists that destroy their art, I figure I’ll just leave it.

MOT ~ I’ve been playing with the idea that some things don’t really have to be done. Plants keep growing, everything around us is constantly changing. It’s the realm of commercial or capitalistic interests that requires an image, article or whatever to be at that ‘done’ stage

FR ~ I guess it’s the artist’s personality that determines when a piece is finished or not. I think it was Rothko whose pieces were never really finished. He’d sell something and still keep it for a while.

MOT ~ As a final note, I like to ask if you have any glaring questions of your own for those that intrigue you, given you had the chance to ask?

FR ~ I read a lot of art history and think it would be nice to be around during certain times. Like to have been able to visit the Cedar Bar in the late 50’s and seeing DeKooning and Pollack hanging out together and shoot the breeze with them, or Lipan ne Gough where Picasso used to hang out in Paris. Maybe go to the dome with the impressionists and drink some absinthe. Maybe not question them about what they are and what they aren’t, but just hang out with them, listen to them talk about art. That’d be okay. The reverse thing would be somewhere a hundred years from now, like go to New York 2120 and listen to them talk. I think the bottom line is we’d all be together in the personhood of artists. Those with the desire to make, to get enough money they can make, how you handled the fame, how you handled the despair, and how you handled your personal life. I think we’d all be, say between 1800 to 21 / 22, it’d all be about the same. I imagine the stuff in the future. . . it’ll be cool.

MOT ~ I’d like to think that art and creativity resides within us all. Humanity didn’t start out driving to the superstore to buy things, and it’s unlikely art sat around contemplating what it is to be creative. Human kind followed the general guidelines of nature, survive, no matter where you are or what the conditions. Not an unheard of story, Frank Rozasy has managed to do the same, surviving to create art. Check out his website www.rozasy.com

Determined To Nature

Portrait Of A Tree

Have you ever aspired to be a “professional” artist only to find an aspect of that path too unacceptable? Maybe the thought of compromising your ideals to get paid for being ‘creative’ extracts the marrow from your soul.

Sitting down at Douglas Greer’s kitchen table at his home just outside the San Jose area, MOT heard the story of an unexpected rescue from the misguided idea of a ‘normal’ life. Childhood dreams of becoming an artist, postponed to avoid the loss of creative freedom for financial gain, found their way back again. Smoked gouda on Triscuits and Austrailian shiraz never tasted so good.

~ BACKGROUND ~

Moments Of Truth ~ If you would, please describe your main creative endeavors?

Douglas Greer ~ Well, it’s watercolors, in one word.

MOT ~ Has this changed or evolved over time?

DG ~ Yes, actually when I first started when I was pretty young, I tended to work more in other mediums. Say, for example, in college I worked more in oils. But then, when I quit to become a regular person and raise a family, I didn’t paint at all. I didn’t start painting again until I went to Ireland in 1989. The medium that I happened to pick up at that time was watercolors, and have since stuck with it.

Within the watercolor department, there is sort of an evolution. You may start off, not knowing exactly what you’re doing and then begin to evolve in a number of ways. One is subject matter; what do you paint? There’s standard things like still life and landscapes or portraits, something like that. What you do is work through a range of options until you settle on what eventually becomes what you’re most excited about painting. That’s the way it works, of course it seems logical that you’d want to use the subject matter you find interesting. Maybe portraits or still life’s aren’t your thing, so you don’t do those. That’s a key as well as your palette.

I happened to take a class while I was over in Ireland, the teacher – a noted watercolorist in Ireland – limited his palette to three colors: red, blue, yellow. There’s your basic primary colors, and he’d mix everything with those. I tried that for a while but eventually settled with six colors. Now I use six. The reason being is that for me, the three are not quite adequate to capture the full range. For example, on reds there’s a distinct difference between sort of an orangish-red and rose-red. In blues, there’s a cobalt blue but also the thalo-blue or even warmer the aquamarine blue. So it becomes difficult to distinguish the aquamarine in the sky and then again just a cobalt blue doesn’t give the complete sense of water. In each of the three primary colors, what evolved was essentially two reds, two blues and two yellows. From there I’ve been able to do anything. It is still a limited palette, but not quite. I don’t think you can get as genuine an orange red out of a rose red and vice versa, or out of just a standard yellow.

So yea, the answer is yes, you evolve in these various ways.

MOT ~ How long had it been that you quit painting or expressing yourself in creative ways before you got back into it? And what was it that triggered the return?

DG ~ It was just pure happenstance. My wife wanted to take a class in folk dancing. . . let me back up a bit. I was teaching in Ireland at the time under the Fulbright; we were over in Galway which is over on the west coast of Ireland. The local high-school had these adult classes and my wife wasn’t driving the car. It was built for the opposite side of the road, six gears and so on, so she really didn’t want to deal with driving. She wanted me to drive her to this class, which was about a good hour’s drive away. I didn’t see driving there, then back, then there again to get her back home again. So I thought to take a look at the catalog and see if there was something during that same time that I might like to take. Then there’d be no need to do the double trip.

So, I was looking at the catalog and thought, “well, Kelly dancing is really not me.”(we both break into a solid chuckle imagining this guy doing some traditional Irish dancing) I said “Hey, there’s a water color class. I used to paint all the time.” At one time I even thought of becoming an artist. So I decided to take that, just pure luck, happenstance. You never really know about these things. (The sound in his voice stills echoes a kind of amazement about that)

MOT ~ What do you think it is about painting, and painting in watercolors that has held your attention?

DG ~ It’s hard for me to explain. Acrylics are…. Sort of plastic. Oil is nice, but it tends to take a long time to dry. Watercolors are a real challenge, they’re tricky and not very forgiving. So in a way they tend to be very easy but fun. The effects one can get for what one wants are nice. Also, to me it’s the light that comes through the paper. What happens in watercolors is that it’s basically transparent. Of course you could go with gauche, which is more opaque. With transparent watercolors you use the paper to light up the whole piece. It’s like a luminescent. It provides you with lighting effects in the painting that I don’t believe you can achieve otherwise. For example water, I like to do paintings with water. Light is critical to interesting watercolors regardless of the subject you’re trying to paint. It may take a little while to get used to the light is not white paint but the paper.

Think of the sun out there in space, it’s absolutely cold, frigid, but then once the light hits something, like your own face or the planet and comes through the window of your home and just heats every thing up. It’s just amazing. So light provides life to a painting as well as to life on earth. It’s the light in the paper that really kind of fascinates me and I enjoy the challenge of working with it.

MOT ~ Where did you grow up, and did that community influence your interests do you think?

DG ~ I grew up in Portland, Oregon, in a section called Mount Tabor. Leaving the house out the back door, through the back gate I’d step right into Mt Tabor. A place where there were trees, fields, and reservoirs. A lot of water supplied for the city of Portland was stored there. I used to pick blackberries up there, chase pheasants, watch lots of wildlife. Yeah, that affected me. I became very accustomed to being in the woods, to being outdoors.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with “Uncle Remis” but in “Uncle Remis” Tales, like ‘Brair Rabbit’ and all that, there’s this thing about a laughing place. I think it’s important for everyone to have their laughing place. A ‘laughing place’ is somewhere that a person feels comfortable, where they can laugh and have a good time and mine happens to be outdoors.

Certain scenes in nature, maybe a single plant, tree or single animal, that I’d paint! It’s not necessarily landscapes, it’s something that really catches my eye, and what I try to do is to convey that to someone looking at the picture. I’m not trying to replicate the scene, just trying to point it out. Hopefully they’ll say “I’m going to watch for that,” or be more open to that when out in nature. I’m not trying to paint the moon, but to point it out and say “hey, take a look at the moon!” Part of the process is one that ends up shunning human influence or human participation. Generally I don’t like to do people or buildings. It would pretty much ruin it for me if the moon had a big ‘Coca-cola’ sign on it. So what I attempt to do when I’m pointing something out is to take it as it comes and not try to improve it with some human element. But a lot of people like ‘Coca-cola’ signs or houses, so they do that.

MOT ~ Do you think over the course of learning watercolors or overall, have you had any mentors, guides be them directly or indirectly?

DG ~ Oh yeah, there’s some great watercolorists. Hopper (Edward Hopper first became known for his etchings and later in his life, 1923, moved into the medium of watercolors) you’d say is one and some watercolors from Andrew Wyeth and the result is that you’re influenced by these masters of the medium. There’s no avoiding that. After awhile, of course, you start to develop your own thing and not paint what someone else has painted.

MOT ~ Did you notice this as a gradual change or did it hit like “puck” and happen fast? Or did it require very focused conscious efforts to develop your own style?

DG ~ I’d say it’s more a gradual thing. Some people may do it in a deliberate fashion and quickly. For me it was gradual. For a while you’re just groping around; like we were talking a moment ago about evolution.

Starting out, you don’t necessarily know what excites you. When you are taking a class or workshops, you’re often doing something somebody else has told you to do. So you’re not really picking out your own subject. They’ll say, “okay, go cut out a picture from a magazine” or they’ll set up a still life for you. Then at the end of the session they’ll critique everyone’s work or something like that. In these instances, you’re trying to do what the instructor is telling you to do.

That’s okay up to a point, but once you’ve gotten that feeling for mixing your colors and practice drawing the end result is that you develop somewhat of your own style unconsciously. If you do it on a conscious level, you’re affected more heavily by previous influences or noted people. “I was really impressed by so and so and I’ll be doing more of this.”

~ INSPIRATION ~

MOT ~ What is it that might inspire you to create these images, to put time and energy into the effort of painting in watercolors? It sounds like it could be something intrinsic you’d like to share images of nature that really strike you with others to some extent?

DG ~ You have an idea in mind, sometimes you manage to achieve that and sometimes you don’t. Even sometimes you do and it turns out to be a bad result. There’s lots of bad paintings. Georgia O’keefe had a lot of bad paintings, and the ones that are familiar to everybody are paintings that are good. Some painters would actually destroy what they thought were their bad paintings. As I recall, De Kooning was that way, he’d burn the paintings he didn’t like. So you just have to keep painting and in some ways you have to go through the bad ones in order to reach those good ones, so you don’t get too disappointed.

Every once in a while, it turns out that you say “wow, I got that feeling that I wanted, what I felt when I saw that scene.” That’s what really keeps you going, that’s the way I look at it any way. I’m not really trying to please anybody but myself.

MOT ~ Does an audience work into this at all for you?

DG ~ That’s kind of like what. . . well, to direct them in the same sense I would to see the scene. The word ‘epiphany’ is a good one to describe the moment. You work at painting in a certain way to get the person to see what you’re seeing, but it’s not necessarily that you’re trying to please that person. Like doing a vase of flowers because you know somebody’d like to see that. It’s more of what gave me a charge or buzz. If someone sees that in the painting, great, or maybe they don’t. I’m not trying to get anybody to buy it or anything like that, so it just depends. The main goal you strive for is really the feeling, and get the person who is viewing the painting to get that same feeling about it when they see what ever it may be out there in nature. Or you get them to open up and start noticing more scenes out in nature.

Like just looking at a tree. A lot of people don’t really appreciate what a tree looks like; the shape of the tree, how the tree behaves in the wind or the color of the tree. Trees are generally all green, but there are lots of different greens: grey green, yellow green and so on. Just trying to get a person to look for these kinds of things. Not too many people just paint ‘A’ tree.

MOT ~ Do you ever feel like those creative energies, while in flux, may be high or low and how do you deal with that? Do you have some way to recharge?

DG ~ It’s a combination. One thing you have to do is to be out in nature if your going to be painting nature. You have to be out there, and open to seeing scenes that have great potential in terms of the painting. The recharging is a lot of just being out in nature and seeing scenes. You’ll see a scene and just get recharged, saying “wow, that’s a trippy scene,” but it won’t necessarily be something you really want to paint. In other cases, it may be something you’d like to paint and it may or may not work, just being out there and seeing things you really can’t imagine seeing.

For example, we were in Alaska on this small boat with about twelve people. Frederick Sound is the specific area, a place where the humpback whales hang out a lot. We were just drifting for several hours in the middle of Fredrick Sound. The sun was going down and reached an angle that the light would strike the spouts of the whales in a way that created rainbows. Imagine, surrounded by whales, and there’s flashes of rainbows over them every few minutes. The water is calm, you see these explosions of rainbows over these whales. Just seeing the whales alone is a real thrill. Seeing a rainbow is generally a thrill. How often do you put them together? Well, you don’t put them together unless you’re out in the middle of Frederick Sound, surrounded by dozens of giant humpback whales while sitting in a little boat just at the right moment to have the sun hit that certain angle to create rainbows over these whales. It’s really quite amazing.

So you can take that, get charged and just enjoy that shock that says “man, that’s really amazing!” From there, you try to put that into a painting. Watercolors are easier for making rainbows then say oils or acrylics, but it may or may not be successful. I’ve done a painting of that, but I don’t know that it’s fully successful so I’ll probably come back to it.

Now if you can do a painting and capture that feeling that you had, yea, that would be terrific and give a buzz so as to recharge me too. Even if you don’t succeed, it’s been a terrific experience!

MOT ~ Do you imagine yourself having specific creative goals? Or say, challenge yourself in a way to keep expanding your abilities? Or maybe you could talk about goals you’ve set in the past that you’ve managed to achieve?

DG ~ Well, the goals, it’s kind of like with technique. You work at becoming good with your technique but also capture something special. For me, it’s finding something unique in the scene, or the plant, or the animal. It could be the way the light hits the eye of a bird. Birds have big lenses, it’s amazing, and sometimes the light of the sun can go through the lens and strike the bird somewhere on the beak or cheek creating an amazing effect.

You might see a duck, and the ducks feet are big because of their webs. It could be that one foot is on top of the other a bit pigeon toed with a silly looking expression on their face. It might be the whales with the rainbows. So essentially I’m looking for something that is kind of unique, striking, and capturing that “wow” sense I was talking about earlier.

It also makes the viewer work a little bit. I definitely enjoy scenes that tie in naturally. Like if you see a dead tree, and all these branches poking out all over the place, then a trumpet vine growing up covering the trunk of the tree. You don’t even see the trunk of the tree, just all these branches shooting out. In the center of all this is the trumpet vine with bright colors and beautiful flowers. One time I saw that and ‘click, ‘you can see that the trumpet vine is trumpeting!

As I go through my painting life, what I aspire to is capturing very unique and unusual situations that the viewer, with some work on their part, can see. They almost say, “this is a painting by Greer and there’s got to be something about this somewhat unique or a story being told.”

MOT ~ Have you had moments where you found those images that really struck you, but your skill level may not have been ready to recreate that feeling you had? If so, how did you deal with that? Is there some strategy to come back to it later?

DG ~ Yes, and what you do is try to repeat it over and over until you get it. And if you never seem to get it, well you tried at least. I mean look at Monet. Several of his works were repeated scenes over and over again: different light, different color effects and so on. There’s nothing wrong with, as I said a moment ago, most of the paintings I do, and most folks for that matter, aren’t all that great. We tend to know artists by one or two things. A really great artist by more then one or two, but most isn’t really all that notable. So you just keep trying.

Success is measured by how high you bounce after you hit bottom. I can’t remember who said that, but it’s a good saying.

~ TECHNICAL ~

MOT ~ Would you mind trying to give an overall break down of your process from beginning to end?

DG ~ Of course you start with and idea and then start to work on the composition. What’s going to be big or small, the position of the objects on the paper. I’m a believer in focal points. In abstraction there’s really very little depth or maybe even no depth at all. There may be little in the way of a focal point and just a whole lot of stuff going on.

Also, you want to get different values from dark to white and the sketch helps to do some preliminary development. Eventually you get to actually doing the graphite sketch on the paper. In watercolor, things can be so unruly I tend to stick to familiar materials and papers. You get in to a bit of a routine. It’s not always the same. Sometimes you may skip the value sketch and go straight to the painting, while others you may get into the washes and the backgrounds. In general, I think everybody tends to follow certain routines to get the results they want.

MOT ~ What is it that tells you when something’s done? Do you get that “wow” impact from the work that just lets you know?

DG ~ It’s hard to say. Sometimes you wish there was somebody behind you looking over your shoulder and holding a gun and they’d say “okay, it’s done!”and then shoot ya. “Whew, okay, it’s over.”

What I’ve done a lot lately is I’ll do a painting, just leave it on the board and just set it to the side and look at it. And sometimes I’ll put it away and bring it out again. I think it helps to really study a painting. One of the things De Kooning used to do was to sit for hours and look at what he was doing. He had some special chairs for this, and I say chairs because he’d often have his girlfriend of the moment with him too. A lot of the time he’d just be sitting there studying his painting. You might just even look at it and say you want to do something, and then look again in the next day or two and say “well no, I don’t want to do that after all.” And after looking at it for long enough, you arrive at that point and say “it’s done.”

Quite often what will happen is during that time of studying the work, you’ll notice things you do want to do because things are missing. For me, it really helps to take that time to study it intensely and confirm if it captures that feeling getting the message across. Once you get the message across, it’s done. But it is a very tricky business. That’s the hardest thing in a sense, to know when you’re done, because you could go on forever. In fact, it’s interesting that some artists like Arshaw Gorky, he painted in oil. He would paint and paint and paint and it would get three inches, four inches, five inches deep away from the canvas paint on top of paint. He’d work at it and work at it with the painting becoming extremely heavy. Maybe it’d weigh fifty pounds because of the paint. He sort of never knew when to finish except when it got too heavy, I guess, that he couldn’t lift it. Of course you can’t do that with watercolor though.

One technique that creates a nice effect, is when you do multiple applications of the same color on the paper. You put it on and let it dry and build up layers with still the white coming through in terms of the light, but you get a much richer effect by that. A lot of people starting out in watercolors, they don’t really know that. Some parts that you’re working on you do need multiple layers, which for many people can make painting in this medium boring. Multiple may mean for some, 10 or more applications of color to get the effect they want. You can get some amazing improvements by patience, which is another thing about watercolors.

MOT ~ I have a question that I’m experimenting with and it’s in regards to how much creative freedom a person has. Not necessarily in a conscious specific way, but maybe more of an inherent inborn way. Are you free to direct yourself, or possibly driven by external forces?

DG ~ Creative freedom is an idea that I have thought about. Since I have had a career in another field which has paid well and so on, I don’t have to realize any commercial gain whatsoever. For many people, I think they do try to appeal to the public. One of the things, while I was in college and was thinking about becoming an artist professionally, that really bothered me was in order to be an artist as a profession you had to actually sell something. This means that you’d need to paint something that would appeal to the public, follow the fad of the day or you’d have to in some way paint in the shadow of what would appeal to people. So you do things like “oh, if I put some big eyes on this child it’ll help sell it.” Or if I paint a little cottage with warm colors in the window, the little path leading up to it and that perfect sunset in the background it’s going to sell. That didn’t appeal to me. So I said “what I’ll do is just forget it and have a regular life, you know and not become an artist.” And that’s what I did.

Many many years later, after thirty years of not painting at all, although I must say during all that time I would look at paintings and say “gee, I wish I could paint like that.” It was always something in the back of my mind that, maybe, I would get back into painting. Now, that I’ve picked it back up again and been doing it for a number of years, I find I’m really free to do what ever I want. I have no thought of pleasing anybody about the painting. Yeah, it’s great to have artistic freedom. I think it’s really fun and I don’t like the thought of having to paint little kids with big eyes just to sell it.

MOT ~ Most of what we consider those classic painters, those “masters” of the various mediums of sculpture, painting and all that never really sold there work during their lifetime. At least not for the sums that they sold for these days. I mean, isn’t that where the idea of the starving artist has arisen?

DG ~ Well, they had ‘patrons,’ but in a sense, although they didn’t necessarily sell their paintings they did need to please their patron. You’re probably referring to people like Van Gogh and he really didn’t sell much of his work for. . . the great painters of the past often didn’t sell their paintings, but even the ones that did, didn’t have that in mind as much as trying to get the effects they wanted. They, in a sense, painted for themselves. I guess it’s like the expression “to thyne own self be true.” For an artist, I think that’s really important. When you’re not, the result is not something that’s really good, whether people buy it or not. No one ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the ‘American’ public.

MOT ~ If you had the opportunity to sit down with any author, philosopher, creative person for a conversation or an interview like this, do you have any questions you’d look to ask?

DG ~ (long pause. . .) It would kind of be interesting to talk to them, much like you’re talking with me. And yet, on the other hand, I think a lot of the really great ones didn’t think so much about what they were doing, they just did it. It just came natural to them, which is what made them good. It’s like for a person it’s natural eat a meal, but people who were great writers started writing, and they wrote and wrote and wrote some more. Musicians, they’d start playing and just did music and enjoyed it. If it comes natural to you, and you enjoy it, that’s the whole story. I don’t think there’s any real key to it. I don’t think you can tell somebody to do this and this and this and they’d become a really great artist. Or to hear that all they did was this and this and than became a great artist. Like cooking a meal that way. Just following a recipe doesn’t quite work that way, it works more organically. Circumstances, influence, genes, all kinds of things play a part. It’s often something they can’t explain themselves, but it’s fun to talk to artists and see what they might have to say. There’s a lot of truth in what’s been said. Like just do it every day.

Artists who are good develop certain work habits, and you often hear about those. Like I always found interesting Hemingway used to write dialog standing up at a typewriter. Then he’d write descriptive scenes sitting down in long hand. He would physically put himself in a situation where he’s attuned to the nature of what’s going on. Dialog is very broken and interrupted, and he got the feeling of that standing up at the typewriter. Now you could do the same thing, and not come anywhere close to Hemingway. It’s interesting. Every artist develops those little techniques, and they are fun to hear about. But I think 90% of what comes out of an artist is just natural to them, just following their nature.

When I was younger, I used to think there was some kind of formula one could follow to become a great writer, musician or artist. As I’ve grown older I don’t think that’s really true. The geniuses and the really great ones, it just kind of came natural. In most cases though, they did receive encouragement and lucky breaks. They may get a mentor or something. They’ll starve to do it giving no thought to their health and well being. That’s really quite remarkable.

MOT ~ I have this idea that there’s a creative element in everybody, it’s just that they may not have found how to tap into it. They may never. It could be because family background, or just lack of encouragement, or not found that creative release they could actually develop something in.

DG ~ There’s truth to that. Even with cooking or gardening, decorating your house, it’s all ways of creativity. It’s all great, it’s living.

I was reading once how you have kids in situations that you’d think are totally hopeless: poverty, father ran off when they were four, their mothers sick a lot, the kids friends are gang members or hoodlums of some sort. Then the kid turns out fine. Well, how does that work? They’ve found that there are certain consistencies that cause a kid to turn out good as opposed to bad. One of them is that there is something they do where people say “Oh, you really do that well.” Then they continue to do that gaining a little bit of self esteem, not necessarily universal self esteem. They realize that they can do something well helping them getting past and avoid all the pitfalls that are waiting there in life for them to turn out bad. Of course they also say a mentor, an adult who takes an interest in the kid, has major sway.

I think it’s very important, and it’s sad to see music programs, art programs and other kinds of activities like that be trashed in school because it’s thought to be irrelevant or unimportant in comparison to math or history or science. But yea, you can be creative brewing beer. . . or making wine, all sorts of things.

Yeah, I think everybody has it, and it’s good to encourage it. To me it’s really sad to see people spend their life in front of a TV. That is not creative, switching channels, no creativity there. They’re just killing time, “I’ve only got so much time here, what am I gonna do to get through this? I guess I’ll just have to watch television.” That’s really stupid, we’re not here to ‘kill time.’ But a lot of people behave as if that’s the case.

Bridging Dichotomies

~ INTRO ~

A friend of a friend led to the interview opportunity with mixed media creative Taiko Fujimura. The following quote lays out what she works to express in her creations. “The concepts she explores include quietude, peacefulness, harmony, unity, and universality. Her work is strongly influenced by Japanese wabi-sabi, an aesthetic system she strongly believes to be “beautiful” art and Japanese calligraphy, which she has studied since age six.” Hmm, I just noticed, that like my previous interview, Taiko started studying Japanese calligraphy at the age of six. Maybe that’s the age when young Japanese women traditionally begin to learn this. Could the inclusion of the study of this medium in Japanese culture spark a sense of creative expression? I caught up with her at a group show at the Market Street Gallery during San Francisco’s city-wide month of open studios.

BACKGROUND

Moments Of Truth ~ Hello Taiko Fujimura, thank you for taking this time during your open gallery to sit down and tell us about yourself, creative process, and work. Could you please describe the medium you work in?

Taiko Fujimura ~ I use acrylic in my painting works. My passion though is sculpture. Unfortunately, because of space constraints I paint to be able to store the works easily. I do enjoy painting as it allows me a certain freedom to do a lot. If it’s a 3D image [sculpture] I need to think about spatial elements, math involved. Just a lot of thinking and preparing involved.

One sculpture project I really enjoyed entitled “Ikebana” I like conceptual art. Sculpture is a medium that realizes my conceptual way of thinking. (An excerpt of her description describes “This series is an experimental abstract three-dimensional form that asks the audience to define their personal aesthetic sensibilities. Similar to how the placement of each flower in a vase may evoke distinct aesthetic reactions about the entire arrangement, the abstract depictions of objects in these pieces are constructed using discrete mathematical and technical principles.” Some images of this project can be viewed here: Series_Ikebana

MOT ~ So given the opportunity, without space constraints, would you focus your energy on dealing with conceptual ideas in the 3D realm of sculpture?

TF ~ I think soooo (she sounds possibly skeptical to make a statement in that regards).

MOT ~ Where did you grow up?

TF ~ I’m from northern Japan. It’s a smaller community. Maybe that’s what struck me. I imagined seeing the world, and so I traveled around when I was younger.

MOT ~ Are you parents or any other close family members artists as well?

TF ~ My uncle is and mother as well. My mother is a dancer but she didn’t teach me though, because my father didn’t want me to dance in front of people. So they told me to learn calligraphy instead. Essentially they wanted me to sit down quietly, and be a ‘nice girl.’ (she breaks out into laughter at the thought of the ‘nice girl.’) That’s what I worked in for a long time.

After I left Japan I felt this freedom that I don’t need to be a ‘good girl’ so much. That I could do whatever I want. And so I did start to get into performance, singing. I used to be a singer. It was fun. Eventually it’s grown into my focus on painting, but I’m always working in some creative medium to express myself.

MOT ~ Through these various mediums, and more specifically what you’ve been working on more recently, have you had any mentors? (As I’m trying to ask the question, city life strikes as sirens blare by just outside on Market Street causing a little distraction and possibly shook to the system.)

TF ~ Yes, especially within the calligraphy. I would exchange what I could for them to teach me. Like maybe some accounting or house cleaning, whatever. I learned a lot from them. I’ve also taken classes at the Asian Art Museum working with Chinese brushes and techniques. They instructed how to harness and use your energy and that around you. I’ve always been interested in Chinese philosophy and wanted to understand it better.

INSPIRATION

MOT ~ So what is it that inspires you to work in these expressive mediums, be it sculpture, singing, dance, performance, painting? Can you explain those elements inside you that are driving you to do this?

TF ~ Hmmm, really everything inspires. Every day I have different ideas of creating things. Maybe I get confused or distracted easily by all these ideas that jump into my head. I try to choose the best one, but it’s hard. You know, when you walk around and see a car or trees and it sparks something in me.

MOT ~ How do you filter that? What allows you to make the decision what to work on?

TF ~ Usually I create a few things at the same time. As I work on them I’ll do some comparisons that will help me decide which one(s) are more successful or represent my idea best. Also I try not to do work similar to the current trends, especially American ones. I try to differentiate myself. But still I create different kinds of art and refine my style.

MOT ~ Can you elaborate on this difference you see that exists between this ‘American Style’ and the style you’re trying to refine? What’s different about it?

TF ~ (She takes a long breath and pause to figure out a way to put it into words) Umm, well I guess I work at trying to create something that I don’t believe I’ve seen here in the states. Maybe to describe what I mean it would be a mixture of European and Japanese ideas. That would be a little bit of philosophy, imagery, history, blended together.

MOT ~ Do you have any particular influences aside from nature and just walking around seeing things that encourage you or drive you to create? Are there any artists, for example, that may have struck you at a young age?

TF ~ Marcel Duchamp is one, a French artist into cubism, futurism and Dadaism. One of those people working in that realm of ready made art, of ‘Urinary’ fame.

(According to Wikipedia Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp is often associated with Dada and surrealist art movements. His influence on post WWII art and art collecting by the works he created to shake up peoples thoughts on artistic processes and art marketing)

”The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” (Marcel Duchamp)

I think he created these particularly shocking works in his 50’s or 60’s before I was even born. These ideas were so avant-garde at that time. What I admire is that he tried to work in different styles and challenge the ideas of the time. People criticize him, say what he did was kind of stupid and blah blah blah, but he still kept doing what he thought he needed to do. I respect that.

One issue that I think exists for many living artists is to create art for arts sake.

TECHNICAL

MOT ~ Do you have set creative goals that you have achieved and or are still working to achieve? Could you please describe them?

TF ~ So, I’m sort of everywhere it seems. My main goal is to continue to refine my style. A more concrete goal for this year and the following is to get my work out and have more shows in the states and in Japan.

MOT ~ Can you be more specific about what you are doing to develop that singular style?

TF ~ Well, I think I need to open my eyes and look around more. I see my attraction to so many things as a problem. I like everything, different kinds of arts. Slowly I’m narrowing my focus, as I’ve now restricted myself to visual arts and not the dancing, singing, performance stuff.

(As I’m transcribing this interview, I’m remembering that we were interrupted by someone arriving to film an interview with another one of the artists sharing the open studio at the gallery. Suddenly Taiko and I are almost whispering our questions and answers to each other as the others converse in the front area. We are now actually sitting in a corner where several pieces of her work are situated and it’s almost as if these paintings are whispering at us too.)

Returning to the idea of sculpture, I really enjoy working with these ideas of physics, because it has to stand up and withstand various elements. Connecting the different materials together also provides other interesting challenges. Painting seems a little more simple with the bushes, canvas, paints. Not so many physical tools involved as in sculpture and I find that easier to a certain extent.

What I’d really like to say, my general idea or philosophy is that two opposites co-exist in our space. This can be seen in certain simple dichotomies like female to male, bad to good, light to dark, you know, that kind of stuff. With my work, I seek to find a way that realizes the coexistence of this dualism. At the same time, I want the viewer to feel happy and harmonized. Females cannot totally understand males, people can’t totally understand each other, it’s just so hard to realize that understanding. For example bad people, totally bad people cannot understand good people in the same way. (giggling a little as she say’s) I might be wrong… but I see these two extremes and try to find the middle ground. That’s part of why I choose to use extreme colors in my works. Like black and red, or white and black and use that composition and palette to illustrate this idea.

Before this I was thinking more in terms of an eastern versus western and trying to bridge that gap to create better understanding.

MOT ~ It sounds like you imagine a very broad global audience that you’re trying to bring together?

TF ~ Yes, I’d agree with that.

MOT ~ Have dreams ever come up in your work? Or how do you view dreams and do they play any role in your work or your past, say childhood?

TF ~ Yes, I have very vivid dreams that I try to sketch. Usually I’ll remember them for a long time after having them and they tend to be colorful.

MOT ~ Could you break down in step by step terms your process from idea inception to final work?

TF ~ It changes at times. One day I may look at my old pictures and photos and see something that catches me enough to start painting. I generally wont complete it, but go on to something else to come back to it at a later time. If I find some recycling materials, something that I think is so pretty that it shouldn’t be thrown away I’ll preserve it to use on something in the future. I don’t like waste. I can work quickly too, especially if I have a deadline. Deadlines can prove helpful for me, which is one reason I try to schedule shows. They force me to get to work. Otherwise I just might take forever.

MOT ~ So you mentioned that you tend to spend a lot of time on a piece, and employ deadlines to help you get something done. Say if you remove that, how do you know when a piece is complete?

TF ~ Yea, it’s a difficult part. Especially when it’s painting. Maybe it’s a subconscious decision for me. If I want to do a realistic piece, I’ll be conscious. For more abstract works, I think it’s acceptable to be unconscious about it.

MOT ~ Say you had the opportunity to meet some creative person, someone you admire, or say Duchamp or somebody, do you have any glaring questions you’d like to ask?

TF ~ Sure, I often go to shows, art receptions, try to find the artist and ask questions to learn more about them. Say like “which to you consider your best piece, and why?” Just general questions I guess, to try and understand them as a person and how they may be reflected in their work.

Taiko has a lot going on. Pay a visit to her site for more photos of her work and upcoming events. taikofujimura.com

Also check out other upcoming shows at Market Street Gallery

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

“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