Wayne White's Monumental Wordscapes

If you were born after 1960, chances are you've encountered the work of Wayne White. From his early days drawing cartoons for The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Raw, to making the puppets and collaborating on the set design for Pee-wee's Playhouse (and voicing Randy, Mr. Kite and Flower), to creating fantastic environments for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" and The Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" videos, Wayne's work has left an indelible mark on the minds of at least one generation.

About a decade ago – after teaching himself traditional oil painting from a book – Wayne started to play around with text, a longtime fascination of his that serendipitously opened the way to a career in the fine art world. You may have seen his revitalized thrift-store lithographs as the cover of Lambchop's album Nixon, or hanging above the booths of East Hollywood eatery Fred 62... or on the walls of Mark Moore Gallery, Clementine Gallery, Western Project or Mireille Mosler Ltd.

"Fuck You"


I've been fortunate enough to know Wayne for the past 10 years. In fact, when I first started buying paintings (albeit peculiar, naïve rummage sale paintings), it was Wayne who encouraged my strange obsession and pointed me in the direction of interesting art sites like Fecal Face. So ever since his new retrospective monograph – a.k.a. art book – came out, I've been really looking forward to sitting down and profiling his work in detail. Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve covers the entirety of Wayne's career, from childhood doodles to his self-published comics, Geedar and Vaga, to puppetmaking and set design, to his early experiments in oil painting and his recent explorations in sculpting with wood, bronze and found materials.



The book was conceived and created by design guru Todd Oldham, who is also a collector of Wayne's monumental wordscapes. Oldham compares Wayne's work to “viewing an old master from another galaxy.” Into bland, sentimental thrift-store landscape lithographs, Wayne inserts masterfully illuminated text-sculptures that integrate into the time-worn fabric of the reproduction seamlessly, adopting the light and shadow patterns required by the geography and perspective of the original work, while also matching the patina that the print has acquired over time. The overall visual effect is grandiose, yet a bit unsettling.

While the phrases themselves are enigmatic and witty, they often seem simultaneously melancholy. Their language runs the gamut between hipster argot and quaint vernacular. Wayne explains, "I still see myself as a Southerner – I still use Southern phrases. The phrases on my paintings are voices of characters that I imagine. Some are me, some are other people, or my parents."

"Boo Fuckin Hoo"


As a result of his new book release, as well as a current installation at Rice University Art Gallery, Wayne's done a bunch of recent interviews for blogs and newspapers all over the country, so rather than bugging him with my own questions, I've scavenged around a bit to assemble a series of quotations from various articles – and also his book – that will give you a good idea of what he's all about. If you'd like to read the original source interviews, just click the link at the beginning of each quotation, and it will take you there.



Wayne is a non-practicing Southerner who was raised in a blue-collar family that valued athletic prowess and hard work. "I grew up in the country north of Chattanooga – a town called Hixson in an area called Middle Valley," he said. "When I was a kid, it was still really pretty rural. My mother was an antiques collector, and she loved to go to junk stores... She would go to these second-hand stores – so the textures all my life were kind of rough, worn, aged, scuffed and scratched. I always related to that more."

Fifty years later, Wayne's work still reflects the ramshackle aesthetic that his mother's love of early Americana engendered. "I think that all artists are very closely linked to their childhood," he said. "You can either get sentimental and maudlin about it, or you can really dig deep and try to find the universal spark that makes childhood so special. In most kids, it's usually drummed out of you by the time you’re 4 or 5. So I try to dig down deep and find the three-year-old and keep that alive in me. It’s clichéd, but if you live long enough, you realize most clichés are true."

"Luv Hurtz"


That three-year-old was a ferociously prolific creator of imaginary creatures and interesting characters. "I made up a guy named Geedar when I was three or four, and played and talked with him all the time," Wayne recalled. "He looked like Roger Maris. He eventually married Momma Geedar, who looked like Edie Adams. I liked creating characters. My real little friends were boring. That’s one of the banal reasons for being creative – to keep yourself entertained. Nothing has changed. I’m still motivated by putting on a little show for myself."

"Nixon" (note the "millhouse" in the background)


As a child, Wayne's ideas would come in such profusion that his parents could barely keep up with him. "They bought me a drawing tablet every week, which I would completely burn through, and they would complain to me, 'We're spending too much money on those tablets,'" said Wayne. "So they started giving me brown grocery bags to draw on, and I drew on those for years. I would just go through every scrap of paper I could find... From the beginning, I would draw on pieces of pale wood and paint on pale rocks... My perfect happiness is improvising with materials and feeling like you're sort of isolated and making the best of it all – but I just gotta be making a picture all the time."

"Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve"


Talking out loud to the Geedars and playing in his own imaginary world, Wayne was sometimes the object of derision from his less inventive peers, which he says left him a bit "thin-skinned." He believes that artists must ferociously protect the side of them that harbors childlike wonder – that artists "are paradoxically the most vulnerable – but it also takes the most guts. I was lucky that art was always encouraged in my life. It was a way, way different culture then. It was the early '60s in the South... it was a very macho sports-oriented culture. There wasn't room at all for art, except for as a rudimentary trick to impress your friends with."

"What'd I Tell Ya?"


As a boy, Wayne was an avid cartoonist, and waited eagerly for new comics to show up at the drugstore each month. "I loved Superman comics, and those were of course all anonymously drawn," he said. "And, of course, the Mad cartoonists – Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés."

One day in 1980, shortly after he graduated from Middle Tennessee State University, Wayne picked up a copy of Raw. "That was the big life-changing moment for me," he revealed. "That's why I decided to become a cartoonist – like, within a day or two. It was real strong. I was seriously drifting at that time, and that kinda focused me instantly."

"So Long Losers"


"I was inspired to move to New York and become a cartoonist. It was as simple as that," Wayne recalled. "The next thing I know, I’ve parked my 1970 Maverick on 23rd Street and I’m looking for Art Spiegelman at the School of Visual Arts. I find him and show him my not-so-hot comic pages, and he’s nice enough to invite me to sit in on his class. That was the meeting that got me out of the South. I hung around Art’s studio when he let me. He was drawing Maus at the time, and it was a real education just to watch that. He also had an amazing library of every kind of graphic art. It was the wizard’s laboratory, and unlike most of my art teachers, he gave me real practical advice, like drawing with a Winsor & Newton watercolor brush and India ink. I built a whole illustration career on it."

"That's where I really learned to draw, mainly because I was surrounded by people who were better than I was. I was used to being the big fish in a small pond, and all of a sudden I was low man on a pole. That's why I say to students all the time – 'Go somewhere where everybody's better than you. That'll put your ass in gear.'"

"All That Fake Laughin For Nothin"


While he eventually started being able to make a living as an illustrator in New York, Wayne had never stopped building puppets and performing with them, a fascination that he'd first discovered in college. That labor of love eventually led to his being hired to work on perhaps the most groundbreaking show ever made for children – Pee-wee's Playhouse. "We did it for adults," Wayne explained. "It was sort of the kick-off of postmodern programming like that, if you want to give it a label."

"The first season of Pee-wee’s Playhouse was produced by a company called Broadcast Arts in New York, and they wanted to do it in Manhattan. So a loft space was found in a building on lower Broadway near Canal Street, and that became the soundstage for the set. We were building a giant, crazy-complicated multi-media chunk of art in an artist’s studio in NYC. It was literally a downtown art project built by painters, sculptors and cartoonists, not a Hollywood factory product, and that’s what gives it edge and power."

"Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep"


By 1990, Wayne was starting to get burned out on working in children's television. He and his wife, cartoonist Mimi Pond, moved to Los Angeles, where Wayne's Pee-wee earnings made it possible for them to buy a house. "I left cartooning and puppetry very suddenly, like I always do with nearly everything," he said. "I knew that I was not gonna get the cartooning thing on the road. You can't make any money cartooning, and it takes a lot of energy. It's a really passionate labor of love – ask any alternative cartoonist...

I've always had a love for painting, and in New York I had a steady stream of influence, because I went to the Met nearly every other week. I loved the history of painting, and because of my love of American history, I decided to do a 180° turn – from this cartoony expressionism I had been involved in for years, to doing traditional, realistic American history paintings."

"Tinted Lard"


"I went to a bookstore uptown somewhere and got a book on how to paint realistically. It was called Light For the Artist. I'd never had any training in realistic oil painting, and I really wanted to do it right. All the oil-painting techniques I learned were from this book. I just took it step by step, learning about underpainting and glazes and basic ideas about how to catch light with paint. I was painting in a realistic style and was feeding off a romantic vision that I had as a kid of the Southern past – like Civil War battles and steamboats coming up the river, George Washington, and just classic, corny Davy Crockett fighting a bear... Mostly I was looking at old guys, like Winslow Homer and Frederick Church and Thomas Cole... So for four or five years, I was just looking at those paintings and getting my technique going."

"Biguns"


Once he had learned the basics of traditional oil painting, Wayne began to focus in on exactly what he needed to express. "I wanted to get at some kind of psychology behind it," he recalled. "I wanted to picture the pain and the weirdness and the craziness of the era... I wanted to capture it in mood and lighting, but it was all still vague, and that's what made me pause and think about the idea of concept and art. It's easy to hide behind vagueness in art. There's a lot of wishy-washy ambiguity going on as far as concepts go, and I didn't want to be wishy-washy. I wanted to nail it."

"Your Ego, My Ego"


"I had gotten my technique down pretty good, and I was doing these landscapes and had gotten surrealist with them – like wolfmen were fighting in the woods now, but it was still painted like Winslow Homer. Eventually I felt it was kind of corny... So I decided the ego and human vanity were gonna be my ongoing topics. In Hollywood, I rubbed up against every type of ego there was, and just saw embarrassing displays of vanity and narcissism. I tried to see the humor in it, but it was kind of like the veil falling away from my eyes...

My first painting was called 'Human Fuckin Knowledge.' Mankind thinks they know everything."

"Human Fuckin Knowledge"


Incidentally, Wayne has described a lifelong emotional and sensory relationship with text that recalls the neurological phenomenon known as synesthesia, the "sixth sense" experienced by many artists – most famously the abstract visionary Wassily Kandinsky. "I've been hypnotized by letters since I was a kid, even before I could read," Wayne revealed. "I saw every letter as a character. They all had different personalities to me, and I used to draw pictures with letters. They were nonsensical, I just used them as visual motifs... I loved my W's, of course, 'cause I'm W.W.W. – Wayne Wilkes White. I always liked B's, they're very feminine. Those were girls, always. S's, of course, were men. I don't know why – maybe it's the penis. I loved E's, because that was like a kid.
A's are houses...

I love letters and still look at it as I did as a kid. They still have a certain character to me, and they have a voice that I sort of hear – like the plain-type stuff is very deadpan and straight-ahead, and the humor with that is that it's saying all kinds of outrageous things in this deadpan voice."

"Eastern Fuckit"


"Lithographs were big in the '60s through the '70s—they would usually sell them with couches in department stores. I was hoarding them for the frames... One day, I decided to put some words in the middle of the woods I was painting, and then I thought, 'Hmmm. What would happen if I just used this ready-made landscape?' It’s sort of a lesson in the value of spontaneity – and kind of a defiant gesture toward the idea of what’s original and what’s not."

Though Wayne is quite skillful at drawing in Adobe Illustrator, he doesn't previsualize his paintings digitally. "I draw on tracing paper over the landscapes," he revealed. "It's always improvised. Sometimes it's simple, and sometimes a gnarled mess. I'm a sign painter with no boss.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kimberly-brooks/first-person-artist-wayne_b_73754.html

"

"Beauty's Embarrassin'!"


Despite the fact that he appropriates these insipid, nostalgic reproductions without compunction, Wayne is nonetheless quite respectful of the source images. "I think of the reproductions that I use as an empty stage. I only paint on reproductions. Real paintings have too much human smell, and it would be a 'comment' on that artist… In a way, I’m collaborating with the artist who painted the original of the reproduction," Wayne explained. "The way I see it, they’re like one stop away from the garbage can when I find them – they’re cheap and devalued. The reprisal or the rebirth is an element to the work."

Of course, there are tens of thousands of these landscape lithographs knocking around church rummage sales and junk shops these days, many of them duplicates of one another. In fact, Wayne has become something of a student of this genre over the years. "I do respect the work, because I used to paint just like that," he says. "There are 3 or 4 names that dominate it, and I paint on the same image a lot."

"Doin Movie Stars and Paintin Masterpieces"


Though the art intelligentsia invariably bring up Ed Ruscha when reviewing Wayne's work, he never considered Ruscha when he was first contemplating the word paintings. Instead, he recalled the huge block letters that shouted over the countryside of his childhood in Tennessee. "See Rock City" was emblazoned on the sides and roofs of hundreds of barns all over the southeast – exhortations painted by a single sign painter on a 30-year mission to promote a tourist destination. Later, after college, Wayne had a job painting the billboard on the roof of the children's museum in Nashville. And then he moved to New York, where advertising was a way of life. "We're so surrounded by giant words," he says. "Our whole world is landscapes full of giant words."

"His Bad Attitude Was Just Fine With Everyone"


"Bringing together the high stuff and the low stuff, the so-called disparate elements... has definitely been one of my missions," Wayne admitted. "There can be real human depth to the lowest kind of art form. And that was a lesson I learned as a cartoonist, you know – or as a kids’ show designer or a video set director – there’s a depth in everything, as long as you are sincere in your efforts."

"That's the hallmark of a compelling image – the tension resulting from all these different meanings."

"Drop the Country Boy Act"


Wayne feels the word paintings "hit a sort of collective unconscious for viewers who have grown up with the imagery. There's an immediate flip-flop in the viewer's mind. 'Oh, I know that – no, I don't know that, I know that – it's weird, now it's new, what's going on?' That was a big breakthrough for me. I started showing them at a little restaurant here in my neighborhood called Fred 62, because I had no confidence at all about approaching galleries. Having been in Hollywood so long, I considered myself a pariah as far as the art world we're in. So I thought, 'Maybe I'll just test the waters at this coffee shop,' and they were nice enough to let me hang them up. Right away, people started buying them, and I couldn't keep them on the walls."

"The Sound of Cutting Slack"


These days, Wayne's exhibitions increasingly incorporate sculpture and large installations. "I’ve always worked in sculpture in some form," he says. "Puppets and sets are sculptures. I see my paintings as pictures of sculpture. Thinking about 3-D forms is constant with me. Making sculpture is hard work. It makes painting seem easy sometimes – like taking off the ankle weights."

"I am always scavenging. I love it when people throw out old stepladders – I love to use those as bases for sculptures. I am always on the lookout for interesting bases. Stepladders, little tables, crazy stuff like that – gold. That’s related to the paintings again – found objects. I am attracted to low-tech stuff that’s had a life. I think that’s the perfect metaphor for the human condition, scuffed-up stuff. I don’t like new and shiny stuff."

"Tennessee Cavewater" (cast bronze)


"I think all art should start on the basis of trial and error," concluded Wayne. "I like that tension of trial and error that comes through in the final image. Nothing too polished. I want the anxiety of the struggle to be somewhat in there. To have a few loose flaps flapping in the wind. It's like music, you know. I like music that's a little rough around the edges, the harmonies slightly sour, stuff that's a little ramshackle, clanky. I can identify with that...

My real happiness was being alone in my studio with a pile of junk and making stuff... So I just decided to follow what I loved to do, instead of trying to be in show business... Here's the thing – you have to sit yourself down and ask yourself, 'What do I really love to do?' Instead of what you think other people want you to do, or where you think the big money is. You have to strip away that other stuff and ask the big questions. Most people don't want to do that. Most people are in really bad traps... But basically it's all about risk-taking. That's what art is. It's a slap in the face of human security. I've taken those risks, and they've so far paid off."

The fun-filled 384-page retrospective, Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve, is available wherever fine books are sold – while supplies last.

"Southern Daddy Shame Ray"

The Witching Hour

"Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on."
– Shakespeare, Hamlet

A little taste of Inka Essenhigh for All Hallows' Eve...
some eye candy to supplement the candy corn.

"The Grass at Night in July"


"Dance Party"


In her words and work, the fabulous Inka Essenhigh captures the quintessence of art's purpose. "It is really important for me to make work that is for something," she said. "I don't have a specific audience in mind when I paint, but I want to make work that reminds people they are alive. I want to remind them of the fun of being a living being. I want my art to prod people into reflecting on the pleasure of moving, feeling, breathing and being alive, right now."

"Setting Sun"


"Yellow Fall"


"Last Snow Before Spring"


"Green Sea"


"The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life — the terror of art." – Franz Kafka, from Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch

Kelly Vivanco's Watery Wonderland

The marvelous Kelly Vivanco is at it again, with a solo show at Halogen Gallery in Seattle on Friday, October 9th. This time around, she has created a aquatic fantasyland where lovely maidens and adorable animals have adventures in little red rowboats filled with tiny houses. There's even an amazing three-dimensional boat sculpture created by Kelly and her husband Peter Hillier, and a series of portraits of its critter crew, encased in handmade antiqued copper porthole frames. This is Kelly's last major show for about a year and a half, so don't miss out!

"Offshore"


"Onshore"


"There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not." – Ratty to Mole, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Mike Brown's Absurd Portraits

If you've been following along since the early days of Erratic Phenomena, you already know a little about the gifted Mike Brown, whom I profiled last year. Since he is such a man of mystery, I decided it would be worthwhile to delve deeper into what makes him tick (or paint, rather). Fortunately, he was amenable to the idea, and agreed to lay his soul bare in the pursuit of a better understanding of his work. As expected, I learned a great deal from Mike, and I think you will, too.

"Fawn of War"


Erratic Phenomena: Tell me a little about your experience of growing up in a blue-collar family in the rural village of Trumansburg, New York. Is that where your affinity for the natural world was formed? Were there people in your life that nurtured your imagination and talents, and encouraged you to look beyond small-town life for inspiration?

Mike Brown: The town I grew up in was very small, without even a stoplight, and our house was about 4 or 5 miles outside of town. There wasn't the type of entertainment you would find in a city, so we found ways to entertain ourselves. I spent a lot of time fishing, riding my bike, building forts and fires and helping out on the neighbor's farm. We had a few acres of land, and my mother had planted a very large vegetable garden and many large flower gardens. It was really quite amazing, when I think back about it.

My father was a mechanic and truck driver, and he was always in the garage or shed tinkering or building something. I guess both my parents really nurtured my imagination, even if it wasn't always that direct. We weren't allowed to watch much TV, so if I was inside I was usually in my room drawing or outside riding my bike, trying to jump it over something or getting away from the house.

There wasn't a need for anyone to nurture my life beyond the small town. So many people were somehow affiliated with Ithaca College or Cornell that there was a community mentality that stretched far beyond the small town. It was actually a much more worldly community than you would imagine, or than I've ever experienced in most other towns and cities where I've been.

"Albrecht and the Felt Hat"


EP: When you were growing up, you were fascinated with the grotesque, slavering, hot-rod-driving caricatures drawn by Kustom Kulture godfather Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and you emulated his work in your early drawings. In fact, you have an affection for automobile modification to this day. Your father spent many hours of your childhood working with cars. Do you think your embrace of Ed Roth's world was in part an attempt to get closer to your father?

MB: The funny thing is that the influence that Ed Roth had on me did not stem from my father at all, but instead from the T-shirts that came out when I was in 2nd grade, or around that time. I remember some of the farm kids wearing them, and I thought they were the coolest thing in the world. I mean... my dad had some early flaming eyeball stickers and Thrush stickers on his old Zündapp Bella in our garage, but I didn't really think about that much... it was the farm kids.

My father's interest in automobiles was more as a mechanic, but my interest in cars has always been about the way they looked and how much I wanted to drive them. I was always drawing cars, making up my own designs, jacking them all up and having flames coming off their tires and out their sidepipes. I was just amusing myself and having fun making cars look cool (or what I thought was cool, as a young country hick).

I was also counting down the years until I could drive, and I did this from 2nd grade on. When I graduated from school I got my first car, and that was the point that I started to learn how to work on them. My dad was the brains and I was the brawn. That was when we started to have a car connection, but prior to that I always felt like my interest in cars was mine and it didn't really matter what other people thought.

"Four Star"


EP: In the past, you've hinted at some dark history in your childhood which left you with "a profound lack of understanding of how the world works." What can you tell me about the events that affected you so deeply?

MB: Well... this kind of goes with the previous question. When I was 4, my parents had just installed a new in-ground pool. One weekend, my parents had friends over and we were all swimming. My dad jumped in and hit his head in the shallow end and became paralyzed. I guess it was a very traumatic experience at the time, but it really affected my understanding of the reality of life. I knew from a very early age that what you hold as stable or true can change in an instant, and you have no control over that, all you can do is accept it, adapt and just keep going.

When I was a freshman in college, my mother died in a very terrible car accident on the way to work. This was a much more difficult event to come to terms with for me. On the day of the funeral, I was told to go back to school. From this, I began recognizing the existence of different worlds of context. My growing-up world was very different than my school world, and the only context to both was me. It was like I was shifting from one bubble to another. I became an observer of life – of its strangeness when everything appeared normal. From that point on, I realized that nothing ever is what it appears to be, and it all became so strange and foreign. The anchors of my life (parents) no longer possessed that ability, and I could no longer rely on what I had previously known to be true. I felt very much outside of life, as if I were watching fish in an aquarium. It was a shared experience, but I was outside of it observing, trying to make some sense out of it.

I think it is important to note here that I have a sister who is a year younger than me, and she is also a very accomplished artist/photographer. Our work is strangely similar, even though we rarely tell each other about the projects that we are working on. I feel that the process of making art has been a way for each of us to try to make sense out of the absurdity of life.

"Memento Mori"


EP: It seems that as a result of these experiences, you were transformed into an absurdist, in the philosophical sense of an acceptance that comprehension of the meaning of the world – if such meaning even exists – is beyond our grasp, although the pursuit of meaning is all we have with which to fill the void we feel when confronted with the silent, indifferent universe. Camus said that when painting from an absurd standpoint, one must refrain from depicting the slightest glimmer of hope, or any form of judgment. Would you agree with this assessment? How do you think this idea is reflected in your work?

MB: I guess I could be considered an absurdist. Things make sense only because we give things/experiences that understanding. As I have matured, I have increasingly lost any grasp of the meaning of much of anything. Beauty and Ugliness went away a long time ago, and in recent years, I don't even know if ART exists anymore.

I don't completely agree with Camus. I think you can offer hope and judgment, but you have to show all the various facets at the same time. Personally, I enjoy showing hope and despair at the same time – this is what makes it all so strange, absurd and ultimately amusing. When you can see opposing understandings of something simultaneously, you can recognize how it cancels itself out, even though both understandings could be recognized as holding equal value. Then you are forced to try and determine what to believe, and it exposes life as the greatest practical joke that exists.

"The Lion and the Lamb"


EP: According to Camus, the consequences of embracing the absurd are revolt, freedom and passion – "What counts is not the best living, but the most living." He likens man's existence to the eternally recurring task of Sisyphus, but concludes that the struggle itself can be enough to make life worthwhile. In his notebook, he once wrote, "I ought not to have written, 'If the world were clear, art would not exist' – but if the world seemed to me to have meaning, I should not write at all." Does that idea resonate for you? Are we driven to create by our inner need to synthesize meaning? If so, does that make all creative people lonely voyagers, building islands of meaning that no one else can ever truly access or understand?

MB: Of course this idea resonates with me, but it is also something that I struggle with. Ultimately, if nothing has any meaning, why do we feel so compelled to find meaning? I think it's not a matter of using this as a tool to find meaning, but instead, and more importantly, to make meaning. Are all creative people lonely voyagers? ...shit... All people are lonely voyagers trying to make meaning.

I don't think it is the artist's responsibility to make work for everyone to understand, but we can, at times, out of the commonality of being human. It's rather silly to think that we would be able to understand what art is about. What is the Mona Lisa about? Who the hell knows, but there have been many interpretations of it through the years. I think the responsibility of the artist is to provide a pointer for the viewer to find meaning, whether it is what the creator intended or not. On top of that, we just seem to be compelled to create as an exercise of community, as a means of seeing ourselves in a different way.

"The Prince"


EP: When did you first realize that you had something unique to say with your vision of the world?

MB: I have never thought that I did have anything unique to say with my vision. I don't create out of a need to say something to anyone, but instead to make connections between various bits of information so that I can re-view or re-see the world. I think another driving force behind my work is my desire to amuse myself. I use the act of making more as a social experiment, so that I may better understand what it is that makes us human.

"The Pauper"


EP: Your paintings are usually set in a world of perpetual night, stripped of color and seemingly barren. Often the only illumination is a tiny pool of light, or a brief harsh glare as if from a camera's flash. Is this enigmatic void, briefly enlightened by small flares of insight, a metaphor for your personal perception of the universe? Were these chiaroscuro environments inspired by anything in particular?

MB: First, I would like to address the idea of perpetual night. I don't think of it this way, because "night" as a symbol usually carries some negative or pessimistic connotations. Instead I use a dark background, much like a theatrical element, to create visual drama for the characters or events that they are involved with, as well as a means to emphasize what is in light. More specifically, it also references Renaissance portraiture and the use of chiaroscuro to create drama. Even though my early influences were Ed Roth, "Big Deal" and the flying machines of WWII, I was also deeply affected by the great masters of painting. I guess no matter what I am painting, I am looking at it as a portrait, as a thing comprised of a series of events (as if a series or the accumulation of events could be represented as a single thing).

"The Standoff"


EP: You once characterized your paintings as portraits of characters in a story. Do you see your work as occurring within a single overarching narrative, or as a series of fables? Will we ever see deeper into your personal mythology, or do you prefer to confine the viewer's experience of that world to these cryptic glimpses?

MB: When I am creating work, I am never trying to confine the viewer's experience. I guess I've never concerned myself with that at all. When I am making a piece of work, the idea is unfolding during the making of it. I have no idea what the outcome is going to be. It always starts with the loosest kernel of an idea that develops throughout the process of making it. I can safely say that there have only been a few instances in my artistic career that I had a specific idea in mind before making it. Once the work is complete, I can see it as a single piece, as well as in context with all its predecessors. In past years, it seems to me that I have been developing the characters and location of the "play" – now I suppose it is just a matter of creating the story. Maybe I have just been too deeply interested in the complexities and nuances of the single aspects of whatever the story may turn out to be.

"Octopusspuss"


EP: Most of the creatures you paint – be they rabbits, stags, hummingbirds or octopi – have rather human eyes, which they usually fix on the viewer with a resentful, accusing glare. What does this choice represent for you?

MB: I don't agree with the standpoint of the resentful accusing glare. Indeed the creatures' eyes do have a human-like quality, but the stare is one of observation, awareness and scrutiny. I am trying to establish another way to see ourselves through the portrayal of other species. By giving them more human eyes, I believe it allows a certain distance and recognition of self, while also being able to convey the absurdity of self-importance.

It is not my intention to create a subjective standpoint with the images. Instead, I think that it only exposes the psychological state of the viewer.

"Deuce"


EP: Obviously you love to paint soft, white fur. Is that mostly an aesthetic, sensual choice, or is there some deeper meaning for you in depicting a world covered with a luxurious white pelt, inhabited by furry albino beasts?

MB: The decision is indeed partially aesthetic. I have a mantra that I follow... lure them with beauty, hold them with intellect. It is not that I love to paint the soft white fur, but instead I am using it as part of a vocabulary to support a greater conceptual framework that functions as the umbrella of meaning that has evolved in my work. It represents the duality of good and bad simultaneously – as spirituality, as the failure of thought in the pursuit of the universal. It is a specific recognition of Hitler's pursuit to create a master race – white power, if you will. However, the pursuit of eugenics in any measure is a failed idea. Within trying to create an ideal anything, there has to be a recognition of certain parameters that are best suited for that given situation, environment or philosophy. The failure resides in an inability to recognize that we cannot generalize or average out a situation or environment. Change is inevitable and power or sustainability resides in variety, not in commonality.

The color white is representative of a failed ideal. White is pure and empty.

It is also influenced by albinism. I am deeply fascinated with this. It is recognized as a good omen, and at the same time, biologically, it is something we must avoid. It comes with physical disadvantages that greatly increase an inability to survive in the world. It is opposing positions on the spectrum simultaneously. This fascination stems from growing up near the Romulus Army Depot, which unintentionally houses the largest population of albino deer in the world. It was common to see up to 12 white deer at one time, while just outside the fenced perimeter would be a regular brown deer. This has been such a strange, magical and profound experience for me, ever since I was young.

"Romulus and the Crown of Thorns"


EP: A series of recurring elements appears throughout your body of work – matches and dynamite, marshmallow bunnies, plastic googly eyes, jewel-like beads of water. Do these items have a fixed symbolic meaning for you? Is their frequent recurrence rooted in your personal history?

MB: There is definitely a recurrence of symbols in the work, but the meaning of the symbols has evolved over time. Nothing is static. It is the combination of the symbols that has allowed me to re-see the world and gain new or different insights, which in turn affect my understanding of the meaning of those symbols and what they are referencing. It lends itself well to the lonely voyage, but makes the journey that much more interesting.

I don't know how to answer the second half of the question... On one hand, yes, of course it does come from my personal history, but some of the symbols I just see or find and give them meaning and use them in my work. They make sense to me at the time and I incorporate them, even though when I decided to use them they did not hold any significant personal meaning.

"Double Bunny"


EP: Tell me about your fascination with Joseph Beuys and his rabbit.

MB: I agree with Beuys' belief that the role of the artist is to provide a deeper understanding to one's community. I believe that the artist does play the role of shaman or seer to his/her community, and they provide the information that the community needs to know, rather than what they might want to know. However, I also struggle with my interest in Beuys, because I find it a bit arrogant that he would call himself a prophet and step in as preacher to the community that would listen.

I am not saying that I think I am this (prophet), or play the role that Beuys claimed to play, but I recognize how our similar approaches have the ability to expose the various sub-layers of context and meaning to the world, and that if you can see things differently, the world takes on greater dimension, depth and clarity. It is a very fascinating thing, as if I have been given a pair of special glasses that allows me to see the structures that support the superficial qualities or façades of what we recognize as being the real. (I know this sounds a little out there, but… I can only state what I have grown to recognize as being real.) Nothing is as it seems, and through the process of making, I have been provided the gift of seeing beyond the surface.

"The Tree of Life"


EP: Your series of stump paintings is disturbing and poignant. The wood has the quality of a life cut short, or twisted and maimed by experience. Occasionally, man-made objects – a snowglobe, a dreamcatcher – or living beings – a swarm of pale green butterflies, a white raven – enter the composition. Sometimes the trees resemble antlers that have begun to shed their velvet. What do these truncated remains of fallen giants represent for you?

MB: The trees symbolize the idea of government or governing principles. By creating certain restrictions and rules, a recognized aesthetic can be applied. We can see this idea in the art of bonsai. Something naturally perfect and beautiful is made "more beautiful" (in principle) through manipulation and restrictions. This is a basis for all existence. The fur is the rabbit, the marriage of spirituality and governing states. They are one and the same.

I find interest and amusement thinking about "what if" scenarios. What if George Washington had cut down the Tree of Knowledge? What if Plato was wrong? Oh dear! So these images become a signifier of the potential to consider things in a new way, disguised as formal exercises of movement of form and balance in space.

"Cave Dweller"


EP: Many of your paintings address the concept of classification and ranking, as well as dominance and submission. Why do class and power hierarchies intrigue you so much?

MB: These seem to be the laws in which all things function. It's as if we can't get away from them – it's a deep-seated part of our biological understanding and navigation in the world. Think about all the various ways we size one another up so that we can determine if we are good or bad, pretty or ugly, strong or weak, etc. We are constantly classifying one another so that we can understand who and what we are in context to them, so that we can recognize if we should run or fight. It's actually very interesting to me. We all play these roles and we are fully engaged in determining our place in these hierarchies. That, of course, is referential to us being human, and I am not sure if these are laws that are true, or laws that we perceive as being true.

"Republic"


EP: Your work has shifted direction fairly drastically over the past several years, veering from figurative work involving oddball people and stuffed rabbits pursuing inexplicable actions in medieval-looking environments, to abstract studies of billowing technicolor gloop, to your strangely mystical Dutch-masterly rabbits, deer, swans, bees and hummingbirds. What – if anything – ties these phases in your body of work together? Do you anticipate that these violent evolutions will continue, or are you now settling into a visual language that will sustain you for a while?

MB: I believe that art, in the greatest sense, is about exploring a variety of ideas. I look at my work as a series of conversations. I choose the appropriate colors, scale and mode of painting in accordance to that conversation. I get bored fairly easily and the idea of making work that all has a similar aesthetic doesn't hold my interest very long. I like the discoveries found in the process of exploration.

I don't find the evolutions to be that violent either. There is always a thread that binds one body of work to the next for me. Galleries/directors/instructors would have artists believe that it is important to create work that is similar throughout its evolution, because they are in the business of selling a product. If Honda decided in the middle of the production year to stop making great cars and start making butter, the people that buy Honda products would freak out, wondering "Why butter?," and if it is supposed to be used on the cars.

"The Story of the Bird"


MB: The one thing that is common to many famous artists is that once they were recognized for a certain style or mode of conveying information, they ceased being artists and were merely the producer of a product to keep a recognized (buying) audience happy. The products are all the same, they just look a little different. This is not my interest. The fact that my name is common and my pursuits are selfish allows me the freedom to create in the manner that is the most interesting for me at the time. This is the mode that I work in, and I can enjoy what I am doing.

I do anticipate continued shifts in my work, as determined by the ideas that interest me at the time. There is always a thread for me from one conversation to the next, much like how we might interact while talking about any number of things in succession from one person to the next, and I find that the language of ideas influences the variety of work that I create.

"A Rose Is a Rose"


EP: What ideas will you be exploring in the work you're preparing for your next show?

MB: I will be having a solo show in May at the Rymer Gallery in Nashville, and this body of work is going to be exploring the subjects of creation and destruction happening simultaneously, while showing their opposites and trying to expose the idea of infinite dimensions. I'm pretty excited about it, really. I don't know how to explain it any better than this, but it makes sense to me, enough to try and flesh out with paint.

"Omnivesence"


EP: For an artist looking to make an impression on the public, having a name like Michael Brown might be something of a liability. It appears that there are at least four other artists out there with the same name, not to mention the infamous "Brownie." Did you ever consider taking a nom de guerre?

MB: If anything, I would change my name and make MikeBrown all one word, seeing as most people have resorted to calling me this. However I'm not terribly concerned about changing my name. True, it is a very common one (not as bad as Michael Smith, however) and I am certain that there are more than 4 other artists with this name, but my artistic pursuits aren't driven by a desire to stand out and be recognized through people's recognition of some fancy name. It's about the work and ideas. I serve only as a medium to try and make an intangible thought or idea tangible. This is my role.

"The Titanic"


EP: Tell me a bit about your conceptual process. Do you do a lot of research, experimentation and sketching, or do these ideas arise full-blown from your subconscious?

MB: My conceptual process is very random, really. It can be completely frivolous – like creating a series of "Jeebus paintings" out of boredom and a need for amusement, or it could be an article I read many years ago in some science magazine discussing some mathematician in England who believes that there are infinite dimensions – and the idea just sticks in my head, percolating. I do some initial research, but most of it occurs throughout the process of the painting, because I don't really know what I am going to be making when I start.

I very seldom make drawings as part of that process. On occasion, I might scratch out a few very crude and small things to deal with formal issues and to acquaint myself with the arrangement of shapes, but I like the magic of just working straight to canvas and creating out of my head. It is all about creating a dialogue with the ideas, materials and image, so that the painting can evolve throughout the process and provide an outcome of greater discovery.

"JeebusFink" (work in progress)


EP: Your impeccable technique allows you to achieve very realistic soft plushy textures while at the same time preserving the luminous, reflective qualities of liquids. Can this be attributed in part to specific attributes of the acrylic paints you use, or is it all in the way you use them? Which aspects of your aesthetic call for the use of the airbrush, and which for more traditional painting methods?

MB: Whether I paint in oils or acrylics or automotive paints, these materials become a means to an end. I am an image maker. I use paint to make these images. I used to paint solely in oils, but 5 years ago I decided to quit my job and move to California. I had a studio, but didn't know for how long, and I wanted something that didn't smell, dried fast and was easy to clean up in case I needed to close up shop and find a new studio.

The funny thing about painting with acrylics is that most of the time people think it is oil, which I find interesting. I use an airbrush to help make smooth color transitions in my paintings. Oils and acrylics are similar like a donkey and a zebra – they have similar characteristics, and then they are nothing alike. I just have never found a way to get acrylics to blend like oils, and that is a romance that I miss, so I use tools like the airbrush to try to recapture that familiar love.

I also have found that the airbrush works great to help create images similar to the way the eye/brain sees/perceives things. We have such a small focal field. When our eyes focus, the area is about the size of a 50 cent piece, and everything outside of that is increasingly more blurry. The airbrush creates a range of fuzziness that I can come back to with a paintbrush to give an image focal clarity. Plus, it makes the whole painting process that much quicker, and I like the idea that people equate airbrushes with crappy mall-painted T-shirts and license plates, while I am using it to participate in the world of Fine Art. It takes away a certain arrogance of art for me.

"Orange Devil"


EP: One overarching theme of the pop surrealism movement – besides a return to the technical ambition of those who painted in the centuries preceding our own – is a nostalgia for a simpler, more innocent past. This has been reflected through a fascination with vintage ephemera, especially childhood toys and games, an interest in turn-of-the-century commercial arts, such as studio photography, poster art and children's book illustration, a fetishization of the cartoons and creature features of Hollywood's Golden Age, and a quasi-religious focus on the birds and beasts that mankind's relentless consumption has placed in harm's way. Does this notion of a generation of artists longing for an irretrievable past speak to you at all? Do you have any objections to being lumped into the pop surrealism genre, or to the categorization of artists in general?

MB: Am I part of the pop surrealist genre? What makes my work pop surrealistic? Is it because I show in galleries that show that type of work? What about the galleries I show in that don't show pop surrealist work? How does this affect the way my work is defined? I honestly haven't spent much time thinking about how my work is or will be defined.

I do, however, find it an interesting to think that other people could define my work this way. I don't see my work as being Pop Surrealist, but I also don't see it as the Highbrow work that has also influenced my work and ideas so thoroughly. I guess I feel like my work is a bridge between the two, with both influences being recognized. I just try to paint in a way that is most appropriate to the idea I am trying to convey at the time.

"King Lord"


EP: You've mentioned Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" as one of your earliest influences, as you spent countless hours examining in your encyclopedia as a child. In fact, after you graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a degree in painting, you traveled to Florence... where the Venus lives at the Uffizi Gallery. What was it about that image that spoke to you so profoundly? What did you learn about painting – and about yourself – when you were living in Florence?

MB: Truth be told, as a horny little kid growing up in the middle of nowhere to pretty conservative parents, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was my first girlie picture. I studied it so intently, because she was naked and I could see her booby. It was in the book of B and it was on page 486 or something like that. I had completely forgotten about that, too, until I walked into the Botticelli room as an adult and saw it covering the back wall of the room. I got all red and started sweating like a banshee... I got all embarrassed and thought everyone else in the room knew my secret. It was funny, I'm sure, but also pretty amazing.

The most incredible thing about living in Florence was that all the stuff I had learned in my art history classes was right there. So much history. I could touch things that were made by Michelangelo... it was as if time didn't exist and I was shaking his hand. It was amazing! I wasn't even painting then. I was just there living and learning and experiencing what I thought at the time was the most profound and relevant aspects of what I had decided to dedicate my life to.

"The Tempest"


EP: What other painters or illustrators from the past move you profoundly, and what aspects of their work do you find most intriguing?

MB: This is a big question, because there have been so many that had significance during the various stages of thought and process. Of course when I was young it was Ed Roth, “Big Deal,” Botticelli and the other Italian Masters, Joel-Peter Witkin, Leon Golub, Bacon, and of course Joe Beuys. As I have grown, it has been people like Donald Roller Wilson, Odd Nerdrum, Emily Eveleth, Inka Essenhigh, Will Cotton, Ugo Rondinone, David Bierk, Darren Waterston and Larry Gray. I know there are soooo many more, but I can’t think of them as I am writing this and trying to remember right now.

What I have found intriguing would be technique and their attention to a personal aesthetic – this is, of course, in relation to the ideas each is expressing, from the serious to the most ridiculous. I think that I am interested in artists that have found a way to express something in their work that I recognize as being important to what I am trying to figure out in my own work. I mean, really… aren’t all of our interests purely a reflection of what we are, rather than what they are? I know I’m guilty.

"Hierarchies"


EP: If you could hang just one classic painting from history on the wall of your studio, what would it be?

MB: Ha! That would be impossible. There would be two… no, three. Sir John Everett Millais' "Ophelia" painting, "The Battle of Issus" by Altdorfer, and a small painting I think I remember seeing at the museum in Cincinnati years ago of a very large male lion lounging in front of his den with his mouth opened wide, roaring at a small blue butterfly passing by. Brilliant! [Editor's note: Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1889 "Lion Snapping at a Butterfly," currently at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.]

"Old Colossus"


EP: After a few years of wandering in the figurative wilderness, you decided to get your MFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design. Later, you joined the faculty there, and are now a painting professor at the SCAD-Atlanta campus. You once said that you started to teach because you had a "debt to pay" to two teachers who affected your life and work profoundly. Could you tell me more about these two people and how they changed you?

MB: The first person was Judy Mariano, my high school art teacher. She went out of her way to provide an environment and means of working and developing my skills as a very young artist. She was the one that took me to portfolio reviews and college campuses when it was time to start the application process. She really believed in me and my desire to one day succeed as an artist. Looking back at the work I did then is rather embarrassing, but she saw something in me that she felt was worthwhile to nurture.

The other was one of my undergraduate professors, Henry Raleigh. He was truly an amazing man. When we were in school, he was a salty old dog. He was an incredible painter and a deeply brilliant man. His life experiences included fighting in the Korean War, getting a doctorate in Philosophy, and reading Tarot cards, which was completely bizarre to me at the time. He was always upfront with his thoughts, and never found it necessary to decorate his words in order to sacrifice a student's feelings. He made us think about things in ways that still affect me today.

Because of these two people and their effect on my life as a person and an artist, I have always felt it was my obligation to try to maintain and foster the qualities they distilled in me, and pass on these qualities to future generations of creative artists.

I owe them so much.

"Vater"


EP: Is there anything else that's having a strong influence on your work right now?

MB: The only thing right now I am trying to understand is the space between creation and destruction and the illusion of three dimensions. (I am not sure it exists, even though my perceptive organs would suggest otherwise.)

"Kind"


EP: What's on the horizon for you? Hopes, dreams, plans for the future?

MB: Good question. First I am going to marry Kate Huber, and then I am hoping to evolve from working as a teacher, and start creating an artist/thinker, studio/work/show space that would include people of all ages working among one another and sharing ideas to help each other grow technically and intellectually at an elevated rate. I just want to create a place that can provide inspiration to the people that participate in it. I don't want it to be limited to artists, either. Art isn't about art. Its about life, and this is what makes art interesting.

I don't know where this will take place, but I know that the time is perfect. The art world has taken a significant hit by the recent blow to the economy, which allows people to use their creative abilities in new ways to create new venues for inspiration and growth in the way we look at all things. Times of duress create new beauty.

Tables Turned

I am honored and humbled to have been asked to participate in Sour Harvest's great new series of collector interviews. It's a fascinating peek into the collector mentality, and there are many much more impressive collections in the future lineup. Here's the interview, conducted by Thinkspace co-curator – and my good friend – Andrew Hosner.

Edwin Ushiro's Fragile Memories

It is my great pleasure to open a window onto the haunting, nostalgic world of Edwin Ushiro, whose work exhibits a fascinating duality. Born on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Edwin has the laid-back loquacity of his birthplace, but also identifies deeply with his more circumspect Japanese heritage. His vision describes the sun-struck days of youth, when the world was fresh and magical – but also explores the eerie folklore indigenous to dark country roads and the boundless depths of the childhood imagination.

"After It's Given All You Wanted"


Edwin’s next solo show, “Softly Encompassing the Womb,” will open on September 12th at LeBasse Projects in Culver City. In anticipation of the show, Edwin invited me over to chat about his work, rather than replying to my questions via email. As a result, the interview is rather lengthy and a bit strange… and occasionally takes detours into unmapped territory.

When I arrived, Edwin was in the midst of the stage of his process where he applies transfers to a thick sheet of clear vinyl with a layer of matte varnish in between. The painting he was working on is one of himself and his little brother as children, heads together as they watch a tiny green chameleon that is perched on a leaf. As we begin, Edwin is bent over the vinyl, with the image face-up, rolling air bubbles out from between the vinyl and the transfer paper.

"The Foundation of Pre-empted Lingering"


Edwin Ushiro: Sorry it’s taking me a while to get this together. I think I mounted it wrong, so I got more air bubbles than I normally would get.

Amanda: That’s OK. It’s interesting watching you do it.

Edwin: It’s fun watching me push air bubbles out? We should make this a documentary. I can do this for hours. (laughter)

The thing that’s challenging at this stage is that when you have the ink under here – and between the ink and the vinyl is this matte varnish – it actually loosens up the ink and kind of lifts it off the transfer paper, so if I squeeze too hard, I can destroy this whole piece… and actually did, here. But that’s part of the fun, that I’m never in control of this whole medium. After maybe two years of doing it this way, I still haven’t mastered it, because there are too many points in creating this that I can totally mess up. And I have. That’s when it’s not fun. But when you can overcome it and not mess up too much, that’s when it’s really cool and you can pat yourself on the back a little bit. Which lasts only for like, two seconds. Until you realize, “Hey, I’m not even done yet.”

"Waking Up Before Starlight"


Amanda: So how many versions of this one have you done so far?

Edwin: Actually this is the lucky one. This one I just did once, and if I don’t mess up here, I feel pretty confident that I’m in the clear right now. Because I knew exactly how I saw it in my head – so it’s that whole process of trying to communicate it as best you can, from what’s inside your head to what you see in front of you. On this one I did it all right.

Amanda: Do you have a title for this one yet?

Edwin: No.

Amanda: Is that the last thing that happens?

Edwin: Yeah… I mean, with some pieces, the title is kind of the catalyst, but with this piece, it was more the emotion that drove it. Because I’m trying to do a beginning, middle, end… So this is obviously more towards the beginning.

"Birth of Unreckoning"


Amanda: Is your family coming out for the show?

Edwin: Yeah, they’ve come out for every solo show I’ve had thus far. I said “thus far” – because I never say that in real life – just because it’s recorded and it’ll sound cool. It’s like Shakespeare, over here.

Amanda: Yeah. It’s weird to ask questions out loud that are all very “written.” I don’t know how I’m going to do it.

Edwin: (loudly) Yes. That. Is. Weird. (laughter) And difficult.

Amanda: Well, do you want to start, or do you want to finish what you’re doing first?

Edwin: No, we can start. Is it OK if I keep working on this?

Amanda: Absolutely.

Edwin: Oh really? Oh, because it’s not video, huh?

Amanda: Nobody can tell what you’re doing. (laughter)

Edwin: That could be taken in so many different ways. But I’m not going to go there.

"When We Met"


Amanda: OK, I’m going to read you a question:

Your work resonates with the echoes of your childhood in the "slow town" of Wailuku on the Hawaiian island of Maui. In many ways, it seems to have been a time of golden innocence, but behind the sunny days of youth lurked a sense that there was more to your world than appeared on the surface. Tell me about that time and place and the people who made such an impact on you.

Edwin: Wow, that’s so weird that you asked me that question while I’m doing this. Actually, I set it set it up that way. (laughter)

Wailuku – when we were kids, we thought that was “city.” Until you come to a place like Los Angeles or New York, you don’t realize how “country” something you had considered “city” was. Wailuku is the same as it was when I grew up, nothing’s really changed. Maybe the demographic is different, but it’s a “slow town,” like you said. There’s nothing going on there.

When we were kids, the local hangout spot was in front of a mom-and-pop 7-Eleven kind of place. We didn’t have a Disneyland to hang out at. Life was just filtered down to its purest form, where anything recreational was something like bike riding or hanging out with friends. In Hawaii we have a tradition – they call it “talk story.” It is what it means – you just hang out with your friends and reminisce about stuff.

That’s probably something that the original Hawaiians passed down to our generation, because Hawaiians never had a written language, so everything was passed down orally. So even something like the hula – that was a way for them to pass on the mythology and legend to the next generation through song and dance. So I guess talk story is kind of the same thing. But am I going off-topic?

"Familiar Kiss of the Underwater Sandstorm"


Amanda: No, this is good. I mean, in a way, what you do in your art is kind of like talk story, right?

Edwin: Oh yeah, definitely! I guess maybe you can’t get away from it. But I think in a way, creating this kind of work makes you appreciate how simple life was and how great childhood is. It’s a lot of stuff that, as you’re older – and I’m 32 now – you lose, you know? It’s lost, or maybe more forgotten than lost.

Actually, right now I have all these cuts on my arms… I talked to you about it already, but for the record, I saw a lemon hanging on a tree, and it was too high for me to even jump up and grab, so I actually ran up the tree, and swiped it. I thought, in my head, “I’ll run up this tree, grab this lemon, and I’ll jump off – like in a Jackie Chan film.” But unbeknownst to me, there were branches that were in the way, and they cut me, so that’s why I have all these scratches on my arms.

It’s kind of like when you’re a kid, and you look at a situation like that, you don't hesitate because you're not aware of consequences. There’s no apprehension – you just do it, because you don’t know any better. Look, I’m 32 and I didn’t know any better. It’s sad.

"Gradiently Everything Would Sparkle From the Sea to the Stars"


Amanda: A lot of your paintings are full of people you’ve known your whole life.

Edwin: Every character that’s in the paintings is somebody that I knew or and grew up with. Even in this piece, there’s a chameleon here. I know that chameleon. They're the ones that ran wild all over any brush that you would find in Wailuku. They’re kind of tame, actually, for something that’s so wild.

All right, I can’t do any more to this.

(Edwin steps away from the piece he’s been working on.)

Edwin: I feel like I just gave birth and just walked away from it. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll create a piece and then I’ll be working on something else, and then I’ll rush back to the piece to take a look at it again, kind of like a proud parent. I mean, hopefully every piece you create, you kind of feel that way about. Or else why even make it, if you don’t like it, in the end?

"No Matter Where She Stood the Light Would Brighten Around Her"


Edwin: You know what would be interesting, is to collect a whole composition of audio files on artists and just kind of listen to them ramble.

Amanda: You know, I’ve done a couple dozen interviews with people now, but I’ve never actually interviewed anybody in person. I’m glad it’s you, because I would be really embarrassed if it was somebody I didn’t know.

Edwin: Well, I think I’d be more embarrassed for the other half. I mean, a lot of artists are just so shy. Most of them, I think. It’s kinda weird, but even the famous ones are shy. Maybe we should have gotten beers, huh? Oh, I have shochu. Yeah?

Amanda: Why not? Well be all relaxed after a little shochu.

Edwin: Does shochu go bad?

Amanda: I don’t think so. Well, we’ll know soon enough.

Edwin: Cheers, or in Hawaii we say, Kampai.

Amanda: Kampai. So… I’m going to ask you another question. (laughter) This is going to be a looong interview, at this rate.

"Flattened Mujina"


Amanda: When you were very young, your mother taught you how to draw, showing you how abstract lines could converge to make an image. Tell me a little about your first experiences with making pictures.

Edwin: I guess I can only go back to when I remember. My mom taught a knitting class when she first came to Hawaii. When she was in Japan, she actually ran her own knitting school, but when she came to Hawaii, she didn’t know much English, so she set up a little class and some older Japanese women would come, and she would speak to them in Japanese.

So I think before her class started one day, she taught me how to draw a car – that simple two wheels and a box. When she came back, I had a dozen of them, and I kept going, drawing different versions of it, tweaking each one as I went. I think she kind of stepped back a little bit, like “Whoa. Maybe there’s something here,” you know? So I think that’s the earliest… and that’s not even my recollection, that’s what she told me.

"Much After the Clouds Retreated Into the Millyard"


Amanda: When did you first realize that you had something unique to say with your vision of the world?

Edwin: I don’t think I’m trying to say something unique to the world. I think I’m saying the same thing everyone else is saying – it’s just that everybody has their own different childhood, so you’re going to have different versions of it. We can only talk about three things, right? Life, death, and whatever’s in between. Or is there anything else? I don’t know, ask Plato, right?

"Once a Reminiscent Memory of the Sea"


Amanda: You seem to identify equally with your Japanese heritage and your Hawaiian birthplace. I've read that Japanese immigrants first came to Hawaii in 1885 to work in the sugarcane fields, and so many of them stayed there that the population of your hometown is about 40% Japanese to this day. Tell me a little about your family's background and how it influences your work.

Edwin: I guess I’m in-between. My father’s from Hawaii and my mom’s from Japan, so I get both sides. I get the Hawaii lifestyle and the Japanese lifestyle. As kids we would frequently fly to visit our Grandma in Japan and their family, so I’m kind of the person that’s in between, who has access to both sides.

"In Excess of Being One Step In Front of Another"


Amanda: When you were born, you had a close brush with death, and I've often wondered if your awareness of that may have been part of what shaped your fascination with the nature of what dwells between the land of the living and the dead.

Edwin: I think yes, subconsciously. I don’t really think about it. I have no recollection of that, I was just so young. I remember my dad saying it hit my Grandpa really hard, because I was his first grandchild and right out of the box, I was going to die. He said, “For the first time, I saw my father cry.” And he was a tough guy, so it was tough to see him cry. Are you tearing up?

Amanda: I think I’m starting to sweat. It’s the shochu.

Edwin: Should I get a fan?

Amanda: No, I’m fine. It happens to the best of us.

Edwin: It’s the hot topics! (laughter)

"A Well Traveled Ancestor"


Amanda: Hawaiian folklore describes how the ancient gods and the spirits of chiefs and their soldiers walk from the mountains down to the sea after sunset and before sunrise, and says that for any outsider to see them along their path is death. I understand that the nightmarchers are said to walk the ʻĪao Valley, near where you grew up in Wailuku. The valley was the traditional burial place of chiefs, and in 1790 was the site of the bloody Battle of Kepaniwai, where King Kamehameha slaughtered Maui's army in his campaign to unite the Hawaiian Islands. Growing up in that environment, echoes of the past must have seemed a natural part of daily life.

Edwin: I guess it goes back to that talk story thing. It’s so ingrained into the Hawaii – I don’t want to say Hawaiian, because we’re not Hawaiian, you know, we’re from Hawaii – but into the culture there. I guess maybe it’s even gossip, a bit, but you’re always talking about the past, or something that happened previously. That’s a really big part of the culture, and I guess in a way it helps shape the next generation as well, and maybe that’s why it continues.

Amanda: I think that because your culture has these boundaries, the stories stay in that place. Here, people lose those stories because they move around so much. But on an island you have these natural borders that keep the stories in, so the story has an area where it lives – it inhabits that place. I mean, when I was growing up, we had to learn the history of the area from books, because no one had any memories of their parents telling them about what had happened before.

Edwin: I don’t remember even knowing the stories because of an educational purpose. It was just kind of a, “Hey, by the way” kind of thing. (shrugs)

"Since Time Only Meant That We Were Growing Up and Falling Apart Together"


Amanda: As you were growing up, Glen Grant's obake books – which described the legendary spirits, demons and ghosts of the islands – made a huge impact on you. You've called him “a living document of all the mythologies of Hawaii.” When you were in high school, you made a point of winning every art competition where the prize was a trip to Oahu, so you could go on Dr. Grant's ghost tours. You've said that listening to him inspired you to go deeper into your subject, to dissect it and find its roots.

Edwin: Everyone talks about ghost stories, but he’s the one that really went and did research. He’s not even from Hawaii, and he was collecting all these stories, and I thought that was so intriguing. A pretty grand approach, trying to collect stories – actually going out there to find stories. You know? And I guess maybe because he wasn’t from Hawaii, he was even more interested in it.

I admired his dedication. You could see that he was so fascinated about the topic. For me, I guess anybody who’s fascinated about what they do or what they like, if they’re fascinated enough, it gets me excited about it. You know?

Glen Grant mentioned that whenever he’d fly over the islands, he always whispered to himself a little prayer to accept him back into the island, in good will, good faith. He always said, “If you have any ghosts or anything strange or out of the ordinary that you want me to investigate, don’t call me. I’ll be the first one out the door.”

"The Diligent Night"


Amanda: You once related having seen something decidedly unsettling sitting on a bus bench. Did that experience change your perspective on the mysteries of existence?

Edwin: It kind of goes back to when I was a kid, and I would look out the window of my bedroom, and wonder, “What really goes on when I’m sleeping? I wonder if I could someday experience that.” That story goes back to when I attended the University of Hawaii for a year, and we had missed the last bus of the night to get back to our dorm. So we went on foot, because that was the only way. It was probably a few hours after midnight.

I remember passing by the mall, and they were sweeping out all the homeless people and closing it down. You know it’s late when the janitors are almost done with their job. We were walking up the street, and there was a bus stop, and we saw a woman sitting there. I remember thinking to myself, “Wait, she looks local. She should know that there’s no bus anymore.” So there was something weird about it.

"Cut Like When Asakusa Recovered Mujina"


As we got closer, I got spooked out, so I moved in between my buddies. When we passed by her, I looked at her face, and this side of her face was OK, but when we passed by, the other half of her face was burnt. It was all black on this side. So for about an hour down the road, nobody said a word, and all of a sudden, I broke the ice. I had to confirm what we saw. I looked at my buddies and said, “Did you see that?” And everybody said, “Yeah.” I didn’t have to say anything else.

That was one of the creepiest things that happened. And that kind of solidifies what I always wondered, about what happened at night. I guess what that gave me also was the realization that anything is possible. Anything can be out there. You can see anything. I still remember it, and I’m sure you could ask any of my friends that were there and they would remember it just as clearly as I did right now. And maybe that could have been a ghost. Nobody knows. I didn’t touch her, I didn’t talk to her.

"When The History of Light Dreamt About the Beginning of Color"


Amanda: After one year at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, you came to Los Angeles to attend Art Center College of Design, and never moved back to Hawaii. Instead you became involved in the entertainment industry in many different capacities, including storyboard artist, concept artist and production designer for video games, movies and shows like CSI: Miami, Angel and Caprica. Did someone or something in particular influence your decision to leave your friends and family and strike out for Hollywood?

Edwin: My intention wasn’t to strike out for Hollywood. I graduated high school in 1995. If you went to University of Hawaii in ’95-’96, there really wasn’t a strong art program at the time. If you wanted to go to school for art, there were a lot better schools out there that you could attend.

I actually had this conversation with Janet Sato, my art teacher in high school. We were talking about how weird it was that a recruiter for Art Center came out to visit me twice when I was in high school. She’d been teaching forever, and never in all her teaching years had she seen that happen. So she’s the one that said, “You should apply. I’ve never seen this happen before.” So I did and I got accepted, and so I went.

I got a lot of offers from a lot of other art schools for a full scholarship, and all that, and I pretty much threw them away. I mean, they would write personal letters to me and stuff like that, and I would be like, “I don’t know who these people are,” and I just threw it away. (laughs) I was just a kid in high school, I didn’t know any better. Now I look back on it, and I think, “That’s kind of cool.”

"Riding Summer Without Skipping a Beat"


Amanda: Was it difficult at first to maintain your resolve to remain here, or did the transition come naturally? Your work exhibits a sense of nostalgia and loss that suggests that you must miss home a great deal.

Edwin: It’s a double-edged sword, because at this point, it’s kind of too late. Maui has changed so drastically that I can walk around for maybe an entire day and not bump into anyone I know… and that wouldn’t happen back in the day. You would spend like five minutes somewhere and somebody would drive past you and they’ll pull over and be like, “Hey, where have you been?” Not nowadays, it’s so different.

I’m so far removed, anyway. We call tourists the “haoles.” Now if I go back, I’m the haole. So many events and so much time has passed by, that I don’t have that same connection to the people and the places anymore. Especially when things change so drastically, with industrialization. So yeah, it would be nice to go back home, but that place that I paint about or I talk about doesn’t even exist anymore. And that’s why I paint those things, because I get to see it. There’s no other way to visit that place anymore.

"When Everything Really Mattered"


Amanda: Although the early work you exhibited was painted more traditionally, you eventually settled on a mixed media technique that involves drawing in ink, scanning, digital painting and printing on transfers which are impressed in layers behind a clear sheet of vinyl. Afterward, you hand-paint behind that semitransparent assemblage and sometimes sand or otherwise distress the resulting layers. Tell me a little bit more about your process.

Edwin: You know what’s funny, when we went to Miami last year, at the Aqua Hotel where we were showing, a few doors down was a gallery called Swarm Gallery – they’re located in San Francisco. Their director, Svea Lin Vezzone, looked at my work, and instantly, she said, “Oh, transfers.” I was like, “You get it!” She said, “Of course, it’s obvious.” I’m like, “Wow, how come no one else can see it?”

I’m using ordinary materials, I think. Everything’s very accessible. The materials that I use right now are primarily acrylic paint that you can get at any art store, and varnish or matte medium – something to bind the vinyl and the t-shirt transfers… that’s it, basically. Pencil, pen, paper… yeah. Every once in a while I’ll drop some ink in there, but that’s just when I feel like it. And whatever’s nearby that I can grab.

"While You Are Still Here and Before You Fade Away"


Amanda: You've said that due to your bad vision, you sometimes misinterpret things that you see from a distance, using your imagination to fill in the gaps and make sense of your imperfect perception of what's in front of you. Do these inadvertent fabrications ever inspire ideas for paintings?

Edwin: Not yet, but where did you get that?

Amanda: I don’t know, something you said to someone online. I’ll send you all my bookmarks, and you can find out all about yourself. (laughter) Is it not true?

Edwin: No, that is very true. But that’s something I don’t really talk to anybody about. The combination of my bad vision and being really tired is a kind of awesome experience. I remember driving home late at night from Pasadena to La Cañada, where I lived before I moved here, and there was a line of palm trees, and with the way the light hit it, and my bad vision, it looked like a line of these weird guys in trench coats with these big bowler hats, sort of hunched over. And it kind of creeped me out at first, until I realized that it was my imagination filling in the gaps.

Maybe it does inspire me, but it doesn’t inspire me to make a painting of it – it solidifies how I can approach a character as if it was the reality seen through my eyes. So if anything, it gives me inspiration to realize that the way I see things and how I interpret things onto the paper, is how it would look if it were real. I think that helps me understand how to interpret the character, so when people see it, they can get the same emotion that they would have if they’d actually seen it in person. It kind of becomes a reference point.

"A Space Absorbing Memories Already Long Forgotten by Others"


Amanda: Much of your work appears to be somewhat obscured – as if it’s being seen through a dusty layer of sun-struck glass, or reflected in an antique mirror with its silvered backing peeling away in places. What does this choice represent for you?

Edwin: That’s a weird way to say it. It has that atmospheric lighting, right? I think it has to do with my poor vision, too, and that’s kind of the way I see things, so that’s how I interpret them.

"Old Pali Girl Revisited"


Amanda: You have a predilection for long, evocative titles with a poignant air. What inspires these poetic, impressionistic fragments of language?

Edwin: I think they’re not very poetic. I just call it like I see it.

Amanda: They’re not very straightforward titles.

Edwin: They’re not. I don’t want to make it straightforward, because why kill the story in one word? Why not string you along for a little bit? A lot of times I do see things really fragmented, so it comes off that way. I’ll say this, a lot of times I don’t know the title. With some pieces I know exactly what the title should be, but there are a lot of pieces that don’t have a title – even now, most paintings I have completed are untitled. But I’ll stare at them, and it will just come to me… and I kind of know what it means. For some reason, I get it. It’s almost as if somebody whispered in my ear. It was there one second and it wasn’t there after. Just in the moment. You hear it and you write it down. That light bulb kind of goes off. I do once in a while write down little titles that I’ll kind of see in my head. Some are very specific, because I know exactly which piece that title’s going to go for, even though it isn’t created yet.

"In the End She Would Love Him Beyond Confines Of Skin, For Flesh Would Surely Rot, Only To Leave Behind the Story of Unconditional Predilection"


Amanda: One of your earliest influences was the manga that your grandmother sent you from Japan when you were young. Did any of them in particular make a strong impression on you? What was it about the manga aesthetic that you found so compelling?

Edwin: Maybe more the action manga, like Ultraman. That kind of illustrated manga was interesting, because it’s based off of a live-action TV show, so when you follow the panels, it flows a lot better than other mangas, because you can see how they actually take place in the live-action version. It translates so well, and the action’s way more intense, because they have that luxury. As far as influence, I guess maybe it showed me that when you illustrate, you don’t just draw a static figure. You can also create a character with some kind of movement going on, as well.

"Old Pali Girl Departing"


Amanda: On my blog, I always ask artists about the painters of history. It isn’t something that you’ve talked about much and maybe you don’t have any interest in that, but I thought I’d ask you if there were any painters from the past that you find inspirational or influential.

Edwin: One thing I am fascinated about is photography, and I don’t even shoot photos. For example, the work of someone like Weegee or Benson – they capture a moment so well. Especially Weegee – he was there when you’re not supposed to be there. I remember a great translation of what cinema should be is, “Cinema takes you to a place where you’re not intended to go.” When you look at someone like Weegee, and you see those detective photos, you’re like, “Wow, you’re not supposed to be there.” And he’s letting you in. That’s fascinating.

Photography inspires me a lot more than illustration, because to me, it involves the viewer into the story more. Also, it’s real life, and they tweaked it, and I guess in a way that’s what I’m doing, so I can relate to it a lot more than to a painter.

Kind of off topic, but I was watching that Art:21 documentary on Sally Mann. It was interesting, because you’re sitting with her in her darkroom – and this was back in 2001 or 2002, when she was doing that series of dog bones. She was processing a really abstract shot of a dog bone and she just kept staring at it – she’d develop it and put it on the wall and stare at it and say, “It’s not giving me what I saw.” So she puts it aside and develops another one and says, “OK, I think I’m getting there, I need to go darker.”

It’s not just, “You shoot it, you print it, it’s there.” There’s a struggle in between, that process, and it kind of relates to what I’m doing. I’ll make an image, but that’s not necessarily the final one. There’s a lot of times I’ll develop it and I’ll look at it, and I’ll think, “It’s not what I intended.” If you tweak it enough, you can almost change the story. Just like photography – I guess that’s why I relate to it – I always have to tweak it. There’s always these little hurdles, during the whole process of mounting and painting over it. There’s still that struggle. It’s not like you print it and – boom, you frame it, and it’s done. So that was a cool thing to see, that whole struggle in between. And not even the struggle, but also that determination to get exactly what you wanted to see, you know? It’s still there. I can get it. You just have to dig harder.

"Recorded Without Any Insecurity"


Amanda: If you could hang just one great photograph on the wall of your studio, what would it be?

Edwin: I don’t know of one in particular, just because I get bored fast, so I don’t know if I could just stare at the same thing over and over. Especially with photography, I think once you get it, I don’t know if you can read more into it.

Amanda: You could say the same thing of a painting, really.

Edwin: Well, maybe, yeah. But you can always go back to a painting and look at the strokes. You can look at it one way, where you can read information, and other way you can read it as an artist and follow the strokes and go, “OK, she started here. Wait, look, she hesitated.” You know? And there’s another story behind that, whereas with photography, I am not educated enough about the process to understand that second read.

I’d rather have a blank wall, actually. I talked to Eiko Ishioka – she did the costume design for that movie The Cell, and she also does a lot of stage design – and I asked her, “What’s your studio like?” She said, “Four white walls.” I thought about that, and I was like, “Wow, that’s inspiring, because then all options are open, right?” That was a great answer for me, because I’d rather stare at a blank wall and imagine, “What would be the next thing that I want to see here?” You know? Because I’m always looking for that next image I will create, even if I did hang something on it, it’s not going to be there for very long. So I guess maybe, instead of photography, the best piece to have on the wall would be a blank, empty wall.

"Remnant of Light Exiting a Pupil"


Amanda: Is there anything else that you find really inspirational that I haven’t asked you about?

Edwin: There are a lot of stories I haven’t even heard yet. That’s the most inspirational thing. One thing is – I haven’t even painted this yet – we were just sitting around drinking beers, and my friend Steve elbowed my buddy Chief. His name is Michael, but we call him Chief. We gave everybody nicknames. He goes, “Chief has a story to tell you.” Steve shares my fascination with ghost stories.

Chief says, “Oh yeah, the story.” He tells me that when he left for college, his mom and her new husband bought a house in a new division in Wailuku. Prior to this, it was just sugar cane fields. She went to the swap meet and bought a vintage necklace, probably just shells. After she got that, something strange started happening at the house. She said every night at two o’clock, she would hear the footsteps of a little kid running around in the living room. There were no kids in the house, so that kind of spooked her out. She was like, “What’s that? It’s not coming from outside. It’s coming from inside the house.” It happened several times.

Usually at this point, you either call your minister, or you call a Hawaiian shaman, which we call a kupuna. So she went for the kupuna, and he came over and he looked around the house, and he said, “Yeah, there’s something strange about this. Can you tell me what you did prior to this occurrence? She said, “Well, I bought this necklace.” He looked at it and he said, “Oh, no, no, no, this is not just a necklace. This is from somebody Hawaiian.”

"Just Like Water"


Then when he was blessing the house, he jolted back because he felt something. He pulled up his shirt, and on his back, there were these long gashes. I don’t know if this was set up, but Chief’s mom told him that these were fresh gashes, almost like a cat clawing you. That freaked her out. So she gave the necklace to the kupuna, and he said he would take care of it. Whatever he did, it took care of the job. The story kind of continues. She went over to her neighbor’s, and her neighbor said, “You know what? I don’t know if you have this problem, but at night, I hear a little kid running around in my room.”

I remember Steve looked over at me and said, “So, are you going to paint that?” I haven’t felt inspired enough to do that, but I love the story, and of all the stories that I’ve painted which are like tenth generation, that story is second generation, and I know his mom. Chief and I were friends since like sixth grade, maybe even before that, so we go back a long ways. These are stories in Hawaii that are shared commonly, but tourists don’t get to hear it because you’re not part of the circle, you’re not in the network. When you’re in the network, you get to hear these stories all the time. It’s not uncommon. People in Japan share these stories, too.

"Sifting Through the Delaying For Repetition"


Amanda: Your upcoming show at LeBasse Projects is entitled "Softly Encompassing the Womb." Tell me a little about the theme of the show, and what we can expect to see there.

Edwin: The way I interpret the title is that it's the moment when you realize what your purpose is. What are you destined to do? In this series, each character answers this question, for better or worse. As far as the title communicating that to the public, I don't know if it does, but to me in my world, it somehow makes sense. So I go with that, that's kind of my gut.

Amanda: That’s good. Thanks for indulging me.

Edwin: Thanks for taking the time to do this!

"Realizing the Perfect Day Was Just a Dream"


Amanda: This kind of interview is OK for email, but it’s so inappropriate for talking to somebody!

Edwin: For me to say what I said, I don’t know if I could have transcribed it. I’m sure I would have edited myself somewhere along the line.

Amanda: Everybody’s different. I’m much more articulate on paper. But you’re sort of a storyteller, so it seemed to me that you would be more comfortable talking.

Edwin: Well, here especially, you don’t feel shy or awkward. You’ve been here so many times, it’s like your second home outside of Silver Lake, you know? It’s a good combination of a lot of things. Being comfortable first of all, and number two, we know each other well enough that you know what to say, and you know you can probably ask me anything. I guess it’s a comfort zone.

"From This Point On When She Would Look At the Tea Leaves, Her Memory Would Lead Her Back To This Very Moment"


Amanda: Do you have any work in there that I can see, or are you keeping it secret?

Edwin: Just digital versions that are midway right now. That haven’t found the magic hour yet. A bunch of them got sent to the framers a couple of weeks ago.

Amanda: Cool. Are there not going to be any that are stretched like at the last group show?

Edwin: No. It’s so difficult. The entire process is so fragile that adding another element – in that case, stretching it onto wood – just creates another point where I can fuck up. Somehow I am unconsciously choosing a process that is very fragile, and can fall apart at any moment, and I can fail, like we were talking about earlier. So why would I do something like that? Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but I think it correlates to time. Time is so fragile. It’s like handling a first edition Gutenberg Bible. Every time you turn a page, you take a chance. I think in a way, that’s why I enjoy keeping it that fragile. It’s like time, I can mess it up, you know? I don’t know if that even makes sense. The fragility of time, I guess, is what I want to say. See, I wouldn’t have typed that out. This is just running with scissors right now. Just going for it.

Edwin Ushiro’s “Softly Encompassing the Womb” will be unveiled on Saturday, September 12th at LeBasse Projects in Culver City. Edwin will be there with all his friends and family – make sure to stop by and say aloha.

Travis Louie's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Monster"

The time has come once more for a conversation with the masterful painter Travis Louie, purveyor of fine portraits from imaginary Victorian-era photography studios whose clientele was largely restricted to human oddities and things that go bump in the night. Travis has just released a beautiful little book of his paintings entitled Curiosities, which is designed to look like a turn-of-the-century family photo album. Inside, you will find a selection of the best of Travis' work – displayed much as the lovingly preserved portraits of your ancestors might be – as well as the poignant and amusing stories from which the images are derived. If you find Travis' work compelling, you won't want to miss it... and if you'd like a copy signed in Travis' exquisite handwriting, get in touch with him directly and he'll hook you up.

"The Strangler"


On August 21st at Roq la Rue in Seattle, his exhibition entitled "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Monster" will be unveiled. Despite his demanding schedule, Travis was a dear and eked out some time to ponder my questions about his work.

Erratic Phenomena: Tell me a little about your experience of growing up in Queens, immersed in 1950s movies and pulp memorabilia, with their rockets, superheroes and giant monsters. From the way you've described your childhood, it almost seems as if you were raised in an earlier era and somehow time-traveled to ours not too long ago.

Travis Louie: I grew up in a neighborhood that was like a time capsule – it was a holdover from the 1950s-‘60s. There was a Woolworth’s with a luncheonette, a drugstore that still had counter service where you could get a chocolate egg cream, a mom and pop toy store, a Chinese restaurant that still had a neon sign that said "Chop Suey," and most important to me, a novelty book store that had a used section with old pulps and comics. I bought old back issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, old horror comics, Creepy, Eerie, and Mad magazine.

There were two great movie theatres in that area, the Prospect Theatre, and at the end of Main Street, a grand movie palace called the RKO Keith's. It was a 3000-seat theatre with a beautiful Spanish-Baroque interior built in 1928. It was fitting that I saw Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Blade Runner and a revival of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad at those theatres.

"Flowering Foster"


EP: You've said that as a boy, you drew thousands of sketches of monsters from Atomic Age science fiction and horror movies. I understand it was your grandfather who first noticed your enthusiasm for making images, and nourished that tendency. Could you tell me a little about your relationship with him?

TL: My grandfather was a machinist who worked for the Bulova Watch Co. in Astoria. He was a decent draftsman himself and used to draw dinosaurs and elephants for me. He encouraged me to draw what I saw on the big screen – and the little one. He said, "Someone had to design everything you are looking at." He introduced me to those great stop-motion creature features, from King Kong to Jason and the Argonauts. He bought me art supplies and built my first drawing table. I remember when we saw the Ralph Bakshi-animated Lord of the Rings, he asked me to try and remember what I saw and draw it. I drew a really clunky version of Gollum.

"The Letter"


EP: Is there a particular moment from childhood that stands out for you as an artistic awakening?

TL: When my grandfather took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that was an eye-opening experience. I saw the Jules Bastien-Lepage painting of Joan of Arc – it is a remarkable painting that is mostly taken for granted these days. It gave me an understanding of what is possible. To my young eyes, it was even better than those large canvases by Tiepolo that greeted us at the top of the main stairs. I got my first museum headache.

"The Professional"


EP: As a child, you were fascinated by films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Godzilla, which were reflections of the communist paranoia and nuclear anxiety of their era. Likewise, I think your work is in many ways not about monsters at all. The beings you depict are living their lives with as much kindness, dignity and fortitude as one can muster when born with unusual needs and a one-of-a-kind visage, and your humanistic portrayal of them seems to be in part a commentary on the way our society marginalizes the 'other,' fetishizes beauty and rewards uniformity. What do you see as the central metaphor in your work?

TL: Mistaken identity… being judged solely on one's appearance… racism. I remember being on a bus with my mom in 1973, and a woman started giving my mom a hard time because of our Southeast Asian appearance. She assumed we were Vietnamese, and insulted us about the conflict in Vietnam and how we didn't belong in her country. My mom always tried to hide such things from us. She felt it was not right to expose us to how ugly ignorance is. The bus driver stepped in and told the lady to pipe down. It played like an awkward moment in a Norman Lear sitcom, but the experience stayed with me.

The characters in my paintings are – or can easily be – misunderstood. They are, for the most part, kind and affable – just trying to get by, like anyone else. I try to keep it light and maybe humorous.

Part of what fascinates me about films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars is the paranoia. I can identify with the character who knows something's going on, but no one believes him.

"From the Flower Patch"


EP: You're a lover of vintage photography – such as ambrotypes, daguerreotypes and albumen silver prints – and you regret that you don't have any such images from your own family. Do you think perhaps your urge to invent ancestral portraits for an imaginary race of misfits might be in part a way to fill a void you feel in your own history?

TL: I'd have to say yes. I definitely wish I had old photographs of my ancestors. For a lot of people from that region of the world during the 19th century, that kind of photography was not accessible, or people were afraid of it. Some of the characters are modeled after real people in my family, like Karl the Humanzee, who is modeled after my grandfather.

"Karl the Humanzee"


EP: When you use a real person as a model for a character, what aspect of that person are you attempting to capture?

TL: With Karl, I was trying to capture the tired look my grandfather had – my grandmother was very hard on him. He had a great sense of humor and just didn't want to make any waves… but I think it wore him down in the end. Karl's character is very similar. He was discovered working for a rather eccentric, vision-impaired aristocrat in 19th century England and didn't want to interrupt his employer's "perfect world." He never mentioned on his application that he was partly chimp, or ape-like in any way. He just displayed his more human side and followed her wishes.

"Charlotte of the Woods"


EP: Besides 19th century portrait photography, the most obvious influence in your work is film – and particularly the lighting and atmosphere of German Expressionism and Film Noir. Could you name a few films which could give the viewer a deeper appreciation of your work, and tell me how you feel they've influenced you?

TL: Nosferatu, Metropolis, and Faust come to mind. I don't paint those kinds of backgrounds anymore, but I started out making paintings of chickens and roosters acting out scenes from famous noir pictures like Sudden Fear, Night of the Hunter, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Phantom Lady. It was an earlier influence on the paintings. I still paint in black and white, though.

"Glen"


EP: You have a gorgeous hand, and I know that you collect vintage mechanical pencils and other fine writing instruments. Did you learn calligraphy from someone else, or did you teach yourself by studying Victorian penmanship? Does drawing or writing with an antique instrument have a tangible effect on the finished piece, or is it a purely sensual choice on your part?

TL: I like the feel of the curvilinear shapes in lettering and fine penmanship. I think it is a sensual thing, as you say. I learned how to have decent, legible handwriting from my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. DiMonica, and I taught myself the more Victorian hand a little later. I have practiced calligraphy on and off since I was in the seventh grade.

"Molly Bad Hair"


EP: My favorite amongst all your work is your recent painting of "Molly Bad Hair," who is one of the least 'monstrous' of your characters. It has a palpable tension and vivid emotion, and she's so warm and fleshy and alive that you can almost see her breathe. I wonder if your process in creating her was perhaps a bit different than usual. Do you think you will be exploring more of this sort of territory in the future? How do you see yourself evolving?

TL: I'm working on a series of paintings right now that is more in line with the feel of that particular painting. They only thing different about the “Molly Bad Hair” piece was that the model I worked from is a dear friend of mine, so perhaps I had some pressure to make a better painting of her. I plan to expand on my portraiture and make paintings with crowd scenes.

"The Smoking Man"


EP: You once said, "I arrive at the subject matter for my paintings by writing short stories in my notebooks and making many little thumbnails. The ideas for those little stories come mostly from my dreams." From speaking to a number of pop surrealist painters, I've begun to get the idea that strange, vivid and memorable dreams are a common thread that runs between most of you. Maybe that portal into the unknown that opens for you every night is one of the things that allows you to capture a feeling of wonder in your work. What do you think?

TL: I visualize lots of things right before I go to sleep. We all possess our own dream symbolism – it isn't quite as universal as some books on the subject would lead us to believe. I try to decipher my dream symbolism, and those images sometimes linger into my daytime thoughts. When things are going well, I see perfectly arranged, stacked objects. When things are not well, objects appear to be just about to fall or are just haplessly strewn about.

The most pervasive dream symbolism I've come across in my lifetime has been zombies – the George Romero type that move slowly while moaning. They represent a need to move on to the next thing, whatever that is. I used to have dreams that zombies were invading whatever job I had at the time, and I would wake up knowing it was time to go on to another project. At some point in my career, I'll probably make my large "zombie opus.”

As far as the stories go, the ideas usually stem from details within the dreams, like a specific coat, or a broom someone is holding. The dreams can be so lucid and vivid… and always in black and white, too. In a way, it's very therapeutic.

"Miss Cynthia"


EP: You've been prominent in the pop surrealism scene since you gave up working as a commercial illustrator to pursue making art full-time in 2003. Since then, you've also been nurturing promising young artists who are testing the strange waters of this scene. How has the environment of this corner of the art world changed in the time you've been observing it? Where do you see it going from here?

TL: This is a very strange little corner of the art world. I'm not sure where this is all going, but I'd like to see it get some more notoriety, for obvious reasons. I've helped some of my fellow illustrators and a few of the newer artists participate in this scene, with mixed results.

There isn't so much a particular style that defines the scene, but I would say there is a definite flavor to the work that is exhibited that falls somewhere between the decorative and the narrative. Along the way, it continues to morph into something that relates to the ephemera of the artists – how they have been influenced by the pop culture around them. Good or bad, that's the most honest way I can describe this. It continues to attract a larger audience because popular culture is so invasive. Perhaps in 10 years, we'll see where this all goes.

"Bricktop the Lummox"


EP: The "highbrow" art scene has yet to take pop surrealism seriously, mostly due to the modernist disdain for technical sophistication, emotion and narrative in art – a cult of mediocrity that has marginalized amazingly skilled painters – from Bouguereau to Ryden – for a century. You've decried the fact that most art schools don't even teach students how to draw – let alone paint – anymore. Apparently art critics maintain that critical writing about a new artistic movement should arise out of the scene itself, so that "serious" critics can then draw upon that in order to understand what they're seeing. Do you think pop surrealism will ever be legitimized by the high-art world? As today's collectors mature, will art critics also naturally grow out of their 20th-century mindset, and embrace vision and craftsmanship again?

TL: I don't know. I always felt that modern art was what they told us it was. Writers of art criticism and art history, perched on the shoulders of others, aping what they've written until the words become gospel and we are expected to hold certain artists to a higher merit and significance, just because they said so. It all seems so political, doesn't it? How does one art community think they are better than another simply because they are different?

Let me rephrase that. When you have to go out of your way to put someone else down to make yourself look good, I think we need to question that. In his day, Bouguereau was the most successful painter in France. He was later demonized as an "official" painter, and the art history books had written him out until recently – when prices for his paintings at auction began to reach beyond six figures. It is unfortunate that his popularity made him the focal point of the reaction against academic art that was popular during his day.

Don't to get me wrong, there is still beauty in the larger "high art" world, but it seems like we need to dig a little deeper to find it. I think art as a reaction falls somewhere between belligerence and posturing. My art isn't about thumbing my nose at any "establishment."

"Jenny Bad Hair"


EP: I know you have a deep admiration for Golden Age illustrators Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish, and you've said that close examination of Parrish's glazing method was an influence on the development of your unique painting technique, as well. Tell me about your relationship with their work.

TL: I like those two guys for different reasons. As far as Maxfield Parrish goes, I really do enjoy his technique. Knowing about it has been quite helpful – it opens up the possibilities. We’re taught in school that paintings should be painted a certain way – fat over lean, light over dark. But Parrish painted with a glazing method – laying translucent layers of oil paint over each other in a thin wash. If he thought a painting was a little too blue, he would go back and make subtle changes with a transparent glaze of another primary color. I’m interested in the methodology of that. Do I like what he painted? Not as much as I like what Rockwell painted.

Rockwell wanted to see. People say his work was saccharine or sentimental, but it wasn’t. He was being honest, because he’d seen that. He had lived through the 1920s, he’d seen the stock market crash. His first wife lost all his money in the stock market, and had been pretty well-to-do, because back then, if you were an illustrator, you were paid really handsomely and you were treated like royalty.

Norman Rockwell’s paintings were the first paintings I actually saw. My grandfather had a Rockwell book in his house. The book was from the 1960s, so the reproductions weren’t that great, but I could see how prolific he’d been. I kind of wondered where he found the time. I realized after reading his biography that he had the time because he just worked really hard – he put in many hours per day painting, and he only slept a few hours. His second wife would spend the holiday season trying to drag him out of the studio for the holiday dinner.

"Bill"


EP: What other painters or illustrators from the past move you powerfully, and what aspects of their work do you find most intriguing?

TL: I really, really like Alfons Mucha and J.C. Leyendecker. Both of them have a wonderful sense of design. Their commercial work was actually quite aesthetically pleasing. Leyendecker was painting more than just an Arrow Collar ad – there was so much more going on. I love the way he used those diagonals. Take a look at those wonderful diagonal strokes.

It seems rather obvious why I would like Mucha – for his curvilinear design. I don’t paint many curvilinear shapes, except in the hair, but I really love his posters. They were just beautiful things. If you’ve ever seen his Slav Epic, those paintings were enormous, and he was never able to exhibit them because they were so big.

Dean Cornwell was a wonderful painter – beautiful, beautiful stuff. He was one of Norman Rockwell’s idols. What made his work even more amazing was that back then they had limited color in printing – they were confined to using just two or three colors – and he was able to get away with a lot with limited color like that.

I like Howard Chandler Christy, he was a pretty good painter. Of course, you can’t mention the Golden Age of Illustration without mentioning Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth. The first Wyeth was the best one... The grandson, Jamie, is living off the fame of his father and grandfather. He’s mediocre at best. Any of the Golden Age illustrators could paint circles around him.

I like Robert McGinnis. He did pulp covers and movie posters, like the old James Bond posters. Most recently he’s been doing western paintings, beautiful paintings that are like a mix of a John Wayne movie with an old silent William S. Hart movie.

Then of course there’s Frank Frazetta. I was much younger when I first saw his work, but I’m not sure I’d be doing what I’m doing now if not for him. I like his work ethic. Here’s a guy who made it look easy. He actually did some of those paintings in an evening, and sometimes I feel like I’m emulating him when I try to do a painting overnight, which is something that happens to every illustrator, and has happened to me many times. I love the pressure. It seems like a crazy thing, but I really do love it. I thrive on it. While I'm doing it I don't enjoy it so much, but when I'm done there's a sigh of relief. It's like that scene in Misery, when James Caan finishes writing his novel, and he lays out a cigarette, a match and a glass of champagne – it's a ritual thing. When I'm done with a painting, I like to go for a walk. I like to bask in the enjoyment of, "Hey, look, I just finished this thing." I guess other artists must do that too... I can't be the only one that does that.

"Bill Arrested"


EP: If you could hang just one classic painting from history on the wall of your studio, what would it be?

TL: Théodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa.” It’s a beautiful painting, there’s this energy, and it’s historical. A good genre painting will give you a sense of when it was painted, not necessarily just the clothes that people were wearing, but the political climate, too. It’s marvelous.

Travis and his alter ego, Bill (via Arrested Motion)


EP: What else are you looking forward to right now? Hopes, dreams, plans for the future?

TL: A break! My big plan for right now is to get past this show and have a break. In the future, I plan on doing larger scale paintings that have more things going on in them. I want to do a painting of a court hearing, or the closing of a large business deal that would have all these unusual characters sitting around a boardroom table. An expansion of what I’m doing to the next level. I’m not going to do any kind of crazy experimentation with my paintings. I’m going to change them very incrementally.

Travis Louie's "Portrait of the Artist As a Young Monster" will open on August 21st at Roq la Rue in Seattle. Along with a few monsters and human oddities, this show will feature a number of Travis' beautiful but strange (and sometimes a bit demented) Victorian ladies. Keep an eye out for a gorgeous print of Travis' painting "Sarah and Emmet," which is forthcoming from Pressure Printing... and don't forget to check out Curiosities.

"Sarah and Emmett"


Incidentally, this was the first interview written for the Heroes & Villains book. For those unfamiliar with the project, Heroes & Villains is a collaboration between photographers Tatiana Wills and Roman Cho, who for the last four years have been photographing a rogue's gallery of artists from the lowbrow, pop surrealism, alt-comics and urban contemporary scenes. Tatiana and Roman liked what I was saying here at Erratic Phenomena, so they asked me to write the text for the book, which we plan to publish in a year or so.

Among the delights contained within will be numerous examples of my in-depth interview approach applied to artists like James Jean, Audrey Kawasaki, Ron English, Liz McGrath, Seonna Hong and the Clayton Brothers. Most of the interviews will be exclusive to the book, but a few will leak out here and in other publications over the coming year. The Heroes & Villains photographic project, which has been exhibited at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles and Shooting Gallery in San Francisco, will have its next showing at the Beyond Eden New Contemporary Art Fair in Hollywood's Barnsdall Art Park from October 9-11th.