Once more we try to broaden our scope beyond what’s supposedly to be expected from us and contacted Ian Francis (www.ifrancis.co.uk) simply because we saw his work somewhere, checked his website and liked a lot what we saw. His visual universe seems familar to those of us that grew up watching TV, reading comic books or going to the movies in the second half of the 2oth century. His work is on the way of becoming increasingly pricey and in our opinion not without merit. Here’s the interview:
First of all: Why, where, how… did you become an artist?
I’ve loved painting and drawing for as long as I can remember. I think I decided I wanted to be an artist when I was about 11 or 12, and since then it’s what I’ve been aiming for. I studied Illustration at university because I felt the course was closer to what I wanted to do than the Fine Art course was at the time, but I was always more suited to doing my own work than working to a brief. After I graduated it took me a long time to get into doing art full time, I knew it was what I wanted to do but had no idea how to go about doing it as a career. I spent about 5 or 6 years doing part time jobs to pay the bills and spending my free time trying to develop my work. Eventually, I started getting asked to submit work for exhibitions at a few different galleries who’d seen my work in online or print magazines.
It looks like your personal iconographic universe has a lot to do with TV, movies, maybe comic books. These are all primarily narrative arts. Because of this and because of the titles of your paintings, it feels like there’s a sometimes underlying and sometimes even obvious narrative intention in your work. Would you agree? Do you like the idea of people seeing a story in your paintings that goes untold, of the paintings just being a hint at a more complex plot going on with those same characters?
Yes, definitely. I love film and TV, and I love the relationship that painting and drawing has with them - in film, frames go by so fast, and come together to make the whole, whereas with painting you’re taking something that’s a few seconds or just a fraction of a second and arresting that moment and spending days/weeks/months portraying it. At the moment I’m not interested in creating extended story-based narratives, but I love the idea of an implied narrative that’s created by a static, two-dimensional picture. I love trying to pair things down to a moment that fascinates me.
As you might have noticed we interview, exhibit and work with many different artists but a lot of them come from a Street art of Graffiti background. It doesn’t seem to be your case but your two major solo shows so far have been at 2 galleries in the US and the UK that also seem to pay a lot of attention to these same kind of artists. Would you say you have anything in common with the whole Street art thing and artists that are labeled as street artists? Maybe not so much with this in particular but with other artists in your generation that don’t quite fit the standard (”Outsiders” as Steve Lazarides puts it)?
Something I guess I’ve always struggled with is where my work fits in. When I graduated I knew I wanted to do artwork about whatever I felt like, so illustration wasn’t for me, but the only gallery work I knew about was either very high-end conceptual work or extremely conservative traditional work, both of which I have a lot of respect for but don’t really move me. I knew the kind of work I wanted to do, so I just got on with doing it and tried not to worry about its place in the world. Lately I think maybe it’s a good thing for me not to fit too neatly into a genre or field. I like Street art, but my work doesn’t really have that much directly in common with it, and in some ways it’s the antithesis of it (it’s built up over layers and time which I guess is the opposite of the immediacy you need with Street art). I think the link comes from being on websites like Fecal Face, Juxtapoz, Beautiful Decay etc. that tend to cover both. I think maybe the similarity comes from a shared sense of just loving artwork and imagery, and wanting to get on with it. I like the fact that a lot of the work in these types of galleries or websites is really trying to engage with people in a way that some more traditional galleries don’t seem to, but maybe that’s just my perception. They feel more relevant to me.
I can’t really tell by your art if your vision of life is a pessimistic or an optimistic one but the combination of dramatic or even tragic situations, monsters even! with the often vividly colorful backgrounds or the sarcastic titles makes it seem a lot less somber. How would you define your art in terms of mood, optimistic vs. pessimistic, comic vs. tragic…?
I think that, despite all it’s failings and my own ingrained cynicism, I love the society I live in, and I don’t want to see it fall apart. The idea of things collapsing and being destroyed fascinates and horrifies me, and it’s become a dominating theme in my work over the years. The way that such a disparate range of ideas, from the very serious to the utterly superficial, sit side by side and link together on the internet or in popular culture really strikes me. I guess it’s this sense of horror and absurdity and beauty mixing together that I’m trying to get across in my work. I think the world’s getting stranger by the day, and it’s hard to really know how to react to it sometimes.
Going back to the monsters, I’ve noticed that a couple of your recent paintings portrait monsters, or at least that’s what the title says, but the monsters seem part of that looser style that dominates your landscapes as opposed to the more defined and detailed technique you use for human characters. Do you think you’ll be getting more specific with your future monsters or they’ll remain blurry and therefore more mysterious and scary?
It comes from a sense of abstract threat that seems to underlie a lot of what I read and see these days. A lot of the dangers we face are very real, but they’re not necessarily immediately obvious in every day life, and they don’t really have literal physical forms. There’s something about the idea of a monster, at least in an abstract sense, that appeals to me, I guess it’s the mix of the seriousness and the ridiculousness of the situation. The actual abstract shapes themselves tend to come from the light effects and distortions you get in photography, particularly in pictures of things like explosions and buildings falling apart. I want to try and bring this idea into the paintings subtly, using shapes and forms that are suggestive of things which recur constantly in news footage.
I would like you tell us about your creative process and particularly how’s the balance between the process and the result. Anything is good as long as it takes you to the desired objective or precisely is the process what makes it worthwhile and the result is just an expression of that process? Can you elaborate on this, please?
Process is very important to me, and I try to use different techniques and media to get them to play off of each other in a way that’s relevant to what I’m painting. Sometimes I love spending time painting something fairly delicately and then obliterating large parts of it with either very loose brush or palette knife strokes or just pouring paint directly on to the canvas. When I’m working on ideas, I usually come up with ideas for images rather than ideas specifically for paintings, which can be good in some ways but often leaves me with no idea how I’m actually going to make the image into a painting.
Seeing it on a canvas where one’s perception is subject to characteristics such as the texture that identifies a certain technique, the size or the context (ie: an art gallery) must make a big difference when observing one of your paintings but seeing it on a computer screen your work looks very close to what could be considered illustration, something taken from a comic book cover, a spread page for some magazine article. And please don’t take it as a way of making any less of your work, I think that’s great!. The difference is probably that an illustration needs to serve the purpose of precisely illustrating something (the comic book, the article…) Do you feel liberated not having to serve any other purpose than taking your work wherever you feel like at that particular time? Do you have to find your own theme or story to illustrate for each new painting?
I definitely feel liberated, although I studied illustration at university I have never been any good at actually illustrating anything. I always paint whatever I’m obsessed with and I just want to try and get across how I feel about a subject to other people. Sometimes I get frustrated with my work because I don’t feel I’m doing this well enough. I have a lot of respect for people who are good illustrators and can bring someone else’s ideas alive, I think it’s a real skill, sadly it’s one that I lack. The difference between seeing work on a screen and seeing it in person is interesting to me, particularly because a few years ago I was making finished work in Photoshop rather than on canvas. A lot of the paintings I make now are physically quite large, and there are some things with scale and detail that you can do on a large canvas that don’t really translate on to a screen, particularly a small jpeg. It’s a lot more immersive being able to stand in front of a painting that almost fills your vision. I think sometimes I’m not really an experienced enough painter yet, I’m still getting used to planning out compositions that work in relation to the physical scale of the canvas.
There’s a question that intrigues me from all artists in general and I wanted to ask you about: How much of your personal visual universe comes from your childhood? Is the kid inside of you a big percentage of who you are as an artist?
It’s difficult to say, I imagine quite a lot, but I think it’s a question a psychologist could probably answer better than I can. I had really bad nightmares when I was a child, I used to dread having to go to sleep, and I think dealing with that baseline fear has probably had a pretty profound influence on the things that I’m interested in.
What have you been working on recently?
I just did a show at the MTV gallery in Sydney and spoke at the Semi Permanent Conference in Sydney and Brisbane. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been taking a break from painting and instead just playing around with ideas. I’ve recently bought a new camera, and I’ve been messing around with it taking thousands of photos.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
No, I want to take a break from committing to shows for a while to just play around with my work and try to develop it, which will take however long it takes I guess. Hopefully the work I do as a result will be interesting.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
I’m not sure… it might be interesting to do something like work on a film, but I’m so used to working by myself I don’t really know how well I’d get on working in a group project like that.
How’s a day in your life?
Lately I’ve been keeping really bad sleeping/waking hours, but ideally, I get up in the morning, go to the studio and paint, then go and meet up with friends or read in a coffee shop in the afternoon, then paint again in the evening/into the night. When I’m working more on ideas rather than painting, like at the moment, my work schedule gets pretty messed up, sometimes I seem to do almost nothing in a day and feel pretty bad about myself, but if I come up with a couple of things I guess it works out. I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and watching films lately, which is all part of the process.
Can you turn us on to some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
Artists: Fuyuko Matsui, Anna Conway, Alex Kanevsky, Ricky Allman, Yang Shaobin, Kristine Moran, Hung Liu, Rosson Crow, Bruno Dayan, Cai Guo-Qiang and Julia Fullerton-Batten.
Some books I’ve read lately that I really liked: “House of Leaves” (Mark Z. Danielewski), “The Boat” (Nam Le), “Remainder” (Tom McCarthy)
Some films I’ve watched lately that I really liked: “Last Life in the Universe“, “I’m a Cyborg (but that’s Ok)“, “Suicide Club“, “Survive Style 5+“, “Kamikaze Girls“, “Funky Forest: First Contact“, “2LDK“.
May 31st, 2009
Mark Jenkins’ work (www.xmarkjenkinsx.com) is one of the best examples of art in the streets that goes beyond the flat surface of a wall, But his installations accomplish much more than that. What they are truly a fine example of is how art out there should make people react somehow to what they see and not just entertain a few colleagues in the internet or amuse another “street artists” or Street art fans.
First a question we always ask to artists who do art in the streets, like yourself: why, when and how did you begin to do art in the street?
I’d been curious about installation sculpture after seeing an exhibit of Juan Muñoz in Washington DC in 2001. In 2003, I was living in Rio de Janeiro and it was here that I started experimenting with tape as a casting medium. Installing the sculptures on the streets was an easy step to take. I had been outdoors most of the last year traveling South America and my life was about bouncing from hostel to hostel and taking in the street life and nature (and a few bars). I was very much with the outdoors, so my sculptures wanted to be there too. But this was also a big transition for me in that I switched from being a tourist to someone sharing back. Integrating the sculptures was a way of integrating myself.
No matter how exciting it might be because it’s also risky and very demanding, now that you have been getting recognition and doing shows in galleries for some time… do you feel as motivated now to do art out in the streets or precisely you do it because it’s a necessary and integrating part of your work as an artist?
The streets have the natural amplification that make my work really work. But there can be a symbiotic relationship between the gallery and street. That’s important if they can feed each other and not be competitive. But you’re right it’s risky. A few times now rescue units and bomb squads have arrived. And while their participation on the stage has been interesting, causing the city to react like this isn’t something to take lightly. I prefer the work to be regarded as nutritious, not an infection.
And you started in Washington DC which must be a very peculiar city for public non-authorized interventions such as yours…
It is peculiar. But I started in Rio de Janeiro. I would never have started in Washington, DC. My work is a strange juxtaposition to this city where most all of the art is oxidized bronzes commemorating past wars. But I like that.
Some of your interventions are more poetic and I guess that the way the average pedestrians take part is just by observation but many other of your interventions seem to be purposely made to have people interact. Do people react the way to expect them too? Do you sometimes feel disappointed when people don’t react the way you expected?
With the hyper-realistic figure installations the intention is to create a stage that is reality. The people, cars, pigeons, firetrucks all become a part of it. But there is never too much expectation or disappointment because while I enjoy cultivating the surreal, it’s also a social experiment to learn from. For instance I put a pair of legs sticking out of a trashcan in Brooklyn and it was generally funny to people. I did the same installation in Bethlehem, Palestine and it was received as strange, hostile and more or less bad. And so I learn a lot about culture from this.
Once the sculpture or installation is set up in the street how important is it to you what happens next? Do you always feel the need to stay around and watch or even record people’s reaction on video?
I don’t try to stay around but have someone else document. I would hate to be caught near it and have to remove it, or have people make this connection for then it takes the experience of it to a boring place. It’s existence unattached to an artist or art space, and not having permits, etc. this is what makes it’s presence interesting. It is an outlier in the true sense abandoned like this.
In the kind of work that you do context is quite essential as it is the fact that people don’t expect to find your interventions and are often surprised with what they see so I wonder how do you confront the blank empty spaces of galleries where context is pretty much nonexistent and people precisely go there to see your work and even expect to be surprised?
It’s possible to do the same thing using context. For instance in the gallery by installing a fake gallery goer it’s easy to trick in the same ways.
So what’s your experience in the world of art galleries and what shortcomings do you see in the world of the art establishment for your kind of work?
I don’t have a strong opinion of the galleries. Each is so different. Some are cool, some aren’t. But I have had real disappointments with the museums. The staff is undereducated about Street art or they approach it in a bad way. I can see why Banksy doesn’t want his work in museums unless it is as a prank.
I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the process of creating. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or maybe not, maybe you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… can you elaborate on this, please?
I have the sort of creativity that comes by itself very easily. But it comes in bursts. I just need a pen handy when it comes. Sometimes it’s after a night of heavy drinking when my brain hurts. My only work is to sift through the ideas and choose the best. With doing street work this is much more difficult because sifting means finding which ideas are possible when considering all of the physical, legal and safety obstacles.
What have you been doing lately?
Lately I’ve been reflecting on the past 5 years of this project and more importantly the year before I started doing this project-who I was before this tangent began-.
Any new projects you want to tell us about?
I’ve been asked to curate some festivals in France in 2010 and I’m very excited about this.
What project you’ve never been asked to do and would love to?
I would like to float a lot of bodies over Niagara Falls. I think it would be great to witness-for me it would be the same emotion as seeing a tidal wave-.
Any other artists or projects that you want to recommend?
I see a little bit of a lull right now. Everything is reflecting I think. But I like Blu because he keeps going. He is always going.
May 2nd, 2009
Usually we try to avoid art that has a more conceptual than graphic approach to things. It’s not a question of liking it or not but to focus on certain artists and not trying to cover everything happening out there. In Cecilia H. Molano’s case there a bit of that whole conceptual art thing but also a little bit of a more specific and graphic side of art. In fact there’s a lot of a few other things as well because she seems able to do a little bit of a lot of everything covering many different disciplines. The list of the links to her work is by itself quite significative:
www.rizomarte.com
www.escritoalapiz.es
www.es.youtube.com/cecimolano
www.vimeo.com/cecimolano/videos
So it will be better if she tells us about it in her own words.
When?, Where?, How? and Why? you started to consider yourself an artist or at least when did you first started to see that you wanted to draw, paint… for a living?
I still don’t see myself as an artist… I do things that somehow are related to art but because of pure need, because I need to grab the video camera or the brush or design… and that has always happened. Since I was little I could see clearly that what I wanted to do is draw. If that means being an artist truth is that this need has been with me all along.
Your work is so diverse that I don’t even know where to start. I know this is very limitative but, in which discipline you feel more at ease? what’s the first natural thing to do when you need to express something through your art?
For me disciplines are nothing but means to an end… each one offers something that makes it attractive in comparison to others. For instance: I like working with ink because what it has of accidental of unpredictable of alive. It offers you a direct relationship with the paper that’s very difficult to obtain through other techniques and that’s the same reason why I like engravings or illustration: how it is a challenge because it’s both difficult and extremely attractive at the same time. It’s funny because I never feel myself in doubt about what technique I should use when I have something to tell because when and idea comes up it comes along with the way to do it. If I had to choose one between all them however, I would probably go for video because that’s where I find myself more at ease. It allows me to play with time, the mise-en-scene… and I like the way it lets me handle concepts. It lets me “paint” very freely.
Besides the purely artistic side of your work, and as a perfect example of what’s happening with many creative individuals of your generation, you also do a lot of commissioned work as a graphic designer and in your case also as a scenery designer… the same way as graphic designers exhibit their work at art galleries and museums. At the end the distinction lies more in the fact that you are either answering some communication need of some type from someone else or a your own personal expressive needs. Is your work as a graphic or scenery designer something you do purely to pay the bills or is it something where you enjoy the challenge of the limitations of a client’s briefing?
Ufff……. That’s a very complex question… starting with the last part: It depends very much on the client and the kind of relationship you establish with him whether the job turns into a challenge or into a limitation. Just like that. On occasions you find yourself in front of a job that you find stimulating and that allows you try new things, grow… on others the only reason you are doing the job is paying the bills. More each time the second case has a cost that’s just too elevated because it makes you do work that you don’t want to assume as your own although sometimes that’s difficult to evaluate at first and at the ends it doesn’t pays off. Right now I’m betting on not doing those anymore. I think this is something that happens to many other designers at some point. As far as the scenery and wardrobe design for theater that’s different. For me it’s impossible to take that as another kind of commissioned work because of the nature of this kind of work: It’s a very lengthy and more complex procedure and it requires of a greater level of commitment. When I’ve faced one of these jobs for purely economic reasons it’s been a disaster. What’s really difficult about my job for theater is finding a place where I’m comfortable, something that’s more akin to my own language and that presents me with mechanisms and questions that I find interesting.
And for all those activities, do you use different alter egos or there’s a common Cecilia H. Molano style in all those different forms of expression? Is it something you look for or maybe just can’t help it?
I think that’s something you just can’t help despite the fact that the languages for each discipline are very different and despite the different styles I can use, there is an underlying coherence… maybe my trademark it’s precisely how difficult is to create a style across so many different disciplines. No matter how diverse I do feel everything as fragments of a single discourse.
Out of everything that you find out there and that nourishes your artistic output I’d say that you put emphasis on the individual and its relationships with its surroundings, however imprecise that might be. Would you say that this or other elements are a permanent referent in your work?
Yes, no doubt that there’s a bit of personal reflection and positioning that defines itself as something more intimate, close to the body and also on occasions to the words but nevertheless very personal. I like the idea of looking onto something and also the idea o limit and how you get in touch with the surroundings and those who share them. I like to reflect, from the visual, about concept pertaining to other disciplines that call my attention and somehow I need of creation to think and think-me.
I would like to know more about your creative process. In your case, it is more important than the result? Is it very impulsive or rational? And that balance between the process and the result, is it very different for the different disciplines that you work with?
Process before result, definitely more instinctive. That’s without any artistic pride. I do envy those the rational processes I see in other artists and I’m very interested in the concepts behind them, their purification, coherence and on occasions I try hard to follow a process of that type but at the end the impulsive side of me wins most of the times. As far as the logic of the process however, it changes. If I draw or paint in general I need more time to try things out, I feel more insecure, I hesitate and I find it hard to find myself. With video is much quicker, it boils up inside my head for a few days, I write down a few notes and suddenly it’s ready. I take the camera and in no time I’m editing. When it’s a graphic design job or something for theater it’s quite different and there’s a clearly rational process: I research, look for myself, try myself out… I try to find valid metaphors. I scratch the process little by little until something comes up.
Also about the process: Your work both with analog and digital techniques and I feel you try to give the digital a dirty look, an analog feel. Do you intentionally try to vindicate the analog?
I love the digital because of the freedom it gives you and I hate it because of the appearance it can give the result: The excess in filters and effects, certain plastic feel… A friend was telling me about a “dirty white” that he finds in my work and I agree there’s a certain quality in my work that has to do with texture and skin… not exactly something that I relate to analog but a way of manipulating materials that has to do with the pictorial maybe.
Also if I didn’t get it wrong you are also a publisher and besides in your videos there’s a prominence of the word. Tell us a bit about this and how it relates to everything else that you do.
My work as a publishers is within the «escrito a lápiz» project that’s very recent (just 1 year old) and also very small, I would say that intentionally small. Reading is one of those unavoidable activities and my connection to words is vital. I’m interested in poetry, I feel moved with things I read, I’ve always written and words, as you say is very present in my work. «Escrito a lápiz» comes from all that. I felt like publishing the books that I like and self-publish some too that I had in mind… books seem like a privileged medium. I do everything in the publishing company: I choose the texts, illustrate them sometimes, do the layout, distribute the books… it reminds me of a ticket clerk in a movie theater I used to go to with one of my sisters: It was the same man that first would sell you the ticket, them take you to your seat and later sold you the popcorn!
What’s your experience in the world of art galleries and institutions and selling and making your work known?
The issue with selling and spreading your work is a very complicated one. The experience with «escrito a lápiz» has taught me a lot. It’s easier to sell someone’s else work. And in a way the publishing makes me want to also sell my other work that I was more reluctant to show or I kept to myself. It’s funny because it seems like one becomes an artists not because what you do but because what others see. I makes me doubt but at the same time I feel that it’s necessary to count with other people seeing what you do. At least I do need the feedback. The experience with galleries has been good so far and besides I enjoy meeting people doing things and galleries are good for that. I’ve prepared a few shows or some video-art sessions and as I get used to it becomes easier but it’s still difficult. Sometimes I’ve talked to people, graphic designers that are good at self-marketing and they have given me advice that haven’t been much help to tell you the truth. Each one of us finds its own way eventually and their own way of doing things without feeling too much of an outsider.
What have you been doing lately?
Right now I’m teaching theater wardrobe design for the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de las Islas baleares, in Palma de Mallorca, and I’m very happy with the experience. I learn a lot and I get to spend time both on the island and in Madrid where I’m designing the wardrobe for a new theater play premiering in April. On a personal level I’m reading and supposedly preparing my thesis and also thinking what I’m going to be doing with a huge studio space that suddenly appeared in my live and also preparing a couple of videos with some ideas I’m having…
Any plans for the future that you want to tell us about?
I’d like to take advantage of all the free time I’ll be having this year to do more personal work. Plans for the future as such? Nothing certain. I feel like travelling and live outside of Spain for a while, probably study something… who knows what?
What project you would like to do but didn’t have chance yet?
The last occasions I’ve showed my video work have been collective shows or in festivals and screenings sessions… i would like to do some video work that’s more site-specific. It’s something I still have to define some more but when I’ve done things like this in the past it’s been very nice.
Any artist or initiative you want to recommend?
As far as artists goes, I can think of many but I’ll just mention some that are close that maybe aren’t too well known and are really talented: The work that she’s been doing for years with contemporary dance, poetry and drawing: Mónica Valenciano. In illustration and painting I recommend the work of Eduardo Ortiz. They have collaborated with «escrito a lápiz»: Estíbaliz Mintegui, the collective Confusión Group, the girls from Velcroart, that work with net art the work as publishers of Pepitas de calabaza or La uña rota. I would also recommend the lito prints by Paula Fraile or the uncouth illustrations of Delphine Delas or the beautiful ones by Ana Yael, and the very delicate work of Luján Marcos on tiles.
April 7th, 2009
It’s always flattering when artists from other cities and countries notice Subaquatica and send an e-mail letting us know they exist and showing their work. To tell you the truth we don’t always like what they do (it’s a question of taste after all). But sometimes you wonder: How come I didn’t hear about these guys before and they found us about our little underground project going on in a backstreet of downtown Madrid? That’s exactly what happened with Pandarosa (www.pandarosa.net) so first one of the first things we thought was: Next available month, we have to feature these people in our monthly interview so here it is:
First, one thing we want to ask everybody for this interviews: When?, Where?, How? and Why? you started to consider yourselves artists or at least when did you first started to see that you wanted to draw, paint… for a living?
Our earliest memories of creativity are flooded with images of Lego blocks, doodling on cigarette cartons & chalk drawings on concrete sidewalks. Once our childhood left us behind our wish to express & play, which you are encouraged to explore as a child but never as an adult, remained. With these thoughts we unconsciously continued to express ourselves through image & imagination, never considering ourselves ‘artist’ along the way or thinking it would became our ‘career’. During high school our knowledge of various creative profession became more clearer, eventually leading us study graphic design at university where we initially met. Shortly after graduating from University we decided to start our own practice, & after a few years later, here we are.
You do work as an illustration and design team but also personal work when doing exhibitions in galleries: how different is your commercial work to your personal purely artistic work?
Our thought process behind commercial work doesn’t differ from personal work, the main difference is that by engaging in personal projects we can experiment with concepts and techniques outside of the client’s needs. These investigations can then be implemented into appropriate commercial projects, which expands our diversity & helps us from being pigeon holed into a certain style, thus personal exhibition projects have became an important part of our practice.
I read an interview with you where you mentioned how you wanted clients from the cultural industry because you felt that it’s the kind of clients that would give you more freedom. So, do you feel liberated when you do personal work, without a client’s restrictions or when you do commercial work do these restrictions precisely feel more like a challenge than a limitation?
We initially contacted clients within the cultural industry because we knew they weren’t going to offer huge budgets as their funding is provided by government grants & sponsors. This gave us an opportunity to concentrate on our creative approach rather than financial benefits & over time has transpired into clients expecting our creative approach regardless of their industry background. Both commercial & personal work presents their own sets of boundaries, but neither of them feel more limiting to us than the other. If anything personal work can be much more frustrating & challenging as U R no longer answering a brief but are simply expressing a personal idea, thought or theme which is entirely on you.
Your work is very heterogeneous in terms of the way you do graphic design, web design, interior design, illustration, motion graphics, personal work and at the same time all of it has a distinctive Pandarosa style. Would you agree? Do you feel all your work part of a same creative discourse?
Although all our work comes from the same creative tree, we’ve never aspired to develop one specific style, but rather create a loose thread that ties all our diverse approaches together. The reason for this, is that we get sick of our work quite quickly & therefore try to keep thing interesting by investigating something new & unexplored. This choice at times can be tough when dealing with particular agencies & clients as they are more at ease with a singular style rather than diversity.
Precisely many other artists and collectives from your generation tend to make the line between design, illustration, art… very blurry. No matter how different the graphic style I would say there’s a connection, a similar attitude… What would you have in common with other artists from your generation?
Perhaps the willingness to try new things & not stick to a singular aspect within their work. In these modern times adaptation is key for survival & one has to be willing to try new things, personally, professionally & creatively.
One of the aspects that I can see in the artists we work with is how, similarly to the way the lines between disciplines are not important, borders between countries are not either. You seem to be a good example of it with personal origins in Chile and Hungary but developing a career in Melbourne and currently living in Berlin. How come you moved to Berlin and how is this restless approach to where you live important to your work?
Berlin is a melting pot of dreams, experimentation, disappointments, joys & frustrations. This restlessness & flux creates a constant energy that many people from all walks of life come to this city to experience, including us. Constant change is key for evolving ideas & though been away from familiar surroundings can be tough it makes you learn, adapt & react differently to situations, creating a wider view of all things around you. These constant alterations accentuate the differences & similarities found among different walks of life necessary to widen not only the view of your ideas, but the ideas of others.
I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the creative process. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or maybe is very intuitive. Perhaps you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… Is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… can you elaborate on this, please?
Concept development is definitely the most important aspect as it initiates everything towards the final result, from imagery, colour & technique to the mood & message trying to be conveyed. Along the way we try to be as lateral as possible & allow for happy accidents to occur, letting things ‘flow’ rather than meticulously plan them, which often creates the most surprising results.
How is a day in your life?
The first thing is coffee followed by emails & music on the record player. Remembering to write our ‘to-do’ list, which hopefully will be crossed out by the end of the day & have a wonder about how the freedom to set our own schedule can sometimes turn into long hours & routine?!
I imagine you have a more or less steady flow of commissioned work as designers and illustrators and every few months you also have been working, with different galleries. How do you feel in that environment? Would you see yourselves completely immersed in the proper art business and not doing design work anymore?
We don’t see ourselves totally stepping away from design or illustration work, as we appreciate the challenges & diversity these type of projects bring, but we’d definitely like to be even more active within the art world. Becoming increasingly involved in the presentation of our work within the commercial fine art world is a clear aim for us & one we’d like to concentrate on throughout the creative existence of Pandarosa.
What have you been working recently?, any interesting project coming up?
We’ve recently completed a publication for Platform Artists Group Inc. back in Melbourne, began to create a large scale mural for a restaurant in the beach resort town of Lorne in Australia as well as finalising an installation & works on paper for a show at California State University in Los Angeles entitled ‘Redefining the Line: Art Nouveau & The Female Figure’. Apart from that we are keenly preparing for our solo show at Subaquatica.
Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?
Creating more 3-dimensional sculptural spaces within a public forum that everyone can interact with & be a part of.
February 28th, 2009
We’ve been receiving small packages from him in the mail for some time now. They usually come full of hand drawings inside and outside and full of stickers, zines and other goodies. John Fellows shows with his letters and packages a great deal of admiration for what we do, certainly undeserved and we don’t only admire his work but also wanted to share it with the rest of you so here’s an interview with him.
First, one thing we want to ask everybody for this interviews: When?, Where?, How? and Why? you started to consider yourself an artist or at least when did you first started to see that you wanted to draw, paint… for a living?
Art has been something I’ve done my whole life. I went to university in Philadelphia and majored in graphic design (to the surprise of my parents) so I’ve normally just considered myself a designer and illustrator. It hasn?t been until recently that I’ve thought of myself as an “artist”. I feel like I’ve always done art, but have never been ready to actually show my work until a couple years ago. I think since I’ve moved to Colorado, I’ve traveled less, so I’ve put that energy towards developing my work and it?s slowly starting to pay off.
You call yourself illustrator and graphic designers, both occupations meaning having a clients but you also do personal, let’s say… purely artistic work. And graphic design, illustrations for clients and your art all look at first very different. Is there a John Fellows style underneath everything you do? How would you define the way your creative output steps on those different ways?
I don’t think there is a underlying “John Fellows” style that runs throughout both my design and illustration work. My design work is, for the most part, corporate and clean looking, while my illustration style has a very “hands-on” feel. I’ve had clients that have only known me for illustration and when I show them logo work or full-color books I have designed, they are always surprised. I believe a lot of people only think that if you are a designer, you are a designer and if you are an illustrator, you are an illustrator and don’t realize you can be both and have completely different styles. My artwork is definitely related to my illustration style. When I was younger, I was a control freak and what ever I was drawing, had to look exactly like the object being drawn or I would get pissed. When I discovered printmaking in university, it really loosened me up. For the most part, no matter what the initial sketch looks like, the final carving will have its own look and character.
Is that personal work precisely a mean of looking for a liberation of a client’s restrictions or when you do commercial work do these restrictions precisely feel more like a challenge than a limitation and you enjoy both sides of your work?
I really enjoy both sides. When a client has restrictions, it becomes more like problem solving than getting to do whatever you want. It’s a part of the job dealing with limitations and restrictions. I’ve had a couple clients that trust me enough to let me do whatever I want knowing I’ll give them the best end product I can. Not having to show 3-5 different illustration ideas for a poster is pretty nice. A lot of the time in design, I find some clients want to stick their fingers into every aspect of the project (even if they have no clue about the design world) so they can justify their job to their boss or to say that the final piece was their idea. Just like any business, there are a million different personalities…. some good and some headache inducing. The personal work side of things is fun because it’s a way to breath life into all the random drawings and ideas I have lying around in sketchbooks and bits of paper that would never see the light of day commercially.
On top of all that you publish a really nice little zine called PaperCut. Tell us more about it.
Thanks, I’m glad you like it. Well, I was introduced to hardcore and punk music in middle school and that opened my eyes to a whole new world. People made their own magazines so they could connect with others around the country (and world) that were into the same stuff. I really loved the idea of meeting new people involved in the same culture, so I started making my own zines to send around. I started PaperCut to continue that connection with people. I never thought of it as a promotion for myself, but more along the lines of meeting new people. I made the first PaperCut and just sent it to anyone (friends & strangers) I thought would enjoy looking at some new artwork and getting something in the mail. In these days of email/internet everything, I feel there are still a lot of people out there that enjoy holding something in their hands. Something physical. The response was actually really cool (its how I got my first art show) so I kept on making them and sending them out. The first two issues were all art based and then I started including photos of my work process leading up to shows as well as photos from the show itself. I try to make it as interesting as I can, not just slap a bunch of images together. It’s basically the type of zine I would love to receive from other artists. I’ve found that PaperCut is perfect for travelling with as well. Any time I travel, I make sure my backpack is stuffed with copies. You never know who you might meet. I make a habit of leaving them with galleries, artists I meet on the street, shops that are pretty cool, etc. PaperCut has led me to meeting great people all over the world such as Christian at Hessenmob, illustrator Bejamin Guedel or Urs Althaus in Zurich, Stereoplastika in Toledo, Andy Mac from Until Never in Melbourne, and of course you guys at Subaquatica. Hopefully I’ll have the new issue done sometime soon. I keep getting distracted by other work or skiing.
You seem to be a restless traveler, almost a nomad, having lived in many different places. That necessarily had to have an influence in your work. How different you think your work would be if you had lived your entire life in the same place? It seems like traveling doing your art and having your art pay for your traveling is something you wouldn’t mind at all. Am I wrong?
I have always felt restless. Travel has always been a part of my life since I was a kid. I grew up an Army Brat, so I moved every 2-4 years. One base we lived on was in Frankfurt , Germany. We had an old VW camper and our family camped our our way across Europe. I think it was that early experience that started my love of Europe. After university, I started to travel more to Europe, on my own, with friends, and luckly with a job I had at the time. When you are in your early 20s, what more could you ask for than a job that sends you to Paris, Sardinia, Lisbon and Madira for 2 weeks at a time. I was a contractor, so after each job was completed I would send my bags home with a coworker and jump on Eurorail for a couple weeks. This is how I ended up going back to a small Swiss hostel in Gimmelwald for 6 summers in a row (and one amazing ski season). How can travel not open your eyes and influence ones work in some way? I always had an X-acto on me to cut down any poster or sticker I saw on the streets that appealed to me. Also illustrators and designers like Benjamin Guedel and Buro Destruct were nice enough to show me around their studios, so by the time I went back to Philly, I was completely reenergized. I would love to be able to travel and create work for shows that would offset travel costs. Right now I am not so much interested in making tons of money on a show, but just being able to cover my travel costs would be fine with me. Simply being able to travel somewhere and experience the culture and have an art show would be rewarding enough.
I also wanted to ask you about your relationship with exteriors: You produce stickers but I don?t know if putting them up around is part of how you want to make people aware of your art and also you’ve done a couple of inside murals and wanted to ask you about mural art and if that’s something you like doing particularly and how that contrasts with the linoleum cuts being such a “miniature” art…
I was on a huge sticker kick for a while when I managed a small sign shop and design department for 2 ski resorts. We had our own sticker machine so when there was extra room on orders, I would put my own designs on as well. It was great, any idea I had, I could just go ahead and make. I’m definitely not a “street artist”. I didn’t make stickers to promote myself, I made stickers because people liked them. If they wanted to throw them up around town or on their board, that?s cool and their decision. Come on, who doesn’t like a good sticker? I’ve only done a few murals, but I really want the opportunity to do more. It’s a lot of work but it’s fun. Most of my work is rather small like you mentioned, that?s because I don’t use a press, just a good ol’ fashioned wooden spoon and I print everything by hand. So when I do try to make some big pieces, my arm feels like it’s going to fall off after two prints. I love the graphic quality that a finished mural of mine has. It’s cool having to think a little differently as well. I have to take into account the actual wall and layout, and not just “wow, this would look good in a frame, hanging on a wall”.
So you do illustration and graphic design with computers but your personal work has a clearly handcrafted process and feel with the use of linoleum and precisely I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the process of creating. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or is very intuitive, maybe you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… Is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… can you elaborate on this, please?
The creative process for design is rather meticulous and slow. Most projects are started on the computer and slowly hashed out until the idea comes. Illustration and personal artwork is much more fast paced, loose and free. I’ll sketch and sketch and sketch, relook at the sketches and then fine tune them till the idea is more concrete. For an illustration I was working on, I was sitting in front of the tv when I got an idea. I grabbed the closest thing to me at the time (a Sharpie and a Patagonia catalogue) and drew the idea on the cover of the catalogue. This initial sketch lead to the finished illustration. After the main illustration is drawn, I then think about adding color.
How is a day in your life?
Every day is a little different, but the average day goes like this: wake up to my dog staring me in the face, get up and make coffee while my dog continues to stare at me, finally feed dog while coffee is brewing, kiss my girlfriend as she heads out the door to nursing school and then its out for a walk with dog and said coffee in hand. After the walk its time to stare at my computer while the dog continues to stare at me wanting to play. Somewhere in between the morning and evening, I actually do a lot of work whether its client based or personal. Evening comes, girlfriend comes home and we go for a drink or make dinner, watch a little tv, maybe some more work depending on deadlines, then off to bed. Then there are the days that go like this: wake up, finish packing, we jump a flight to a foreign country, and know we don’t have to return home for six weeks. Those are the really fun days.
You also have been working, even more lately, with different galleries. How do you feel in that environment?
I always have butterflies in my stomach when dealing with a show at a gallery. I haven’t done enough to be completely comfortable in that situation and I always want to do something so when people leave they are inspired or feel like their time was well spent. I’ve walked out of many a gallery feeling less than inspired, like the artist phoned the whole show in and that I should have just stayed home. It’s been happening quite a bit lately and it’s kind of disheartening to see. I feel if someone is giving you the opportunity to show in their space, you should go all out. So I try to not only have artwork, but do a mural, make a zine, have limited edition screen prints, stickers and postcards, etc. At one show I had a bunch of lino prints I had done on old hang tags and hung them up throughout the space on existing things like light switches, hooks, leaned against books, on door knobs, and it was for the guests to decide whether they were free or not (they were). They didn’t last too long into the night and it was cool to see people trading them, searching them out, and being disappointed when they realized the walked past them and didn’t even see them.
What have you been working recently?, any interesting project coming up?
Recent projects included the boards for Hessenmob. I’m really proud of those. Working with Christian was cool too. He came up with a great theme for the boards. Normally my carvings are very stylized so it was a nice change pushing myself to actually try and carve realistic looking animals. Has anyone ever tried drawing or carve a tiger before, man it’s hard! My big plan for now is organizing a group show at Keystone Ski Resort for this March. It’s going to be a one night art event involving artists from Colorado involved in the snow sports and board sports industry. It should be really fun. It’s called Moving Mountains and hopefully if all goes well, we will take it on the road to 1 or 2 other resorts next year. Oh yeah, and try to finish the next issue of PaperCut before the Spring.
Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?
I would love to work with companies that value art like Carhartt (Europe) and ski/snowboard companies Rossignol and Salomon (love both of their equipment). I would also love the opportunity to do more murals. The biggest thing I would like to figure out how to do is to be able to travel more and mix travel and my art. I would love to be able to show in another country (let alone another city besides Denver) so I can feed both my hunger to travel and my love of art.
Can you recommend some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
Can I recommend any new artists? There are a ton of great artists in Colorado that haven’t gotten there due yet. It seems that when people think of artists and art scenes, they only think of the East and West Coasts. But there are a ton of great artists located in smaller areas. One guy that I think deserves some attention is Markham Maes, aka Shitty Kitten. His work is awesome, he has true talent. He can easily handle drawing, painting, and a spray can. He is constantly producing new and original work all the while balancing a full-time job and family. There’s another great artist I met briefly while in Australia named Nails. His work is really different. He uses a lot of found objects that gives his work an old yet contemporary feel. He just did an exhibit of his work inspired by a trip to Eastern Europe where he saw people hawking their wares on the streets. He set up his own portable gallery contained in an old suitcase (complete with detachable legs and music) and would “exhibit” his work on street corners around Melbourne in various locations. I thought it was a brilliant idea. … and thanks to Alberto from Stereoplastika for the PaperCut photo.
January 30th, 2009
This coming thursday December 18th 2008 we will celebrating the opening of the show by NYC-based artist MOMO (www.momoshowpalace.com) here in Subaquatica. For those of you that want to know more about him the interview we published with him a while back is right here.
MOMO is a restless, hard working, artist, situated at the margins of topics and scenes that has gained international and has exhibited his work in cities like New York, Seoul, Cologne, Manchester or New Orleans. He’s also a prominent street artists and has collaborated with other artists such as Eltono, Zosen or Maya Hayuk in a series of different projects. This is is first show in Madrid and MOMO will be offering 1000 silkscreened printed variations of his “MOMO Maker” project (see www.momoshowpalace.com/1000.html for more information).
December 14th, 2008
Always alert to new creative individuals, we are particularly happy to find some that are not only visually challenging but also prove some kind of sense of humour. That’s precisely the case of the artistic duo from Barcelona known as Comte D’Urgell (www.comtedurgell.com) so we thought it would be a great idea to close the yearly cycle of interviews with this one and half a smile (or a full one) in our faces.
First of all a question we always ask: When, why, where, how… did you start to think of yourselves as artists?
Our artistic career started suddenly when we were invited by some friends to participate in a collective show. We were very motivated to do things because we were in the middle of our age of extreme “scholarshipance” in Barcelona and taking part in shows would give us the occasion to do whatever we liked. We didn’t get paid and we didn’t care much. Luckily everything has changed since then, in the artistic aspect as well as in the professional.
Something that it’s common to the work of different creative individuals nowadays is how the line between art and design is so blurry and sometimes if there’s a distinction has more to do with commission work and personal work and sometimes not even that one. Would you rather do only personal work and not having to deal with a client’s briefing limitations or what’s your relationship with commission vs. not commissioned work?
When we do design work it ends up being very similar to when we are hired for a Comte d’Urgell design because we don’t work in a typical meeting-briefing kind of way. We just do our thing and that’s way there isn’t a bug difference between those two worlds. We just try to do something new every time and make it different to the previous thing so we don’t get categorized in some kind of approach or technique because that would be too boring.
It might have happened to you that a client wants you to do precisely what they have seen from your previous work…
It doesn’t usually happen because we get very different projects but when it does happen we talk our client into doing what we want.
In all the different disciplines that you work with there must be certain elements in common and referents that necessarily distinguish your work, from others. Could you try to define what are those elements and influences that make the Comte D’Urgell style?
In our iconography there is alchemy, mysticism, freakiness, design from 1992 Barcelona and uglyism.
Besides your graphic work on plain surfaces there’s also a lot of work with installations and in those there’s a predominance of the conceptual versus the visual. In general how would describe the balance between the two in your work?
We started working in more visual works but always with a narrative or entertaining factor involved. We don’t like at all the idea of purely decorative art. Now our work is 50-50 between the graphic and the narrative-conceptual. Starting this past summer and with the projects for 2009 in mind we work almost like the executive producers of a TV show or a movie: We write the scripts, develop the characters, design the wardrobe, hire the special effects guys… what we always dreamed of!
There’s a generation of artists and designers worldwide, very different in style but similar in attitude. Do you feel part of it? What would you say you share with the artist of your same generation?
What we like a lot from the artists in our same generation is the self-sufficiency in terms of resources. I think people wise up to get their ideas off the ground with what they have, without having to wait for more professional resources or anything like that. And that influences your style. We’ve always worked with everyday materials and stuff we buy from 1 dollar shops and Ebay. That helped us not being inactive waiting for money to arrive from somewhere.
There’s an increasing interest in artists like you from the mainstream and the art market. How do you evaluate your experience in the world of the art market, art galleries, etc…?
For better or worse we never felt part of any kind of art market or museums or art galleries. Barcelona is a network of artists, curators, etc.. very small where everything is connected, almost like in “Heroes”.
Something that always intrigues me about art is the creative process. I would like if in your case is more important the process or the final outcome.
We are always arguing because of that. We try to make the process the important part but the conditions of each project don’t usually allow it to be that way. There are always conditions and lack of resources and or time…
We usually enjoy the process more than the result because we feel it’s more interesting to question the work and its significance and meaning and don’t view it just as an exhibited “perfec” piece.
In your case, being a duo it would be good if you could also tell me how the team work functions or if there’s any individual work outside the collective work.
Our work process starts always in a coffe shop talking about our things and once we get into talking about the project, doing some brainstorming with lots of humour. And, as the natural thing to happen when doing team work, our ideas often collide and we can’t seem to find the right combination between them. It’s frustating but then, at the end there’s always fate making sure the right idea prevails.
Besides our work as Comte D’Urgell Jordi does solo work (www.jordiferreiro.es) yand is into the pedagogical side of art.
Carlos has a music project: Internet2 (www.myspace.com/internet2) with the idea of being a pop act but mostly performing in art galleries and museums.
What have you been up to lately? Any plans for the future you want to tell us about?
We are preparing an exhibition about the relationship between botany, magic and music in Caixaforum in Lleida for february that will later go to Caixaforum Tarragona in september 09.
And early 09 we will be at the Festival de Animación de Cataluña with a very interesting performance by Internet2/Comtedurgell.
What project you would love to do but still nobody asked you to?
A TV show.
Any artist or initiative you want to recommend?
Ilookforbrightness (www.ilookforbrightness.wordpress.com): Is an art blog by Jordi about geometry, light and colour.
CruzCastillo (www.cruzcastillo-cruzcastillo.com/): They are these fashion designers with these amazing printed fabrics. Comte d´Urgell favourites!
Daniel Jacoby (www.danieljacoby.com): One of the most interesting artists around.
David Armengol (www.davidarmengol.net) is the curator with whom we work the most lately. You have to see his projects and he’s such a braing besides being the most light creature we’ve met.
December 7th, 2008
A few years ago we produced a semi-documentary DVD with short clips about different Spanish street artists of that time. One of them was Deno JR (www.denotattoos.com) that came from a Hip Hop Graffiti background but whose style had evolved into something else. Nowadays he’s a successful Tatto artist but he still works in different media, including the streets so we thought it would be nice to interview him and see what he’s up to lately.
First of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets?
I really never even thought of doing anything in any other place. I just wanted to do Graffiti. It was 1989. I used to skate and spend most of the time out in the streets so in a way everything seemed part of a same thing: Skate, Graffiti, Rap music (although back them I used to listed to Metal). Well, the thing is that it happened naturally. I took some markers and started in my neighbourhood, Coslada, I guess that looking for what many other people doing the same: recognition, fame, notoriety… Shortly after that some friends and myself formed KR2, that gave the whole thing a more orthodox character, closer to the classical Graffiti back then. And we did so much that I don’t think I will be able to top that ever. We would paint every single day: We stole the paint, did sketches and painted. Al the time focused on that and this lasted for around 10 years.
In your street work that background it’s obvious, mostly in your techniques, but you’ve also done stickers and pasting posters and your style is not precisely only big letters and characters. Maybe you are a purist in the philosophy but not in the aesthetics?
Like I said, my beginnings come from classical Graffiti but at some point I had the need to change the language I was using and at least try to make it more personal. It was then when I started doing what I call urban interventions like pasting posters, make JR toys to “tag” around with them, make paintings and hang them in the streets, stickers… It was a new visual universe that seemed to flow naturally and that came from my own personal need. In a way it’s kind of a schizo behaviour because I would still do the more conventional Graffiti pieces while at the same time doing that other more personal stuff.
I guess that all that must have come from nurturing from influences outside the Graffiti world…
Philosophy is probably the biggest external source of input into my artwork, the study of aesthetics theory and art theory… all that made possible new expressive methods and their fundamentation. As for specific influences I can name painters, illustrators, Tattoo artists and of course Graffiti writers. I can list just a few, maybe the most representative: Jean Dubuffet, Antonio Saura, Daniel Higgs, J.M. Basquiat, Keith Haring, Sento… well, that’s quite a mixture.
What do you feel like the primary idea behind art in the streets, what do you admire the most from other street artists, their style, their technique… and what do you feel is accesory?
The main idea is, in a way, democratization of art because the street is an open medium, open to anyone. It’s not mediated as a preconceived space for art and that’s whey it can also reach a more plural audience. As for other artists it’s difficult to choose a single aspect that interest me the most. For instance, I’m captivated by the creativity or personality of Besdo and at the same time I find Buny’s overwhelming presence fascinating. It’s a little like asking a father which one of his sons he loves the most. I love the idea of bombing, the purse essence of trying to be everywhere and at the same time I also love the strength of a single image that can transmit so much so I feel somehow in that crack, in that wound because both things hurt as much and I think that the dialectics between both is what gives me the strength to paint. Without one of those two aspects the whole thing wouldn’t be as appealing to me.
You live in Madrid, a city that has gone through different phases in it’s Street art activity but that has never really been a clear reference on an international level but at the same time there’s been a lot of very active people here… How would you describe the present moment and how’s your own personal relationship with this city?
For me, Madrid is the center of the universe. I’ve been living here for over 30 years and my relationship with the city I think is the same for me as for many other people living here, a hate-love relationship. As for the Street art is a very active city, there’s alway people doing it, the city is “dirty” and full in that sense, but at the same time it never seems to become a reference probably because people get tired or they come and go. There are more and more Graffiti writers every day but at the same time many people that will never go out and paint again. Also there isn’t a connection between old-schoolers and the new guys so the tradition gets lost and consequently the knowledge that comes with it. Because tradition is neccesary as Palazuelo said: “What’s not tradition is plagiarism”.
It seems clear that one way or another you keep having, after so many years, the need to bring some of yourself to the streets. What’s the motivation that keeps you active now that you have a different age, responsabilities, a family life…?
Well, my life has certainly changed a lot in the pas few years: I have a beautiful 1 year old son, I’m married, a have a job and of course the responsabilities but painting is something that has always been there in my life and I’ve been doing it for two thirds of my life so, it’s inherent to who I am. It’s part of my identity and it gives sense to my life. That’s why I can, after a lot of effort, still find the time to go out to paint, maybe even a train once in a while…It’s something I need to feel alive.
On the other hand there’s your activity as a professional Tatto artist. Do you feel both thins are part of the same artistic output? Do you have very different styles?
Yes, I have a work tattooing and I love it and it also allows me to travel often and paint in other cities around the world almost very month. My Tattoo and street work are connected and there’s constantly a exchange of imagery but I always conceive every new work according to its medium. I don’t paint tattoos in the street or do Graffiti or Street art tattoos. Every design has it’s own context and purpose and at the same time there’s an open communication between both worlds.
Besides in the world of Tattoo I guess it’s not seen as being a sellout those who make a living with their art, like some of the most purist Graffiti writers sometimes argue. But when it comes to paintings, drawings, etc… work that you can try selling through galleries and so on, what’s your experience in that sense?
I’ve never had problems when selling my artwork or designs. I think it has a lot to do with respect. If you’ve grown into this from the beginning and you’ve shown that this is something you really like I don’t think there’s any reason for which anyone can criticize you for selling your work and maybe even making a living with it, besides doing your street work. Maybe it’s a problem with outsiders, newcomers and opportunists trying to get ahead of the game skipping steps and just offering themselves as urban artists to the best bidder when they’ve haven¡t been in the streets that much. What do you think the Graffiti people of this people after they have drawers at home full of bills and they’ve had their problems with the police and so on and the time and effort they’ve put into it without getting paid and being all so ephemeral while there’s other people that didn’t go through all that and are making their way into the world of art galleries or getting features in art books labeling themselves as urban artists? It’s complicated but in my case nobody has said anything against me for showing in galleries. In fact what I’ve received usually is compliments and many Graffiti writers come to the openings, I feel that love… but of course there are always exceptions.
And being into the Tattoo scene I imagine some of it has translated into your tattoos, right?
Of course Graffiti has influenced my Tattoo work. If it wasn’t for Graffiti I would have never discover my creative side. Besides also being a way of communicating in an urban environment, Tattoo has contributed to my street work with an iconography that after being interpreted by me has given me a wider range of ideas to work with. Besides both disciplines share a ephemeral spirit which seems very appealing to me.
Of course you are not the only Graffiti writer turned Tattoo artist. I can think of Barcelona old-schooler Inupie, or superlegend Seen. I wonder if you can spot a certain feel when you see somebody elses tattoo that makes you recognize if that was done by a Graffiti writer-Tatto artist.
Maybe there’s some of that but it depends a lot on your style. My own style with tattoos is similar to my Graffitis in the sense that I use simple patterns with clear lines and solid colors… maybe because of that you can see some of the Graffiti in my tattoos and the other way around although I depend on a different iconography. However there is a few Tattoo artists that I’ve only discovered afterwards that they were also Graffiti writers.
Your work has a series of elements that define your own personal symbolism that might result a little obscure to the rest of us. Would you try to give us a few hints?
I’m obsessed with certain images and hence the repetition of certain elements in my work such as the skull, the anthropomorphic animals, icon from occultism and religions and all this often combined in a provocative or incoherent manner, of course intentionally. The skull is death, yours and mine, the certainty of being finite and contingent. As for the animal I’ve always been fascinated with them. I’ve always live with them or picked insects or birds or snakes and thus my great interest in recreating them, animate and give them some some of character, human or divine. And with the symbolism that I use I try to provoke like when I combine the star of David with the dollar sign or sometimes I use it to give testimony of something, my roots, for instance if I use a half moon and a cross or somethings just to use the power of these symbols.
And what have you been up to lately?
Now I’m tattooing 4 days a week which gives time to go out and paint once a week or prepare some paintings for some show or a commission. I also try to draw every day and enjoy my son, my wife, and well, my bulldogs too!
Any plans for the future you can tell us about?
I have a lot of good news and plans and I hope they come true little by little.
What project you haven’t done yet and would like it if somebody proposed it to you?
I’ve love to do a world tour painting and showing my work in each city but really I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to do that which makes it more difficult. I need an agent so anyone interested let me know.
Any artist or initiative you would like to recommend?
The record-book from Daniel A.I.U. Higgs: “Atomic yggdrasil tarot” published by Thrill Jockey, the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, “La danza de la realidad” and the autobiographic writings from Jean Dubuffet.
November 12th, 2008
Therese Vandling (www.vandling.co.uk), most probably unaware of the existence of Subaquatica, one day received an e-mail asking for an interview for our website. Most of the times we interview people that we’ve worked with or met them somehow in the past. We didn’t know her at all but her work seemed enough proof that some further attention was needed. Also we usually interview artists and this swedish resident of London is not too sure if she’s actually an artist. She’s not too sure if she’s a graphic designer either because she hates being labelled… but, well, who doesn’t?
First, one thing we want to ask everybody for this interviews: When?, Where?, How? and Why? you started to consider yourself an artist or at least when did you first started to see that you wanted to draw, paint… for a living?
It took me a really long time to realize that you can do something you enjoy for a living; I come from a simple background where you work to earn a living. When a lot of my friends went traveling I didn’t have the money to go with them so I bought myself a ticket to London and got a job in a shoe shop, I hated it, but it was a really important moment when I realized that you spend a lot of time at work so you better enjoy it. It still took me some time to realize what I wanted to do. I have always been drawing a lot, as a child I was a daydreamer and quite shy so drawing was my thing. My mum used to get stressed out with the piles of drawings everywhere and my dad used to argue that he got one sheet of paper for Christmas every year and that was it when he was a kid. So as I was growing up it didn’t occur to me that drawing was something that people did for a living and when I did realize it seemed really farfetched like something that Picasso and guys like him was doing. I guess I lacked in confidence and had no clue about art. I still have a problem with the word ‘artist’, maybe I get around to it one day
You do work as an illustrator but also personal work: how different is your commercial work to your personal purely artistic work? How would you define the way your creative output steps on those two different ways?
When I do my personal work I spend a lot of time researching a subject. It can be months without me actually doing any visual output, but once I know what I want to communicate I find it a lot easier to decide how I’m going to execute it. This process is really important as it lets me reinvent myself. When I work for clients they have often seen some of my work and want something similar.
Do you feel liberated when you do personal work, without a client’s restrictions or when you do commercial work do these restrictions precisely feel more like a challenge than a limitation?
I enjoy both and I need both, I love having a good relationship with a client because they can help you grow as a commercial illustrator and I enjoy going through the process and achieving something that we are both happy with. It’s funny but it’s less painful doing commercial work, my personal work often seem like a really painful and slow experience, and once I have finished a project I often feel a bit sad, I think most creative people feel like that.
In your work there’s a predominance of “retro” style elements. The obvious questions is if your main influences are coming from the second half of the 20th century but also, how’s the balance between the pure creation from scratch, if there’s such a thing and the recycling?
I don’t see my work as retro at all, but I guess I can understand what you mean. I think graphics from the 60’s and 70’s are really strong, both conceptually and visually, they were less technically advanced and I think this sometimes gives it a certain warmth. I like their simplicity and I guess I’ve been influenced by this. Also I often work in screen printing and maybe this adds to this feel.
You are not the only artist or designer of your same generation to have that retro influences but the truth is that influences and styles from different artists of your same age range are very varied, tremendously heterogeneous and at the same time there’s a connection, a similar attitude… What would you say the different artists from your generation have in common?
I’m not sure, I guess we are all a product of our time and generation, I do a lot of collage and in that way I ‘sample’ the past into my work, I guess that is typical for our generation, we sample the past rather than looking into the future. I think this affects all areas of our culture especially music and fashion, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing it’s just the way things are at the moment.
So you do illustration, you typographic work, graphic design, maybe collage and I’m not sure if you also paint. Do you feel more of a drawer, a painter, an all-around artist… in other words, how’s your relationship to the different art disciplines nowadays when the line between them is often blurry?
I started as a graphic designer and I still do graphic design and I guess I should maybe call myself a graphic designer. There seems to be a need for people to put me in a box, at times this has caused me a lot of anxiety. I look at great designers like Alan Fletcher and Push Pin Studio and how they did really varied work, I wonder if this need of defining and narrowing down your discipline is a new need. One of the things that attracted me to graphic design in the first place was the fact that you don’t choose your medium your brief chooses your medium for you. I do what I do and if it makes it easier for people to put a label on me I’m quite happy for them to do so I just wont put a label on myself.
I would like you to let us know about the importance you put in the process of creating. Maybe it’s more complex than it appears or is very intuitive; maybe you focus more on the final result and use different processes as long as they take you there… Is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… can you elaborate on this, please?
When I work for clients there is always a deadline that makes it difficult to spend too much time on the creative process, it’s a different way of working, you have to be quick and just go with your instinct, believe that the first idea is the best (which it often is) When I work on my own projects I put a lot of emphasis on the creative process and I enjoy letting research lead me into different areas, not knowing where it’s going and what the end product is going to be. Of course there is a time when you have to take control and make decisions but it all seems to happen quite natural.
How is a day in your life?
I currently work as a designer for a publishing company so at the moment my days are pretty normal, I get up, cycle to work, work, cycle home. I’ll cook some food with my boyfriend and then listen to some music and do some drawing. …or I just go to the pub with my friends!
You also have been working, even more lately, with different galleries. How do you feel in that environment?
I participated in a group show in Australia recently, I really enjoyed being able to show my work over there, I also did a catalogue for a gallery in London, I worked very closely with the artist and it was a good experience, he got a writer to create a story inspired by his work and I illustrated the story and designed the catalogue. I enjoy the gallery environment and I would love to have the opportunity to take part in more group shows or have a solo show in London.
What have you been working recently?, any interesting project coming up?
I got a few personal projects brewing, but I don’t really want to discuss them yet. Apart from that I’ve been doing a lot of editorial illustrations for clients such as The New York Times, The world of Interiors, Le Cool London guide, and I’m currently working on illustrations for a recipe book.
Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proposed to you yet?
I would love to do more music related stuff and stuff to do with dogs or animals in general, I would also like to do some fabric and creative collaborations with people of other disciplines. It would be quite interesting to do some fashion related stuff as well. There are a lot of things I still want to do…go on a worldwide inspirational tour for example
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
Dieter Roth, Roman Cieslewicz, Angus McBean, Melvin Sokolsky and Le Gun are a few artists that inspire me. I’m quite a fan of theatrical surrealism.
October 2nd, 2008
This past saturday September 20th we celebrated the opening of the solo show of Brazilian artist Fefe Talavera, that we interviewed not long ago around here.
And beware: Fefe Talavera is coming to town with the beasts from her inner self! Fefe is an artist from São Paulo that shares the raw creative energy and freedom of the new generation of urban artists coming from the streets of the Brazillian megalopolis. Her career as an artist has taken her to galleries and art fairs and events around the globe: Moscow, Buenos Aires, New York, Seville, Berlin, Los Angeles, Mexico DF, Vienna, Amsterdam… and she has recently been featured in magazines and websites for her succesful show in Amsterdam in collaboration with the legendary NY artist and Graffiti pioneer Doze Green. This is her first solo show in Spain.
September 18th, 2008
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