Jon Burgerman
Doodler supreme, British illustrator, visual artist, Jon Burgerman (www.jonburgerman.com) is our guest artist for september 08. As this character creator’s work evolves, gets more complex and characters are lost in the intricately duddled patterns, the artist is as accessible and here’s the result of the questionnaire we tortured him with:
First of all: Why, where, how… did you become an artist?
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I went to school, I went to college, I went to University, I graduated, I kept working, I traveled, I ate, I slept and woke up and now some people call me an artist.
There’s a generation of artists worldwide that I think that share at least a somehow similar attitude and sometimes some aesthetics coordinates whether coming from Street art, illustration… and you seem to be very active collaborating with artists from other countries. What do you think you share with other artists from that same “scene”?
We probably share a lot of cultural keystones, we grew up watching, reading and listening to the same things and were part of the first generation to enjoy a shrinking world due to leaping technology. Other than that I think a lot of people share the excitement and pleasure in just creating work, and meeting similarly dysfunctional but decent people. I disfunction all of the time.
Any experience bringing your art to the streets?
I’ve not done a lot of art on the streets. When I was starting I mainly dropped stickers I’d made out and about on my travels. Quite innocently I was just putting my work up, I wasn’t really aware of any sort of street scene or community in stickers existing. Later I did, it was like a spotty cousin to more traditional Graffiti and what people started calling street art. It was really good hanging out with and meeting lots of these different artists. The scene seems to of been legitimised now and over the years I done less and less direct work that you might call street art. Mainly because I’ve been busy doing other things and perhaps I don’t feel I need to spread my work about so much anymore. People might be getting sick of it.
You live in Nottingham, that, at least from the distance doesn’t seem to be precisely boiling with artistic activity. And you seem to be very busy with shows and work for all kinds of clients, in the UK and worldwide. Do you find it difficult to be in contact with other artists, clients, different things that might be happening in bigger cities or you are pretty much connected through the internet and such?
I don’t want to be touched and harangued, smudged and pinched. I like the distance, I’m happy to recede from view. I’m easily contactable and eager to please but after that I’ve never found I have to hang out in the right places and network (shudders). Nottingham isn’t a hotbed of activity. There is good stuff that goes on here but it’s very small and sometimes a little insular. I don’t mind living away from bustling scenes, I’m too reserved, repressed and shy to bully my way up and get noticed in a big creative community. I’ve found it better to have distance and to have the time and space to make my own work undisturbed and undistracted. In the marvelous age of the internet and affordable travel I do not feel cut off. I can dip into scenes all over the world, and when I get tired and in need of some time on my own I can step away and retreat back to my little hidey-hole. I won’t live in Nottingham forever but for the last few years it’s been an adequate place to be based. I’ve not found it too difficult to be connected, I’ve connected with people through my work. The work is what interests people, not me. It’s not important if I’m in a place, it’s the work.
You do work as an illustrator and that’s usually a on commission occupation but how different is your commercial work to your personal purely artistic work? Do you feel that once you reach a certain level of recognition you are more liberated from the client’s restrictions because if they choose you for some project is because they know what you usually do and expect you to something in that line?
Yes, recognition can allow you a freer reign, as you’re not just being commissioned to create some work but for who you are as well. This does seem a little strange to be at times. That expectation can also be a problem when an art director thinks they know what you’re going to do but actually their notion is fuzzy and flawed. I’ve been lucky enough that for a long time most of the commercial work I get offered is open for me to work as I like. This is good as I fail miserably when trying to be a proper illustrator. I’m not much of an illustrator at all. But there is an expectation with gallery shows and what could be seen as less commercial projects too. There is always an expectation and therefore something to try and live up to, which is often both daunting and ridiculous. I am interested in the commodification of my work, and how it is viewed differently, dependent on the form it takes and how that form is offered to people. It’s a fun game; toying with the expectations, assumptions and prejudices. Often, of course, I fall into the trap of that expectation, delivering work that responses to what i think is best suited to being in a gallery, or on a t-shirt etc and therefore enhancing further expectations. The contradiction is endemic to having aspirations of being an artist whilst trying to earn a living through your work by making things that could be art.
It seems like apart from commercial work and personal work that can be sold at galleries and so on, many artists find another ways to portray their work in the form of assorted merchandising such as t-shirts, toys, etc… more accessible to most people because they are cheaper. I know that you have been producing your own small runs of sculptures, t-shirts, etc…and also designed some toys for “designer toys” brands, even your own series!. What’s your experience and “policy” in that field?
More accessible too because they are familiar. The experience has been good, most of the time I’ve been allowed to do as I wish but at the same time there is a much more black and white view, from the companies, that the merchandise is made to be sold. If something can be tweaked a little to make it easier to understand or look more appealing, it should be done. On the whole this hasn’t bothered me because its effects haven’t affected me very much. One on project I had to change my overall concept for some toys and I found that disappointing. The objects themselves remained exactly the same but the way in which they were described was altered. The simplifying of and dumbing down of the idea was a shame, even though I suspected the idea would get picked upon. It would have made the product a little more knowing and interesting than similar things out there already. My policy is always try and push for what you want, 100% your ideal supreme scenario but then don’t be surprised if it gets reduced down as you work on the project. There’s always factors that interferes with your initial plans.
And also, because of how many different brands and institutions have been counting with you for so many different projects, from painting a truck, a hotel room, designing toys, video games… where do you find yourself more comfortable and what would be something you would have to reject because it’s simply out of your field of work?
I sort of enjoy all of these things and hate them at the same time too. Hate perhaps is the wrong word, but it’s that extra level of concentration and energy you have to plough into doing something new. It’s uncomfortable, which is bad but ultimately good, as inevitably you push yourself, experiment and maybe surprise yourself too. I find I get bored easily, it’s no good for me to only work in one way on one sort of project all the time. Most of the different projects all have the same starting point, which is drawing. So this is a comforting and familiar place to begin a new project from. From a drawing you can go anywhere. I reject projects that ask me to do something I really cannot do or really do not want to do, like work for a cow slaughtering fast food chain. I cannot place my work or characters into a world where they just would not belong. Even if the premise is commercial, as long as I can make my concepts fit, it is possible to get involved in it. I cannot animate beyond sixty seconds, I cannot build websites or program games. I cannot build structures, cut clothing or cast sculptures. With collaboration though, anything can be achieved.
Now, the doodle question: What’s exactly this whole doodle thing and where would you draw the line (precisely) between doodling and just drawing, what any given illustrator does? By the way: Is it originally yours (and your pal Sune Ehlers) invention?
I don’t think anyone invented doodling, it’s existed as long as drawing and mark making has. For me the act of doodling is when you are drawing but without a full mind on the job at hand. You allow your hand and brain to be connected without too much interruption from your thoughts. You can doodle on the guitar and you can doodle when you dance but it’s most common when holding a pen. I can’t draw a line between doodling and drawing, they can be one and the same. Doodling is about lifting your foot from the pedal and just gliding along on momentum for a bit. Sune calls doodling duudling, but I figured that is just his eccentric Danish want. We’ve maybe popularised the term a little, I’ve encountered many ‘doodle’ sites and blogs over the last few years that never existed ten years ago. The style I draw in sometimes gets called a doodle style, probably owing to the loose, looping, easy intertwined lines I use. I’m not sure there really is a well defined doodle-style, it’s not as obvious as saying that work is in a scribble style, or a messy style, or a scratchy style. I would call my work ‘doodles’ when I was starting out because I didn’t feel it was right to call it art, or drawing or design or illustration. Doodle was a way of protecting it (and me), suggesting that it might not be ‘high-brow’ and therefore not worth further enquiry. Thus I would avoid any potential tricky questioning and would be allowed to continue with my work undisturbed. People might ask ‘are you an artist’ and I’d say I’m a doodler.
And another “label” people have come up with in recent years that you also seem to be part of: “character design”. Same question more or less: What would you say it’s new and different about this for a new term to be coined to name a series of different creators?
Character design has been around as long as written language hasn’t it ? I don’t have a clear understanding of what that label really means. If you draw characters are you not a character designer? Or does this new label refer to a certain type of character art? If you look at the excellent Pictoplasma books, who might be to blame for some of this confusion, the range of characters and different styles is overwhelming, so I can’t think the term is bound by a stylistic grouping. I can only think that the term encompasses a collection of artists, who not only design characters, but also actively push them out into the world, through their art and merchandise, beckoning you to leave your world and join them in theirs. Baseman calls it Pervasive art, which is a neat term. But then this is more than just character design, it relies of there being a world for them to exist in too. See, I’m still confused.
And through doodling and designing characters the thing is you create a world very Jon Burgerman. It’s usually very colorful but I’m not sure if we should interpret that because of that it’s a happy world. How would you describe the mood of that universe and its inhabitants?
It’s not a completely shiny, happy world even though there is great silliness and fun to be found. There are flaws, contradictions, anxieties and doubts (which are all good mines for humour). The universe is fantastical but the moods are grounded, human ones, sometimes hyper-emotional and other times completely stoic. I think about the complete absurdities of our world, the strangeness of other people, how so little makes sense, how I feel remote. Maybe making characters and scenarios is trying to make sense of things around me. They are reflections moving on the surface a puddle of ink.
There’s a question that intrigues me from all artists in general and 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?
I think it’s a big percentage of the person I am now. The art work follows on from that.
I’m clinging on to, making deep finger nail marks in, all I can recall of my childhood. I’m taking as much as I can carry into my adult years.
Not being an artist I’m always curious about the creative process. In your case it looks very organic but maybe the process is more digital than it seems, and for instance I don’t know if for you it’s a question of enjoying the process rather than the result or any process is good as long as the result is satisfaying?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.
It can be a very simple process; Everything starts off as a drawing. It may get scanned, cleaned up a little, coloured in and then sent somewhere for printing. If it doesn’t need to go near the computer then it doesn’t. I guess this is the physical process and that the process of thinking about what to draw is more interesting - if not a million times more complicated. Most of the time it is in the physical process were the joy resides. It’s the making of the marks, applying colour, bringing something to life that is fun. That is when you are playing the game, trying to solve it or come to a conclusion. When it’s over it is like the puzzle has been completed and it holds a lot less interest. But I hope some of the energy and spirit in making it resonants in the final piece.
What have you been working on recently?
I have a solo exhibition in Hamburg at the Helium Cowboy gallery on August 30th, so I’ve been mainly focusing my attention on making works for that. Over the last few months I’ve also done some live drawing at a festival, a magazine cover, some editorial illustrations, a toy customisation, some clothing designs and worked on some new toy designs.
And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?
I have a monograph called “Pens are My Friends”, published by idN coming out on September 25th. The book is 300 pages and is accompanied with a DVD, mini book and fold out poster. On the same day my collection of mini figures, produced by Kidrobot are going to be released. They are called the Heroes of Burgertown. I’ve been working on the book for about a year and the toys for a couple of years so it’s great that they’re nearly ready to be released. Beyond that I’ve just started working on a little computer game idea, a live doodle sound project and am going to make an album where I do not produce any of the music or sounds myself. Everything will be contributed by people who have got in touch with me via my website. It will be a collaborative effort where I get to boss everyone around. It is possible it will end badly. I am also working on a small comic book, which will be both stupid and silly and badly drawn.
Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?
I’d like to create an animated TV series, design the interior for a restaurant or bar and make a hot air balloon.
Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?
I’m interested, without even being able to understand too much, about the Large Hadron Collider. If the Earth wobbles on September 10th (when they test it for the first time) we know who might be to blame.
August 29th, 2008 07:04pm Administrador
