John Fellows

January 30th, 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.

Entry Filed under: Artists