MARCEL DZAMA // RAYMOND PETTIBON // ED EMBERLEY

FEBRUARY 2017, n193 $6.99

MARCEL DZAMA // RAYMOND PETTIBON // ED EMBERLEY // TALITA HOFFMANN // FRENCH FRED FEBRUARY 2017, n193
 Art that Tells a Story.
Learn to Let Your Art Speak.

Take Classes in San Francisco or Online

Student sculpture Yummy by Hui Ye, School of Fine Art - Sculpture

Academy of Art University | Founded in San Francisco 1929 | 888.680.8691 | academyart.edu/FA | Yellow Ribbon Participant
 FARGO
LONG UNDERWEAR
Ed Emberley, Cover of The Parade Book, 1962
 ISSUE 193 / FEBRUARY 2017

10 EDITOR’S LETTER

14 STUDIO TIME SCOTT ALBRECHT IN BROOKLYN

18 THE REPORT IN THE LAND OF SUNSHINE

22 EVENT POP ART IN ORANGE COUNTY

24 PICTURE BOOK FRENCH FRED

32 DESIGN GERONIMO BALLOONS

36 FASHION OUT OF THE BOX: THE RISE OF SNEAKER CULTURE

42 INFLUENCES RAYMOND PETTIBON DEFINES THE TIMES

46 MARCEL DZAMA 60 ROBERT MONTGOMERY

68 TALITA HOFFMANN 78 SCOTT ALBRECHT

86 ANDREW LUCK MAKING HIS OWN

104 TRAVEL INSIDER MURALS AND MEALS IN SACRAMENTO

108 IN SESSION UNIVERSITY OF IOWA’S NEW SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS

110 BOOK REVIEWS CARHARTT, DABS MYLA, BAG CITY

114 PROFILE POST STREET ART AND NUART

94 118 PRODUCT REVIEWS GET AWAY IN COMFORT

ED 120 SIEBEN ON LIFE ARTISTS AS INFLUENCERS

EMBERLEY 122

126
POP LIFE

PERSPECTIVE
VANCOUVER, NYC, SF, LA

THE GHOST SHIP REMEMBERED

JUXTAPOZ.COM
S TA FF

FOUNDER PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER ADVERTISING + SALES DIRECTOR

ROBERT WILLIAMS GWYNNED VITELLO MIKE STALTER

stalter@juxtapoz.com

EDITOR CFO

EVAN PRICCO JEFF RAFNSON ADVERTISING SALES

EBEN STERLING
ART DIRECTOR AC C O U N T I N G M A N AG E R

ROSEMARY PINKHAM KELLY MA MARKETING DIRECTOR

DAVE SYPNIEWSKI
david@hsproductions.com
M A N AG I N G E D I T O R C I R C U L AT I O N C O N S U LTA N T

ALEX NICHOLSON JOHN MORTHANOS

A D O P E R AT I O N S M A N AG E R

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS MIKE BRESLIN

CO-FOUNDER
THOMAS CAMPBELL
GREG ESCALANTE
GREG ESCALANTE M A R K E T I N G + A D M A N AG E R

KRISTIN FARR SALLY VITELLO

CO-FOUNDER
CARLO McCORMICK
SUZANNE WILLIAMS
AUSTIN McMANUS W E B S T O R E C O O R D I N AT O R

CALEB NEELON YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ

CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER
EVAN PRICCO
NICK LATTNER
GWYNNED VITELLO MAIL ORDER + CUSTOMER SERVICE

ERIC WHITE EBEN BENSON

DEPUTY EDITOR
TOM SHATTUCK
KRISTIN FARR
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS subscriptions@hsproductions.com
orders@hsproductions.com
IAN BATES 415-822-3083
CONTRIBUTING WEB + PRINT EDITORS
IAN COX
JOEY GARFIELD
BRYAN DERBALLA P R O D U C T S A L E S M A N AG E R
AUSTIN McMANUS
STEPHON DYSON RICK ROTSAERT
GABE SCOTT
SAMUEL ESTEVES 415–852–4189
MICHAEL SIEBEN
DANIELLE GARZA
SAM GRAHAM PRODUCT PROCUREMENT
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR
TODD MAZER JOHN DUJMOVIC
AUSTIN McMANUS
AUSTIN McMANUS
FABIO PALEARI SHIPPING
CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITORS
DANIEL STANUSH MITCHELL CLARK
ESTEVAN ORIOL
BLAINE SUQUE MADDIE MANSON
DAVID BROACH
GARRICK WONG CHARLIE PRAVEL
BROCK FETCH
IAN SEAGER
E D I T O R I A L A S S I S TA N T ADAM YIM
AG E N C Y D E S I G N E R
LAUREN YOUNG SMITH
MAX STERN
SASHA BOGOJEV TECHNICAL LIAISON

SANTOS ELY AGUSTIN

JUXTAPOZ ISSN #1077-8411 FEBRUARY 2017 VOLUME 24, NUMBER 02

Published monthly by High Speed Productions, Inc., 1303 Underwood Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124–3308. © 2016 High Speed Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. Juxtapoz
is a registered trademark of High Speed Productions, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author. All
rights reserved on entire contents. Advertising inquiries should be directed to: advertising@juxtapoz.com. Subscriptions: US, $29.99 (one year, 12 issues) or $75.00 (12 issues, first class, US
only); Canada, $75.00; Foreign, $80.00 per year. Single copy: US, $6.99; Canada, $6.99. Subscription rates given represent standard rate and should not be confused with special subscription
offers advertised in the magazine. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 0960055. Change of address:
Allow six weeks advance notice and send old address label along with your new address. Postmaster: Send change of address to: Juxtapoz, PO Box 884570, San Francisco, CA 94188–4570.
The publishers would like to thank everyone who has furnished information and materials for this issue. Unless otherwise noted, artists featured in Juxtapoz retain copyright to their work. Every
effort has been made to reach copyright owners or their representatives. The publisher will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in our next issue. Juxtapoz welcomes editorial
submissions; however, return postage must accompany all unsolicited manuscripts, art, drawings, and photographic materials if they are to be returned. No responsibility can be assumed for
unsolicited materials. All letters will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to Juxtapoz’ right to edit and comment editorially.

Juxtapoz Is Published by High Speed Productions, Inc.

415–822–3083 email to: editor@juxtapoz.com
juxtapoz.com
Cover art by
Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibon
Attention 28
Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache
and collage on paper
18.9” x 20.5”
2015
Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London
 #lagunitasjux

COLOR ME IN. OR DON’T.

PETALUMA, CALIF. & CHICAGO, ILL. WHATEVER...CHEERS TO THE NEW YEAR!
Beer speaks. People mumble. @lagunitasbeer
E D I TO R ’ S L E T T E R

ISSUE NO 193
TO THE SAY THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SINCE I LAST Trump in the face, with the Captain exclaiming, “Yo Fired!” above
Marcel Dzama
wrote the editor’s letter, just over 28 days ago, would What was so powerful was, not only these two famed and and Raymond Pettibon
be an understatement, regardless of political or national critically-acclaimed artists working together on something It is big big business (or
We s’port…and necessitate
affiliations. Perhaps we ultimately learned our lesson in so politically-charged, but their ability to respond to such one another, thought to
making predictions. We were wrong, and lots of other turmoil in such a timely manner. It’s something I have brush, word to image hand
in hand…or the greatest
people were very wrong. But, in our business, the world of always loved about illustration and political cartooning, that interest…of writing thou art)
Ink, watercolor,
creative endeavors, we are already perceiving something spontaneity of a good drawing that film or even sculpture
and acrylic on paper
loud and clear: action, substance, and a powerful reflection and painting can’t capture. 392” x 101”
2016
of our times through artwork. And some of the most Courtesy David Zwirner
powerful work will be coming from today’s great illustrators, When we look to artists to help us cope and clarify New York/London

artists and political cartoonists.
One thing we have learned through social media is that
a powerful image can travel the world in ways absolutely
impossible, even 20 years ago. When Jean Jullien created
his now iconic Peace for Paris image on the night of the
attacks on the City of Lights in late 2015, and posted it to
his Instagram account, it quickly spread and was reshared
exponentially. It was an illustrator responding in real time
to crisis and politics. This struck me when I walked into
the studio of the great fine artist and exceptional drawing
master, Marcel Dzama, just days after the US election.
There, on his desk of drawings, was a collaborative work
just completed with another legend, Raymond Pettibon. On
the paper was Captain America, forcibly punching Donald
unsettling times, artists like Dzama and Pettibon, Jullien,
or even street artists like Banksy and Swoon, expand our
dialogue with history. In this month’s issue, with Dzama
and Pettibon on the cover, Robert Montgomery’s street
poetry, and Nuart continuing to champion the use of public
space, artists are already making work that speaks to the
challenging era ahead for Mother Earth. Pens and brushes in
hand and are ready to tell our stories.
Enjoy #193.

10 | FEBRUARY 2017
 F EATU R I N G W O R KS BY: JEFFRE Y GILLET TE

ARMANDO VEVE L E E C H E N - DAO

BEN VENOM N I G E L COX

CHRIS BERENS PAO L A D E L TO R O

JAIME BRET T TRE ADWELL PETER FERGUSON

J A S M I N E B EC K E T- G R I F F I T H SAM GIBBONS

SOLO E XHIBITION GROUP E XHIBITION

FULVIO DI PIA Z Z A TH E SHAPE O F

ENTANGLED TH I NGS TO CO M E

JANUARY 7— JANUARY 28, 2017

OPENING RECEP TION: SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 6 — 8 PM

52 9 W E S T 2 0 T H S T R EE T | N E W YO R K , N Y 10 011 | J O N AT H A NL E V IN EG A L L ER Y.CO M
Co m i n g S o o n: J O N AT H A N L E V IN E PR O J EC T S a t M A N A CO N T EM P O R A R Y. St ay t u n e d fo r d e t a i l s !
STUDIO TIME

STUDIO TIME
LIVING FOR THE CITY
LIVING IN NEW YORK, THE CONCEPT OF PERSONAL
space is one not often realized. You are almost always in
competition to carve out some space to call your own, from
a place to live, to standing room on the subway. But what
NYC lacks in personal space, it gives back endlessly through
interactions and inspiration.
I live and work in Brooklyn, splitting my studio between two
separate spaces not far from one another—one, a small
room in my apartment where I do the majority of my drawing
and painting, and the second, a shared space where I do my
woodworking and larger projects. I really enjoy the flexibility
of being able to change my scenery as well as having the
options of working by myself or surrounded by fellow artists.
Recently, I’ve come to realize that my home studio mimics Photo by
Malena Seldin
my work in some ways. It’s lined with mementos, notes, art
from friends, photos, things I’ve picked up along the way
on my travels—all things I want to remember and surround
myself with. And my process is one that often mirrors that
idea. I tend to observe and write a lot about the things
happening around me, and the work becomes a distillation
of the ideas I’ve found to be important and don’t want to
lose sight of. —Scott Albrecht
Read our interview with Scott Albrecht on page 78.

14 | FEBRUARY 2017
THE REPORT
THE SUNSHINE STATE, WEST
PMCA CAPTURES THE MOOD OF THE LEFT COAST
above IT'S NO QUESTION CALIFORNIA IS A UNIQUE STATE.
Rex Brandt
Surfriders
With terrain ranging from the lofty Sierra Nevadas to the
Oil on canvas Mojave Desert, each region is colored by the landscape,
36” x 26”
1959 which, in turn, defines the people and their mosaic. In The
E. Gene Crain Land Of Sunshine at Pasadena Museum of California Art
Collection
tells an intimate story of the development of the California
Coastline, its thriving culture, and the camaraderie amongst
local artists. Curator Gordon McClelland has lovingly put
together a show that will have visitors from all over the
country walking away feeling like true West Coast locals.
Greg Escalante: Give us a little background about the
scope of the show and who’s in it.
Gordon McClelland: In The Land of Sunshine is a show
I have thought about doing for a long time, and it finally
18 | FEBRUARY 2017
became a reality earlier this year when the Pasadena
Museum of California Art agreed to let me curate and
design this exhibition. It features works from as far back
as the 1850’s and as recent as this year. Included among
the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century California
artists are William Coulter, William Wendt, Joseph Kleitsch,
Alson Clark and Duncan Gleason. Artists from the 1930-
to-1960 era include Phil Dike, Rex Brandt, Millard Sheets,
Keith Crown and Milford Zornes. The 1960s-to-1980s era
is represented by a number of fine artists such as Roger
Kuntz, Robert Frame, and Richard Bunkall, while more
recent works include paintings by Suong Yangchareon,
William Wray and Bradford J. Salamon. A special surf art
section is comprised of major works by Rick Griffin, John
Severson, Bill Ogden and Kevin Short.
Do you have one of my favorite paintings, the guy carrying
the board on his back, going up the steps in Laguna?
I'll tell you why I didn't put that one in—because they're
going to have a whole show of Phil Dike at the Laguna
Museum with a book, so I didn't want to take anything that
I thought they were going to use. That said, what is in the
surf art section are some truly fine works. The original
oil painting titled Pacific Vibrations by Rick Griffin brings
some very kaleidoscopic surrealism to the show. Bill
Ogden’s work brings another wild psychedelic aspect to
the exhibition. John Severson is represented with several
abstract works from the 1950s and ’60s that were part of
the first series of fine art paintings devoted to capturing
the essence of the early years of California surf culture
development. Kerne Erickson’s painting for a well-known
Roxy surf contest poster from 2000 is included, and Jim
Evans’ airbrushed classic for a Surf Research surf wax
poster represents that 1970’s culture. Rex Brandt’s well
known mid-century Surf Riders abstract painting is also
featured in this section.

So, there’s abstract and representational?

There are nineteenth-century Luminist style paintings,
Post-Impressionist works and, in other sections, American
illustration art and California-style watercolors. There are
Surrealist paintings, geometric abstractions, Photorealist
works and many other styles of art. The whole point of
this exhibition is to show all the different ways artists have
interpreted subjects they encountered along the California
coastline. I’ll put it this way: there are many different
approaches to tradition and modern art used to produce
these works, but, in all cases, the viewer can tell what subject
matter inspired each work. As I mentioned, the whole point of
the show is to celebrate all the different ways that California
artists have interpreted the coast culture. So the idea is that
they would pick the subject matter that they found interesting
and use their own particular painting language to interpret it.

It's such a great idea for a show, like one of those shows
where you just go "God, I can't believe no one has done
it before."
Another thing that’s cool is calling it In the Land of Sunshine,
and the reason I chose that was because there was this
guy named Charles Lummis, who edited a magazine that
promoted the development of California coastal towns in
the late 1800s. This dude traveled on foot from Cincinnati to
Los Angeles to take a job, and then he built this big beautiful
stone house up in Highland Park. He's also the founder of

top right bottom right

Louis Betts Joseph Duncan Gleason
Mid-Winter, Coronado Beach Start of the Race (Newport Beach)
Oil on canvas Oil on canvas
24” x 29” 25” x 30”
c. 1907 1930s
The Irvine Museum The Kelton Foundation Collection
© 2016 The Kelton Foundation

THE REPORT JUXTAPOZ.COM | 19

THE REPORT
The Southwest Museum. Lummis often provided a place
for artists to stay for free at his place there, and he would
hire them to do illustrations for his publication titled Land
of Sunshine. As a tribute to him, I have a couple of posters
and some issues of the magazines displayed in a case.
The exhibition title also honors this guy who was a real
visionary. He arrived here early on and promoted the
coast, became a real Southern California guy. He wrote
articles saying, "There's a new town of Redondo Beach,
there's a new town, Laguna," so he'd write about them and
get people interested in these places. I've always liked
him, and I kind of wanted to give a tip of the hat. He was
such a classic character, so that’s how I got the name for
the show.
Who is the youngest artist you decided to put in the show?
Probably Kevin Short, who's, I think, in his forties, and
would be the youngest one. Do you know the artist
Suong Yangchareon, originally from Hong Kong?
This guy paints really soulful, off-beat paintings. He's
handled by Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco,
20 | FEBRUARY 2017
but he lives down here in LA, and most of his paintings above
Dennis Hare
center around LA and San Pedro. I think he’s quite an The Cove (Monterey)
exceptional painter, so I put two of his pieces in the Watercolor on paper
30” x 22”
show. As the paintings get closer and closer to modern 1982
day, they seem to picture more developed scenes like a Mark and Jan Hilbert
Collection
7-Eleven in Oceanside, or just a regular suburban tract
house scene in Huntington Beach, showing the way the
coast developed. Most of these contemporary people
aren't name-dropping types. They're just people whose
art I liked and thought deserved to be in the show. The
paintings are engaging. The criteria is always that the
art is engaging, not necessarily how famous the artist is,
and that makes it a better show.
In the Land of Sunshine is on view at the Pasadena Museum of
California Art through February 19, 2017.
E V EN T

POP ART DESIGN

MARSHMALLOW CHAIRS
AT OCMA
YOU MAY RECOGNIZE POP ART WHEN YOU SEE IT, BUT
there’s more than meets the eye. Where else but to start
with Andy Warhol and one of his gimlet-eyed observations:
“What’s great about this country is that America started this
tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the
same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and
see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks
Coke. Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink
Coke too.” While duly and truly noted, it may be surprising
to learn that the Pop Art movement started in Europe in
the 1950s. Artists in London, particularly influenced by
American movies, comics and television, began to make
collages and paintings playing on this celebrity culture.
Brit Richard Hamilton, credited with making the first such
piece, in which a candy-red Tootsie Pop literally “pops” out
of the frame, is a featured artist in Orange County Museum
of Art’s, Pop Art Design, which opens up more than cans of
Campbell’s tomato soup. Graphic design, lamps and toys
are among the designs that accompany album covers and
paintings by notables like Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha.
Also among the 150-plus artworks are everyday objects
in vibrant display, illustrating Warhol’s understanding of
how advertising, celebrity and consumer culture came to a
crossroads paved in irony. Familiar items sit center-stage,
like Claes Oldenberg’s Wedding Souvenir, a Plaster-of-Paris
slice of sugary white cake.

Pop, as defined by Lichtenstein, is art that “looks like

the thing itself.” Craft and whimsy elevates the common.
Repeated images of Mao Tse-tung transform the mighty
into the mundane. Museum visitors will tour the show,
and certainly pose with Vija Celmins’s acrylic-on-balsa-
wood Eraser. Smartphones, eponymous with design and
consumerism, will record and transmit the moment. The
crossroads are busier than ever. —Gwynned Vitello

Pop Art Design shows at the Orange County Museum of Art in

Newport Beach from January 7 through April 2, 2017.

right (top) right (bottom)

Milton Glaser (American, b. 1929) George Nelson Associates, Inc.
Dylan, 1966 (Irving Harper) (American, 1916-2015)
Poster insert, Bob Dylan, Marshmallow, 1956
”Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits“ Sofa Lacquered steel tubing,
Offset print vinyl cushions, aluminium
83,3 x 56 cm Herman Miller Furniture Company,
Columbia Records Zeeland, MI, USA
Gerrit Terstiege 79 x 131,5 x 80 cm
© Milton Glaser Collection Vitra Design Museum
Photo by Photo: © Vitra Design Museum
Andreas Sütterlin

22 | FEBRUARY 2017
LAGUNA
COLLEGE
OF ART + LCAD.EDU
DESIGN

LCAD IS PROUD TO INTRODUCE ITS

BFA AND MFA PROGRAMS IN CREATIVE WRITING

Application option 6e:

Make
your reader
terrified of
a duckling.
LCAD CREATIVE WRITING. WE’RE DIFFERENT. ARE YOU?

BFA MFA MINORS

Animation Art of Game Design Animation
Creative Writing Creative Writing Art History
Drawing + Painting Drawing Creative Writing
Drawing + Painting w/ Sculpture Emphasis Painting Drawing + Painting
Game Art Graphic Design + Digital Media
Graphic Design + Digital Media POST-BACC CERTIFICATE Illustration
Graphic Design + Digital Media w/ Action Sports Design Emphasis Drawing + Painting Sculpture
Graphic Design + Digital Media w/ Illustration Emphasis
Illustration
Illustration w/ Drawing + Painting Emphasis
Illustration w/ Entertainment Emphasis
NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS
Illustration in Entertainment Design lcad.edu/creative-writing
PICTURE BOOK

24 | FEBRUARY 2017
FRENCH FRED
THE CATCH IN THE AIR
FRED MORTAGNE, BETTER KNOWN AS FRENCH FRED,
is a self-taught director and photographer, focusing his work
mostly around skateboarding and life in the streets. As a
young skateboarder and video enthusiast in the early 1990s,
it felt natural for Fred to begin making videos himself. He
created his first in Lyon, France in 1994, documenting the
local scene, shining a light on young emerging talents and
helping to put Lyon on the map as a skate destination. His
hard work led him to film top skateboarding professionals
around the world. Well-known mostly for his work on the
videos Menikmati for éS footwear, Flip’s Sorry, and a variety
of work for the French skateboard company Cliché, he gained
recognition for incorporating cinematic elements of mood and
movement into shooting skateboarding, literally elevating the
craft with his unique approach.

“While filming professionally, I began wanting to shoot still

pictures,” Fred says. “I would see short scenes or moments
that would be better fit for photography, moving images being
pointless for instances that only have a split-second interest.
In addition, I realized that the still photographers with me on
the skate sessions would not shoot certain things that I could
visualize in my mind, that I believed were interesting. That
was the precious insight that informed me that I could shoot
pictures that would be different than others.”

With years of trial and error, Fred developed a style of

photography that was more or less his own. Through
independent growth and discovery, Fred’s work would
eventually give a subtle nod to his favorite masters of
photojournalism: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Koudelka,
Willy Ronis and Raymond Depardon. Fred continues to live
with his family in east-central France, traveling and chasing
the image, both still and in motion. And with the release
of Attraper Au Vol, we pause to savor the true fruits of his
journey so far. —Thomas Campbell

Fred Mortagne (French Fred)’s newest book, Attraper Au Vol, with

introduction by Anton Corbijn, is currently out via Thomas Campbell’s
Um Yeah Arts.

umyeaharts.com

left
Flo Mirtain
Lyon, France

PICTURE BOOK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 25

PICTURE BOOK

“On skate trips, I usually wake up early to take advantage

of the opportunity to travel to new places. This was in
Lisbon, Portugal. During some totally random wandering
around, I spotted this scenery. I waited and shot a bunch
of various pictures, until this man showed up. To me, it’s got
a ’70s type of vibe, and I love for my pictures to be timeless.”

26 | FEBRUARY 2017
“When I first showed a series of these full-pipe pictures
to Thomas Campbell, he told me right away: “Go back
there and shoot tons more of that stuff.” I did, but all
the pipes were gone! Fortunately, the previous time,
the day was epic, which resulted in shooting the cover
of the book as well as lot of material that made the cut.
Cold and rusty steel can create such beauty!”

PICTURE BOOK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 27

PICTURE BOOK

“Tokyo in 2003. A total DIY shot, made possible because

this intriguing parking lot was right outside the skyscraper
hotel where I stayed with the Cliché Skateboards team.
This weird scenery was just asking for some action!
Skateboarder: Jeremie Daclin.”

28 | FEBRUARY 2017
 “When making the Flip Skateboards Sorry video around
2001, I would sometimes go hang out or have dinner with
the Templetons. Ed was a big inspiration for me as he
contributed to getting me on the right track to vegetarianism,
and he also started to introduce me to the cultural side of
photography, for which I was totally ignorant. Here he is
painting at his house in Huntington Beach.”

PICTURE BOOK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 29

DESIGN

ALL THE WAY UP

JIHAN ZENCIRLI, EMPRESS OF BALLOONS
WALKING DOWN MISSION STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO
one fine afternoon, my feet literally screeched to a halt.
A massive cascade of balloons was draped over a three-
story building. This giant, colorful network of celebration
spilled gently onto the awning of Mi Ranchito Produce on
the ground floor, and I couldn’t figure it out. It was the best
art I’d seen all day, and after gawking for a while, I assumed
that someone had been assigned “decor” for a party and
was doing the most. Later, I realized It was, indeed, the best
art of the day, the work of LA’s famous balloon lady, Jihan
Zencirli, master of a joyful empire.
Kristin Farr: There is a badass danger to your work. What
would people be surprised to know about your job?
Jihan Zencirli: My tanks weigh hundreds of pounds, and
I scale 40-foot buildings regularly. Don't think I haven't
looked up "at what height can you fall from a building
and survive?" None of my crew scales the high heights.
That's my job, and thrill, and I can't sleep the night before
an installation. I have to take a day or two off after the
installation to rest. It is so physically demanding, and I put
such an enormous amount of pressure on myself to make
sure every detail is perfect, that it's hard for me to enjoy
the installation when I immediately finish. I just have to walk
away, sleep and then return to sit and appreciate the piece.
Growing up, my mother would say, "I don't care what you
choose to do—just do it the best you can," and that is so
much a part of me today as I think about making something
that is meaningful to people who come into contact with it—
and that's the best thing I can do.
I see your work as art, one hundred percent.
I've been working with balloons for six years now, and it

right
Photo by Paul Ferney
10th Anniversary Celebration
for Oh Happy Day
in San Francisco
2016

32 | FEBRUARY 2017
wasn't until this year that I've considered myself an artist.
For me, art was a tangible object that comes as a response
to something bigger I try to tackle conceptually within my
mind. I work in a medium that is common and ordinary and
not unique. In fact, my business works because it is all
these things. Balloons represent memory and nostalgia for
so many people, and I feel like my work reminds people of
feelings they've forgotten.

How did the Mission Street project come up?

It was on the facade of Jordan Ferney’s Oh Happy Day
Studio, in the same building as Mi Ranchito, and it was such
a special, if not the most personally important installation
I’ve created to date. I met Jordan at the inception of her
blog which, in its early days, was just a hint of what would
become the influential million dollar creative studio she
runs now. Jordan had a small Etsy store and sold single,
36-inch jumbo round balloons. I bought a pink and a yellow
balloon and kept them tucked away for years, saving them
for a "someday project.” That someday came when I was
the creative director for a children's character education
company—the kind of non-profit that creates content for
school children to encourage them to be good citizens and
go after their dreams. I realized I would finally have a use for
the balloons for a video we were filming and dug them out
from deep inside my home craft closet.

Everything feels like it has come full circle with my creativity

and human connections. I feel so much gratitude for how
far I've come from almost a decade ago, buying balloons
on the Internet and sitting on them, intimidated by their size
and this sense of importance and reverence I felt to create
something meaningful with them.

Do you have a history with balloons?

For my 16th birthday, all I wanted were white balloons for
my backyard dance party. It was the single most important
element for my birthday. All white, on white cord. I bought
dozens of the 11-inch style at the grocery store floral
department with money I saved from my Saturday job of
cleaning houses damaged by fires or floods. At my party,
I wore a Bebe shirt with rhinestones and had a friend on
the porch DJing "Lady in Red" and "True" by Spandau
Ballet, which, at the time, were songs I listened to 30 times
a day from a cassette tape recording.
That sounds like a fresh party. Tell me about the crew you
party with now.
I love the people I work with. I mean, I'm really obsessed
with them. I've started to feel my maternal abilities come
through from having a team of artists, designers, illustrators,
photographers, dancers (we have a stilt walker and a former
performer from Wicked on the team), and entrepreneurs
who are building their own life and are driven by their own
passion. I've somehow snagged these amazing people to
help with what I do. It's healthy for me to work with people
who are driven in their own life, since I am not interested in
having people with a passion for balloons on my team. Oh
gosh, that would be boring. I think everyone on the team has above
Photo by Christopher Sullivan
an appreciation for what we do because they know what it for Geronimo
feels like to walk away from a project and see how happy it Spring Street Social
Society Dinner
makes everyone. 2016
Your installations are always ephemeral.
Part of my art is the impermanence. It's decadent and
luxurious to spend hours creating something that will not
last much longer than a bouquet of flowers. What you
generally see in images is the first day of life for these orbs,
but as they start to decompose and deflate, the shape and
material morphs, and they become something completely
different. Something beautiful—more beautiful to me than
they were on day one.

DESIGN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 33
DESIGN
Where do you plan to travel and make beautiful things
this year?
I'm en route to Istanbul right now. And I just returned from
Paris and Marrakech this past week. We have projects all
over the US, Toronto, Moscow, Shanghai, Berlin, Buenos
Aires, Cape Town and more. Travel and exploration is such
an important part of my personal life, and I've made my work
embrace and grow from this. I travel almost half of the year,
and it's sort of my downtime, a place to center myself and
explore new ideas in my head or in my sketch book, talking
to strangers and feeling small in the world in the best way.
Is there an example of how travel inspired a specific project?
In Greece this past Spring, sponsored by T Mobile, I got to
travel and set up little installations around the country, which
is how I operate regularly. I shop at the local stores looking
for something unusual or interesting, and in Greece, I was
most inspired in Santorini with these empty, half-built dream
homes that have been abandoned since the economic crisis,
deteriorating and overrun with wildlife. It felt wrong to create
anything that celebrated this pain, but while touring one of
the abandoned homes, I inflated a stack of obnoxious hot
pink mylar balloons and photographed them inside, a sort of
memorial to the celebrations, dreams and joy that the house
once had in its future, but no longer.
I'm inspired by Jeanne Claude and Christo and their ability
to to create unexpected wonder in life. For my 31st birthday
34 | FEBRUARY 2017
this summer, I flew solo to Milan and trekked hours to Lake above
Photo by Christopher Sullivan
Iseo for the Floating Piers. for Geronimo
Cinespia Movie Screening at the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
So jealous! I want to see your photos. Photography 2016
seems important for your practice. Your Instagram
is amazing.
My photographer and creative collaborator, Christopher
Sullivan, has everything to do with the images being so
beautiful and capturing the process and experience of what
we do. Without him traveling with us to every location and
documenting these experiences, my Instagram would look
very different. Surrounding myself with talented, passionate
people and giving them full reign for their expertise makes
each experience feel like a collaboration and less like my
own creative agenda.
How did you get such a perfect sense of style and design?
That comes from my mother, Heidi, and a line of great
matriarchs in my family who cared to make life feel and look
beautiful, and to do so with very little means. Caring about
details that make life so delightful is less about the tools or
materials and more about the intention to create something
lovely for another.
geronimoballoons.com
FA S H I O N

OUT OF THE BOX:

above
Manufacturer Unknown
Pre-vulcanized Rubber Overshoes
ca. 1830s
Collection of
the Bata Shoe Museum
Photo by Ron Wood
Courtesy American Federation
of Arts/Bata Shoe Museum
opposite (above from left)
Adidas x Run–D.M.C.
25th Anniversary Superstar
2011
Courtesy of Run–D.M.C.
Collection of Erik Blam
Photo by Ron Wood
Courtesy American Federation
of Arts/Bata Shoe Museum
Nike x Tom Sachs
Whites (Original)
2008-12
Collection of the artist
Courtesy
American Federation of Arts
THE RISE OF SNEAKER CULTURE
AT THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA
SOMETIMES IT’S AS PLAIN AS THE SHOES ON YOUR FEET.
As Evelyn Orantes, Curator of Public Practice at the Oakland
Museum recalls, “It was a great collaboration as we were
going through the process of deciding what our upcoming
exhibitions would be. I hosted a brainstorming session and
we came up with a bunch of ideas, and someone brought
up the museum’s huge shoe collection. It was fun batting
around different ideas and realizing it was such a topic
of conversation, an aspect of popular culture that people
would appreciate.” Look for artists like Shantell Martin, who
debrands white sneakers, then covers them with her own
wonderful drawings, and former architect Tinker Hatfield’s
creations, like the Air Max 90 and Air Jordan lll. The show
got its legs in Toronto under the curatorship of the Bata Shoe
Museum’s Elizabeth Semmelhack, who has published books
such as Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels,
and Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the
19th Century. Both curators brought me up to speed.
Gwynned Vitello: In categorizing the different styles, how
did you organize the show?
Elizabeth Semmelhack: The exhibition was grouped
historically, starting with the earliest sneakers and moving
through the twentieth century to contemporary times.
There is a stand-alone section on innovation and design.
I felt it was important to situate sneakers within an historic
framework as the reasons for many of the shifts in sneaker
culture were impacted by large social issues.
It would be interesting to know the origins of the first
sneakers and how they later developed.
Evelyn Orantes: The Brazilians were the first people making
the original rubber shoes before sneakers. The initial
material was unstable, melty or brittle. The first rubber shoes
in the West were Brazilian rubber overshoes made for the
American market. The naturalist Isaiah Warren watched
them being made in the late 1840s while in Brazil, where he

36 | FEBRUARY 2017
wrote that the “girls were engaged in the making of various
impressions, such as flowers… upon the soft surface of
the rubber by means of their thumbnails, which are pared
and cultivated for this purpose.” Although the pair in the
exhibition is now hard to the touch, it is in remarkable
condition and its original decorations remain clearly visible.
ES: The first sneakers were status items. Not only did one
have to be able to afford to own more than one pair of
shoes, one also had to be able to have time to play. People
forget that before workers’ rights, the forty-hour work week
and weekends were not part of most laborers’ lives. Simply
having the time to play was a sign of wealth, and wearing
early sneakers helped convey that status.
Given the influence of skateboarding and Silicon Valley,
how is the West Coast represented in the show?
EO: The sneaker conversation is international in its scope,
but there are some West Coast contributions that we
drew out for presentation at OMCA, specifically skater below (from left)
Christian Louboutin Roller-Boat
culture as represented by the iconic Vans black-and-white 2012
checkerboard slip-on. Skateboarding may have originated Collection of the Bata Shoe Museum
Gift of Christian Louboutin
on the West Coast, but passion for the lifestyle quickly Photo by Ron Wood
spread across the country, and interest in skating among Courtesy American Federation
of Arts/Bata Shoe Museum
some East Coast rappers further paved the way for skate
sneakers to make forays into urban fashion. When the Vans Checkerboard Slip-On
computer age arrived, with it came the sartorial style of 2014 retro of 1980s
Collection of the Bata Shoe Museum,
Silicon Valley and the influence of tech culture in sneakers, Gift of Vans
like the adidas Micropacer. Photo by Ron Wood
Courtesy American Federation
of Arts/Bata Shoe Museum
What were the features of the Micropacer?
EO: By the early 1980s, computer technology was
embraced in athletic footwear as a means of enhancing
athletic performance. The revolutionary adidas Micropacer,
released in ’84, had a microsensor in the left toe that could
record distance, running pace and caloric consumption.
The information was retrieved on the tongue of the left
shoe on a readout screen, only one of the futuristic
FASHION JUXTAPOZ.COM | 37
FA S H I O N

aspects; the silver gilt leather and unusual lace covers

also heralded a new era that offered the hope of physical
perfection through technology.

Did you devote a portion of the show to the lacing aspect

of sneaker culture?
EO: The small details like stitching are so fascinating.
I never thought of shoelaces as accessories before,
but they’re an inexpensive way of personalizing your
sneakers to reflect your personality, and there are
hundreds of ways to customize your kicks with this
sneaker accessory. We will have an area in the exhibition
where visitors will be invited to try a couple of new ways
of lacing their own sneakers.

So many of the shoes have a story to tell. I’m thinking of

one with an unusual take on the endorsement model and
another illustrating and taking a stand on immigration.
ES: Each has a story, but one of my favorites is the Robert
Haillet/Stan Smith sneaker. The iconic Stan Smith actually
started out as a shoe for the famous French tennis player
Haillet. When adidas decided to gain traction in the US
market, they asked Stan Smith to also endorse the shoe.
For a short time, sneakers featuring Stan Smith’s image
on the tongue and both players’ name on the sides
were produced, making for a bit of a confusing model.
Eventually, Haillet’s name was removed and the Stan Smith
was born.

EO: Conceptual artist Judi Werthein chose the Spanish word

brinco, meaning “jump,” as it is the term migrants use to
describe the crossing from Mexico to San Diego. Werthein
designed the sneakers to assist with the crossing, each
pair equipped with a compass, light and painkillers in case
of injury. The shoes protect the ankles from snake and
tarantula bites and have removable soles printed with maps
of popular routes from Tijuana to San Diego.

As a matter of personal and especially archival

conservation, what is the best way to preserve a pair of
sneakers?
ES: Believe it or not, sneakers from the 1980s are extremely
delicate and great care is needed to preserve them. One
of the biggest challenges is that the midsoles on many of
these sneakers are disintegrating. While nothing can be
done to fix this problem, our conservator, Ada Hopkins,
recommends freezing as a means of temporarily stopping
the progression of this disintegration. For other sneakers,
keeping them away from light and stored in acid-free boxes
is best.

Out of the Box is on view through April 2, 2017 at the Oakland above above
Museum of California. Converse Rubber Shoe Company Nike Air Jordan I
All Star/Non Skid 1985
1923 Nike Archives
Converse Archives Courtesy
museumca.org
Courtesy American Federation of Arts
American Federation of Arts

38 | FEBRUARY 2017
I N FLU EN C E S

THE PEN FOR THESE TIMES

RAYMOND PETTIBON’S RETROSPECTIVE AT THE
NEW MUSEUM, NYC
RUNNING LIKE AN OPEN WOUND ALONG THE RAZOR’S the winds of metaphor, and sewn like the seeds of doubt by
All artwork courtesy of
David Zwirner edge between utter despair and blind rage, Raymond the sharpest shooter of our collective dread.
New York/London
Pettibon has come to define alienation with such profound
except where noted
pathos and poetics that, for many, his art makes us feel just Surveying the unruly and prolific mass of manic missives
below
No Title (We shall try to)
a bit less alone in our loneliness. It is a painful prescience he’s been drawing for nearly a half-century now, culled
Pen and ink on paper that has delivered this visual and linguistic storyteller from down here to a relatively terse number somewhere over
17” x 22”
1991 the unlit side of our consciousness at this dark dawning of a 700, Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work should allow
brave new world; so, as the rest of the frightened ninnies go ample opportunity for viewers to experience how the
opposite
No Title (Having read superman) to culture seeking solace and healing, let us all rather head continuous reprisal of subjects and themes throughout
Pen and ink on paper
over to the New Museum to examine the nature of American this artist’s career has functioned as both a dreamlike
22.5” x 30.25”
2003 anger as it has been methodically dissected, scattered to leitmotif and an obsessive monomania. That his work
can function as both a private demonology and a public
display, to be, at times, so achingly personal it hurts
and then at others so socially acerbic that it stings,
has allowed him to cross over as few of his generation
could have imagined. In this he has taken the common
language of our national conformity like baseball or
surfing, regularly digressed into those hypnotic spaces
where mundane matters like trains or clouds transmogrify
into existential meditations, and spoken to that utterly
American vernacular of loss and longing by which our
ongoing ahistorical amnesia fools itself into a set of false
nostalgias we call tradition.

It is hard still—even from the vantage point of someone

who knew him and his work when his primary vehicle was
self-published zines and his greatest notoriety was for
how his stupid brother butchered his art to put it on the
album covers of a So-Cal hardcore band—to know if we
love Pettibon for his cynicism or his sincerity, for speaking
the ugly truth to our lies, or for peddling the counterfeit
currency of our greatest myths with the seductive grace
and guile of a used car salesman. However we choose to
love his work, we cannot help but know its importance.
Funnier than most, scatterbrained to the limits of genius,
and righteous in the sum of his discontent, Raymond is the
last resonant voice of our punk provocations still echoing
today, an epitome of the countercultural underground from
the analog days of yore, before interconnectivity made
subculture something of a quaint artifact, and a savage
visual critic who got his chops skewering the hypocrisies
and pathologies of our “exceptionalism” back in the smiling
face of fascism that was Reagan’s shining city on a hill.
Never before has noir shown so brightly, and we need it
now more than ever. —Carlo McCormick

Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work will be at the New Museum in

NYC from February 8–April 16, 2017.

newmuseum.org

42 | FEBRUARY 2017
INFLUENCES JUXTAPOZ.COM | 43
I N FLU EN C E S

clockwise from top left

No Title (And how go)
Pen and ink on paper
17” x22”
1992

No Title (That I may)

Pen and ink on paper
12” x 18”
2001

No Title (This feeling is)

Pen and ink on paper
49.5” x 37.25”
2011
Private collection
Courtesy Regen Projects
Los Angeles

44 | FEBRUARY 2017
FRED
TIEKEN
LA
ART SHOW

JAN
11-15
LOS ANGELES
A T
S
MUEE CONVENT ION
S

UNO’S
CENTER WEST HALL
GMO
BEACH
PARTY
INSTALLATION

fredtieken.com SEE US AT BOOTH 113

MARCEL DZAMA
HEROES AND VILLAINS
INTERVIEW BY EVAN PRICCO // PORTRAIT BY BRYAN DERBALLA
48 | FEBRUARY 2017
Y
OU CAN PLAY THE GUESSING GAME
as much as you want, but it’s difficult to
identify artists who could be dropped
into a different time period or era and
thrive. Marcel Dzama, the Canadian-
born, NYC-based fine artist, who
exists at the intersection of so much
recent art culture in so many styles and
mediums, is my ideal time traveler. He is a prolific drawer, as
well as filmmaker, installation and sculpture artist, musician,
costume designer, and one of the most sought-after
collaborators within the aforementioned categories. The
aesthetic of his work, figurative scenes embedded in the
history of surrealism, Dada, Duchamp, 1950s literature and
punk rock, streams the consciousness of who we are and
where we are going. He is the old soul with modernity
at his fingertips.
The list of artists Dzama has worked with includes the
most influential and creative minds: Dave Eggers, Kim
Gordon, Arcade Fire, Beck, Spike Jonze, and even recent
art direction for the NYC Ballet. He is also a founding
member of the crucial Royal Art Lodge, a drawing group
born in 1996 at the University of Manitoba, which,
although it disbanded almost 10 years ago, is still
talked about in folkloric reverence. Perhaps even more
significantly, he has achieved international success with
museum retrospectives, as well as exhibitions at the
contemporary art powerhouse, David Zwirner Gallery.
Needless to say, Dzama is a universe creator, and the art
world circles in his orbit.
In late 2015, Dzama teamed up with another hero of the
underground, Raymond Pettibon, on what would become
two collaborative solo shows and zines shown at Zwirner’s
spaces in NYC and London. The pairing not only speaks
to the unique history of alternative art cultures born out of
music and comics, but also to the immediacy and political
impact that drawing captures in a world dominated by
new media. Dzama and I sat down at his Brooklyn studio
just after the US election, and a few weeks after I visited
his and Raymond Pettibon’s show in London, where their
improvisational style seemed to respond to the world’s
events in almost journalistic fashion.
Evan Pricco: You and Raymond Pettibon have been
working with these superhero motifs in your works
together, and I know you were thinking about doing some
Trump work even before the election. I think we have to
start with this superhero/supervillain idea, because it feels
like we have a supervillain now.
Marcel Dzama: A few days before the election, Raymond did
a portrait of Trump. I think it said, "You're hired." Raymond
was predicting it better than I was. And then, just after
the election this week, we collaborated on the one where
Captain America is punching Trump and saying, “Yo Fired!”
opposite
Trinket’s Sarabande
Watercolor and graphite
on paper
12” x 16”
2016
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London
left
Installation view of
A Flower of Evil
Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf
2016
Courtesy of the artist and
Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf
Photograph by
Achim Kukulies
MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 49
above
Installation view of
A Flower of Evil
Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf
2016
Courtesy of the artist
and Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf
Photograph by
Achim Kukulies
opposite
Je suis Charlie
Ink, gouache, and graphite
on paper
13.9” x 16.9”
2015
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London
Maybe this is a sensitive question, but is there something
fascinating about artists’ reactions to times like this?
I think it's an important time for artists to make as much
noise about it as we can. I don't know how to phrase that
properly, but I also felt that the trajectory of things was
moving forward and it was good. Then, all of a sudden, you
hit these nose dives. One foot forward and ten back.
The way that you present your drawings, and even the
performance stuff you do, seems era-less. But you interject
politics into the work all the time, perhaps just not literally.
You are influenced by Dada, which came out of WWI,
right in the heart of an era that saw, perhaps, the greatest
world changes in terms of how we settle conflict. It seems
like there's an interesting lineage in your work that feels
heightened in these times.
During the Bush years, I was very obsessed with all of that,
because disgust at the war really motivated me to do work.
This reaction to what was going on.
Drawing is so perfectly immediate for times like these.
Other mediums can't actually cover ground as easily or
urgently. You can make a film with overarching themes,
but drawing is directly here, right now. When you draw,
you can be a lot more literal.
There is that instant gratification from doing a drawing. It's so
immediate. That was one good thing about the collaborative
shows with Raymond. We were able to comment on what was
happening the day before the show opened; it was fresh off
that table we worked on.
It's almost like you're a newspaper journalist, in a way, this
old-school way of political discourse.
There’s something nice about actually being timely about it,
being of the moment, at least. In the last few solo shows, I've
usually made a film, and then I'd have the drawings I made
that storyboard the film. After the film was done, I'd also do
drawings that were almost sequels or prequels to the film.
The drawings all made sense together.
Then, for Raymond and I, at the recent show at David
Zwirner in London, there was Trump’s election on the
horizon, Brexit, more cop shootings of unarmed black men,
and Standing Rock was happening. Standing Rock was
actually the centerpiece of the show, this anti-oil stance. We
had a giant oil explosion and the environment running amok.

50 | FEBRUARY 2017
MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 51
52 | FEBRUARY 2017
MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 53
 It was a very apocalyptic show, which makes sense for now,
even. More so, unfortunately.
Do you consider drawing to be the core of what you do?
Yeah. I do move into film a lot. I always have. Even in art
school, I would do short videos and things like that, but I got
known for drawing first.
You grew up in Winnipeg, which has some significant art
institutions and infrastructure, despite being a small/big
city. Would you credit this underrated hub as an influence
in your creative growth?
The city has an amazing Inuit art history and collection. That
was really influential in my early drawings. There's also this
history of the city that peaked in the 1920s, when a lot of
buildings were in their heyday. You can see the decay, but
they're still there. There's old ads written on buildings for
some dish soap or something from that era. There's this nice
nostalgia, this idea that there was a better time. In 1919, there
was this huge strike and they tried to reproduce the Bolshevik
Revolution in Winnipeg. There was this whole movement there.
And that ties together how your work has both elements of
theatrics and the aesthetics of a revolution.
That may not have happened consciously, but probably
subconsciously. My father was also a war history buff, so
I watched a lot of World War II documentaries at a very
young age. It was kind of drilled in pretty early.
When did your style, as we start to see it now, begin to
emerge?
It happened out of a tragedy. I was living with my parents
when I was in art school, and we had a big house fire where
all my art was destroyed. After, we were put in this hotel near
the airport, called the Airliner Inn. When I was there, I did all
these drawings on the hotel stationery because it was my
thesis year of university. My presentation before that was all
these big paintings because I had all this room in my parent’s
basement to work. Suddenly, I was in a hotel, with basically a
small space to walk around. I drew on my bed the whole time,
did these small drawings that kind of became what you see, at
least at the beginning of my art career. All a blank background
with one or two characters doing some kind of surrealist
thing. It was very depressing, but it was also very freeing
having nothing to hold you back. No possessions.
It was all drawings. I was also very poor, too, and didn’t really
have art supplies. The paintings I did before were all house
paint works. It wasn't like it was so tragic that they were lost.
They weren't these masterful oil paintings or anything. It was

previous spread (left)

Marcel Dzama
and Raymond Pettibon
He can not afford the canvas—
one makes do
Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache
and acrylic on paper
10.9” x 14”
2016
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London

previous spread (right)

Marcel Dzama
and Raymond Pettibon
Back in the land of the cat
Pencil, ink, gouache and collage
on paper
16” x 20”
2015
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London

right
The tension around which
history is built
Pencil, ink, and watercolor
on paper
17” x 14”
2015
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London

54 | FEBRUARY 2017
1996, the same year that we started the Royal Art Lodge.
My uncle, Neil Farber, my sister, and a few friends from
university, we started getting together every Wednesday
at the beginning. Then it became every Sunday. We had
meetings at my hotel and stuff.

That started at the hotel?! We can jump ahead, then,

because with Royal Art Lodge, and working with musicians
and people like Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze, and now
Raymond, you evidently thrive with collaboration, which
not everybody does.
I think it might be a Canadian thing.

Why was collaboration so necessary for you?

We were all in each other's bands, too. It kind of felt nice to
have a group of friends, to have a reason to get together.
We're all socially awkward, too. Almost none of us even
drink or anything, so it was like, "Let's get together and we'll
draw." Anytime we tried to have a party, it was a huge failure.
We'd just end up drawing and not talking.

If you look back right now on those hotel drawings, do you

like them?
Yeah. They came from much more of that Inuit influence that
is so prevalent in Winnipeg. It's almost like a mix of children's
illustrations with Inuit art. It feels like a different person. It's
me, and I still like some, but maybe not all of it. I was very
prolific, but very minimal. There were only two characters on
the page. I would do... I don't know, 30 drawings a day, but
there wasn't that much to them.

I remember, it must've been 2006, and Richard Heller, the

gallery where you were showing then, was one of the few
galleries with this really strong fine art drawing program.
I thought it was a really good time for that style.
It was when drawing came into the art world. I think that
actually had a lot to do with Raymond Pettibon. He opened that
door, and if he hadn't have done that, I don't think I would be in
the art world at all. I really owe a lot to Raymond for that as well.

Neither of you is afraid to do a lot of work. It's not that you

don’t edit, but the volume of output is compelling. That's
why I love drawing. In this day and age, where there is so
much information, it matches the times.
That helps inform the other parts of my art, too, like
the dioramas. Those came about after I spent time in
Guadalajara, Mexico. The people that brought me there
were asking me to do something, and I kept seeing all Danse Des Bouffons (The Jester’s Dance), we were filming above
De Mest Utolige Ting
these little sculptures of saints in the marketplace in town. in this small space. Then, all of a sudden, we had a day to Pencil on vellum
All these nativity scenes. You could go buy these little use this really large space, so the cameraman and I wrote 24” x 26”
2015
clay characters. They weren't just Jesus and Mary. There a whole new theme for her to run around in this maze of Courtesy David Zwirner
were little devils and stuff and they were holding bags of stairways and things. Then we had this weird gate, so I'd New York/London

money or being mischievous. I thought, "I'd like to recreate
something like that." I started working in ceramics there,
making these dioramas. Kind of recreating nativity scenes,
I guess. And all of them were based on my drawings.
Is that how you always work?
Yes, even with film. I usually storyboard everything with
drawings. In the silent film that I did with Kim Gordon, Une
light up these weird soldier creatures in there. It added a lot
more dimension to the scene. I’m always open, especially for
locations. Locations can actually change scripts for me.
I know you had this chess thing for a bit, right?
I was obsessed with it for a long time, right around the time
I got obsessed with Marcel Duchamp. I was living near
Washington Square Park, and there were two chess stores

MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 55

56 | FEBRUARY 2017
MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 57
 where you can go to play people. Also, in the park, you could I came from that scene, but I came around the time of the
play. There you play for money. And I only did it once, to say resurgence of Punk the 1990s. The whole grunge thing.
I did it. I was always very shy, but I would go and watch. I was
finding my attention span was very… well, I wanted to start And I love his artwork. I've been a fan of his since I knew
thinking further ahead, and I thought it would be good to slow what conceptual or contemporary art was. He was probably
previous spread (from left) down and learn how to think ahead of the game. the first contemporary artist I knew because of the Sonic
Marcel Dzama
and Raymond Pettibon Youth Goo album cover he did in 1990.
Making Captain America
Is that what you like about Duchamp?
great again (or Yo Fired!)
Pencil, watercolor, and acrylic Yes, the almost pre-planning of everything. I find that since We're working backwards here. What was your first thing,
on paper
18” x 23.1”
having a kid, I haven't played chess at all. With pre-planning, the thing that got you into drawing?
2016 you don't have much time anymore. I just go on instinct now. I was always drawing. As a little kid, even. I was making
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London For my shows, I would have the walls covered with drawings, these weird poetry journal things. I don't know what it was,
and I did this over and over again. Then at some point, these scrapbooks with drawings and writing. I was always
Title to be confirmed
Ink, pencil, watercolor, and collage I thought, "I want to add sculpture or videos." I wanted to writing bad poetry, and I always thought of it. Later, that way
on paper
base the show around a theme. So now I have all these of thinking was used for songs. It came out of that. It was
11” x 14”
2016 different directions I can go, and it's nice to have that. totally surreal, definitely heavy on the William Burroughs
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London
influence. A lot of chopping up and collaging... I had that
How does that idea work with the shows you are doing going. That was because of seeing Naked Lunch.
below
Litanie des saints with Raymond? Why does it work with him?
Watercolor, ink, and graphite I think we have a lot in common. We probably have similar Did you think you were going to be a writer?
on paper
13.9” x 16.9” working class backgrounds. And we both were, I think, just No. I have dyslexia and I'm terrible at writing anything. It's
2016
obsessed with, like you said, this output of work at an early very affordable, and as a kid, you just have a pen and paper
Courtesy David Zwirner
New York/London age. He also came from the punk scene. I can't say that around, and you do that. I remember my dad would bring this
paper back from the bake shop that had grease on one side,
but the other side was clean. It was this really nice cardboard
lined paper, and I used to draw on that all the time. It used to
ruin some of the drawings if I piled them on top of each other.

In the 1980s, my parents bought me this Fisher Price camera

that recorded on cassette tapes. I didn't know how lucky
I was until later. I would just plug it straight into a VHS player
and press record. Then I'd just make films in my room.
I would always make the costumes and had my sister, uncle
or dad be the actors. And they weren’t actors, so would
always smile if I was filming, so I'd have to put a mask on
them. That's how my style of film was.

Did you design the masks and costumes?

At the very beginning, yes. I didn't know how to do paper
mache or anything yet. Then, once I got more ambitious in the
films, I started making paper mache costumes.

So, even early on, you were into this. Everything I've seen of
your film stuff, what I love about it is that it's hi-fi/lo-fi. It feels
like everything's done by hand, as opposed to doing super
special effects or elaborate dress, yet it’s high concept.
My favorite thing in films are in-camera tricks. Those early
French ones, like Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon, in like, 1902.
Even when I art-directed the NYC Ballet, The Most Incredible
Thing, earlier this year, I wanted the costumes to look like
they came from the past, but as if they were also predicting
the future. I usually like that aesthetic. It’s handmade, trying
to see the future, but it's not like, “The Future.”

We have come full circle. Your characters are timeless but

looking to a future.
Trying to predict the future, telling the story of what is to
come. . .

58 | FEBRUARY 2017
 left
Revolution
Silkscreen print, pencil, ink,
watercolor and paper collage
60” x 87”
2016
Courtesy of
the artist and Sies + Höke
Düsseldorf
Photograph by
Achim Kukulies

MARCEL DZAMA JUXTAPOZ.COM | 59

ROBERT
MONTGOMERY
21ST–CENTURY TROUBADOUR
INTERVIEW BY EVAN PRICCO // PORTRAIT BY FABIO PALEARI

60 | FEBRUARY 2017

previous spread
Robert Montgomery with fellow
poets from New River Press
left to right
Rosalind Jana
Greta Bellamacina
Heathcote Williams
Robert Montgomery
Niall McDevitt
below
Wall piece for Nuart Festival
Stavanger, Norway
2016
STREET ART, BY ITS VERY NAME, ALMOST DEFIES
definition. For years, the formula of, “Let’s put art from
the streets into a gallery, but what is it?” has been a legit
discussion, but rarely do we view it from the other end by
considering what happens when an artist takes a gallery
practice and brings it into the street, transforming our
perception of public space. Using words and LED light
sculptures to create political interventions in urban areas
and natural landscapes, Scottish-born, London based artist
Robert Montgomery balances the intimate and ethereal
characteristics of prose and poetry, forging them into a
fine art practice and a poetry imprint, New River Press. By
placing his artwork in situations where advertisement-speak
dominates language, Montgomery actively amplifies his art,
inspired by some of the great wordsmiths and thinkers of
the twentieth century. After his participation at Nuart 2016 in
Norway, we sat down in his London studio and considered
Bob Dylan, the idea of permanence, and the power of good
street art.
Evan Pricco: When I disconnect you from ownership of the
work, this sort of anonymous, whimsical spirit emanates
from your poetry. Some just feel like they don’t have an
author and exist as quotes from time. And then you have
works that feel so personal and direct, especially the
wheatpastes. Both these methods are impactful. Does that
observation resonate at all with you?
Robert Montgomery: I’m definitely conscious of them being
slightly different voices, for sure. At the beginning of my
career, I decided that I would do this mix of statements that
were political and some that were personal or romantic.
I would go from more authoritative observations of the state
of the world to things that were almost addressing a lover.
So you get this voice of describing the collective state of the
“things,” and then you have the interior voice of something
quite personal.
What I studied most in terms of getting that voice, which
is topical because he was just awarded the Nobel Prize
in Literature, was Bob Dylan. You can learn so much from
studying the way Dylan treats pronouns. On the album
Blood on the Tracks, the way he does the simple trick of
switching “me” and “him,” and “you” and “she” changes how
you address or view the subject. It’s a really clever device.
It’s one of those things where you can study a hundred
years of great literature to find out how to do it, but then,
Dylan does it best.

There was that era, right? That heyday of modern writing,

where there was just such great experimentation of
literary voice and narrative.
There are so many great writers and poets who make
every word count. John Ashbery wrote this brilliant poem
in the 1970s called So Many Lives, which starts off with this
great lead, “Sometimes I get radiant drunk when I think
of and/or look at you,/ Upstaged by our life, with me in it./
And other mornings too/Your care is like a city, with the
uncomfortable parts/Evasive, and difficult to connect with
the plan/That was…” What I love about this kind of poetry
is that mix of romantic and ordinary language. That is
something I really like.

I’m glad you brought up Dylan, because what I always

appreciated about his singular position in the arts is that
at one point, he was quite a “pop star,” one who was
using complicated language techniques but still reached
a wide audience. That is rare and doesn’t quite exist in
popular music today. Perhaps you could look to Kendrick
Lamar as probably the most popular artist with that strong
command of language.
“The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face,
where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.”
Incredible stuff. I have this theory that this period for Dylan,
like 1965-68, is amphetamine writing. And this sort of wild
poetry, this imagist way, is just beautiful.

In terms of authorship, often when an author writes

something or publishes a piece of fiction, people will
assume that this is the author’s truth. Which isn’t always
the truth because, if you are good writer, you can balance
story-making and personal experience. Can I assume, for
your art, that you come from a place of truth?
I would say it’s pretty much what I think. I like to sort of stay

62 | FEBRUARY 2017
in the first person, but having said that, sometimes I try and
think about the collective conscious, though sometimes they
just unfold. When I started doing street work in 2004, I did a
whole series of anti-war poems, and these just sort of came
out and wrote themselves. It wasn’t just what I was feeling; it
was what everyone was feeling. And they came out of being
part of the anti-war movement and going on amazing peace
marches around London in 2003. So it was responding to
how everyone around me was feeling.
Do you find that people often ask, “Well, Robert, what do
you mean by this?”
Actually, the question I get the most is, “Are you an artist or
a poet? Is this art or is this poetry? What is it?”
Categories make people feel comfortable.
I’m not so into that. I think if you are really secure in what
genre you belong, you are probably not saying anything all
that new. I don’t know what genre I fit into…
If you decide whether to do a light piece or a simple
black-on-white text wheatpaste or poster, does the
message change at all?
It’s definitely harder to write the light pieces, just the actual
schematics of having to write in brief. Also, I’m an artist
using poetry as opposed to a poet who became an artist, above
Old Street Billboard
so I definitely think in graphic terms first. A billboard has to London
have a certain length to make it work graphically. So there is 2012
definitely this struggle to condense the phrasing to make it
work economically and graphically. I’ll start with maybe 200
words and edit down.
Did you study graphic design?
No, actually, I studied painting.
Tell me how the career path evolved in this direction.
When you went to study painting, did you go in with the
focus of becoming an exhibiting artist?
I studied painting at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland,
which is a very traditional art school. And I think I went into
painting with the idea that I was going to be an expressionist
painter—like Egon Schiele or something. And then I started
working with text at the end of school, and did installation
work for my BA show. During my MFA, I did a project with a
classmate of mine called Aerial where we went to the Scottish
Arts Council and applied for a grant so we could participate
in this project that allowed artists to take over advertising
space— intervene with the advertising in the city, really. We
got the money to do it, and this was the first time I actually got
to work on the street and in the advertising space, and also
ROBERT MONTGOMERY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 63
above facilitated others artists in the same way. In the end, I think
All Palaces
Cardiff Contemporary
I’m the only artist from that project that made working in this
Cardiff, Wales arena, this advertising sort of venue, their careers.
2016
opposite So this triggered something in you, realizing this is the
Billboard takeover
Nuart Festival space where you wanted to explore and work?
Stavanger, Norway
It triggered something because that whole project was
2016
inspired by Jenny Holzer. I thought she was a fucking genius.
I just loved the therapy of taking over advertising space.
Advertising is also the stripping away of language,
simplifying language down to something so universal that
surpasses words. You are re-examining that space.
I read a lot of language theory at university, and
specifically, Roland Barthes, whose theory that all types
of speech were inherently political because of the
commonality of ideas that a certain way of speaking
implies. Advertising speech for example, treats us only
as consumers, as one-dimensional beings. Whereas
news speech, like CNN, only treats us as a demographic
or a potential vote. Put them together, and they are both
rooted in the materialist world, and completely excluding
anything that is spiritual or counter-political. It’s been
64 | FEBRUARY 2017
ramped up in recent years, and the internet is the pocket
version. These places that you get your news, Google or
Facebook, are just advertising companies.
And the companies that advertise with them get a better
chance to “reach their audience” because they are the only
ones who can afford to open the paygate of access. Pay
to be the top Google search, pay to reach more Facebook
followers. I know we may seem to be wandering away
from art talk, but your work is finding ways for art and
poetry to occupy a space that is being made increasingly
inaccessible from language.
At the same time, the internet has this sort of supernatural
aspect of instantaneous information from a distance. Like
NYC to London in a second. It’s a positive thing, but it’s really
supernatural. If you told someone in 1916 about what was to
come in 2016, they would say it was wizardry. And what is
frightening to me is that we are all sort of bored of this now,
with these new powers that we have. We chase the sunset
on a airplane from London to NYC, flying at 35,000 feet, and
complain about the chicken we’re eating. You are a mammal,
flying in the space of angels and birds and eating the soul of a
dead bird. It’s like, “You spoiled fucking mammal.”
ROBERT MONTGOMERY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 65
 Right now, there are a ton of of topics for you to call on
for your art. Every era says that, but something about
the information superhighway we live in now has really
accelerated it all. Is that overwhelming?
Yeah, and it gets a bit depressing to write about it. That
is why it’s important to have the romantic stream in the
work because you can retreat into that and perhaps not
just focus on the bad. What’s nice is that when I work on a
public project, like the one for Cardiff, Wales right now, is
that curators aren’t necessarily asking you to inject politics
into the work. And I’m interested in that. I’m working on a
permanent piece with a public arts council in Cleveland.
I may have something perhaps in the works with a new
Holocaust museum here in London. So I like the idea of
doing permanent projects, works that will be somewhere for
a long time. The work then becomes a delicate balance of
tone and universality, and you don’t focus on being partisan,
which makes it more interesting, really.
You spoke of your enjoyment in being included in street art
festivals, and that it was a welcome development.
I really like the energy of street art. In a way, that energy is
below
New Countries at the core of what I do. I get confused when I hear accounts
Biennale d’Anglet
of other contemporary artists not wanting to participate
Anglet, France
2016 in street art festivals. I always get a really uplifting sense
66 | FEBRUARY 2017
of energy from them and a sense of freedom. I often feel
a lot more spiritually in-tune with street artists. I think my
perspective is that the kind of contemporary art I'm closest
to, like that of Jenny Holzer, Lawrence Weiner, or Ann
Messner, has a shared origin with graffiti art. I think if you go
back to the early 1980s in New York and shows like The Real
Estate Show and The Time Square Show, you can see that
origin, you see conceptual artists and graffiti artists being
part of the same movement. John Ahearn from Colab, who
organized The Times Square Show in 1980, said, “There has
always been a misdirected consciousness that art belongs
to a certain class or intelligence. This show proves there are
no classes in art, no differentiation”
I believe in that possibly Utopian idea of classlessness.
I think the Nuart Festival in Norway is a really good example,
where street art is part of a more complex and academic
history. Martyn Reed, the founder and curator of Nuart, has
that expanded vision of what street art is and can be. There's
a book that, for a long time, was out of print but was recently
reissued called The Writing on The Wall, by Roger Perry,
which documents the text graffiti of London in the 1970s.
It records the often surrealist text graffiti that grew in London
around the 1970s squat scene. As we were preparing to work
together for Nuart, Martyn and I realized this book had been
an inspiration both to him becoming a street art curator and to
me in becoming a text artist—now there's a perfect example
of shared origins and shared cultural histories.
What have you been most excited to explore in recent
months? The light poems? The billboards? What you did in
China was really stunning, and Cardiff as well.
The piece I did for the Yinchuan Biennale was certainly
my biggest piece of the year, it was 150 meters long and
spanned a whole river bridge outside the museum. I really
enjoyed it and worked with a great team at the Cardiff
Contemporary. I think Nuart and The Crystal Ship were both
definite highlights of the year for me. I think Martyn Reed
and Bjørn Van Poucke are both pushing the boundaries of
what public art festivals can be, and I'm really interested
in the way they're approaching that question. I also really
enjoyed working with Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne on
the Anglet Biennale, and I managed to do my first light piece
in French, without, I hope, losing too much in translation.
I also set up a small poetry press with Greta Bellamacina,
which is called New River Press. We're looking at it almost as
an indie music label for poetry.
That line "All Palaces Are Temporary Palaces" really
resonates with me, especially now as this idea of
temporary power seems like a desperate feeling in above
City is Wilder. 2012
America. Does that happen to you often, where you write Installed at Nuart Festival
a poem or a line and it takes on a new life long after the Stavanger, Norway
2016
project has passed?
Yes, it does, especially when things begin to slide towards
increased xenophobia, misinformation and selfish short-
termism, which I think is what has happened in Britain
with Brexit and the US with Trump. I wrote a billboard
piece in 2011 that has come back to haunt me in the days
after Trump's victory. It contains the line, "here comes
the white working class again." At the time, I imagined
the voice of the white working class gathering behind
someone like Michael Moore or Bernie Sanders, I did not
imagine the white working class would be fooled into a
vote for someone like Trump. I think, for all of us here in
Europe with a sense of historic memory, it is frighteningly
reminiscent of the beginning of the rise of fascism. I hope
we are able to amplify the voices of people like Michael
Moore and Bernie Sanders as an affirmation over the next
four years to bring some sense and kindness back into
the argument.
robertmontgomery.org
ROBERT MONTGOMERY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 67
 TALITA
HOFFMANN
A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM
INTERVIEW BY KRISTIN FARR // PORTRAIT BY SAMUEL ESTEVES

TALITA HOFFMANN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 69

above TALITA HOFFMANN IS A PAINTER IN SÃO PAULO MAKING
Wheels on Fire
Acrylic on canvas
work influenced by her landscape and a fascination with
60” x 40” the life cycles of architecture. Beyond the practical, these
2013
structures literally represent the ups and downs of urban
opposite construction and destruction embodying the rhythms of life.
Varanda
Acrylic on canvas An abandoned, neglected building still echoes the community
35” x 39”
that once inhabited the space.
2015
The digital age has a significant impact on how artists see
the world, and Talita creates glitch-like visions based in
reality that reflect the visual collages our eyes consume
constantly. Glitches are alluring to artists, like holes in the
matrix, phantasms that somehow humanize the computer,
and Talita combines and renders them in a way that elevates
their significance, speaking to the new fusion of humans,
technology, and urban development. Her perspective is
an aesthetic juxtaposition of beauty and decay, and her
paintings ask all the right questions.
Kristin Farr: Figures have become noticeably absent from
your newest work. What happened to them?
Talita Hoffmann: I started to get more interested in
architecture and the relations of space and perspective
70 | FEBRUARY 2017
that some landscapes and juxtapositions provide. The
human figures were beginning to tire me, in a sense
that I thought they brought a certain psychological load
that I just wasn’t interested in talking about anymore.
The human action that appeared on the landscapes, its
indications and traces, started to have a more interesting
subtlety to me.
You’ve also been creating paintings with ghostly layers.
How did that technique come about?
I think this type of image comes from my interest in graphic
design and technical drawings. I like the overlaid aspect
in which these images appear in the world—the internet,
newspapers, ads. It’s a drawing before its concrete final
form, existing only in line, color or structure.
Would you say your work is imagining a post-apocalyptic
future? Or is it open to interpretation?
I like to be open to interpretation, of course, but I don’t
think I imagine it as a post-apocalyptic future. Our present
is already pretty post-apocalyptic, right? But, for example,
in 2013, I did a series of paintings based on portraits that
Walker Evans took of the South in the United States, post-
TALITA HOFFMANN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 71
72 | FEBRUARY 2017
“ THERE’S ALWAYS A POLITICAL ASPECT TO TRYING TO MAKE SENSE
OF THE WORLD, SO I DON’T THINK IT’S THERAPEUTIC.”

depression. They were images from the 1930s of some suggests, with the internet, for example. I think that’s an above
Quitanda
destroyed and abandoned landscapes that, in some way, interesting possibility. Acrylic on canvas
seemed very timeless to me. I thought they had something 55” x 60”
2015
to do with my work, so I used them as reference for some What do you use for source material?
paintings. But I didn’t want to talk about the past exactly, Images from newspapers, magazines, old catalogues, and opposite (from top)
Piscina
maybe more about a timeless landscape that doesn’t have product packaging that has some interesting design, as well Acrylic on canvas
60” x 24”
a lot to do with nature, but with people. as cell phone pictures that I take of places on the street.
2014
In my last show from 2015, entitled Areia MovediÇa or
Cartão Posta
Do you have stories in mind for the images? Quicksand, I used a lot of Google Maps images, especially Acrylic on canvas
I prefer the ambiguous narratives, and the possibilities images that the app generated with glitches. 24” x 32”
2014
of abstraction that some overlaid images can bring to
the reading of a work. Some people have said that the What attracts you to glitches?
juxtapositions that I do remind them of the digital reading I like glitches because they are mistakes with the image
we have of the world, and the simultaneous narratives it patterns from our times that people have gotten used to, and

TALITA HOFFMANN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 73

 learned to incorporate in the daily reading of these apps. And
in the case of Google Maps, I find it even more interesting
because it’s about physical images of houses and streets that
are completely reconfigured randomly, and the system and its
users sort of ignore this language that has many similarities
with the process of collage. It’s a creative operation that
technology does by accident that I find very poetic.
Me too. When did the biggest shift happen in your
paintings and what caused it?
I think the moment I started to paint bigger canvases,
my relation with the composition of the work totally
changed. There’s something about the position of the
painter in front of a big canvas that completely changes
once you face this challenge. I had already painted some
murals on the street, but the work time you put into a
74 | FEBRUARY 2017
canvas is different, and I wanted to bring this corporeal
relation of the mural to the canvas.
What do you like about the experience of working in public?
What I like the most about murals is this time of the
process, the physical tiredness, the coffee breaks and the
conversations with the people around the work being done.
Where do you find inspiration from your own environment
and community?
For the Quicksand show, my main source of inspiration
was my surroundings, as I had just moved downtown to the
center of São Paulo. As any other major capital, São Paulo
has so much construction, lots that are waiting for buildings
to be demolished so that others can be built in the same
place. This constant movement of architecture reminded me
a little of the concept of quicksand, where nothing stays still
for too long.
I like to think about the constructions and architecture of
my city and how this constant shifting in the juxtaposition
of landscapes affects us daily. The reading that we make
of the city is always changing, but these constructions
don't necessarily bring progress—like with real estate
speculation, that is the main disastrous effect of this type
of urbanistic thought. But I really see it as a challenge. I
think my goal is much more to propose reflection than to
point out directions.
Is the production of waste that comes with with constant
urban construction something you consider?
Yes, I guess it does concern me. Not only waste
production, but more than that, there are twice as many above
Estacionamento
vacant buildings in São Paulo as there are homeless Acrylic on canvas
families, and those numbers are ridiculously huge. 98” x 35”
2015
It’s really incomprehensible. I noticed a painting with
handcart silhouettes. Are they symbolic for you?
The handcarts, as well as some other work tools, interest
me firstly by the formal aspect they have—objects of very
simplified geometries—and also by the fact that this simple
object carries so much significance in terms of manual labor.
This simple movement of taking something somewhere, this
very basic work activity, appears to me to have some sort of
relation to this simplified geometry.
Does painting help you make sense of the world and/or is
it a therapeutic process?
TALITA HOFFMANN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 75
 I guess making art and thinking about it—yours or someone
else’s—helps in subjective changes in our thoughts, and
that’s the best way to make sense of the world. Not only in
visual arts, but also in music, film, literature. There’s always
a political aspect to trying to make sense of the world, so I
don’t think it’s therapeutic.
What are favorite stories that you often return to or find
comforting?
I’m influenced by storytelling and literature, and I think my
work has some relation to Realismo Fantástico authors
such as Julio Cortázar, with these nonsense elements in
mundane environments. But I don’t have any favorite story in
particular. Actually, Bob Dylan is a folk myth that I find very
comforting and inspirational. Does he count?
Definitely. Do you connect with folk art practices or have
below connections to them?
Please Be Quiet
Everybody is Welcome I like folk art and music, especially American folk music
Acrylic on canvas
from the 1960s. Since I was a kid, Brazilian folk and naive
60” x 40”
2013 art was something that really impacted me, artists such
76 | FEBRUARY 2017
as Djanira, Véio, Heitor dos Prazeres, or even Tarsila do
Amaral and Alfredo Volpi, who are not naive by any means,
but are naive-influenced. But I guess, more than anything,
I’m attracted to the simplicity of it, and the political thought
behind it. Among other things, you could say that naive art
has a very “do it yourself” attitude.
Who are some artists you like to collaborate with?
I’m a huge fan of Jaca and Fabio Zimbres, two Brazilian
artists who are also from Porto Alegre, like me. They work
a lot together and I would love to be a third element there.
Also, Robert Crumb would be a dream come true; and while
we’re dreaming, it would be amazing to travel back in time
and go out for an afternoon of photo-shooting with Walker
Evans or a day in the zoo painting with Henri Rousseau!
Yes! Rousseau’s jungle zoo. Your earlier figures seemed
to be hybrid animal-people. How did you describe them?
They really were these animal-people hybrids; but again, the
abstracted and simplified characteristics were what really
attracted me. Like the minimum drawing that shapes an
animal or a human expression, those characteristics that can
minimally express some action or feeling.

I’ve always thought about that too, how the lines to create
an image can be so simplified and still be legible for most
people. What do you like about abstraction?
I think the strangeness that abstraction causes, not only
with shape and color, but also landscape fields, interests
me the most.

Did you make art as a kid?

I always drew a lot, as any kid, but I wouldn’t necessarily call
this art. My father also paints and draws and I remember
being very impacted with this ability to create images from
scratch. He also showed me a lot of Brazilian naive art that
turned out to be an influence on my work today.

What’s your idea of a perfect day?

I really like rainy days, and If I could be inside drawing or
painting, listening to music, drinking coffee and hanging out
with my cat, Milton, the day is perfect. Also, São Paulo has
lots of cultural activities, and usually I’m really caught up
in that, with concerts, art shows and random events in the
streets... but sometimes it’s just great to stay inside.

Tell me about Milton.

What can I say about the studio boss? He loves catnip,
watching The Office, sleeping on top of important papers,
and overall just being this asshole that we love. Recently he
got the habit of scratching his nails on some canvases that
I have leaning up against the wall in a corner. I hope it’s not
his way of criticizing my work.

That would be a harsh critique. Are there places you'd like

to travel specifically for architectural inspiration?
I would love to travel to the south of the United States that
I saw so much through the Walker Evans pictures. But I
imagine these places are much more poetic in my mind than
they are in reality nowadays. Russia is a place I dream to
meet, and also Mexico. In terms of art sources, São Paulo
has been pretty satisfying.

What is your studio like?

It’s a relatively big room in downtown São Paulo. It’s on top
of a street that’s famous for selling speaker systems, so
there’s always this awful and very loud music coming from
the outside. But I learned to ignore it. Other than that, I try If you could hear your paintings, what would they sound like? above
Rádio
to be as organized as I can with materials, but it’s always a Last month I saw Kim Gordon’s new project, Body/Head, Acrylic on canvas
mess. I always have a notebook in hand to write out ideas here in São Paulo, and I thought the energy and abstraction 28” x 40”
2015
and there are always many reference images opened on they had in the live performance was just amazing. If my
my computer. Sometimes I have a random movie playing as paintings could sound anything like that, I would be more
background sound, or podcasts. than happy.

What will you be working on in 2017?

I want to work on a new series of paintings, but exploring
more works with collage, which I have been doing this year. talitahoffmann.com
I’ve been having this interest in gates and electric fences,
their grid drawings and what they mean in the cities. But I
can only tell once I’m working on them, it’s hard to say in
advance what direction the work will take.

TALITA HOFFMANN JUXTAPOZ.COM | 77

SCOTT ALBRECHT
WORDS TO THE WISE
INTERVIEW BY KRISTIN FARR // PORTRAIT BY BRYAN DERBALLA
80 | FEBRUARY 2017
SCOTT ALBRECHT HAS A CONTEMPLATIVE PROCESS
rooted in typography, and his work maintains a positive vibe
as it reconciles our polarizing times through the abstraction of
language. Words can be the most powerful form of activation
and communication, and their meaning can be twisted into a
barely recognizable state. The inevitable ambiguity can give
language more power, and the same is true for Albrecht’s
work. By obscuring letter forms, he has developed a symbolic,
universal visual voice that builds on past traditions while
contributing to modern dialogue. He reflects contemporary
life with hard edges and hopeful messages.

Kristin Farr: You’ve said that your recent solo show, New
Translations, was inspired by both personal and cultural
events that challenged your perception of “normal.” Can
you expand on these events?
Scott Albrecht: There are a lot of things that inspired the work,
but all of them are connected to this common narrative of
realizing that when things are fundamentally not working, there
is a need to re-evaluate your perspective in order to make
sense of any kind of path ahead. Earlier in the year, I decided
to step away from my full-time job to focus on my studio work,
and while it’s something I truly wanted to do, it was not an
easy decision because it comes with so many unknowns and
uncertainties. It still does. But I’ve been figuring out how to
navigate some of those waters. When I think about how much
time a person has, and what it means to feel fulfilled and really
value the time that you have to do the things you want to do,
make the things you want to make, and actually prioritize
those things, I want to make sure I’m doing that for myself, and
not just giving in to the possibilities of what could go wrong.
I’m very much the kind of person that would regret not trying
something more than trying and failing.

In another direction, my opinion, culturally, is that we’ve

seen some really terrible things recently in terms of a
disregard and a lack of compassion for people and basic life.
Most recently, the outcome of the election, for many, hurts
on a level that is a lot deeper because of what it could mean
for so many people and what it has the potential of undoing.
It has bred so much misguided fear and anger towards other times harder, but it’s a challenge to authentically above
It Echoed Before
people, and continues to do so. I think it was expected address and understand an outcome. It Was Heard
that people would protest regardless of the outcome, but Acrylic and ink on
wood panel
the level of division of one side versus the other side, with What’s the last phrase you heard or considered that 8” x 10”
no understanding of the fears of one another, makes this inspired a text-based piece? 2015

even more upsetting. As a country, we need to figure out
what kind of path we have ahead and where we want to go
because right now it feels very dark and unclear.
Allow me to quote you: “I try to keep an optimistic
perspective in the work I do, despite the situation it’s
inspired by.” Seems like this statement still resonates.
It does, and it’s not about being optimistic for the sake of
it. One of the things I’ve come to realize and embrace is
that a lot of the work I’m inspired to make is something
I want to keep myself reminded of later on. I do a lot of
writing about things that are happening around me and as
I’m writing and sketching on these ideas, I’m processing
them and trying to understand how to see or accept
something good in them. Sometimes that can be easy and
I’m working on a piece now titled A Forgiving Permanence opposite
Understanding
that will be a part of the installation in the New Translations
Acrylic on wood
show. I was thinking about how some of these things we 29.5” x 31”
2016
are faced with are a permanent fixture in terms of time and
being a part of our history moving forward, but not in the
sense that we can’t change or evolve from them. It feels like
a good reminder considering current events.
Tell me about the new book. Is it your first? How does it
feel to look back at a large collection of your work in print?
I’ve done smaller zines and things in the past, but this is the
first larger, concentrated collection of my work. It’s about
92 pages featuring a collection of works from over the last
couple years. When Valley Cruise asked me if I wanted to do
it, I was kind of taken aback because this was a project that

SCOTT ALBRECHT JUXTAPOZ.COM | 81

 I’ve always wanted to do, but just never knew when. It was
really fun to collect everything and look at the work through
a retrospective lens, thinking about how all these works are
connected. And then finally seeing it and holding it, I had
a mix of feeling really satisfied by it being a tangible thing
but also motivated to make more work. I think, like anyone,
your work gets really personal to you, and you can view it
as one big thing that represents you, but this just feels like
a snapshot of a relatively small window of time. In five or ten
years, I’ll have a completely different snapshot, and that’s
kind of an exciting to think about.

Are the wood pieces abstracted letters? Are you

developing your own language or symbology with them?
Those works are various explorations of abstracted
letterforms. I’ve always had an interest in typography within
my work, and this is just building on that, in a way. A couple
years ago, I started to lose interest in the work being purely
legible typography, and was finding ways to abstract the
characters and messages more and more, until finally the
forms became the most prominent part of the piece and the
legibility second. Typography is an interesting thing because
it exists as a communication device first, and an art form
somewhere after that. These abstract works are an attempt
to slow viewers down to engage with the forms that build up
the message within each work.

Do the abstract letters create the message?

For the most part, these works spell out their titles in
different ways. While they’re meant to appear more
abstract, you can break down the works into varying
grids and start identifying the letter structures that make
up the characters. Within the layouts, I’ve been playing
with abstraction as well. For instance, some pieces are
using non-uniform grids which disguise the legibility even
further, or in a different series, two words are overlaid
on top of one another to illustrate the idea of a conflict—
the concept being that there are two ideas that are at
odds with each other, and the end result is made up of
elements from both words, creating something where
no one idea can clearly come through. I enjoy the visual
aspect of these works being more about form, but having
a message grounds the work for me and gives each shape
purpose and meaning.

Tell me about any literary references.

I don’t use a lot of literary references because I like to keep
the work in my own voice, but occasionally there will be
something that really resonates with me. In this upcoming
show, I have one piece titled Nothing Succeeds In Which
High Spirits Play No Part, which is a quote by Nietzsche, but
the context, for me, comes from an album by Sonny Smith
called Sees All, Knows All. I listened to that a lot this year
while working on this show. The album is a spoken word
story over music about this artist who is wrestling with a lot
of ideas of himself and where he is in the world, and without
giving it away, this quote enters the story at the end without
above
All This Time (with detail) any real context other than it offering how the character
Acrylic on wood
must be feeling. It validates what he went through while
24” x 24”
2016 giving him an outlet to move past it.

82 | FEBRUARY 2017
Sonny Smith is a great inspiration. What are your most
treasured books?
All my Calvin & Hobbes books, which I just gave to my
friend’s daughter.
What kinds of things did you get into as a kid?
I was really into normal kid stuff—comics, cartoons, super
heroes, building forts. My parents encouraged me to make
the things I was interested in, and it was empowering to be
young and be like, “I really like this. I’m going to do that too,”
and for no reason other than I just wanted to be a part of the
things I was interested in. When I was in high school, I was
really into skating and music, and I started publishing a zine
as a way to share a lot of the bands I was listening to with my
friends. We lived in a pretty rural town, and it was pre-internet
boom, so it wasn’t as easy to find indie punk or hardcore
bands there. I would scour liner notes to see what bands were
thanked and look them up, write about them, and eventually
started connecting directly with bands and labels. I did this
for about six years and it became my job for awhile. I was
writing, interviewing, designing, gathering all the advertising,
distribution. It was a production and it was super fun, and
eventually the reason why I went to school for graphic design.
I noticed you draw on the end pages of books. Is there above
Mural for Rag & Bone
a story behind how you started using that rare and The Houston Project
resourceful material? Houston and Elizabeth Streets
NYC
I just really love the way they can look and the character December 2015
they can have. They’re all different based on the page color,
the vignette that forms on the edges, and the markings
or degradation over time, like a rip or missing corner. It’s
something that is unique to each page and surprisingly
discarded a lot. I get a lot of my pages from people throwing
out books in my neighborhood.
Are you influenced by the Mission School or Mid-Century
Modern artists?
Definitely. Both groups are huge inspirations to me for
similar reasons. The Mission School era of artists made
art inclusive and was rooted in the things that I was
inspired by—skating, music, counter-culture. Artists like
Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, and Shepard Fairey were
contemporary bridges for me early on with the visual things
that I was interested in, from graphic design to the art world.
And Mid-Century artists did the same, but from a different
era and a different set of interests.
SCOTT ALBRECHT JUXTAPOZ.COM | 83
above Tell me about your project with The Jaunt. That seems like
New Translations
Acrylic on wood
such a fun residency where you get to travel.
29.5” 31” Oh man, the Jaunt trip was a blast! They sent me to Nicaragua
2016
for six days to get inspired by the culture, and in return, make
an edition of work for a new branch of the project called The
Jaunt: Forma, which would result in some form of an editioned
sculptural work versus what is normally a screen print.
Going on the trip was way different than any other trip I
had taken because I was there to experience it and make
work based on it, versus just going to relax, so I was
hyper-focused on trying to see as much as I could. While I
was there, I got to visit three areas of the country—Masaya,
Granada, and a small tropical island called Corn Island. The
thing that stood out to me the most and what wound up
inspiring the series was an unmistakable sense of individuality
in all the places I visited. All the homes and buildings were
painted wildly different from one another, the tile work for the
sidewalks was largely non-uniform (usually a mix of varying
tile designs), and the signage and advertising was almost all
hand-painted. Everything had its own character.
84 | FEBRUARY 2017
When I got back, I started to reflect on everything, looking at
the pictures I had taken, my sketches, and I started creating
these tile-esque pieces. At first there was only going to be
a couple variations throughout the edition, but it quickly
turned into a series where every piece was different, which
felt more appropriate—creating something that was a
multiple didn’t feel as right to me given what I was inspired
by. In the end, I wound up creating 40 unique works all
varying in form and color palette.
What’s your favorite color combo?
That’s such a hard question! I’m pretty particular about the
colors and tones I use. If I had to choose, I really love red-
orange and navy, but it so easy for me to geek out on other
color combos.
How do you describe your pattern-that’s-not-really-a-
pattern?
It can be tough because people tend to see what they want
or what they know, and they hold on to those assumptions.
I do my best to leave explanations of the work, and if people
are interested enough to talk about it, I love to hear about
what they see. I’m okay with people having their own idea
of the work. I have my own connections and relationships
to what I’m creating, but if someone sees something else,
even if it’s missing the point of the work, there’s something
weirdly comforting about knowing that people can have a
different connection to it than what I have.
Of all the parts of your practice, wood, paper and collage,
which one are you most focused on currently?
I think I’m most drawn to wood before any other medium,
but it really depends on the piece and the impact I want
it to have. I try to take every piece as its own and allow it
to be considered in different mediums. While I really like
wood, I don’t want to be limited only to that, so having the
opportunity to switch gears and create with ink or on canvas
or collage is really important too.
Were you always a woodworker?
I started working on wood as a canvas pretty early on
because it was more available to me. I would use scrap
pieces to make more collage and traditional typographic
pieces then, but I really grew to love its qualities, and it
became more satisfying to make work in that way.
What kind of secret meanings can we find in your work?
Could you point out specific relevance to your personal life
that others wouldn’t notice?
As I continue, the individual pieces are less representative of
very separate, specific situations or moments, and more about
constructing a larger conversation between all the works.
I can still speak to what these pieces mean to me and what they
are inspired by, but I don’t want to have that be the focus as
much as what the core idea is. What people take away is more
interesting to me, and I do want people to see themselves in
these ideas and have a perspective on what it means to them.
Who’s an artist that makes you want to push yourself
harder?
Man, I have a lot of friends who keep me energized and
motivated, but my Dad is really a force that keeps me
pushing. He’s an artist, illustrator, and designer, and has
shown me that the hardest things are often the most
rewarding things to go after.
What is your connection to folk art, and is there a specific
tradition that fascinates you?
A lot of it speaks to a similar visual language and aesthetic
of being more simplistic and graphic. I’m really drawn to a lot
of traditional quilts and pattern work.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I can reach most things on the top shelf, and I have an
uncanny ability to talk like a muppet at questionable times.
How many times a day do people comment on your height?
I think more than I realize, most commonly with something
like, “Hey you’re really tall… do you play basketball?” Or,
“Watch your head!”
scottalbrecht.com
left (from far left)
Dishonest
Ink on found paper
7” x 9”
2015
The Guide
Ink on found paper
7” x 9”
2015
SCOTT ALBRECHT JUXTAPOZ.COM | 85
ANDREW LUCK
MAKING HIS OWN
INTERVIEW AND PORTRAIT BY AUSTIN McMANUS

UNTIL ANDREW LUCK TOOK ME FOR A DRIVE, I HAD NO IDEA THAT

a redwood forest exists in the Oakland Hills. Fifteen minutes from his modified
garage studio, 150-year old trees towered around us from all sides. Until
further notice, this was to be Andrew’s last hike here as a resident of the East
Bay. Born in Santa Cruz and having lived in the Bay Area his entire life, the
minimalist painter is setting out to further his creative aspirations by joining
the masses of ambitious humans occupying New York. Keeping a brisk pace
as we traversed further on our hike, Andrew expressed his excitement and
optimism for this transition in life. I don’t blame him. NYC is an electrifying city
unlike any other, and what better place in the U.S. to seriously pursue art?

Actively showing in galleries since 2011, Andrew has continually progressed in

all facets of his craft. His entire practice has matured and evolved, showing little
resemblance to his work of five years ago. I think we both consider this feature
an encapsulation of everything that has gone before, and most especially, it’s
sort of a farewell and “Best of Luck” postcard.

ANDREW LUCK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 87

88 | FEBRUARY 2017
Austin McManus: I know you appreciate a good adventure,
even a dangerous one. I think the last time we really hung
out we took a daytime stroll through the entire Freedom
Tunnel in New York. Have you been on any memorable
explorations recently?
Andrew Luck: It’s crazy how long ago that was. I’ve been
hunkered down lately, so long-term traveling hasn’t been
much of an option, but I have been taking a few day trips
around the Sierras in an effort to get the most of the season.
My friends and I have been finding swimming holes. Most
of the entrances to fire roads we pass through start in rural
mining towns. My favorite spot we've found is an abandoned
gold mine with the crane still intact, one hundred feet above
the quarry that was filled with water, like, 30-feet deep. I’ll
have to show you that spot sometime.
Let’s do it! So, you’re about to make the jump from West to
East. I got really excited for you when you told me about
going to NYC. I think everyone should do it if the urge is
there. What prompted this decision, and what are you most
excited about?
About four years ago, I rented a room in Brooklyn for the
summer. I had a great time. I went to all the pay-what-you-
wish museums, met a bunch of interesting people, and got
a glimpse of architecture and plant life that does not exist
here in California. I would have stayed there if I hadn’t already
planned to return West for school. Since then, the move has
been on my mind, and when the opportunity came to rent the
exact same room, the familiarity and the cheap rent made it
too alluring to pass up. Plus a lot of my friends have moved
out there. I’m looking forward to catching up with them, and
suppose it will be good for me to experience the seasons.
You really have to step outside your comfort zone to really
appreciate certain aspects and amenities a place like
California has to offer. And I think living in the grind of
New York will give you new perspectives and push your art
further in positive directions. Do you already have an idea
of where you want to focus architecturally in New York
since that so heavily informs your work?
I don’t think I can anticipate that change yet. It took me some
time to look at my work objectively and really notice what
I'm attracted to in my environment. For years, I took the train
to SF every day at the same time. I noticed the same light-
based events each day. I discovered that these reflections
and shadows can tell time like a sundial, they’re on a schedule
just like me. I imagine being attracted to a lot of the same
visuals in New York since that’s how my eye is fixed right now;
anywhere with light-reflecting windows casting soft images
on nearby structures. It is populist imagery. We've all seen a
light reflection, so it’s easy to connect with people through that
understanding. New York has its own defining characteristics,
and only time will tell what I’ll be inspired to react to.
You went to school for printmaking. Do a lot of the skills
you learned from working in that medium carry over to
what you do now?
I've always painted, and when it came time to declare
a major in college, printmaking made sense because
I liked working on paper. That department also had more
leniency with experimentation, and all the critiques were
based on technique. At the time, the process of making
the work was more satisfying than explaining what it was
about. I use general techniques emphasized in print, like
being mathematical or paying attention to the order in
opposite
Chester
Acrylic on wood
27” x 35”
2015-16
right
Bicycle
Gouache and acrylic
on mounted paper
19” x 12”
2015
ANDREW LUCK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 89
above (from left) which colors are layered, but not much of what I do now
Duboce
Gouache and acrylic on paper
is related to what I was doing then. Now, if I use a print, it
(grey lacquer frame) will be for a mixtape cover or a zine with small runs and
17.5” x 23”
2014 mostly varied editions.
Coliseum
Gouache and acrylic on paper I was just looking at this zine you sent me years ago
(grey lacquer frame)
and the work looks nothing like your current wide-open
17.5” x 23”
2014 embrace of minimalism. It’s always interesting when artists
reinvent themselves.
I'm just not interested in the same things I was back then.
I'm happy to feel like I'm making progress in some way. The
work I used to make was pretty painstaking, sort of a paint-
by-number approach. I can’t imagine working like that now.
The more sparse approach I’ve been working with isn’t less
time consuming, but it’s more fun.
Yeah, the series of paintings that resemble house siding
with shadows is, by far, my favorite in the body of work
you’ve created. What were some of the ideas behind
making those?
Those are my favorite to make. The shadows depicted in my
paintings are inspired directly by the photos I take during
the golden hour when long shadows stretch down the sides
90 | FEBRUARY 2017
of Victorians. As an observer and visual person, I filter for
commonplace sites that captivate. What feels unique to me
is my landscape—I’m drawn to light refractions and shadows
because they are ordinary and fleeting. It’s specific to the
place and time of day. I take a lot of photos and use my
favorites as references for paintings. There are plenty of
artists before me that used shadows on architecture in their
work, like Ellsworth Kelly's depictions of cascading shadows.
These paintings are challenging while I’m working, but once
they’re done, they feel peaceful. Underneath the softness of
the painting is hard-edged geometry—it’s kind of humorous
how tedious it is to make something look serene.
You have stated that working with wood and fabricating
objects is an integral part of your practice.
My day job is picture framing, where I’ve been fortunate to
work alongside some very talented woodworkers. They’ve
been generous with their knowledge, and I’ve picked up
valuable skills that are repurposed in my own art practice.
I like to have my hand in the process as much as possible,
which includes taking reference photos, mixing my colors,
and building my surfaces. Making the panels from scratch is
meticulous and becomes physically demanding, especially with
these larger pieces, but it’s satisfying to exert my control over a
material that has natural defects like grain and knots. Preparing
the surface helps me to balance out the delicate airbrushing.
What’s the deal with the sculptures that replicate the
bright yellow sidewalk bumps that cities use for traffic
control?
I actually only made one of those since it was a found object.
A construction worker had to mess with some pipes or
something, so they jigsawed the circular shape out of the
sidewalk bumps. I found it and exaggerated the texture with
rayon flocking.
You’ve shown at a bunch of galleries around the Bay Area.
After all the changes that have occurred in the last five years,
how do you think the art scene as a whole is holding up?
It’s good, just different. Or maybe I’m different. Probably
both. My young adulthood was spent accompanying the
recent changes here. When I first moved here in 2008, I felt
immediately immersed in an optimistic, creative scene. Even
then, there were murmurs of nostalgia for past San Francisco.
Naturally, as time has gone on, my perspective on the art scene
here has broadened and I’ve realized that it is always changing.
It’s like whack-a-mole with Mayor Ed Lee and technology at the above (from left)
Foothill
mallet. Lots of galleries lost their leases due to a competitive Gouache and acrylic on paper
economic climate, which led them to move into spaces on (grey lacquer frame)
15.5” x 21”
the outskirts, or open up in alternative spaces, like inside of 2014
apartments or pop-ups inside temporarily vacant spaces.
Montgomery
But this year some major institutions opened, and a bunch of Gouache and acrylic on paper
(grey lacquer frame)
galleries relocated. The great thing about the Bay Area is that
16.5” x 22”
it continues to reinvent itself, and I think there is always a good 2014
thing going on here.
I think we should talk about the time you rode your bike
halfway across the country from Oregon to Kansas.
That was the summer I ended up staying in New York
working as a bicycle messenger. I planned the trip from
Astoria, Oregon to Astoria, New York with a friend that
I toured with from Seattle to Santa Cruz a few years before.
I ran out of patience in Kansas City, and caught a train to
the East Coast. I ended up staying in Brooklyn for those few
months I mentioned earlier, mostly because I had already
booked a flight out. We spent 30 days, averaging about
75 miles a day, from Oregon to Missouri. Kansas was the
hardest, even though it was the flattest. It was 110 degrees
during the day, so we ended up waking up at midnight to
ANDREW LUCK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 91
92 | FEBRUARY 2017
ride our day’s length under the stars before the sun came
up. The air was much cooler, and in the brush beside the
highway, thousands of fireflies accompanied us. We saw
some beautiful things like that, too many to rattle off. My
favorite person we stayed with was named Byron. He
repurposed a gas station into a pottery shop called Monk-
King-Bird Pottery somewhere in Wyoming. I remember that
his pottery was really crappy, like horrible, but in the best
way. He gave us a trailer to stay in, helped us with food
and gave us whiskey. He wore this cool purple T-shirt with
the silhouette of a cowboy in thick red ink from a place in
Dubois, Wyoming called “Cowboy Café.” I said that I liked
his shirt and he took it off, gave it to me and said, “I’ll get
another one. I know those cowboys.” I hope he’s doing okay.
Do you consider yourself to be a socially awkward person?
I think you do, but I don't think you are.
Not really, not anymore. I think, for me, it’s self-fulfilling at
this point. I probably want to be weirder than I actually am.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with awkwardness; in
my mind that’s always made everything more interesting.
I’m making that transition now, but my output is slow, which above
23rd Avenue
can't sustain itself as a full-time practice. I find the process Acrylic on wood with
to be the most rewarding part of these recent pieces. By the steel supports
90” x 100”
time I’ve finished the sketch, I’m eager to build the panel, 2015
and when I’ve finished that, I’m excited to start painting.
opposite
Each time I finish a step of the painting, it feels really good, Tehama
Gouache and acrylic on paper
but showing the outcome to other people is the best part. (grey lacquer frame)
17.5” x 23”
2014
What aspects of life excite you the most? What
I mean is, what gives you a rare, overwhelming feeling of
joy and happiness?
I have a lot to be excited about, but that feeling you’re
asking about has to be unexpected to really hit me. Like,
last month, I was alone in Portland looking for something to
do. Kind of lonely and uninspired, I walked into a bar. Lucky
for me, Michael Hurley was there getting ready to play
some music for free. I sat and watched his entire set and
felt that contentedness you described. A crummy situation
turned good.

What have been the most challenging and rewarding andrew-luck.com

aspects about pursuing art as a way to make a living?

ANDREW LUCK JUXTAPOZ.COM | 93

ED EMBERLEY
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
INTERVIEW BY ERIC WHITE // INTRODUCTION BY CALEB NEELON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TODD MAZER
 F
ROM HIS HOME IN IPSWICH,
Massachusetts and for nearly sixty years,
Ed Emberley has been turning out books
for children. At age 85, he is still restlessly
creative, continuing to work in many styles
that make him one of the most compelling
and diversified living American illustrators.
Whether masterful line drawings, woodcuts,
print-based work, or digital illustration, Emberley has
kept moving, too curious to settle into the comfort of one
technique or style. His 1970 Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book
of Animals and the series that followed would influence
generations of young artists—and, most importantly, instill a
confidence and joy that kept them drawing.
One of those artists was Eric White, who, while you’d never
guess from his adult work, credits Emberley’s books as
steady artistic guides through a turbulent part of childhood.
White made the trip to Ipswich to meet Emberley on the eve
of the first-ever career retrospective of the artist’s work,
Kahbahblooom: The Art and Storytelling of Ed Emberley,
which runs through April 9, 2017 at the Worcester Art
Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. The show features
dozens of never-before-exhibited artworks from well-
known Emberley books like the Caldecott honored One
Wide River To Cross, and Caldecott winner Drummer Hoff,
his seminal Drawing Book series, as well as long out-of-
print cult classics Suppose You Met a Witch, Wizard of Op,
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo and many others. White interviewed Ed
Emberley in the company of his wife Barbara Emberley, their
daughter Rebecca Emberley and myself, the lucky curator of
Kahbahblooom. —Caleb Neelon
right
Ed Emberley in his studio
Ipswich, MA
2016
96 | FEBRUARY 2017
Eric White: I’m an obsessive person, and when I find an
author or director or a band that I like, I try to go out and
get everything. I did that when I found your Drawing Books
as a little kid. As I wrote in my essay for Caleb Neelon and
Todd Oldham’s book on your work, you are involved in one
of my most distinct memories from childhood. My parents
divorced when I was seven years old, and I have this very
distinct memory of hearing muffled arguing upstairs while
I was downstairs, which was completely dark except for
one small light. I had your Drawing Book of Faces, and
I obsessively drew the faces in it while listening to the
Beatles’ White Album. I was surrounded by chaos but able
to control this one little aspect of what was going on.
Ed Emberley: Well, when you draw, you go away. You go to
another place. It’s a safe place. And it’s a real place.
You’re in control, or have the illusion of control.
EE: And that’s good enough. It’s all illusion, right? You were
listening to an argument that you didn’t want to have to be
listening to. When I was in my seventies, I remember being
at a party, and two people started to get into a big argument.
I’m not an obsessive sketcher, but I had a pad in my lap and
started to draw. In about five minutes, I realized that I had
been “not there,” that while I was drawing, I had gone away.
Have you been drawing since you were a little kid?
EE: Well, you have to remember how old I am. This was back
before World War II. I grew up in Central Square in Cambridge,
where my father was a painter and carpenter, and my mother
worked in a dress shop. People had expensive toys around
us, but I never felt jealous or like I should have them. We had
pencils and paper, and that was constant. We didn’t have
much money, but we had a little cabin in the woods where we
went in the summertime. No electricity, no running water. My
grandfather was a carpenter, too, and my grandmother would
give us the box of odd triangle cutoff scrap pieces. I had a
hell of a time, could play with that for hours, lining them up,
making shapes out of them.

All kids are like that. But I had pencils and paper, and I, at some
point, decided to try and make a living at it. I had no training in
anything else. I washed dishes at Harvard as a teenager.

Were your parents supportive of your art?

EE: Yeah, they were. My father was like most fathers of his
generation. He got up and went to work and came home
from work, and got up and went to work and came home
from work. My mother worked too but also nosed around
and figured out how to send me to art classes here and
there and so on. They gave me space in the house. When I
went to Mass Art, they found the fifty dollars a semester that
it cost, or helped me with it. My brother, two years younger
than me, he got a camera and taught himself and became a
successful fashion photographer. My other brother became
a machinist and worked on submarines.

So, why are you an artist? Is it something that came to you?

Or a person-to-person interaction?
I complained once to my mother about being bored. She
took a walnut, melted wax from a candle into the shell, put a
match and a paper sail in it, and made a boat. Now, why do
I still remember this? Think of all the hours we live and what
we remember from them.

Things like that are huge. You saw the world in a new way
the moment she handed that nut sailboat to you.
EE: And I had fun drawing pictures. I liked following step-by-
step instructions when I could do them. I didn’t like, and I still
don’t like, the so-called drawing books that guarantee a kid
to fail. If you present something that is supposed to be the
answer, and it’s not the answer, you’ve done damage. And
that’s my credo. You’re supposed to do the best you can for
kids. You’re not supposed to cheat them. Do no damage.

And so many drawing books just show you how well the
guy who did them can draw. What was so great about your a thousand dollars, so I went freelance and I decided I would above (from top)
Ed Emberley’s studio table
books, as well as Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right do everything that anyone asked me to do for one year. At Ipswich, MA
Side of the Brain, was the idea of breaking things down the end of the year, I’d look at what people asked me to do, 2016

into form.
EE: I wanted the Drawing Books to be a springboard, not
a cage.
What was the decision to go to art school like for you?
EE: I don’t know how I made decisions. Even now. To
what end did I go to art school? Life came to me. I wasn’t
concerned with the fine art world. I didn’t know much
about illustration and that world—I had only seen funny
books, the illustrated Wizard of Oz, Rockwell. I first went
into direct mail advertising doing paste-ups, making fifty
dollars a week, and they eventually had me draw cartoony
characters. I didn’t really have any goals. Eventually I did
some side freelance illustration work that got me a check for
and how much it paid, and whether I liked doing it. In that Various Emberley books
year, during downtime, I decided to do a children’s book, on display in Kahbahblooom
2016
which was The Wing on a Flea, my first one. It got a New
York Times “ten best illustrated of the year.” You couldn’t
really make a living doing children’s books, though, because
you could only do one a year with a certain publisher, and
advances were in the hundreds of dollars, not enough to
live on. But I liked doing them. What I could do, in addition,
were things like non-fiction books, textbooks, and I could
mix things up and work in different techniques. And I could
work with Barbara on—in addition to the pen and ink books
I was doing—a series of woodcut books, and sell those to a
different publisher. And Barbara worked on preparing a lot
of the color separations.

ED EMBERLEY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 97
 And this was done by cutting Rubylith? EE: It was a puzzle. It was a problem to solve. And I always
Barbara Emberley: Ed did most of the Rubylith (colored liked the problem solving. When we would go sailing, I never
masking film), but I did a lot of the layered separations in black. liked day sailing, just to go out and come back. I wanted to go
below to Nantucket, to Bar Harbor, to deal with buoys and channels
Image from The Parade Book
This is so interesting to me because younger artists today and no electronic equipment or beacons.
1962
Painted as a wall mural don’t have any experience with this at all. You’re doing all
in Kahbahblooom
of these color separations in black—not seeing any of the And the books wouldn’t have been the way they were
opposite (from top) color until the book comes out. without you being like that. So how did the Drawing Books
Image from Space City
unpublished Emberley book BE: Yes, it’s really magical. And for some of our books, we come about?
mid-1980s had to assign percentages—20% of a certain color or 38% of EE: I was forced to. By money. I had won the Caldecott Medal
Kahbahblooom woodcut a certain color. But we always did our own separations. And and the publisher was waiting for the next book. They felt the
From Caldecott-winner
Ed always did his own design of his books as well. It made a medal was an indication that they appreciated my work and
Drummer Hoff
1967 better book. wanted me to do more, as much as it was for the book. But I
was working on Suppose You Met a Witch, and that took six
months of creating seven or eight overlays, with color over
black, two trips to England where the story took place to get
the plants and flowers right, and it would take another year.
And I told the publisher that I had a little drawing book idea,
some things I had played with as a kid. I thought it was a quick
novelty greeting-card kind of thing that would come and go. I
thought teachers and libraries wouldn’t like it because it was
a copying book, that it was the destruction of creativity. But
I published it, and it was my Drawing Book of Animals. Like
every book I’ve published, it turned out to be a huge seller,
and the day it was published, the reviews were huge. Bam!
Terrific reviews from the New York Times, fathers saying they
took the book home and drew with their kids for the first time;
their kids thought they were a genius. It took off from there
and sold probably over two million. Many of the other books I
did would sell maybe five thousand, ten thousand.

And you never taught in a classroom setting, right?

EE: Right, I never did.

So what was it like then, being a teacher to so many young

artists? You must have been getting letters and hearing
from them?
EE: Nope. Silence. All we got were sales figures. Sometimes
the publishers didn’t even send you the reviews.

I always wondered why I never wrote you a letter.

BE: It took until the next generation to hear back—people
like you who are old enough now to get in touch.

But didn’t you ever wonder? You’re doing something that

is sort of one-sided. You’re having a tremendous impact on
young people, but the feedback is limited to reviews and
money. Did you ever think about the impact you were having?
EE: No, I really didn’t. The book was done and I was on
to the next one. I’m happy I did that. When the book was
done, we piled the artwork up into a box in the studio, and
it stayed that way until Caleb came along. We were on to
doing the next book.

But you never wondered about the feedback or wanted it?

BE: How could we get it? All we would get is the number of
books sold.

It’s so interesting to think of you having this one-way

influence on such a massive scale.

98 | FEBRUARY 2017
ED EMBERLEY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 99
 above
The Wizard of Op
1975

100 | FEBRUARY 2017

above (from top)
Production drawing from Paul Bunyan print
Suppose You Met a Witch c. 1962
1973 reprinted for Kahbahblooom

ED EMBERLEY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 101

 Rebecca Emberley: And the children’s book rock star thing
didn’t exist then. The whole trend of publishing based on a
person’s following online is ridiculous. I’m sure it’s that way
in art, as well. And just because you’re good at social media
doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t. It’s an incredibly narcissistic society.
Caleb Neelon: When putting together this show, one of the
questions asked by the museum was to identify the fine artists
below
Emberley signing
were who were influenced by Emberley. They were wondering
books for Eric White about who was influenced at the time the books came out—but
Ipswich, MA
2016 it was the wrong question, in a way. The people who were
influenced by Ed Emberley, who were fine artists—well, they
opposite
Installation views are sitting here at this table, people like Eric and me. You had to
of Kahbahblooom
check back twenty years later on the young people who loved
Worcester Art Museum
2016 the books as kids to find out if the influence was there.
102 | FEBRUARY 2017
EE: It’s only the odd times when I go to a restaurant or store
and pay with my credit card. “Are you that Ed Emberley?”
Then I get a long story from a waitress or someone.
Sometimes it takes a second or third or fourth generation for
the influence to come back.
RE: And while this is a great achievement to sell so many
and for so long, the scale is still small. It’s nothing close to
the scale of something like Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry
Caterpillar, which sells every minute.
EE: We hear people tell us that they got our books from
the library all the time when they were kids. Kids of course
can’t really buy the books on their own. They might
influence an adult to buy one, but libraries and teachers
were the most influential.
CN: Even as kids, Eric and myself were both deeply
influenced by the Drawing Books, though neither of us knew
about any of the other Emberley books in the many different
styles and aesthetics. Even something like Drummer Hoff,
which won the Caldecott, I never saw it.
Neither did I. I would have loved them, but all I saw were
the drawing books.
EE: And that was a problem I created. If you liked the
drawing books and saw a very different book of mine, say
a woodcut book like Paul Bunyan, you may have gotten
to love one technique, or been disappointed if it was
different. I realize that, but I get bored very easily. It would
have been hell for me to be Charles Schulz and drawn the
same thing always.
But did you like the work of contemporaries like Dr. Seuss
and Richard Scarry?
EE: Oh absolutely. Richard Scarry was a genius. And Peter
Spier was wonderful. I like a lot of people. And Picasso is my
favorite artist.
So, are you excited about Kahbahblooom, your
retrospective at the Worcester Art Museum? Does it feel
like a milestone?
EE: I feel wary! Who am I? Suppose your good mother got
you a surprise present which was to sing at the Met at the
opening of a big opera and they shoved you out with your
costume on. And everyone is looking at you. That’s the way
I feel. I do the work for myself and I’m not overwhelmed with
my own wonderfulness. I think it’s fun and I like doing it, I like
to please people and I realize that I won’t please everybody.
So I’m a little wary. But seeing all the things that Caleb has
found in the piles, a hundred books with 32 pages, it goes
on. It’s like going through your old clothes. Maybe there is
still some life in those old socks!
Caleb Neelon is also co-author with Todd Oldham of the 2014 AMMO
Books retrospective, Ed Emberley. Kahbahblooom: The Art and
Storytelling of Ed Emberley, is on view through April 9, 2017 at the
Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.
ED EMBERLEY JUXTAPOZ.COM | 103
T R AV EL I N S I D ER
GOLDEN STATE OF MIND
MURALS AND MEALS IN SACRAMENTO
WE SPENT TIME INLAND LAST FALL FOR THE FIRST BIG
Sacramento Mural Festival organized by LeBasse Projects and
the local arts commission. California’s capitol has a lot to offer
besides politics and The Kings, although the team did just open
a huge new stadium with a controversial Jeff Koons sculpture
out front. How could a monolithic gem called Coloring Book,
paid for by tax dollars, stir up so much drama? Such is the art
world, but that’s beside the point. Some of our favorite artists
spent a week at the mural fest, adding color and new life to the
walls of Sac Town (as tourists like to call it). While feasting on
some unbeatable banana almond butter toast at WAL Public
Market on R Street, we met local luminary Trisha Rhomberg,
curator and owner of a killer vintage shop, Old Gold. She
graciously walked us through a pleasant day in gold rush town,
Photography by where many corners are full of surprises; we even spotted Riff
Blaine Suque
Danielle Garza
Raff himself during our stay. If you find yourself in Sacramento,
Garrick Wong take Trisha’s crib notes and go on a treasure hunt for new
Stephon Dyson
Daniel Stanush murals by Michelle Blade, Andrew Schoultz, Nate Frizzell, and
more, and have a foodie fest along the way.
below
Sacramento Mural Festival Artist
Jake Castro
Trisha Rhomberg: In the morning, head to The Mill, run by
opposite (clockwise from top left) Ianna and Nick, rad artists I met when we had studios at
Sacramento Mural Festival Artists
Verge Center for the Arts. They’re super sweet, beautiful
Nate Frizzell people. Nick made a lot of the furniture at The Mill, and the
Michelle Blade coffee and waffles are great, or grab a croissant… it’s all good.
There are other coffee choices like Weatherstone, which has
Kristin Farr
the best food and outdoor patio, and OG places like Temple
Dog and Pony
or Old Soul, known for a good breakfast sandwich. Insight is
Alicia Palenyy also new and good for coffee, as is Identity.
104 | FEBRUARY 2017
If you want a big breakfast, you might like Orphan or Fox
and Goose, which has been around for over 40 years. Its
building was constructed in 1913. I love the simple stained
glass and super high ceilings. It’s like a ’70s English Pub.
I always get the Benedict Arnold with Welsh rarebit cheese
sauce and corned beef. I’d also recommend a bloody mary.
Then, you can immediately check out Mark Vintage, right
next store, which has great furniture. Head up the block to
R street for another snack at Metro Kitchen and Drinkery at
WAL Public Market. Sip on their Orange Sunburst Immunity,
a cold-pressed juice that will soothe your soul. I also like
their egg salad breakfast toast. They serve Temple Coffee,
which reminds me, there is a brand new Temple Coffee on
22nd and K Streets.
So, now you’re shopping inside the WAL Public Market.
On the facade is a rad mural from the Sacramento Mural
Festival made by artist Add Fuel outside of the Warehouse
Artist Lofts (WAL), a mixed-income artist community
space that’s had a four-year waiting list since it opened.
I’m lucky to live there and throw rooftop shows and the
annual R Street Block Party, which draws 4,000 people
for one day each summer. It’s a fun little party for makers,
local breweries, food trucks, live art and music, etc. I love
having an extra gorgeous spot for booking shows. It will
be different in a few years, but for now the roof has the
best view of the city. It’s the most magical experience; fun
and unique with a rooftop garden and mural, BBQ pit, and
sunsets galore.
TRAVEL INSIDER JUXTAPOZ.COM | 105
T R AV EL I N S I D ER

Get amazed at the Fish Face Poke Bar. Three times a week,
I get a Cali roll and a blood orange beer—fresh food plus
good beer for under ten bucks! Old Gold is my shop, the
best shop in Sacramento. Why? Everything in the shop
is unique, quality shit. We have been selling vintage in
Sacramento for 30 years combined. We buy vintage and
we know how to pick ‘em. Old 501s, Redwings, Pendletons,
’70s dresses, and the perfect mix of new pieces; definitely
something for everyone. We also have handmade items.
I do custom designs with local fabricators in everything
from leather, ceramics, sterling silver and gold, and we
have a small-run clothing company that uses vintage
fabrics for limited edition pieces. We have apothecary from
independent Northern California lines, and stuff for the
whole family. We are happy to help our local friends spread
their talent and passion all over.

I curate a new show at WAL Public Market every first Friday.

Rumor has it we’ll have Sacramento native Jay Howell
showing with Chris Sullivan this summer, and we are
stoked to bring the best new stuff to the public. My favorite
local painter is Waylon Horner, and Jared Tharp just did a
rad new mural.

Gallery 1810 has good solid shows on the ground floor of

WAL, and there’s also Arthouse nearby for the older crowd,
plus artist Raphael Delgado’s studio. Verge Center for the
Arts is the best contemporary art gallery with cool shows
and good workshops, lectures and screenings.

In February 2015, M5Arts Collective took over the

abandoned Jade Apartments in Downtown, transforming
the empty space into a five-story immersive art
installation called Art Hotel that attracted more than
12,000 visitors before its scheduled demolition. In
February 2017, their next project, Art Street, opens in a
temporary space in the Greater Broadway District and
will feature more than 100 local and international artists.
The SOL Collective has also been a multicultural staple in
the local art scene for over a decade. They have gallery
shows, live music, and workshops for young artists and
the community.
For lunch, head to Magpie on P Street. If you had to eat at
one place in Sacramento, this is it. For Happy Hour, there’s
Ella, a fancy restaurant, or you can get a huge, delicious
slice of pizza and beer for five dollars at Vito’s on 16th. It has
a slightly bro vibe, but the fucking pizza… check the website
for their hours. It’s a slim window, midday and late night.
For dinner, if you want dark, fun, new and fancy-ish, go to
Empress, with a popular new chef who also owns Mother
restaurant and is the drummer for local band Drug Apartments.
With cool decor and good food, it’s where everyone went for
their birthday dinner in the past 365 days. For Mexican, you
want Tres Hermanas. For sushi, try Kru. Burgers and Brew
on R Street has the best burger and fries, and for fried food
inspired by the south, try the aptly named South.
Red Museum is a rad underground venue for live music above
Andrew Schoultz goes big at the
and weird, intimate art events. It’s a big old warehouse Sacramento Mural Festival
space next to the train tracks. No one bothers us out there,
and there’s a nice little backyard zone for fresh air/not-so-
fresh smokes in between sets. The best local bands, in
my opinion, are Gentleman Surfer, Drug Apartments and
Screature. The Red Museum also has dance parties, touring
bands, mini festivals, and more.
For jazz and avant garde jams, check out Gold Lion Arts or
Luna’s for far out tunes. They’re very laid back, and Luna has
been alive and kicking for years. Bigger shows that 18-year-
olds line up for happen at Ace of Spaces, and the more
mature crowd enjoys their entertainment at Harlow’s.
For bars, there’s Jungle Bird with a tropical vacation vibe,
and B Side, which is a loud and tiny bar with good murals.
Shady Lady has great drinks and food, and Bottle and
Barlow on the corner of 12th and R Street is where the fine
cocktails can be found. It’s all about R Street, so be sure to
stop by when you’re in town. Rooftop art parties await!
walpublicmarket.com

106 | FEBRUARY 2017

masterclass
learning tools for artists

Apply some science to your creativity with Winsor & Newton’s new video tutorials. Created by
artists for artists, our video masterclasses reveal techniques, insights and demonstrations to
help you perfect your practice. We’ll keep it technical – the creativity is up to you.

Subscribe for free and join the community.

winsornewton.com/masterclass
IN SESSION
GRANT WOOD SLEPT HERE
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA’S NEW SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS
ROWS OF CORNFIELDS AND AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN
weave the fertile fabric associated with Iowa, but move
beyond the expected association of farm and livestock. The
commodity of culture flows freely in the Hawkeye State. The
Iowa Writers Workshop, which began in 1936 as a gathering
of poets and fiction writers, is a wellspring of the written word.
Grant Wood, the artist most historically identified with the
state, was a creative mind who not only painted, but started
as a silversmith and included lithography, ceramics and
woodworking in his interests. It’s not surprising that the “Iowa
Idea” grew out of such a mindset.
Envisioned as way to bring artists and scholars together,
Lester Longman, the first chair of the Department of Art,
brought art history and studio practice into one department.
The Master of Fine Arts became a template for graduate
studies, welcoming music, visual arts and literature as
fulfillments of a graduate degree.
In 2008, a flood destroyed most of the original building, but
in October 2016, the new Visual Arts facility for the School
108 | FEBRUARY 2017
of Art and Art History reopened, and the “Iowa Idea” is alive above
Mold-Making Course
and expanding. Large corridors become horizontal meeting Professor Kee-ho Yuen demonstrates
spaces, and sculptural stairways with spacious landings traditional mold-making techniques
are expanded into social circulation spaces. Multiple
balconies and glass partitions along studio walls cultivate
collaboration and conversation. From painting and drawing,
to 3D design and metal arts, to animation and photography,
the Steven Holl-designed building meets the Iowa River and
hugs limestone bluffs, solidly stating its midwestern “can-
do” ethic. Not coincidentally, other shows at the University
Of Iowa Museum include Come Together—Collaborative
Lithographs from the Tamarind Institute, Turkish Textiles,
the art of flat weaving and Bodies in Motion, a collection
of dance photographs, all soundly anchored by the
preservation of the brick studio where Grant Woods taught.
Must be something in the water.
The University of Iowa School of Visual Arts is located at 141 N.
Riverside Drive in Iowa City.
CURATED BY TAKASHI MURAKAMI AND EVAN PRICCO
NOV 5, 2016—FEB 5, 2017

Image by James Jean

Image by James
Presenting Jean
Sponsor:
Brian and Andrea Hill
REVIEWS
WHAT WE ARE READING
REAL AND IMAGINED
THE CARHARTT WIP ARCHIVES
I still remember walking into the Carhartt WIP
flagship store in London wearing a Jeremy Fish
shirt in the early 2000s and finding a kinship
with the staff. It was like we were part of a
club and shared the same visual language.
Through Carhartt WIP, I found the likes of
Mode 2, Sozyone, and other European-graffiti
artists who were hard to come by in the States.
The European line for the venerable Michigan
brand was, and continues to be, all about
combining a world-view of music, art, and skate
cultures with a classic workwear aesthetic.
The Carhartt WIP Archives, 428-pages of the
history of the “Work In Progress” brand, is
solid documentation of underground culture
over the last 20 years. Artists like Evan Hecox,
Lucy McLauchlan, Mode 2, musicians Jamie
xx and Modeselektor, and collaborations with
A.P.C. and Patta have placed Carhartt at the
center of so many relevant artistic milestones,
it reads like pictorial history. Edited by Michel
Lebugle and Anna Sinofzik, look no further
than the opening spreads of the Beastie Boys
and Public Enemy rocking Carhartt coats to
understand just how far back this influence
goes in streetwear. This book is a proper
cultural bible. —EP
rizzoliusa.com
110 | FEBRUARY 2017
BEFORE AND FURTHER
DABS MYLA
Last year, we featured one of Dabs Myla’s most
epic projects, Before and Further, in which they
transformed an entire house in the Modernica
manufacturing complex into a giddy and glossy
world of signature characters and designs. Each
item was handmade, from books to furniture,
and secret, wallpapered, psychedelic rooms.
Every corner of every stair, nook and cranny in
the house was painted by these two adorably
savage artists, who transformed the space
over two months with zero breaks. Happily, this
work was fully appreciated for its ephemeral
lifespan, with eleven openings and parties that
drew crowds and unique performances from
Bushwick Bill and other luminaries. Sketches,
process, artwork details and related happenings
are all documented in the Before and Further
book, with an intro by DJ Lance Rock. We may
never get to see this house project in real life
again, but we’re glad to have the memories, and
we always love to see Dabs Myla rise to the top
like fizzy bubbles. —KF
dabsmyla.com
CARRY THIS BOOK
ABBI JACOBSON
Abbi Jacobson of Broad City fame is not
only a comedy kween, she’s a fine doodler
and comic artist, just like her character on
the show. Between seasons, she hit the TV
press circuit to promote her new collection of
narrative drawings, Carry This Book, which
documents the fictional-but-eminently-possible
personal effects of luminaries. What’s in RBG’s
wallet? What kind of iPhone case does Oprah
have? And exactly what brand of hot sauce
does Beyonce carry in her bag—swag? Abbi
imagines the artifacts, painstakingly rendering
the telltale trinkets in pen and ink. The book
serves as a friendly exhibition in print that Abbi
would apparently like you to carry around,
just like Oprah and her gratitude journal.
Jacobson’s new collection is a fanciful follow-
up to her series of coloring books dedicated to
great cities, Color This Book. —KF
 ART SHOW
2 0 1 7

JANUARY 11-15, 2017

LA CONVENTION CENTER | WEST HALL

LA’s pre m ie re e ve nt fo r ex per iencing , co llecting , s haring &

purc ha sing a rt. Fe a turing o ver 1 0 0 pro minent g alleries fro m
ove r 20 diffe re nt c ountries - Ex hibiting painting , sculpture,
works on pa pe r, installatio n, pho to g raphy, video & perfo r mance.

The LA Art Show pre sents LIT T LET OPIA - a selectio n o f g alleries
e xhibiting a n e c le c tic blend o f lo w bro w and po p sur realis m.

L A ARTS HOW.COM
JUX LOGO TEE
AVAILABLE NOW AT
SHOP.JUXTAPOZ.COM

Photo by
Bryan Derballa
@lovebryan
Model: Sade
PRO FI L E
BACK STRAIGHT, HEAD UP
NUART AND THE FUTURE OF POST-STREET ART
EACH YEAR, THE NUART FESTIVAL CONTINUES TO
exceed itself as the most progressive and historically
relevant of the world’s street art festivals. Not only does
Nuart founder Martyn Reed create themes and relevant
stories, but he challenges artists, academics, and other
street art groups to understand the relevant past and
complicated future of one of the biggest and most
widespread art movements the world has ever seen. Street
art keeps changing; so much so that even our magazine, as
early proponents and documentarians of the movement,
can’t define it as clearly anymore. For the 2016 Nuart
Festival, Martyn Reed proposed an idea that this moment
in street art should to be reidentified as post-street art.
What may seem so simple, almost banal, has historical
implications. The name change is significant and gets to the
root of the issue that street art is entering a different phase.
All photography by We asked art critic and historian Carlo McCormick to sit
Ian Cox
down with Reed to discuss the post-street art concept, as a
below
Fintan Magee
reflection on 2016’s Nuart and also a way to contextualize
in progress future festivals. —Evan Pricco
114 | FEBRUARY 2017
Carlo McCormick: You've been engaged with street art now
for many years now, so what has changed that brought us to
this moment where we need a new term for it?
Martyn Reed: There’s exponential interest in the culture from
all strata of society, of course. But within art, we’re beginning
to see artists with little or no history in the culture engaging
with its themes and concerns within the street. On the one
hand, we have a relatively conservative form of decorative,
commissioned, neo-muralism taking a stranglehold on the
term “street art,” whilst on the other, we have predominantly
studio-based artists taking their activist-based messages
and fight to the streets. And the latter don’t really adhere
to the traditional idea of what a “street artist” is. It’s these
artists, in terms of content, that we’d like to see championed
as “street artists,” and as that term now seems to have
become a little corrupted, we thought the term “post-street
art” could open things up again.
I think, perhaps, we might think of a new level of self-
consciousness, or at least self-awareness. Ten or fifteen
years ago, artists would work in the street with little
thought of the history, who their audience might be,
and the prospects of a career. Today, this has all clearly
changed.
Yes, there are absolutely two or three templates to success
that have been established over the years and are now
being slavishly and cynically followed by some. But unless
you’re incredibly lucky, you still have to be in it for the long
haul, and if you are, you’ll eventually find convergence
points with your own practice and street art history that
are impossible to deny or ignore. I think you’re right about
this “awareness,” though. Years ago, you’d be working on
something for months, and then someone would turn around
and say, “Oh, so-and-so did that in 1979,” and you’d scrap it
out of sheer embarrassment, or at least spend another few
months reconfiguring it. Now, you’d just change the hashtag
and bang it on Instagram regardless. People have their own
“audience” for the most part, and a lot of the time, they’re
happy catering to them. A mirror reflecting themselves
rather than a window to the world.
Obviously, most of those we see in this magazine have paid Clockwise (from top left)
SpY
their dues. Regarding newcomers or emerging names, it’s
our responsibility to either amplify the message or the artist, Henrik Uldalen
or preferably both. Sometimes the message is everything, Add Fuel
and it doesn’t really matter who created it or why. I still love
Axel Void
stumbling across a nameless piece that gives life to an
age-old concept or emotion. It’s surprising just how many
different and wildly creative ways there are to say, “fuck the
system,” or “hey, I’m in pain.” I always felt the platforms I
created were first and foremost for these people, to remind
them to keep their heads up, that we have each other’s
backs. What is art if not hope?
Speaking of history, Robert Montgomery, who joined us this
year, says it best, “You walk on the bones of Kings now, their
bodies fertilize your gardens.” We should never forget this.
Back straight, head up.
Before shifting over to visual art full-time, you spent many
years working in music, including the Numusic Festival
PROFILE JUXTAPOZ.COM | 115
PRO FI L E
that was the precursor to Nuart. I like what you were telling
me in Norway recently, how the whole arc of electronic
music changed. Can you compare your understanding and
experience of this with post-street art today?
The parallels are striking, and the deeper you get into it, the
more you realize what drives emerging culture as well as
capitalism’s relationship to it. How the dysfunction bred by
a lack of investment in education and our inner cities leads
to the creative subversion of current paradigms, creating
subcultures that are then co-opted by the mainstream.
And by mainstream, here, I mean corporations. I think
being aware of how this worked in punk and rave culture,
electronic music and other activist-based subcultures,
has helped Nuart stay on course. There’s a pretty well-
established template that goes something like: originators
and pioneers, those second and third generations inspired
by such, and finally the emulators and imitators. By the time
capital has caught up with the culture, it’s the emulators
and imitators they’re building platforms and festivals for and
116 | FEBRUARY 2017
promoting to the mainstream. This was the case in music Clockwise (from left)
MTO
and seems to be the template being deployed by emerging
street art festivals and institutions who are more interested Hyuro
in the “form” than the content. I’d rather see an interesting Jaune
pasteup down a back alley on the way home from a gig than
another ten-story mural on a inner-city tower block.
Post-street art is just about focusing attention back on the
content, on the forces that drove the originators. It’s about
shining a light on and encouraging the militancy that is the
essence of unsanctioned public art practice. It’s an invitation
for everyone to participate in shaping public space, street
artist or not.
The annual Nuart Festival takes place in Stavanger, Norway every
September-October. The organizers will be presenting a special
festival in the sister city of Aberdeen, Scotland in April 2017.
REVIEWS

THINGS WE ARE AFTER

CRUISE IN COMFORT

GNARHUNTERS x TOY MACHINE BEACH TOWEL

We don’t want to tell you how to live your life; we’re just here to help you along the way.
So if you want to take this Gnarhunters x Toy Machine beach towel collaboration and use
it after your bath at home, by all means, go ahead. But if you want to take it along on your
winter holiday to Hawaii and be the envy of your friends, do that too. The point here is that,
no matter what season or time of year, an Ed Templeton towel is absorbingly appropriate
for all your drying needs. Sized at 30” x 60” and made in the USA.
store.gnarhunters.com

TODD FRANCIS x STANCE SOCKS

In achieving airport ease and comfort, socks
have to attain a level of security, both public
and personal, as they bear all for our toes and
bare all for the TSA. May we suggest longtime
skate graphic champion Todd Francis and his
HERSCHEL SUPPLY TRADE LUGGAGE
new collaboration with Stance socks? Stance’s
Do you ever strive to be that calm, confident
new partnership with Mr. Francis launched with
and fashionable couple seen striding through the
two new styles, Cashfoot and Pigeon Toes,
airport with their ever-so-simple travel luggage
designed with the Los Angeles artist’s iconic
that just eases behind as they glide through the
pigeon illustration. You will never want to wear
terminal? You’ve seen them too, right? That in
shoes again… unless you have to. Find the
mind, we’re eyeing the Herschel Supply four-
collection in early 2017.
wheel luggage in this new lichen green colorway.
stance.com
Available in both 29.5” tall and 23.5” tall, the
hard-shell Trade has internal mesh dividers, two-
way zippers, and multi-directional wheels. Look
better, feel better.
shop.herschelsupply.com

118 | FEBRUARY 2017


K O H I N O O R U S A . C O M
Koh-I-Noor spans the globe in search
of rich, top quality pigments for our
Polycolor pencils. These pigments are
highly concentrated and per fectly dispersed
throughout the entire Polycolor color range.
Polycolor pencils also maintain excellent
light permanency, creating vibrant, durable
pieces of ar t.
I WAS ALWAYS DRAWN TO
PORTRAITURE. ALTHOUGH I
HAVE WORKED WITH VARIOUS
MEDIA, COLORED PENCIL IS
BY FAR MY FAVORITE.
- ANNA H AMMER
Anna Hammer is a traditional ar tist born and
raised in Poland. Working primarily with colored
pencil, she loves creating por traits and fashion
illustration, with her daughter ser ving as a model
and inspiration for her ar t.
VISIT ANNA ON
THALO.COM
S I EB EN O N L I FE
HEAD ON
ARTISTS AS INFLUENCERS
MY COLUMN LAST MONTH WAS WRITTEN ON THE DAY
of the US presidential election—before the polls had closed.
I jokingly ended the piece by stating that if Donald won, I might
consider moving to Canada. I made the same threat when
George Bush's seed was reelected in 2004, so anybody close to
me knows I was just blowing smoke. Still, I wish I hadn't thrown
that out as a plan of action for what to do if the proverbial feces
hit the metaphorical fan.
The Idiocracy comparison is obvious, but there's a huge
difference between the movie and the reality of the situation:
Mike Judge's film is hilarious. The current state of affairs,
however, are terrifying. But rather than running from reality,
I think the only thing to do is face the next four years head on:
look the fuck out for anybody being bullied or attacked; set up
fundraisers for groups that will continue to fight for civil rights;
donate money and/or time to institutions standing up to this
incoming administration.
120 | FEBRUARY 2017
The motto "Make America Great Again" is a fallacy because Art by
Michael Sieben
America has never been great. This country will only be great when
every child, woman, and man—regardless of gender, race, sexual
identity, religious affiliation/spiritual identity and income level—are
treated equally. As a white male, it's easy for me to preach shit like
this without being radically affected by the impending shitstorm
that's about to beseech us, but I vow to do everything I can to help
combat the racism and sexism (and the countless other negative
isms) that seemed so pivotal to the campaign trail.
Artists might not have the power to change policies, but we
can affect popular culture and influence younger (and hopefully
older) generations. Let's be as vocal as possible and try to
spread anti-hate messages from the top of our lungs for the next
four years. Nah, fuck it, let's broadcast those messages 'til we all
hit the coffin. —Michael Sieben
PIERS 92 & 94
THEARMORYSHOW.COM
P O P L I FE
VANCOUVER
JUXTAPOZ x SUPERFLAT AT VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
1 2
VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
1 | Juxtapoz and Takashi Murakami kicked
off a busy week in Vancouver for the
opening of Juxtapoz x Superflat at
Vancouver Art Gallery, on view through
February 5, 2017. Madsaki and Takashi
gave their sign of approval.
2 | Opening night, James Jean sat down for
a session at the David Shrigley drawing
installation while Booooooom.com’s Jeff
Hamada served as documentarian.
122 | FEBRUARY 2017
4 5
3 | Juxtapoz editor, and Juxtapoz x Superflat
co-curator Evan Pricco imparts a little
inspiration and insight into a Ben Venom
quilt for a group of young art mavens.
4 | Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor’s three
showstopping sculpture pieces
dominated the museum’s atrium space
and drew a massive crowd for her
lecture on opening day. . .
3
6
5 | . . . while Yuji Ueno held the audience Photography by
Ian Bates (1-5) and
rapt for his beautiful performance piece
Evan Pricco (6)
outside in the museum’s plaza.
6 | Look who stopped by! Three-time
Juxtapoz cover artist David Choe was
in town and said hello to Superflat artist,
the legendary mega-illustrator, Katsuya
Terada.
P O P L I FE
SAN FRANCISCO, NYC, AND LOS ANGELES
HESS WINERY, JOSHUA LINER GALLERY, CHANDRAN GALLERY, KP PROJECTS,
THINKSPACE GALLERY & COREY HELFORD GALLERY
4 5
HESS WINERY, NAPA VALLEY
1 | Red, red wine. Frank Stella, fresh off
opening his magnificent retrospective
at the de Young Museum in San
Francisco, with Juxtapoz publisher,
Gwynned Vitello.
JOSHUA LINER GALLERY, NYC
2 | Stand tough. December 2016 cover artist,
Parra, gives us a look at the opening of
his new solo show, No Work Today, in
NYC.
124 | FEBRUARY 2017
1 2
CHANDRAN GALLERY, SF
3 | Old friends making new shows. Sage
Vaughn and Cali Thornhill DeWitt share
a tender moment at the opening of their
exhibit, Valley Recovery.
KP PROJECTS, LOS ANGELES
4 | Joe Sorren kept his hair cropped short
the better to hear Merry Karnowsky
at the opening of his solo show, From
Inside.
3
6
THINKSPACE GALLERY, CULVER CITY Photography by
Joe Russe (2), Mido Lee (3)
and Sam Graham (4-6).
5 | The stars of the show, Audrey Kawasaki
Photo 1 courtesy
and Stella Im Hultberg, give the crowd Gwynned Vitello
a double smile at the opening of their
respective new shows at Thinkspace
Gallery.
COREY HELFORD GALLERY, LA
6 | We like to cram a lot of painting talent
into one photo: Ron English gives Natalia
Fabia support at the opening of her new
solo show, Rainbeau Samsara.
PER S PEC T I V E
A COMMUNAL TRAGEDY
THE GHOST SHIP FIRE IN OAKLAND
MY FIRST THOUGHT WHEN HEARING ABOUT THE GHOST
Ship warehouse fire in Oakland, California that claimed
the lives of 36 concert goers was, “We have all been there
before.” It doesn’t matter where you live, or where you grew
up, there has been a party/art show/concert in a warehouse
that felt risky or sketchy. If we were to take a step back and
consider the possibility of a fire or something dangerous
happening in the space, you know your emergency exit
would be precarious.
And we all would have still been there, because no
matter what, art and culture are made in these places and
spaces. Underground movements start on the fringes, in
warehouses late at night, where creativity can be nurtured
without the fear of noise ordinances or high rent prices,
without worrying about curfews or velvet rope entry. Artists
find these places, and they create and invite others to join
them through art shows, concerts and communal living. It’s
been happening for years in cities around the world, from
Berlin to Oakland, Miami to Hong Kong. It will never stop,
because artists don’t operate like that. Organizers will find
126 | FEBRUARY 2017
buildings on the outskirts of town for parties, artists will above
Oakland City Logo
find warehouses in industrial neighborhoods to live and Created by Walter E. Carroll
make work. And we will find these spaces and join them Circa mid-1970s
in a collective spirit of originality and expression.
There are so many parts to this tragedy that could have
been prevented. I know that. But what we saw in Oakland
on the night of December 2, 2016, was a group of people
gathering to celebrate art, to enjoy themselves, to have a
night of simple fun. To join friends, make new friends, listen
to music and be free. And their lives were taken. No matter
what caused the fire, what could have been foreseen, the
most important part is we lost a group of young people
from the Bay Area and beyond, accomplished creatives with
more valuable contributions on the horizon, who spent the
evening listening to music in a warehouse. We have all been
there before. From Juxtapoz and the entire art community
around the world, we express our deepest condolences to
everyone who lost a loved one. —Evan Pricco
 Alternative’s first 50/50
blended tees are the perfect
mix of breathable and soft in
a vintage-inspired fit.

UNISEX Alternative Apparel

05050BP Keeper Vintage Tee, As Low As

$
6.57 Ea / 144 Qty
< AVAILABLE IN 15 SUPER-SOFT COLORS
WOMENS Alternative Apparel
05052BP Keepsake Vintage Tee, As Low As

S IN ES

5
$
6.26 Ea / 144 Qty
BU

DAYS

PULLOVER Champion WOMENS Alternative Apparel

S700 Double Dry Eco Pullover, As Low As 05064BP Backstage Vintage Tee, As Low As

$
16.97 Ea / 144 Qty $
7.59 Ea / 144 Qty

S IN ES

BU

S
Meet Decky DAYS
Our newest headwear brand with
streetsmart styles and friendly pricing.
BEANIE Decky CORD Decky
8040 Day Out Beanie, 1076 Corduroy
ZIP-UP Champion As Low As Snapback, As Low As 7-PANEL Decky Snapback
S800 Double Dry Eco Zip, As Low As $
6.78 $
8.82 $
16.86 $
8.82
$
21.46 Ea / 144 Qty Ea / 144 Qty Ea / 144 Qty Ea / 12 Qty Ea / 144 Qty

Call 877.246.3132 Click jak.ink/jux16

17 YEARS of INDEPENDENT PRINTING from CLEVELAND

 Photography: Brock Fetch © 2017 adidas AG.
ADIDA S X HARDIES COLLECTION /// S H O T W I T H T HE G O H A R D B O Y Z IN NE W YORK CIT Y