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Spraygraphic Interview with Joshua Hagler
By Spraygraphic | December 7, 2007
Spraygraphic Interview with Joshua Hagler
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
JH: I moved to San Francisco about five years ago after I graduated with a degree in illustration and graphic design from the University of Arizona. Since the end of 2004 I’ve been making art full time. At first I was doing mainly freelance illustration, and now I’m focusing more on my gallery work and writing. In 2006, I received a Xeric Grant to produce the first part of my graphic novel The Boy Who Made Silence. The entire series will be released by AAM/Markosia, a UK-based comics publisher, beginning next March. I recently started an arts company called 5 Mined Fields, and will be showing other artists’ work at my studio in Berkeley starting in January. I am currently seeking more submissions from artists of all media who are doing provocative, intelligent, and meaningful work.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
JH: I work out of a live/work loft in west Berkeley. Downstairs I have a 600 sq. ft. studio.
SG: What mediums do you work with?
JH: My large paintings are done in oil. I illustrate my books in all kinds of media, especially watercolor and digital.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
JH: I create a scale Photoshop composition using various photographs (which looks cheesy at first). With these large canvases I’ve been doing, I’ve actually been creating a grid system to the scale of the small digital print. The drawing is pretty accurate at first. From there I mix a black to map out darks and lights. The canvas is primed with galkyd and white ground but I don’t do a very good job of that generally so it’s kind of spotty with some bare canvas and that. As I bring in other colors, I actually create a fairly realistic underpainting. But as the painting goes on I’m constantly making trouble for myself as I can’t really control the paint that well. I then start creating other messes to fix my earlier messes and this continues until I decide I’ve been defeated. Then the painting is done with me.
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
JH: Believe it or not, this never happens. In fact, I’m usually frustrated that I’m so slow at making art because my ideas pile up and I don’t have time to do them all. I recently hired an artist for the first time to do some work for me on a comic book script I wrote. It’s called “Even God Fears Notes from the Swell Feet Row” and Josh Kemble is illustrating it for me. He’s a fellow Xeric Grant winner and is a completely different kind of illustrator than I am. Out of LA. I hired him because it will take me another year or two to complete “The Boy Who Made Silence” and I like the Swell Feet script so much, I don’t want to let it go to waste.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
JH: Hmm, the thing about inspiration I guess is that it seems to find you. You can always be influenced by things that come in from outside, but I think inspiration is something you can’t really learn to look for. You almost have to stop looking for inspiration for any worthwhile ideas to invade your body. So, in a roundabout way, I guess inspiration has been coming from the feeling lately of being hunted. I lost my apartment and studio last March to an arson started by a schizophrenic person living in our building. Then we moved here recently and we have a crazy person living next door to us who is currently being encouraged to leave by the landlord and has been banging on our walls and making vague threats. There are also more abstract observations I’ve been making lately that relates to this idea of not having control of one’s own destiny and to the fragile state of sanity. There is something about this that inspires me in unexpected ways lately. It seems palpable in the world at large. Especially in the Bay Area where there sure are a lot of crazy people.
SG: Can you tell us a little about your piece, Portrait of an American Christ.
JH: I did that painting about two years ago. It was an important piece that signified a shift in the way I was painting.
It seems to me that Christianity in America is so different from Christianity in other parts of the world and at other points in history that Christ himself is as much a mascot for the U.S. as the bald eagle. I wanted to imagine a new version of Christ that reflected the state of the United States in the height of its spiritual revival that has been taking place since the 1970’s, but especially recently with the religious right gaining such a foothold in the American political landscape. I wanted to express a sense of shell shock or post traumatic stress through his face, but I wanted him to feel mythic, the way other images of Christ do.
SG: What kinds of reaction did the piece to receive from gallery audiences?
JH: A very positive one. I was fortunate to have that piece selected in a Saatchi Gallery competition to display in London, and this was my first time attending a show in which I had work on display outside of the United States. Because it was through the Saatchi Gallery, some of the big names in the London art scene were there, including high-ups at galleries such as Gagosian, White Cube, and others. I also got my first review, of all places in the UK Guardian (showing for years in the Bay Area and never even a tiny bite from the press) and was singled out by critic Jonathon Jones as the favorite work. More importantly, the kinds of questions I was being asked was really unexpected. They were the sorts of questions that let me know that they understood the basic concept, and so were able to ask more pointed questions than I’m used to getting. I was unprepared and probably didn’t answer them very well. The reaction to the piece was large enough and positive enough that it allowed me to raise the value of all my work. It helped me to turn down some illustration work to keep going with my paintings.
SG: How has your work changed since your earlier efforts as an artist?
JH: The work is more intentional, conceptually, than it used to be. Aesthetically, I feel a kind of confidence now that lets me worry less about what a painting ought to look like, and because of that I feel like I’ve been able to transcend certain old habits that led to a predictable painting that borrowed from a lot of popular aesthetic cliches. Overall the work is more complex, it’s richer. I’m not really following Bay Area trends, and I think that has been for the better. I used to follow certain illustrators I looked up to. There is a lot of crossover from illustration to pop surrealism to graffiti, and all the stuff that’s been popular here for the last decade or so. Some of that stuff is really interesting and valuable, but mainly it puts a pretty low ceiling on itself, on diversity in the art scene, on the artists, and on the audience in more ways than one. I’m trying to escape it, and I think the shift in my work is helping me to do that.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
JH: Some Bay Area spaces have included the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Rosa, San Francisco Design Galleria, Bucheon Gallery, Mina Dresden Gallery, Swarm Gallery, The Lab, Varnish Fine Art, 111 Minna, and tons of other non-gallery spaces though the years.
Outside of the Bay Area, I’ve shown at The Guardian in London, Omy Gallery in Toronto, Rhys Gallery in Boston, C. Emerson Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL., Urban Earth Gallery, ADM Project, and The Project Gallery all in Los Angeles, and the Joseph Gross Gallery at the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
JH: I have solo shows scheduled for 2008 and 09 at A.Muse Gallery in San Francisco, Rico Garcia Fine Art in Los Angeles, and Ad Hoc Gallery in New York.
In January I have an important two person show with Mike Ritch at Reaves Gallery in SF.
Upcoming work in juried awards shows include Gallery 24 in Berlin, 111 Minna Gallery, and the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Beginning (11.24-25), and continuing on weekends through December 16th, I will also have my studio open to the public as part of the Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios. Five Mined Fields Studio is at 2745 10th St. @ Grayson in Berkeley. 11-6pm, Saturdays and Sundays.
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
JH: My dream is actually to stop having assignments and push forward with more self-initiated projects.
SG: What is your favorite color?
JH: If we’re talking about colors of paint, I love the expensive transparent colors. Transparent maroon sticks out in my mind as a favorite. Gorgeous color.
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
JH: I can’t say I have one favorite. What have I been looking at lately? You know, the Italian cartoonist Gipi has really left an impression on me lately. I read “Notes on a War Story” and was very impressed. As far as painters go, I recently saw a wonderful painting show at Togonon Gallery in the 77 Geary Building by painter Mary Lovelace O’Neal. She’s an African American painter who’s considered an “Abstract Expressionist” but I don’t really get that. The work is both figurative and narrative, which are qualities I relate to. Fucking fantastic titles. Here’s one: ‘Running Freed More Slaves Than Lincoln Ever Did’ Kurt Vonnegut died earlier this year. That was a loss. His work influenced me as much as any writer’s has. These are all favorites at the moment.
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
JH: Glamour. It came in the mail. Did you know that a slight majority of women wish they had a pole for pole dancing in their houses? I shit you not. It’s written down so obviously it’s true. Also, it turns out Jennifer Garner saved some children in New Orleans. She’s now a Glamour woman of the year. Finally, a celebrity who gets a little recognition.
SG: Ever do a self portrait? Where is it now?
JH: A gay doctor owns a nude self-portrait I did back when I looked good enough to do that sort of thing. He struck me as a person with enough taste not to buy one based on the high cholesterol version of me. And my former gallery rep owns a small head and shoulders portrait I did with a mask on. In both pieces I have masks come to think of it. That probably means something. I have not done a self portrait in a long time, and unless a specific reason comes about, I probably won’t do another one anytime soon.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
JH: In bed with my wife on mornings she doesn’t have to leave early. When she gets out of bed, Luca the dog replaces her, but that’s not as good because my dog won’t have sex with me even when I compliment her.
SG: Any final words of advice?
JH: Just act natural and hope no one notices.
Additional Link: joshuahagler.livejournal.com
ART: 1) the Kingdom, 2) Prayers like Two Black Wells, 3) God has only to Wink and the Earth is Pregnant with Jokes, 4) Leviathan Disco, 5) Distant Past Sprawls Languid and Wasteful into Present Future, 6) Portrait of an American Christ
Topics: Artist Interviews, California Art Scene, Paintings, San Francisco Art Scene |
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