Enameled panels in John’s backyard
What is your primary medium?
What I'm known for is enameling. Worldwide.
How long have you been doing enamel?
I began in 1974. It was a competition to do a piece on the exterior of the Boise Art Museum and surprisingly, I won the commission to do it. I proposed to do it in the automotive enamel they put on cars, which is paint. I thought, “Well, it'll last a while.” Harold Balazs was one of the judges from the Spokane area. He was an analyst and sculptor and there were two other judges. They chose me based on my little airbrush example. He said a better enamel is porcelain enamel. Why don’t you try that? And so he said, go up to Seattle, work at Pioneer Enameling, they'll show you how to do this. So I went up there, I learned about it, and then I asked them if they could do it. I had $5,000 and they said, “Oh, what you want to do will cost $10,000.” So I thought, I've got to do most of this myself. I came back and I designed the thing, blew it up full scale and cut stencils. Bought a spray gun and a compressor and went back to Seattle and I did the piece in about two weeks. It's on the Julia Davis side of the art museum. And it's been there for 40 some years. Yeah, it looks just about the same.
What got you interested in doing enameling?
Well, porcelain enamel is a utilitarian kind of enamel. If you have a stovetop, it's porcelain enamel. The interior of your water heater probably has enamel. It was considered an industrial medium. Most of the other enamels you call vitreous enamel and it's used by jewelers and other artists, small scale that kind of stuff. I thought porcelain enamel was just like poster paint and I thought, it's got a lot of possibilities that people aren't exploring at this point. So I pursued that and came to it with no knowledge of what couldn't be done. I discovered a lot of ways of working and the predominant method that I've come up with is granular spray, along with some other ways of working with porcelain enamel.
What is it about teaching that kept you doing it?
When I was an illustrator in Detroit, kids would come in for summer jobs from the University of Michigan. They'd get a job cutting mats, you know, doing those kinds of things. And they'd come into my studio area, which was about the size of this studio, and I'd be working on these car things and doing all kinds of illustration. They’d say “In our classes we never learned any of this kind of thing!” They were really interested and I was teaching them. I was doing my work, but I was teaching on the job. Later on I thought I could go into college teaching, because these are college students. I ended up coming here to Boise State.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Well, I have a pretty good imagination. I also love nature, so I came to Idaho. I had a choice of a couple other jobs. I thought, “I'm from Michigan, there's not a lot of real high mountains here.” I thought, “I'd really like to go to a northern place that had all this kind of subject matter.” I came here and the first thing I did was examine the area and got out and did some plein air work. Later on when I was teaching, I'd take my students out and we'd go here and there and meet up in the canyons and different places. It was really a camaraderie thing.
What drives you to get out of bed in the morning and come out here to work?
Actually, I don't get going until the afternoon, because I'm a night owl. I can't help myself, I’ve just got to do this. But I switch from one medium to another, so that I don't get bogged down and tired of any one thing. I do water color, I learned how to paint using gouache, I use oil. I use water mixable oil and I wish they would have come up with that earlier, I would have had my students use that. We mainly used acrylic, and the majority of my work is acrylic. I love acrylic because it's so versatile. It can go from thin washes to thick paint, to glazing, to detail, to spontaneity. So, my ideas, they just kind of come from drawing. Doing a lot of drawing. Over the years I've got sketchbooks full of drawings with potential paintings and I still use those.
Can you tell me about the process of putting together your book?
Well, first of all, you have to afford to do it. At first I looked into it and found somebody in town that would do it for maybe $30,000, so I kind of backed off from it. About that time my wife died and I thought, “Oh, mortality, I better shape up if I'm gonna do a book.” Bob, an artist who taught at Boise State, I went to visit him and he said, “You better do a book no matter what it takes. If you have a piece of land, sell it and do the book.” It just happened that one of my former students was in Portland and she is a graphic designer. So I asked her what it would cost for her to do the book for me and she gave me a price I was able to afford. Then I got a writer in town who was willing to do the writing. So maybe it cost me about 10,000. On the front of the book is an example of my tremor enameling. At the turn of the century I noticed my handwriting was really going bad. My sister said “What's the matter with you? You can't write a decent letter.” I said, “I don't know.” I went to a neurologist, he said, “You have an essential tremor. If you were a piano player, you'd have to give up because you wouldn't hit the right keys.” I said, “Well, it's not going to stop me.” So I made use of that tremor. It's a gradual thing. It makes my head shake a little bit. But the worst thing is, it stopped me from drawing. I couldn't do detail anymore. But the kind of drawing I could do with it, from the tremor itself, came up with these forms that couldn't be imagined. So I just let my hand do the drawing and then put it into a computer, and then cut it out with a plasma cutter and then I do the enamel. So thank you tremor for doing some of my art.
That's great perseverance. How important is it for you to have a space to create in?
I've worked in a lot of different spaces. At one point I was behind the furnace in a big old house. I was working on a screened in porch and then It got to be 20 below so I went down behind the furnace, but I was still doing stuff on the living room floor. So it's important to have it. The main thing is to have your equipment where it should be so that when you need it, it's there. And your supplies.
What's the story behind your “Kilnmaster”?
I built it because I couldn't afford a big kiln. I thought, “Okay, I'll go to the high school and learn how to weld.” I took a class in welding and bought the welder, bought the materials and built the thing. It cost me about $250 in materials and free labor. I built it over Christmas break. I had a book about kilns so I knew some basic stuff. I built it, turned it on and, usually the little kiln that I had made noise when you turn it on because the elements get brittle. Well I turn it on, no sound. I thought oh, it's not working. I spent $25 to get an electrician to turn it on and tell me what's the matter with it. He put his hand in there, turned it on and said “It's working perfectly.” So it cost me another $25. But it's been going ever since and I've taken the thing up north to do workshops, taken it to Boise State. I’ve taught a lot of people how to use or do enamels, large scale things. I have plenty of interest, but not enough support from the college, so I supply all the materials.
Why do you think art is important?
I think it's beauty and flowers and clouds and trees. People need this sort of thing. If they can control it by doing their own art, they can then satisfy this urge, this desire. When I was about four I made a little card for my mom for Mother's Day. That was my first work of art I guess. During World War 2 I drew airplanes all the time. I also made little airplanes. I did a lot of carving. I carved little boats. I just couldn't help myself. I was terrible with math. I just couldn't do math. My dad would get frustrated. He taught trigonometry and calculus and he was a school principal and a civil engineer. He gave up on me. I'm not going to amount to anything. He suggested I go into the greenhouse business and we built a greenhouse. But he only had it for a year and he died. So I was on my own at 16. I had a job in a store and I didn't like that at all, except when I decorated the windows. I thought, “I need to go to art school”, because that's the only thing I could really do. So I went to Detroit, I got a job and went to art school.
Do you think art school was good for you?
I went to art school for about two months. I lost my day job, so I couldn't afford to go to school anymore. I got a job in a printing place and I learned all about the printing business. I was working with airbrush artists, Retouchers. All the art, everything you see was retouched with airbrush. And so I learned from these guys, and they provided an opportunity to move on to a larger studio with a lot of illustrators, painters, and real competent artists. I had that job for a year and then I started doing freelance. In the evenings I did freelance and made enough money to equal what I was making all week. So just being around other students and other artists is the way I learned. I learned on the job, but I went back to art school at night when I could afford to and did life drawing and worked with some pretty good students. The whole thing just evolved and it was a positive thing all together. I always told my students, make sure you take some good artists, believe what they're telling you, don't question them. Gain everything you can from them. And also be diverse. Because you'll never know what opportunities are gonna come up in the future. Diversity is what I did, and I think a lot of my students took that to heart and learned a lot of different things so that they are still in the business.
What inspired you to teach?
Well, like I said, people were coming to the Howard Art Studio in Detroit from the University of Michigan. They weren't getting what they wanted and I was teaching them. So that inspired me to go on and I was thinking, well, I'll teach in grade school, but I didn't get into the program. My teachers were about my age. They said, “Well, why don't you become a college teacher?” So I went ahead, and in six years I got my four year degree and then I got a two year degree. I also taught a year when I was a senior at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. I was in a summer show and one of the guys in the show was a teacher at Ferris State University, he said, “Why don't you stop by and talk to the department head, show him your work.” So I did and they called me up while I was still a senior. They needed somebody really bad. They had somebody coming from California, but his wife decided she didn't want to have to deal with snow. So they needed somebody real bad. I didn't have any degrees but I had the ability. I was teaching painting, drawing, some design and perspective. That was my first experience, then I immediately applied to graduate school and did that. In the summer I got my undergraduate degree. In those six years I got an undergraduate, graduate and a year's worth of teaching and then everything opened up. I went on to teach fine art and I applied here and there. Dr. Peck at Boise State called me up and he said, “You want the job?” I said, “Okay.” So that's how that was settled. The next day a college in Colorado called me up and they said, “You're our number one pick! Do you want the job?” I said, “Well, I took a job yesterday teaching in Idaho.” He said, “Well, the fishing is a lot better there.”
What would you say to somebody just starting out their career?
I would say focus on your art. If it's a guy, don't focus on girls at this point and vice versa. Just really improve your art and then save your money, go to college, learn what you can, but work constantly. Go out and plein air paint. Find people that are also interested and they'll encourage you and you'll encourage them. My whole life starting at five years old, has been art. And I never had, except for that store job, to work elsewhere. I've been in art and it's paid off for me.
Are there opportunities you feel you've had in Boise that are specific to here?
Well, I’ve gotten a couple of grants. I guess because nobody else applied for them for one thing. I was aggressive enough to go to the gal who was running it, and got a grant from the Western States Arts Foundation and that led to a showing in the Smithsonian. I got to talk to Joan Mondale and met Walter and was in the first Western States Biannual, I represented Idaho. By being in Idaho I was in the newspaper a whole lot of times, people would come around and take pictures and they would write about me. I was in the Statesman off and on as a new guy, you know, a grass is greener guy. But after a while, that kind of wore out and then people that you knew move on and pretty soon nobody remembers you. So, that's life you know? Even by talking to you, it kind of regenerates me. Here I am again.
John using a hairdryer on a piece before firing it in his kiln
My goal with this whole project is to shine a light on who's out here.
Right, and that's really important. I think, sure, you can get to know the wheeler dealers, but having somebody legitimate that's willing to show what you're doing, to expose you, to re-expose you. Another thing I do is I'm on Facebook and I teach there. I get in groups where I know how to do these things, I show them my work. My approach to teaching was to demonstrate, but I also intimidated. I brought my work in and I said “You want to do this kind of stuff? You want to get this good?” I didn't hide the fact that I went through a lot to get to this point. “You're gonna have to do what I did, learn from me and learn from other artists.” You know, what it took with me was the right couple of guys that showed me how to do things. I picked up on it and went with it. So that's my approach, is to do workshops in this little place here. I had a gal from Boston this spring, and another guy from Jackson Hole came in to learn, and there's a lot of people waiting. I can't do it anymore in the heat of the summer. I’ve got people wanting to learn my things.
Is there anything you want to talk about that I haven't asked?
Well, I think people always say, find your niche, and that worked for me, but I have several niches. My first niche was the illustration thing, which I learned on the job being around other artists. And then it's a good idea to get a degree, just in case you want to teach. I know it's really competitive, but if you're really good, you'll get the job. Believe in yourself. Be inventive, innovative. Don't just follow what everybody else is doing. I had a chance to go to New York. I didn't take it. I came to Boise. I'd rather be a big frog in a little pond than vice versa. But then again, some of my friends did go to New York. I have all kinds of great stories about that I won't get into.
Is there anything else you'd like to say?
I think enameling is an area that has a lot of future and potential. It's glass fired on metal. It's a fast technique that is permanent. My sculptures, there's one in Portland and there's one at Boise State, they look the same as ever. It's an exterior medium the way I use it and long lasting. It's out living me, that's for sure. So I think if you're interested in this medium, take Delia Dante, take me, take some of my students that do it.
Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?
Oh, I've thought about it. I've been retired for 20 years and as long as I have energy I can't help but do it. There's so many things I haven't done that I'm continually looking for new ways of working. Like my sand enameling. I thought to mix sand with enamel, fire it, do three dimensional stuff, which isn't being done, and it works. I'm constantly looking for new ways and I've done that with painting too. I put acrylic water based paint over oil. Everybody says you can’t do that. That challenges me and I do it, and I've been doing it for 25 years. The paintings are as good as ever. So, no, I'll never give it up. I'm not that interested in playing golf or doing any of that other stuff. There's too much that art offers that it makes life really significant and enjoyable. What I'm looking for is my ultimate statement, my masterpiece. I'm on the way, yes, but I'll get there. I'm going to be 87, so I'm sticking with it. My sister kept doing little art things up to age 91.