What is your primary medium?
My primary medium now is digital for sure. It's evolved a little bit and I guess digital and traditional pen and ink are probably the two I jump between.
What got you interested in art?
You know, the first pivotal moment I remember thinking that art could be something really important to me was probably in sixth grade. I had this teacher, he was old, unfortunately I'm sure he's not alive today, but he always smelled of cigarettes and cigars and he was a big fly fisherman. One day he had us tie flies and they ran out of the equipment to do it so I decided I would just sketch one. He noticed it and was like, “Wow, you're really good at art.” I think it was the first time that anyone had ever even recognized that maybe there was a talent there or a or a passion. For some reason it just stuck in my head. I think it's the first time I realized it's something I like to do.
What gets you out of bed in the morning to create something?
Well, this is gonna sound so dark, like, emo artist of me. But there is something that's real inside of me that needs to be fulfilled with being creative and I feel like it also drains very quickly so I need to constantly keep dumping creative production into it to kind of keep that fulfilled. It’s attached to my mental well being, where if I'm creating constantly I seem to be happier and if I hit a block or go a couple days without creating, my mood swings will definitely dictate that.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Inspiration wise, I grew up watching a lot of cartoons, kind of as my babysitter. I remember watching Ninja Turtles or Fred Flintstone and then trying to draw those eyes, or, this is how a turtle shell looks. That sort of evolved into Ren and Stimpy, which I think is one of my favorite inspirations along with like Garbage Pail Kids. So I would take a lot of images that they would create and then try to recreate it and even sort of Frankenstein them together to make my own artwork.
What has it been like for you to support yourself with art?
I mean, I don't take it for granted. Making art for a living and being able to have a decent lifestyle is something that first off, takes a ton of work. But it also takes a little bit of luck I think. I've had a lot of great mentors in my life. I've had a lot of great opportunities. But even with all that stuff, you have to deliver. I feel like being able to do art for a living and consistently for a long time, I think you have to be consistent yourself as a business person and making sure that you're running yourself like a business. You're giving accurate quotes, you're hitting these deadlines, your relationship with the client is good and professional. I think that's the only way I've been able to do it is by maintaining good relationships and professional ones.
Are there opportunities you've had in Boise you might not have had other places?
To be an artist here, I feel really, I guess lucky, in a sense. I think we're still in that medium-sized town stage, which 10 years ago, I would have said small, but we're growing pretty rapidly. So to have roots here creatively from being a kid and making those relationships and sort of getting in on these cultural things that Boise has, you know, I remember doing art for the Boise River Festival, which a lot of people probably don't even remember, whether it's the Hyde Park Street Fair, or, I've sort of embedded myself in the community and the culture that surrounds it. So I do think there's opportunity in Boise and I kind of take issue with people saying that Boise's art scene is broken or that there's no buyers, there's no one that supports artists. I mean, the internet's available. You know what I mean? I love doing art for people here locally, but that only probably accounts for 60% of the work I do. A lot of it is from out of state or even without boundaries through the internet. It's people that have found my Instagram, or social media, or word of mouth that travels through those avenues.
Did you go to school for art or are you self taught?
Self taught for sure. I had a really great high school teacher, Miss Shanafelt. And one of the things that stood out with Miss Shanafelt was, you know, I kind of phoned in my art stuff in high school. I would slack off in class, I wouldn't do a great job, the end. I was a horrible student so I really needed art and PE to help my GPA, because in all my other classes I was near failing. I remember going up to the front of the class and her letting me know that she was going to give me a C on my report card. It was sort of devastating because I was like, come on, I need this grade. That was the first person I respected in the art world that looked at me and said, “You're better than this. If you take this seriously and work to your potential, you can get better grades.” So that was another teacher that kind of helped me pivot and guide myself in the right direction.
How long have you been doing art professionally?
I think professionally is the debatable word there. I feel like I've been doing art for as long as I can remember. Art for people that are specifically asking, like, I need this logo, I need this illustration, I would say seriously for maybe 15 years. The longer I do it, the more I think I like it. There's a certain challenge to doing art someone needs from you within certain parameters. I can do art all day long for myself and it is very fulfilling. But I feel like at that point you're just trying to impress yourself. I think there's a bigger challenge to say, here's someone coming from an industry that you don't even understand, they're trying to tell you they need this thing and then you have to take the responsibility of being like, I'm gonna take your money and your ideas and I'm gonna give you back something that's going to further your mission, or your company.
Is it easier for you to create for yourself or for a client?
Oh, that's a hard question. I think the last time I had a body of work that was purely for myself and for no reason at all, was a show at the VAC I did. God it even seems like last week, but I think it was something like 15 years ago. It was me and Rick Walter and this was all work that I had in a closet that I'd been doing for years for no reason. It was all stuff that I was dealing with through depression, or through some life event. I went to thrift stores and bought a bunch of old frames and spray painted them black and that was my art show. I think there were close to 60 or 80 pieces of work in that show. It was so cool to show in a gallery setting, but it did something to me where after I sold a bunch of pieces, something changed. I felt like from then on I was making art to sell. And it's kind of this weird teeter-totter with me because I know that it's such a shitty thing for an artist to say “I'm making art to make money” and it's kind of frowned upon. So I battle myself with that. But I don't think I've created art just for straight up, no one's ever gonna see this, this is me mentally dumping creatively since then. I feel like I've got a style that people recognize where I can insert a lot of personal creativity into a logo or an illustration or an event poster where I can get that creative outlet. But I don't remember the last time I made a piece that was purely for just myself.
Why is art important?
Art to me, is everything. If I can't make art work, then I have to seriously rearrange some things in my life. I mean, I've sort of put all of my eggs in this art basket and I don't know what I would do without it. That's like the personal answer for it. I don't know how art isn't important. I mean, even if it pisses you off, or if it makes you feel at peace, or whatever it is. I go back and forth so often on things like, what is art? And I don't think it's for anyone to say. I think if there's certain things that other people call art, where I look at it, I'm like “I don't get it, that's not art to me” but because someone else thinks it is I can't take that away from them. It's like someone's music preference. You know, when you show someone a song and you're like, isn't this the best song ever? And they're like, ehhh. I mean, It's so wild and I don't like when people claim that they know what art is or like, why it is. Because I think it's very personal.
Can you tell me a little about the books you’ve been making?
A While Ago in Idaho is a book series that I'm working on with an Idaho historian. I had this idea that really goes back to elementary school where, again, I was a horrible student, and these teachers would dump so much information on you in a way where, at least for my learning style, it would just go right over my head. I don't know if it wasn't interesting or if it didn't entertain me that second but it just didn't resonate. I didn't hold on to the information. I started working with Amber Bierele, and she'll correct me on this later, but she's somewhat of a manager or director of Idaho historical sites. She's brilliant and every time I hang out with her I ask her, what's going on with this building? Or what happened with this person? And she knows the answer to it. So I pitched the idea of like, “What if we made an Idaho history book, but it was really weird stuff, the stuff that you're not gonna learn in school.” I mean the stuff you learn in school, Oregon Trail, or like those Idaho facts, they're important, they're very important. But for a kid like me, I needed something a little more exciting to get me going down that road, to almost trick me into learning something. So we set out to find all these really weird stories and historical facts about Idaho and made a book out of it. We're trying to expand that into interactive maps and teaching guides, and give Idaho kids a new source or something that will excite them a little easier than what's been done. And I'm not bashing on any teachers or their history curriculum, I just think there's a more fun way to teach it.
You just came out with the second book?
Yeah. So we just came out with tour #2, we call them tours. It's 12 new Idaho locations. It'll tell you where it happened in Idaho, when, and what that fact is. There's alien stuff in there that can be confirmed historically. There's Idaho myths, there's a lot of ties to World War One and World War Two. Parachuting beavers, dinosaurs, I mean, when you start digging into the weird stuff that happened here, it gets pretty bizarre. It's pretty awesome.
How far do you plan to take the books?
What we found out from searching for really weird facts about Idaho is that there are a tonof them. We have to play in the parameters of, it needs to be kid friendly. If we went adult friendly, there'd be a million books, but it's very inappropriate and probably history that Idaho doesn't want to repeat for sure. But as far as kid history goes and just like fun, Idaho history for adults, we have plans to do the third one. We're starting that in about a month. We're partnering with the Idaho association of museums and basically what we're gonna do is find 24 museums throughout Idaho and they're going to tell us the weirdest thing they have in their collection. So this one will be a little bit of a detour but it'll still be like, if you want to go to northern Idaho to this museum, you can find this really crazy thing that they have in there.
How important is having a space to create in?
I didn't know how important it was before going freelance. I worked at an agency and I was in an office downtown and didn't realize how important it is to leave your personal home space to go to a professional workspace until I left that agency job, came home, tried to work inside the house and realized you almost need a space that that helps you think creatively and somewhere where you can sit for eight or 12 or 14 hours on a project and not be antsy or distracted. So having a studio space that's mine and that people know, especially my family, when I'm in here, I'm on air, Do Not Disturb, is I think paramount for sure.
Is there anything you’d like to talk about I haven't touched on?
Well, you know, there is something I've been thinking about recently. Sue Latta, she's a local artist and she's amazing. I don't know if you've heard of her, but she teaches a class at Boise State University which I think should have been taught a long time ago. It's Art and Entrepreneurship and she'll bring in local artists and have them sort of chat about things like, what do you think about making money on art or how you do it? I take questions from these students, and they're like, “I've always wanted to do a label for a beer”, “I've always wanted to do a snowboard graphic”, “I've always wanted to do…” and they're grasping for these certain milestone things to design or to do art around. I remember being there, but I think the other question they need to be asking themselves is, what CAN’T I make really cool? I do contract work for a vertical agency that only does stuff for car washes. For anyone creative they're like, the last place I want to end up doing creative stuff for would be a carwash. Some of the coolest and I think most fun work I've done is for car washes. Some of them are in Florida, East Coast, California. We're taking an industry that doesn't really focus on creative stuff and being creative forward. We're introducing that to them and it's been awesome. I feel like everyone thinks they need to end up at an agency. I need to work for Nike, I need to work for whatever it is. These grandiose companies. Take a step back and realize that almost everything in every industry needs something that's more creative, more engaging to customers, more engaging to the industry itself.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who went to art school is that you don't learn how to market yourself and network. You come out of school with artistic skills but the business side of education tends to be lacking.
I think that's an interesting point. I've almost flipped it to where I focus first on “How do I run a business the way I want to run a business” and then “How do I make the art for it?” Now I consider myself a commercial artist and illustrator or designer, and less an artist. I put it in the category of like, I am making great art for no particular end to it. I'm not making it for someone, no one sent me this idea, it's not a commissioned piece. So for me, acting like the best business person I can and making sure people can find me online, that people can contact me if they need to. That I allow them into my creative process. That's how I'm living off of this, you know, if you're this artist locked in a closet and you're so dark and so deep and no one can get a hold of you to do art, the chances of you making a living on that are pretty slim. So I do tend to try to follow some really good business practices.
Do you think art is something you will ever stop doing?
I don't think I can stop. I think it's part of my mental health. My wife lives in a different world where she has a very corporate job and it's very interesting for me to watch and compare and to realize that I just couldn't handle that. I just can't. I mean, the simple answer is I could never stop doing this as long as my hands and my eyes work and even if they didn't, I'd probably find a different outlet you know, make some really ugly pottery or something. No, I just, there's no way I could stop. It's like a really good piano player, or a really good guitar player. People say, “Oh, it must be so great, you're so lucky to have these talents” like, those people work on that stuff every day. It becomes like part of them. The number of days I have not created something or thought about creating something since I was a kid, I could probably count on two hands. I just have to. My wife makes me sometimes. She’s like, “Go in your shed and make something” because I'm being an asshole. That's kind of how it goes.