Monkeys on my back - The Art of Jeremy Szuder
click image to watch video
Jeremy Szuder: Monkeys on My Back
Interview / Review by Jonathan Myers
Jeremy Szuder is a busy man. Looking over his bio on his website ( www.szuder.com ) we can see that he has had his hand in many artistic endeavors. Los Cincos, Miss Derringer and the Syncopation are a few of the bands Jeremy has played in. He is a prolific writer. And the boy can paint.
I bought my first Szuder piece a few years back, and it still hangs prominently on my wall. When I returned to Los Angeles after a sojourn in San Francisco, I hooked up with Jeremy to talk about art, music, and his new solo show, Monkeys on My Back: Recovering Hipster, with pieces showing at Monkeyhouse Toys in Silverlake. The show ran from August 5 to August 31, 2006. Pieces are still available for order via Jeremy’s website (www.szuder.com).
Jeremy’s art is a mixture of styles – pen and ink, graffiti inspired stencils, psychedelic images, and so much more. Topics range from paintings of your favorite indie hipsters, like members of Gogogo Airheart, to William S. Burroughs, Tom Waits, and more. But Jeremy doesn’t pigeonhole himself into solely portraiture – his images really run the gamut.
Zoot – as Jeremy is known to many of his friends, and I participated in an email interview. Below are the questions and responses:
________________________________________________________
DearLittlePony (DLP): Jeremy, your show looked to be a huge success when I stopped by. You mentioned that you were trying to make art affordable for everyone and I noticed pieces as low as $20 at the show. Why did you take this approach?
Jeremy Szuder (JS): I honestly feel that art should be accessible to everyone, not just celebrities and big time moneymakers. I know a lot of people who enjoy owning original art. It is something that people trust in, it is something that they look at every single day. I think great art speaks to people and sort of helps them with their daily lives, in good times and bad times. If artists can learn to accommodate the budgets of common working folks then we are expanding the art market and not making it a stereotypical rich mans hobby. Of course, it’s tough to know how low you can price your works without being too inexpensive, but that is all part of learning the market and understanding where your niche is.
DLP: You’ve worked with a lot of artists over the years, and notably, recently played music with Liz McGrath. Do you find that art, that is visual art, translates into music? How does your art, or the art of your band mates, influence the sounds you produce?
JS: Yeah, I played drums in a band called Miss Derringer with Liz for a year or so. I enjoyed the experience and had a great time doing it. We recorded one full length album for Sympathy for the Record Industry, which was the same label my old band, Los Cincos / Syncopation was on for ten years or so. As far as visual art influencing sound, for me I think it is the other way around. I always have music playing while I am making art. I play music rather loud and allow the vibrations to penetrate the entire space of my studio: the canvas, the paints, everything. I do believe that sound soaks into the artwork. So I am very conscious of that, and allow it to happen at all times. To turn actual art into music is a bit tricky, and I am sure that there are people who have taken this approach. Sound creates colors and images always, and I try to harness those visions, like an antennae, and retransmit them back onto the surface. A person could actually set a canvas up against a loud speaker with paint loosely applied and the sounds would push the paints around into a pattern of some sort, but if you put a microphone up to a painting, it might not make much of a sound.
DLP: Focusing on your paintings, you have expanded into some new territory, namely the toys you have created for this show. How did you get into working with Dunnys?
JS: The whole toy thing is getting huge right now and I dare say it, the custom toy is soon to become the new canvas for artists. My artwork had sort of just lined up with the inclusion of the toy, my own works having a very animated sort of Hello-Kitty-meets-Picasso-on-acid approach. I also work very closely with portraiture, and when I started to see how other artists were customizing toys I knew it was something I should take a crack at. I treat blank toys like a skeleton, with which I allow myself to stretch my own skin over. It’s like breathing life into a three dimensional object. You can hold it, it is slightly more tangible. I honestly feel that there is going to be a lot more custom toys popping up from the underground by tons of artists in the near future. I’m already working on a few new customs for a group show at Monkeyhouse Toys in November called Delicious Vinyl. I am also working on a few toys for Thinkspace gallery as well.
DLP: Which pieces hold the greatest significance to you? Care to elaborate?
JS: Every piece I make is a part of me; it’s like having little children. They find new homes and the art talks to the owners and new relationships are built. I have a connection to all my pieces since they all bear my fingerprint in one way or another. I don’t hang on to too many of my own pieces, but there are a few that I have painted for my wife, Whitney, that are part of our permanent collection. It seems like the pieces that are very hard for me to finish are usually the ones I hold close and dear, because they may have really taken a lot of emotion and effort to finish. I still hang onto a few of those. But usually, I like to set my paintings free into the world, my job has been done, they have to go out into the world and prove themselves at that point.
DLP: What does the future hold for your work?
JS: When I finished up the Monkeys on my Back show, I had a brief revelation. All of a sudden I had somehow figured out a way to work all the different mediums and ideas into one cohesive piece of art. So all of the paintings I am now working on have a much different approach, look, and feel to them. I am very excited about all the new pieces I am now working on and they will be making their debut throughout the year and into my next solo art show which will be in September of 2007 at Monkeyhouse Toys in Silverlake, CA. I also have a show I will be in with John Gill, Sophia Pottish, and Blinkey in San Diego that is in the works. I’m also hoping to do some more collaboration art with both John Gill and Poor Al. I don’t really want to give too much away on my newest paintings, but I hope people are gonna dig where I’m going with it. Who knows- I’m kind of hoping to quit my day job someday and make art full time. That is the ultimate dream.
posted by Brian Tipton @ 10:11 PM
0 Comments
