Gary lives in LA. He's preparing for a show in Barcelona on July 3rd and a new book out through Lasp Gasp. He's also won 3 Emmy's for a cartoon he created for Disney a few years back. He's Gary Baseman and he's here.
Creating his self titled "pervasive art" (adding your work to any medium anywhere from canvas to clothing to toys etc) for over the last 2 decades, Gary Baseman is an artist you've got to be familiar with. He's won three Emmy Awards for the cartoon he created for Disney, Teacher's Pet, which was also turned into a feature film in 2004. He also has a show "Knowledge comes with Gas Release" opening on July 3rd in Barcelona @IguaPop Gallery and is about to release a new book "Dying of Thirst" through Lasp Gasp... We had a chance to do this quick web interview featuring some of his newer works and to get a heads up into Gary's current life situation. Say howdy to this very well known "Low Brow" fine artist.
Age? Location? Artistic education?
Age: Old enough to be your father. But young enough to fuck your sister.
Location: The mean streets of Hollywood, if you believe Orthodox Jews are mean, you god damn anti-semite!!
Artistic education: No formal training. I learned it all in my bedroom.
Describe your process of creating a new piece.
I dream. I draw. And I draw again. Then I draw again and again. And I see what stays with me. What gives me meaning. Then I start creating a body of work. Does that make sense?
What materials do you normally work in?
I use what they call "art supplies." Pens, colored pencils for drawings. Paper too. Acrylic paint with brushes for wood panels and canvases. Sometimes bodily fluid. I might spit by accident on my work if I talk. I sometimes drool.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, how would you do it?
Well, I used to describe my work as where the line of genius and stupidity was smudged beyond recognition. I love things that create intellectual curiosity and are moronic at the same time. But if someone asks what I paint, and it all seems to lead to "desire." Desire, longing, lust, control or lack of control. Fuck. I am so out of control...
Or if I was talking to them in a more conceptual context, I would tell them that I use the term "Pervasive Art" do describe my work. Pervasive in the sense of the definition that it is perceived everywhere. My definition of Pervasive Art is that as long as an artist stays true to their esthetic (their personal artistic vision) and has a strong message, they can blur the lines of all media and put there art on anything, from gallery walls, street walls, vinyl toys, fashion, tv, film, internet, phones, skateboards, condoms, a hot girl's ass, a dog's ass, a jackass, anything...
It blurs the lines also of fine art and commercial art. It is a true populous movement. Oops. I think that stranger I was talking to just walked away.
How long have you lived in LA?
Well, I was born and bred in Los Angeles. Actually, the Fairfax District. I best way to give a good mental image of where I was from was that I went to high school with the Red Hot Chili Peppers; and my mom was the head bakery lady at a famous Jewish restaurant named Canters. Eastern European Holocaust survivors meet Punk. Suck my circumcised dick...
I lived there till after college, where I went to UCLA, then moved to the mean streets of NYC for ten years. Mean streets, if you think the Jews who own the publishing industry are mean, you are such a fucking anti-semite!! I came back to LA, to produce an animated TV show. Okay, I am tired about making Jewish jokes. I might be Jewish but I am actually one of the more non-religious people around. I seem to love all religious imagery and icons from Catholicism to Elvisism. Beautiful poetry.
Oh, I love being back in LA.
What do love most about living in LA?
I love that I can go swimming at 4pm in the afternoon in an outdoor semi-olympic heated pool all year round. I love good "molé" sauce. And I love the whole underground LA art movement and all the young art galleries here that are willing to take risks and sell new affordable art. And, of course, the girls.
And my painter friends....Mark Ryden and Marion Peck, the Clayton Brothers, Shepard Fairy, Camille Rose Garcia (well, she moved up north, but I know she and Jeremy will come back), Richard Colmen (okay, he moved to SF too, shit!), Shag, Tim Biskup, Seonna Hong, Jeff Soto, Natalia Fabia, Andrew Brandou and Korin Faught, Souther Salazer, and the list goes on.
If I came out for a visit what would we do/ where would you take me?
I would take you to Dominick's on Sunday evening. I seem to go there every Sunday night. They have a wonderful Sunday Supper special, appetizer, entree, and dessert for $15. And you can get a bottle of their house wine for $10. I usually sit by the outdoor fireplace and sketch and invite my friends to come by and hang. I did it so much that they asked to put my artwork on the wine bottle, so I drew my deer girl, Venison. If you didn't know, Venison is the term for deer meat.
What are you really excited about right now?
I am finishing up a solo show at the IguaPop Gallery in Barcelona on July 3rd. We are also producing a hard cover catalog for the exhibition. And it will be fashion week. There will be parties till 8 in the morning.
Also, my new book, Dying of Thirst, published by Last Gasp, is coming out. It is based on my exhibition at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco titled "I melt in your presence." It will be full of paintings and drawings of my little nymph girls and their imaginary best friends.
When are you the most productive?
I am most productive when there is a damn deadline in my face. Or on a plane where there are not too many distractions. I can get a lot of drawing done.
Favorite trip taken?
I just returned from a week in Buenos Aires where they brought me out for this Urban Art festival. I had an amazing time. About 10,000 attended, I had a speaking engagement and signed about a thousand autographs. And the girls. The girls. They are so beautiful. The Argentinean people really seem to care about living life to the fullest and experiencing happiness.
Music?
Music is really important to me. My staples are the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Tom Waits, and the Beatles Stones.
But my favs that I seem to be listening to are Radiohead, Coldplay, Nirvana and Beirut.
And since Coachella, I have been listening to Calvin Harris and DataRock.
What were you like in high school?
I was a nerdy good kid with a Jewfro who ran Cross Country and Track. I did not kiss a girl till I was 18, nor did I drink, smoke, or take drugs. Back then, I was absolute about everything. Black and White.
I was 5 ft. 2in in my sophomore year and sprouted to 5 ft. 9 1/2 at the end of my senior year.
I wasn't even close to being the smartest, but I probably was the goodest kid.
In my senior year, I was probably awarded almost every award in school from the American Legion Outstanding Student Award to the Principal Awarding me a Special Award for all the art I did for the school. Even, the Mayor of Los Angeles personally handed me Los Angeles City Youth Advisory Council Outstanding Youth Award on the top floor of City Hall....
There was nothing cool about me except I drew everyday.
I used to be good. I am not good anymore.
Upcoming projects and/ or upcoming shows, etc...?
Were you not listening to what I was telling you? I have a solo exhibition in Barcelona on July 3rd titled "Knowledge comes with Gas Release." @IguaPop Gallery. The title is based on me mis hearing the lyrics to one of my favorite David Bowie songs, "Quicksand." He sings "Knowledge comes with Death Release." Death's release. Gas release. What is the difference? In this series of painting, I remove the narrative and concentrate on the iconic nature of my work. I started to experiment with the abstract nature of my "manifestations of desire." these spheres that I paint in the atmosphere of my work.
*List any blogs or other sites you may have your work on or another interview...
I don't know. Let me look at my website for press or just google me, or bloglines.com me...
Is there any other real site other than Fecal Face? You guys do such a nice job.
If your around Barcelona on July 3rd, check out Gary's show Knowledge comes with Gas Release @IguaPop Gallery... Also be on the look out for his forthcoming book from Lasp Gasp titled Dying of Thirst.
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.
The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
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