Oddist Jones - Interview by Robbie Brown

The American Artists Gallery Interview 3/10/12

with Oddist Jones...

…on his evolution, his alter-ego, and the supreme pleasure of being censored.

By Robbie Brown, Senior Editor - The American Artists Gallery
 

The first time I saw a work of art by Oddist Jones, I very casually glanced at it and was sure I had just seen a Warhol – I thought he had literally posted a Warhol to his Facebook page. Not uncommon, people do it all the time (*yawn*). When I took a closer look, I realized it was his own self portrait…

That was what seems like forever ago, and I surely don’t remember the exact image – but I do remember that feeling. Like this guy understood the soup can and Marilyn and the Frosted Flakes boxes,  and maybe if I keep watching he’ll try taking it to the next level. So I kept watching and he’s proven to have an edgy aesthetic with an irreverent  reverence for the irreverent – and a measure of warmth so begging to get out that he tempers it with an alter-ego.

The Warhol-esque, Pop Art inspired piece that drew me in disclosed a much more three-dimensional  artist, and as I’ve watched I’ve even seen some Ansel Adams peeking through that doppelganger of his…

I present Oddist Jones.

Robbie Brown: At what point in your life did you realize art was more than a pastime for you?

Oddist Jones: For me that happened at the end of high school. Before then I’d always drawn but in my senior year I began to feel a change, began to put more of myself into what I was drawing or working on. I began to see art as a way to express myself and expand myself. Art was also a way for me to deal with the teen angst and depression I was going through at the time. In that last year of school my art teacher submitted a few of my pieces and I was given the chance to enter into a national congressional art competition. I couldn’t believe it, for me this was the thrill of my life and I quickly started what was to become the drawing I sent. Well a few weeks went by and in the mail I was notified that my piece was rejected due to its subject matter, it dealt with fear of sex as seen through a young woman and it included some nudity and some subtle graphic imagery. Here I was already censored by the government and I was only 17…well for me this was an even bigger rush then having been accepted to the event to begin with. I learned then that art was powerful; it had strength and could really shake things up. This was a major turning point in my life and it was then that I started to really identify with being an artist.

RB: Did you create art as a child? If so, what did you create?

OJ: At an early age I was introduced to comic books - I don’t remember how but it sparked a lifelong love affair with the art form. I remember reading the X-Men, Spider-Man and the Hulk and just staring at the art, the colors in wonder. Wow, thinking back the colors were so vivid then, so bright they excited me [very much], the reds and the bright yellows. I loved it. It wasn’t long before I was tracing heroes and villains fighting it out, and not long after that I started copying the scenes in my own hand. Soon I created my own Superhero, his name was “Dart” and he fought crime in his own comic made by me using an array of different darts that he shot from a special gun he made…I know, I know but hey I was a kid and drawing and writing them got me through a lot dull days growing up as an only child. In my teen years when my music taste changed from radio pop to heavy metal my drawing and painting took on a more gruesome aspect. Skulls replaced heroes and I was using a lot more red in my work. I was also exploring the female form a lot at that time with my pencil *wink*

RB: Do you have a daily work routine? And if so, please describe it.

OJ: What is this work routine you speak of sir and where can I find one???  All kidding aside I don’t, I wish I could get into one but I’ve never been able to stick with one, not for lack of trying - believe me. I’ve tried working before bed, in the morning after waking, setting aside specific times during the day that I would work for designated time periods but no regimen has ever lasted more than a week or two. I have an astounding lack of self-discipline and terrible insomnia so I don’t go to sleep at any given time which keeps me from always being able to wake up at the same time. This has always made it hard to keep to any real schedule. Now I also have two active kids who make it hard to stick [to] a routine - the parents out there will understand that feeling. Basically I work when I can, when I fell like it, when I can sneak away and when everyone’s asleep.

RB: Can you see specific ways your work has evolved over the years through different circumstances?

OJ: The answer to this that comes to mind is that being mostly unemployed since we moved to Florida in 2008 has left me a lot of time to work on art and improve simply by doing. From 2008 till even just today my work has evolved greatly, getting more personal, more dynamic. This circumstance has also come with some hardship. It’s not easy raising two children and paying bills on a single salary so art has helped me immensely to channel some of that hardship into my art and helps me express myself creatively which I find can feed the creative instinct nurturing it. I spent a very, very long time artistically dormant. Through most of my twenties I was more interested in partying than in pursuing art, being a bartender during these years didn’t help that. Then in my early thirties, being a new father I was caught up in the “American Dream” go for the brass ring mentality of capitalism. I started my own business and found myself working ridiculous hours which left me with very little family time and none for artistic pursuits. With all that being said I still always identified as an artist, which in those lean creative years was very frustrating. I did attempt to go back to school in 2001 for graphic design…unfortunately I never finished, however on the bright side I was introduced to Photoshop and this has become one of my main tools through which I express and explore my artistic vision.

RB: What has influenced your work the most?

OJ: Wow, good question. I am influenced by so many different things. Music, the horror genre of movies and literature, pop culture, pop art, erotica, sex - all these things, and I’m sure more that I’m forgetting at the moment - make up who oddest Jones has become and what fuels his artistic drive. I have a dualist personality and Oddist Jones has become a major part of that. He is gritty, dirty and loves loud music and punk rock, but there is another side - a warmer caring person who looks at the world around him and sees beauty in nature, architecture and life being lived. This is the side that expresses himself through photography; this is K Michael Richards, and he is influenced by other cultures, their different [types of] music and styles, by exploring the artistic masters works, by reading Shakespeare and Milton. The two are the same but at the same time very different and I have found that the splitting of the two personas has freed something in me, it’s hard to explain but I feel that this split will only further my work as an artist.

RB: What do you think is the biggest hindrance to creativity?

OJ: Well for me that would be insomnia. I find it so hard to think clearly when I am tired, as I imagine most people do, but with insomnia I am tired often. My insomnia can also lead to bouts of depression that are very hard to work through. I’ve had times where I’ve been awake for up to three days which leaves my irritable and sullen, this leads to a sleeping  jag of up to 14 hours which has me dazed and confused all the next day and sometimes into the next after that. I find it so hard to be creative when I’m like this. It can be a real drag. Worse though is the times of depression, anyone who is prone to these states can tell you it can be a struggle just getting out of bed, so for me work is almost impossible aside from some scribbling in notebooks or doodling on a pad. I know some artist can either work through these are channel them into their work but for me I all but shut down.

RB: When I have a creative block I…

OJ: Don’t work. That’s it. I’ve given up trying to fight through creative blocks. I find when I do I produce work that I’m not happy with which, for me, only prolongs them. I use the time to catch up on other things. Housework that I might have neglected, reading, watching movies - things like that. I might play a little with art, pick up the markers, [and] mess around with Photoshop but nothing serious. I wait it out and find that they don’t really last too long and force it. This approach gives me a chance to miss creating; the whole absence makes the heart grow fonder principle. When I fell like I’m ready, that the block can be worked around I start slow, this is when I usually work on my iconic images, my pop art pieces. The fun subject matter and bright colors usually get the juices flowing again and get me in better mindset.

RB: I’m addicted to…

OJ: Facebook. There I said it. I spend why too much time on it. It’s sometimes time that I should be creating, or cleaning or any number of different things but I love it there. I really like the global aspect of the community, and now with translators you can really talk to anybody in the world regardless of what language they speak. It’s amazing. I also love the fact that I’ve been able to meet so many like-minded people who share the same interests and passions I have. It’s also the home base of the AGG group and it’s one of the things I love most about Facebook these days. [There are] so many talented, artistic individuals, sharing their work and thoughts, creating a community within a community. It’s technology, at its best.

 That’s all I’m going to admit to being addicted to without my lawyer being present.

RB: What are you reading?

OJ: I have a habit of reading multiple books at the same time; it’s part of my scatter-brained split personality charm. As I mentioned before I am a big fan of horror, specifically Zombie horror. Now I don’t mean the voodoo mind controlled zombies of the past. I love the brain eating, flesh tearing living dead. Right now I’m reading a collection of short stories about zombies in a book titled “The Living Dead”. It features some big names like Stephan King and Clive barker and some more obscure authors. It’s great - I would totally recommend it to anyone who is a fan. I’m also a fan of history and non-fiction and am reading a great book about the history of oil; “The Prize”. A great read about the discovery of oil, the race to control it, the fortunes made and lost and the way’s it’s been used to both help and hurt humanity on a global scale. I also like to read passages from Milton’s “Paradise lost” but I have to do that a little at a time, it’s hard reading, but taken in small doses so damn beautiful.

RB: How would you like to be remembered as an artist?

OJ: As a globe-trotting millionaire…just kidding…but not really.

Posted in: