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Gerald Davis: So what is preoccupying you these days? Jared Buckhiester: I’ve just been making work and enjoying my summer. Finally signed up for Netflix and been working my way through old movies I’ve wanted to see. Also, I just started taking classical ballet at the Alvin Ailey School, which has been surprisingly satisfying. GD: Ballet is great. Lynn Swan swears by it. He said it was essential to his football game, made him more graceful, you know? |
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Jared Bruckheister is an artist who lives in New York and Gerald Davis is an artist who lives in Los Angeles. NY Arts introduced them to each other and asked them to have the following conversation over email.
Gerald Davis: So what is preoccupying you these days?
Jared Buckhiester: I’ve just been making work and enjoying my summer. Finally signed up for Netflix and been working my way through old movies I’ve wanted to see. Also, I just started taking classical ballet at the Alvin Ailey School, which has been surprisingly satisfying.
GD: Ballet is great. Lynn Swan swears by it. He said it was essential to his football game, made him more graceful, you know?
I’ve been trying to figure out how to paint a good cloud the past couple days. For some reason I never learned how, and other painters make it look so effortless. Like on Bob Ross—it looks like clouds are shooting out of his brushes. I don’t want a labored-looking cloud.
JB: Oh, so you’re painting! I’m avoiding that step towards painting; I decided to learn how to cast porcelain. I’ll get to painting soon though. For the cloud maybe you should try two colors only and see how that works. I’ve just drawn clouds, and perhaps they are labored. I always thought of “labored” as kind of a nice way of being honest about what I am and am not capable of. Do you like Frank Frazetta, the old fantasy artist? He could paint a good cloud. Dark, dark clouds.
GD: I guess Frazetta is cool, but for me it’s like he’s too good at drawing or something. Like he blew everyone away in illustration school and it gave him a big head. It reminds me of those kids in school who could draw superheroes really well, and they thought they were great artists but it was just because they read How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way.
But Frazetta is nice and loose with the paint here and there. I think that’s the best place to get with painting, where you use it so much that it’s just like you’re drawing with the paint. Is the porcelain casting an extension of your drawing? Or just a different thing, like ballet…. Or perhaps the ballet is an extension of your drawing?
JB: Just to explain my connection with Frazetta, Conan comics and fantasy art was kind of my first porn. You know ballet is something I wanted to do in North Georgia as a kid, and my parents warned me that I’d be the only boy…. Well I’m doing it now! I did some drawings once inspired by a film still I found from an after-school special called The Special Gift. That’s what reminded me that I ever wanted to do ballet.
I’m kind of in a place where I spent three years sitting still in front of paper making work. The drawings became too precious as they got more developed. It’s intense having to stay so present and be so cautious when finishing a piece. Working in porcelain is definitely an extension of the drawings. Sculpting is more forgiving in a way, and the process that follows the actual making of the model is so manual and mathematic that it’s like meditation, a break. It feels right for me right now.
GD: Ugh! I haven’t taken a shit in 4 days! What to do? It always happens when I travel; just went up to Big Sur. Ever been? I’m calling it an “art research” trip…that way it’s all a write-off. Booyahh!
JB: No, never been to Big Sur.
GD: Oh man it’s beautiful. I won’t bore you with too many details…. But one night I stayed in this hotel where I learned there had been a murder/suicide in 2003, so there was an air of creepiness to it all, but it was beautiful there. And the place was run by all of these really weathered-looking woods people…everything was really homemade. I wish I had taken more pictures of that place. Do you take photographs when you’re planning a project, or do you find stuff randomly?
JB: Wow, that hotel sounds great. The people sound like guys at the Moore Hardware in North Georgia.
Some of my photos are a result of finding something I want to document, like prom pictures. Those are from a long time ago, though, and not really me anymore. The "Last House on the Left” pictures are a combination of travel pictures, family photos, and portraits made at a haunted house run by the Boy Scouts. Are you making many pictures in Big Sur?
GD: I always work from memory. I like to let things settle in my brain and decide what I really think about them. Ever see Lost Highway? There’s a great line in there about preferring how things are remembered rather than how they really were. Your watercolors and drawings look to be in this vein. I love to see what’s in people’s heads, and the struggle to communicate it. Something from someone’s head, translated in their own strange hand, to me it’s so special. Like James Ensor said, he much prefers to see where artists go wrong with drawing, rather than where they go right. What are you after when you draw?
JB: Thought you might be taking pictures for yourself, not as reference. I like that you draw from memory. It’s more powerful for me when it’s done this way. All of my drawings come from my head as well, most scenes are referenced from places from my childhood, furniture, clothing, hairstyles….
Sometimes I use photos when I reference animals or cars though. As for what I’m after; it’s satisfaction. I work on something until it feels right to me. This moment is totally self indulgent and perfect. I often don’t think a drawing is good or is finished until it makes me laugh, although humor is not what I’m trying to convey—mostly it’s acceptance for the different parts of myself. This laughter kind of ensures that. Does that make sense?
GD: Absolutely. Humor is a guide for me. If I can’t help laughing at something, it has an undeniable power. Which reminds me, do seniors really rule at sucking dick?
JB: That wasn’t so much a statement of truth as a symbol of how it felt to be forced to sit through those years with people totally pumped on being seniors. I personally don’t think I ruled at sucking cock as a senior. It took a few more years to develop that skill. You?
GD: It’s just nice to know that as a senior, you rule.
