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Steve Lafreniere: Who are the men in these drawings? Jeff Davis: They are more symbolic than anything, but even what I loosely identify them with will sometimes shift within a single drawing. I do think of them as archetypal, though, and as me. SL: The totem-pole clusters of trees, figures, and cartoon faces are like sentences or paragraphs. JD: That’s how I think of them. But usually at the beginning I don’t have an idea of what they’re going to say. I start working and whatever comes out does. I end up developing vocabularies of images and have to work with that syntax and grammar. One thing proceeds from another. |
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Steve Lafreniere is a writer and editor in western New York state and Jeff Davis is a New York-based artist.
Steve Lafreniere: Who are the men in these drawings?
Jeff Davis: They are more symbolic than anything, but even what I
loosely identify them with will sometimes shift within a single
drawing. I do think of them as archetypal, though, and as me.
SL: The totem-pole clusters of trees, figures, and cartoon faces are like sentences or paragraphs.
JD: That’s how I think of them. But usually at the beginning I don’t
have an idea of what they’re going to say. I start working and whatever
comes out does. I end up developing vocabularies of images and have to
work with that syntax and grammar. One thing proceeds from another.
SL: You told me that their origins are a bit embarrassing…
JD: At the time I began doing them, a few years ago, I was having
amazing sex. Mind-blowing, body-dissolving sex, where you don’t know
where your body ends and the other person’s begins. It was
transformative. I was also going through a lot of internal changes in
my life. The sex made me feel really human and present in my body.
These drawings came out of that, and also somehow made me aware of my
own mortality. Since then I’ve brought other concerns to that original
impulse.
SL: I’ve noticed there’s less detail now.
JD: I’ve always wanted to reduce them from sentences to ideograms.
All the ideas would be squished into one central figure. That figure
would have an entire vocabulary inside it.
SL: What about predecessors? I see Guston in there, but then George Herriman and psychedelic artists like Rick Griffin.
JD: You know, I don’t really think in that way. I suppose obvious
people like William Blake and the Symbolists, but I’d rather be
associated with [19th-century poet] Edward Carpenter, who wasn’t an
artist at all. I once read an interview with Alan Ginsberg where he
said that he’d slept with someone who had slept with Edward Carpenter,
who had slept with Walt Whitman. There’s a book entitled Light from
Guru to Disciple and that’s what I thought of. It’s like passing the
torch; a whole lineage of hermit intellectuals. That’s what I’m more
interested in.
SL: In your candles, there’s the same melding of faces as in the drawings …
JD: Actually, the fact that they relate to the drawings is
accidental. At the time I wanted to make something totally different. I
was walking to meet a friend and I suddenly thought, “I want to make
giant candles.” I then set about figuring out how to do it.
SL: You make them yourself using latex Halloween masks, but what’s the method?
JD: It’s like pattern-making. I have to figure out how to join all
these complex spheres. To make the mold I cut the masks apart and sew
them together with linen thread, and cut them back apart and re-sew
them until they fit. I waterproof them, layer them with duct tape, and
then stabilize them with wooden dowls.
SL: The surfaces are remarkable, especially as you must have to work quickly with the wax.
JD: (laughs) I have turkey basters, hot plates, double boilers, and
a huge industrial wax-melter. I squirt the selected colors into the
mold one at a time. Let that cool and then do another layer, and
another.
SL: How long are we talking about?
JD: With the bigger ones, from the time I pour the first wax to the
end is about six straight hours. I’m touching the piece and
manipulating molten wax the whole time. The sewing and cutting takes a
few days.
SL: I know you’re an eclectic music fan. Does that weigh on the work?
JD: I’m even more obsessive about songs now than when I was an
adolescent. And the way I make work is the same way that I respond to
music. Songs are controlled little three-minute emotional journeys that
you can take over and over. I’m not some kind of emotionalist savant,
but to me that’s more interesting than trying to pretend that a small
art world gesture of mine is going to overthrow capitalism.
