Carl Moore

This week I met with Memphis artist Carl Moore at Caritas Village. Carl received his BFA and MFA from the Memphis College of Art. In addition to working as a Graphic Designer, Carl curates the art space at Caritas Village and is an established mural artist in the Memphis community. His work has been the subject of countless solo and group exhibitions including;  An American Dream at L Ross Gallery, Portraits and Figures at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Common Ground at Memphis College of Art Alumni Gallery, Inspired Resistance at Crosstown Art Gallery, and Present Tense at Dixon Gallery and Gardens to name a few. Currently, he is working on curating an exhibition for L Ross Gallery, titled The Man's Show which will open in June. He is represented by L Ross Gallery. 

AB: I am a big fan of your work and I really admire, as a fellow painter, how you have developed your own language. I think it is no easy task to portray complex, heavy imagery into these simple forms. I know you are a Graphic Designer. So I am wondering how you arrived at the imagery you are making now, was it more complex visually at one point? 

CM: When I came out of college I actually was a super realist. The graphic design fell in when I went to MCA in the early 80’s. I went as a painter, and still remain a painter, but the ideology back then was you are an artist, you work as an artist, you sacrifice as an artist and that should be your only focus. I like to eat so… and I had a love for graphic design. I had an interest in graphic design, and so I went in to graphic design. In the 80’s illustration was very big and it still is but you know with all the stock imagery now illustration can go back and forth, but coming from that super realism you know air brushing, under-painting, and getting to this point now. I basically wanted to simplify it. I wanted to say everything that you would say in a realistic image but with less…less. I don’t want to say less effort, that sounds like a lazy artist. You know I've always been a big fan of Jacob Lawrence and a lot of the artists in the mid 20’s 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s when they were going towards this abstract theme and they were simplifying things. You know artists like Stuart Davis were expressing jazz in a very simplistic manor. So I loved that and I like color and I wanted to be able to take my statements, make any statement I wanted with a very simple image and so design played a little bit in that because you know I love that discipline of sketching it out, working it out…building your composition, it played a certain part in that but most of my images are still sketched out in detail even when I am putting them on canvas, and then I go in and start taking out sections.

AB: So are you, and this is totally a painters question but are you kind of figuring these images out as you go or do you have a specific image in your head and then you execute it?

CM: Its kind of funny that you ask that because one of the things that they really hated about me in grad school…I actually have titles before I do anything. 

AB: Oh wow 

CM: Right, I sit down…because its almost like writing a book. You know what you want to write about and so I know what I want to do a piece of art about. So I have a book of probably 200, 300 plus titles of work I want to do and I break them down into a body of work, maybe ten or five and I start sketching. So I guess you can say I take the illustrators point of view. I get my subject and I develop it out. 

AB: That is  interesting that it starts with words.

Fireflies, Butterflies and Helicopters

CM: Yea, it starts with words. Well you know I do my research and my observation and then I go… I guess being a quote on quote social painter, its not hard to find subjects now and so I go OK this is in video, this is in the media, but I want to do my interpretation that can stand the test of time no matter when somebody looks at it. I think my most recent new body of work that I started the end of last year was the Rodney King piece. I sketched that piece about 10 or 15 years ago, if not longer, and it just sat in my sketchbook. It was in an old sketch book and I would tear it out when I would move stuff into a new one…images I wanted to keep working with. Then about 2 years ago I just started re-sketching and re-sketching it and of course with his death the meaning changed from what it was and even my idea and the look of it.  I always associate the idea that you are going to do stuff when you are supposed to do it. So with that said, I started sketching it and sketching it, getting it on canvas. You start sketching and take out areas... that one I don’t know what I put so much effort in to it because it went through two or three color changes. You know everything that's in the original sketch that I finalized is not in the final painting, and I even went so far as to scan it in, move it into illustrator and get all the lines perfect, get it exactly like I wanted....kick it back as a PDF and get a large scale print out of it. Then transfer it because I wanted it to be so specific. 

AB: So you were sitting on that idea for a painting for a while.

CM: Yea, I actually have a lot of stuff in my sketchbook that I am waiting on... when I feel like I have a good concept for it. Along with titles,  I always have something to work with, its just picking out the time to do it. 

AB: So are a lot of these titles coming from the media, people in your environment, or just everywhere?

CM: You know I'm driving down the street and I see, most recently, I see a man with blue bag with yellow hat. That's a title. I keep it on my cloud. I keep a long list on my cloud, and I have a printed copy that I update. Man with blue bag, I remember his posture and how unique…I think of a background, and I think of that social statement of…and its not always so beat down, it has to be a social statement, but anything that happens in the world is a social statement. 

AB: Yea absolutely, so what are you working on now?

CM: I’m working on new work, its coming out slowly. It doesn’t matter how my intentions are; I'm going to whip out a certain amount of these in a certain amount of time…it never happens that way…Im to anal for that. You know…I have a children’s book I wrote 15 years ago, that I recently have rewritten the last four years... now it is time to illustrate it.  Its time to do it. I took supposedly a hiatus the last two years. I have had life changing events and I was going to take a year, and the year ended up being just six months, because I was just going to do little rough sketches and make a list of things I wanted to work out and I thought this will just be a list of 20, 30 things, and its like a list of almost 300.

AB: That's a good problem to have through.

CM: Right, and I was like OK I am just going to mark down a few things to work on, but the ideas keep flowing. I'm driving down the street and I see something, I see something in the media, or I just get an idea from 2 or 3 different variations and I go this needs to be a piece of work, so you know the hiatus ended fairly quickly. 

AB: Yea, that's good.

CM: So I am back to working, I've broken down some of my list into the bodies that I want to do in the next 3 to 4 months. I have some possible exhibitions, some nailed down. I’m curating a show in June. 

AB: Nice, where are you curating a show?

CM: Its going to be at L Ross gallery. Its called The Man’s Show.

AB: OK

CM: Its a whole lot of dialogue…just off the titles, but I picked quite a few friends and artists I admire. The majority of them are over 40, because I wanted the interpretation of what man hood is over the last 50 years, so I got different race, gender, backgrounds, culture, you know and I wanted everybody’s view. We’ve met several times. We met this past weekend out at L Ross Gallery to look at the space and she was very interested, so she said why not have it here. 

AB: That is great. It sounds like a very powerful show.

CM: I hope so. We are putting a lot of planning in to it so…we have some really highly skilled people in this show...

AB: I look forward to seeing it. When does it open?

CM: In June. 

AB: Speaking of Memphis a bit, I saw on your website that you were born in Mississippi. How did you come to Memphis?

CM: I went to the Chicago Institute of Art first because my sister lived there and I went a year early to get college credit. They had a course at the time. Yea, this is…I'm old…1982. You could go and start college early and then you can go do your pre-admittance and all that stuff, and it was great. I loved the experience, I hated Chicago. 

AB: Really 

CM: I made the mistake of getting on the bus at rush hour once with my portfolio…it wasn’t pretty. I had a great time there and I went back, finished out my senior year and I had been contacted by…my sister gave me info for the Memphis College of Art. Then the Memphis Academy of Arts and I applied, they sent down a recruiter. I guess you could call them recruiters then, just somebody in admissions to look at my work and I ended up going there because it was closer to home. I was going to go to school here, graduate, and leave. Of course that never happens. 

AB: Yea, that never happens. So you stayed for graduate school? 

Childhood

CM: Yea, actually I went to graduate school about 5 years ago…I went back. 

AB: Oh wow, I didn't realize that. 

CM: Which is funny because I was like why didn’t I do this right out of the gate? I didn’t think the program was set up for…way back when….I'm not sure what the program was then... I don’t know maybe for painters or what, but I wanted to get out of school. I went to school for 12 years, then I went to college for 4, that's 16 years. You want to just get out into the world.

AB: Yea, live life

CM: Right, but going back was more expensive. I was working full time and going to grad school full time. I did it in 2 years because I went during the summer. 

AB: I think that's nice though, going back when you are older. You have a different perspective. 

CM: Well you are more focused. You know I have an 8 hour, 9 hour job so I need to do this. I don’t have any lag time, so that's pretty much what it was. I didn’t have any lag time, leave work, go to class. leave class go to work,and you are in your studio till 2 in the morning. 

AB: You were working as a graphic designer during this time? 

CM: Yea, I still had my job. 

AB: So you started doing that right out of undergrad? 

CM: Yea, well right out of undergrad... I worked several jobs…even as a billboard painter. I discovered I was afraid of heights. On the job, you get over that really quick. You really never get over it, but you make it work. It was interesting. I worked as a layout, pay stub artist which is a lot different in 1988 than what it is now. 

AB: I'm sure.  

CM: I love it now. I use everything adobe makes and I love it. Back then using press type, and cut and paste was really cut and paste. 

AB: Its changed a lot, I can imagine. So are you thinking about graphic design when you are painting? 

CM: I think about art. 

AB: Yea 

CM: To me, in my world, painting, graphic design, murals, web development…its all one big thing. I am an artist. I love it all. I make it all work. My paintings, if I have a sketch I really really like I will grid it. I still use the grid system sometimes on large work. If I have something that I really have exactly like I want it I'll scan it, create it in illustrator, make it a PDF, take it to FedEx office, have them print it out to scale, the exact size, and then I transfer it. It still changes once I start throwing paint on it . I like the whole thing.  for me as an artist, you should be familiar with it all. You should be familiar, you should be able to represent yourself…you should have a website. If you are a painter or artist and don’t have a website now …that's an issue. You should be able to sell yourself, control how your imagery looks…control where it goes. So being a painter, to me is the creme dela creme, its the icing on the top. Then being a designer and being able to manipulate it, its great. I go in to Photoshop, I color correct my own stuff, fix my own website. You know if I'm working on a mural, I can go build a website for my mural project. 

AB: I saw the mural you did in Cooper Young. Have you worked on one since? 

CM: I'm working on one over on Barksdale. I started late and had to stop for the winter time, but I will probably start right when I get off from vacation in March. 

AB: So are you painting directly on site or are you using poly-tab?

CM: I’m painting directly on site, I want to try poly-tab one day, but now I'm directly on the wall. 

AB: Do you have assistants?

CM: I did with the one on McClain. I paid three assistants and I think I eventually had one who went through the whole project. The other two, it was dependent on their schedule. This one I don’t. I am kind of just filling it. I presented a design and now I am working with the design..but once you get out there... Ive already called them and told them the design is going to change…I'm actually adding more. 

AB: What is the mural about? Do you mind saying?

I really can’t, not that I am hiding it. Its just about the community. The only nailed down thing is that the people who donated to the production of it have photos they want incorporated. I went and scanned those and worked them digitally in the design and those are going in, but everything else is kind of  just what I am feeling. 

AB: That is nice that you have that freedom. 

CM: Yea, there are certain parts just promoting Memphis and the Cooper Young area. There are things about it that they did want but pretty much how I manipulate color and everything is up to me. 

AB: I can see you your work would lend itself very well to murals. So I know you said that you planned to leave Memphis after undergrad, but how have you felt about the Memphis Art Community? 

I am Man

CM: I like it. 

AB: Yea 

CM: Yea, I mean its one of those cities. I think when you get to my age and a city is a city. I mean there are great places you can go, but in all essence its like we used to go to St. Petersburg Florida at least twice a year especially in the winter time and it got to the point, once you stay there..we would stay roughly about 10 days at a time... but once you stay someplace more than 3 days you are not a tourist anymore. You start to see the city for what it is. Its a beautiful place, you learn where all the stores are, all the shops…it becomes a city. Its just another place you live. Memphis is Memphis. Are there are bad things about it, yea, are there good things about it, yea. I love the art scene here….it changes. I think in the last 15 years there are more artists here then there has ever been and they all are doing something. You know when contemporary art came in to the scene, meaning outside of the landscape, or still lives, it got creative, it got interesting. There is a lot of good art in this city. People who leave come back, some don’t, some do, so there's always this constant change. 

AB: Yea, I think there are a lot of really talented people here. 

CM: Oh yea.

AB: And a lot of exciting things...

CM: Yea, good friends, who’s work I admire. 

AB: I feel like Memphis is kind of on the cusp, in terms of the art scene. 

CM: Yea

AB: I definitely get a sense of that. I think Crosstown has a lot to do with that too. 

CM: We have more art districts here, you know, Cooper Young is hanging in there…it will get rid of all its galleries like it did and then they’ll come back. Jay Etkin has kind of brought that area back in to play. You have South Main, Cooper Young, Broad Street, Crosstown, and you have the Marshall Arts area. You have all these art centric places….you can’t help but love it if this is what you do. 

AB: A lot of really driven people here too, which I think is helping move that along. 

CM: Yea 

AB: Are you planning to do more murals in the future? 

CM: I'm playing that by ear, it depends, probably not any as large as the Cooper Young one. I love doing them and to be honest I’ve got to give a shout out to Jamie, my assistant, she was a fast painter. We had so many sections to do. We got a system of I would draw two sections and paint two sections. It got to a point, where she was whipping them out, you know everything has to be coated twice. Its just an anal thing with me. In my own painting, roughly five coats… so you paint it, she’ll paint one, Ill paint the other, then we’ll flip flop so we get caught up. She’ll put the second coat and and I'll go and draw the other two…everything was hand drawn. 

AB: That's impressive. Usually when people do murals of that scale they use a projector or something.

CM: The cost that would have gone in to creating stencils…I like to draw. I just get china marker and draw it. 

AB: Going back to your work a bit, how important is accessibility to you? 

CM: Its important, understanding it. You are never going to get everybody to understand what you are doing. I always tell students, 98% of the time you are not going to be standing there with your work. So you want it to translate  your message. Everyone is going to translate it differently. What you see as an antagonistic, image, someone else is going to say..well that's kind of mild, and maybe think something else, so everybody is going to get something different. It is important that what I am trying to say in the work…if you come close to getting it, or something in relation to it.

AB: Especially since your work is so concept driven. 

CM: Yea, it really is. 

AB: So I know you said when you were driving down the street you saw a guy that immediately gave you an idea for an image...so are these figures in your paintings based on specific people or are they characters that you create based on situations? 

CM: They are characters that I create.  I do have a few media stories that are going to be fairly specific but its still going to be my interpretation. I used to paint oil portraits, many years ago and I kind of never want to do that again. I create my own, I guess, I don’t want to say generic, but I create my own figure to put in that particular situation, but we do have specific stories of specific subjects like Eric Garner, it won’t be Eric Garner’s face because I don’t want to do that, but the imagery will present itself like…I’m going to say Eric Garner’s murder, and because of  what I am trying to portray to the viewer is not necessarily specific…but they will probably relate it to Eric Garner. Those who don’t know that particular situation... I want them to look at the act that's being committed as being wrong. I am not trying to give you the history of Eric Garner, but I am trying to let you know that this particular act is wrong, or it took place. This is based on a true story…I hate those moves, but…so the image doesn’t become generic, but the image becomes a representation. 

Beating Rodney King

AB: Yea, you don't give enough specifics but its enough for anyone to be able to associate it with that.

CM: Right, and it may even be title driven. Unless you walk up and see the title Killing Eric Garner you can still step back from the painting and see this is a violent act, and by the colors, this is the victim, this is the antagonist, you can see who the players are and draw your own conclusion. See even with the painting Beating Rodney King you have the representative sticks, you have him in his crouched figure, you have the city behind him, if you don’t know who Rodney King is, and as I get older, I just turned 50... I am surprised, as I get older, younger generations don’t know who Eric Garner is, they haven’t researched it. Then I realize they probably weren’t born or they are kids and don’t know the story. Just like there are events that happened before me that I had to research. So you know in Beating Rodney King they can see these items that represent somebody being struck because there is an arrow based on where he was probably hit. 

AB: Yea, well that is the power of art...to document these situations, so when someone younger approaches your work, it might prompt them to look it up. 

CM: You know, Picasso’s Guernica would make someone go research it and see what happened. 

AB: Yea, absolutely. You mentioned a children's book, I think it would be great to portray stories through that...

CM: Yea, I don’t want to say too much about it until I…I have been rewriting and reworking it and its going to be a picture book, but it has dialogue. I think the only thing that has changed from my original idea...I went back to my history of illustration and started trying to come up with how  I wanted to illustrate it, fast forward to now, I am going to use my style. I got these beautiful characters that are part of this little journey these two kids are taking but my style will work and I will just build these characters, simplify them…because the original sketches, 5, 16 years ago were very complex, they were very stylized, realistic and I guess that's why I didn’t do them because I'm lazy..I don’t want to have to do 5 or 6 different styles, overtime I do something so if I decide to do a second children's book, if this one actually works, then I have to go back to this style. I'll just keep the same style for everything, then I don’t have to think. 

Justified Homicide

AB: Well I think your style works. 

CM: Thank you. 

AB: I know you don't want to give away too much, but do you see these children's books being about social issues as well? 

CM: The first one is not, its about reclaiming childhood. That's what they mostly are. I think children are forced to grow up too fast now. My daughter is going to be 22 this year and just looking at where she is now, we made sure she stayed a child, and that's why it is so perplexing that I can’t sit and talk to her, when we go out to eat, as my little daughter. I am sitting in front of a young women now and its just weird. 

AB: Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that I haven't asked you? 

CM: I can’t think of anything. If I do it will probably turn out to be a long drawn out ramble. I’m not going to put you through that. I will say that I grew up in an era where there weren’t a lot of highly recognized African American artists, so my research came from Charles White, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence, but not just them…I love Michelangelo because it was the perfect way for a figure to look. I think students should do their research now. I think the old masters are highly over done in magazines. Overtime you open up one, its like yea there is another Picasso. I think there are a lot of good artists out here and they should start featuring them. There is something to say for doing your research, looking at who’s doing what, and how they are doing it. That's my spiel. 

See more of Carl's work on his website: http://www.carlemoore.com/about.html

Holt Brasher

I thought it would be fitting to make one of the first interviews on ART YAK one of my friends Holt Brasher. Holt grew up in the small town of Oak Grove Louisiana. He received his BFA from the University of Louisiana at Monroe where he fell in love with printmaking.  Holt moved to Memphis for graduate school at the University of Memphis where he will be completing his MFA this coming May. Since moving to Memphis Holt has been involved in numerous group and solo exhibitions including; Drunkard’s Hymns at Southfork, Exhibition Momentum at South Main Gallery, the 56th Annual Delta Exhibition at Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, and the Delta National Small Prints Exhibition at Bradbury Gallery in Jonesboro. 

 AB: Tell me about what you are working on right now. 

HB: What I am working on right now is a body of work for thesis. Should I go deeper? 

AB: Yea, I think you should. 

HB: I had kind of gotten confused on where to go next so I started thinking about the idea of identity and thought about the idea of the identity of the southern white male.  I was reading a lot of books about Latino/a and African American artists and decided to confront my own identity. Which I didn’t see a lot of. Most of the art you see is New York or Los Angeles...especially in the bigger named publications like Art in America, Art Forum, things like that. I wanted to focus on Southern Art. The Box Gallery show I did focused on a small town. I focused on how small towns worked and eventually started to think about the guys I was raised around. I got into the idea of myself, the things that I deal with and the things the people in my hometown deal with, healthcare, dentists...everything is not the greatest there. The biggest joke in the town is that if you go to the hospital they are just going to give you some antibiotics and a z pack then send you on your way, kind of like the old joke about Robitussin being a cure all. I wanted to focus in on that identity, with the addictions and obesity. A part of it is dedicated to trashiness, unhealthiness, beer, soda, and eating too much. I had been working on a series called Da Boiz, it was focused on big alpha male guys, convicts, rednecks... etc. Then I took them through a demasculization process, watercoloring them with bright colors and putting Cute Boi and Sexy Boi behind them. Then I took it further with faces either from my memory or photos of southern men.  From looking at cigarettes in their mouths, bad teeth, mullets, angry stares, I came up with the term Alpha Redneck, which I thought was funny. When I was growing up everything I did; clothing, hairstyle, music, the idea of going to college, etc. was made fun of and still is, so I wanted to take the power back and make fun of them. It is a humorous jab but then again I’ve noticed there are layers to it so on the front end yea its humorous, but its also kind of sad that people live like that. There is a sadness at least for me that they don’t want more. A lot of people are like yea they’re happy where they are, which goes back to ignorance is bliss. but people drop like flies at 40, cancer, obesity, heart problems etc. A lot of them can’t afford it. Then there's the nihilistic outlook of all I got is my muscles and then I’m gonna die so fuck it. When James Luna came through I was asking him how he deals with people not understanding his art and he said that's just something you have to deal with…do you want people to understand all of your art, because its not going to happen. There are certain aspects of Native American culture that only Native Americans are going to understand. There are aspects of that in this. There are probably people in the north who would look at this and laugh at it,  then move on. Where people from the south would get more from it. So I like that multi-layered approach and I’ve always liked to have social commentary mixed with humor. 

AB: You said something about how it is dual. In one sense you are dealing with who you are. This is who you are because it is where you came from, so you are creating this work to kind of combat that. Yet you are also making this work to take power back because you have now established yourself as someone who is different. I know you have said before how when you go home you are met with people who don’t understand why you are doing what you are doing, or they make fun of you. 

HB: Its a bit of an exorcism. Its like an exorcism for all of my anger towards these people, but its home, and its comfortable. There is also a lot of anger and resentment that needs to come out, and yea its all these years that I’ve dealt with why are wasting your time? Even just recently going home and being met with oh yea you are graduating soon... real world is coming. There has never been a moment where I have felt respected for what I am doing. However its not woe is me. Its never been woe is me. Its more like I’m going to prove myself. I’m going to prove you wrong. 

AB: Well yea and you are also fortunate to be in a position where you are able to go to college…get a masters degree.

HB: Oh yea. There are a lot of regrets I have in life about how I couldn’t save friends. People I grew up with in elementary school.  There are a lot of people in elementary school that I wonder if I could have kept them off drugs or kept them in school... kept them from fucking up their life… ending up in jail. If it wasn’t for my dad and my uncle... my uncle sent all the music and art. My dad pushed me to think and to work, he wasn’t approving of what I went to school for but he still supported me. I appreciate that a lot. That's why when I teach I am here to help because if I can do it I want to help others do it as well. 

AB: Yea Absolutely. 

I know you just mentioned accessibility a while ago. Is that really important to you? 

HB: That has always been a thing for me. I hear so many different ideas about my work. You can’t expect everyone to understand what you are doing. Its just impossible. If somebody is making art about race somebody is not going to understand it, if somebody is making queer art somebody is not going to understand it because they’ve never been in that situation. Then you wonder if people like it just because everybody else does. That's one of the hardest parts about being an artist, until you start selling stuff, then you don’t give a shit. (laughs) I mean that's what I’ve heard. What I hope is that when someone walks in they get something from it. That's what I get from southern people, they laugh at it and say that reminds me of so and so. Then some people go well all you are doing is making fun of them. Some don’t care about the content but love how detailed I am with my carving. If they hate it, I hope they absolutely hate it. I don’t want people to walk in and go meh. (laughs) 

AB: Well I don’t think anyone wants that. 

HB: Yea if you don’t like it, fucking hate it. If you like it I’m glad. 

AB: It seems though that you are kind of keeping things light, in a sense. I have heard you talk a lot about people having problems with drugs or going to prison. While in your work you are dealing a lot with beer, or over eating, or these sayings that are about ignorance. Yet I have never seen you do anything about hard core drugs or anything like that. 

HB: I guess for me there are personal things that have happened in my life that I don’t want to get near. I mean number one I don’t ever want to get too personal because I feel that when I get too personal in my art it knocks a lot of people out of it. I never want to do that. With my uncles death for example, I tried to make a piece about it and I couldn’t. It might be my own issue but when I deal with the thought of my friends who have ended up with those problems it seems too serious for me to deal with in my art. I may not be serious enough to deal with it in the right way. 

AB: Yea, and to be respectful maybe, to those people...

HB: Yea and to be respectful, and also just thinking too much about those times in my life really fucks me up. My uncle wasn’t on drugs, he had health issues. However the things that happened to my friends are always in the back of my head. I think every person has things that they want to deal with but can’t. 

AB: It’s too close. 

HB: Yea its too close and it would have to be very serious.I don’t feel that that is my kind of art. 

AB: Yea well humor is clearly very important to you, and I think that's what makes it so accessible. 

HB: I think it does until you hit a mark with somebody. I’ve made art in the past that some have labeled immature. No matter what you do its going to piss someone off. I can’t say I don’t like that aspect of it. Some people don’t like that I misspell words. I mean Flannery O’Conner did it the best to me, and Faulkner…two great writers. Its like come to where I’m from. 

AB: Speaking of where you are from, what do the people from your home town think about your work? Do they find it funny, are they offended? Do you even show it to them? 

HB: The only person I’ve ever really shown my work to is my dad and he always says, "well there you go making fun of rednecks again." 

AB: So you haven’t shown your friends from your hometown? 

HB: Oh yea, I have. They are busy with their own lives and they just go "oh cool." Well I do have one friend there who I talk to about art and politics. He was saying that he doesn’t get art and finds it pretentious but when he looks at mine he understands it. He said its like Gummo and I can relate to it. I’m all for people who don’t look at art to find humor in my work. Also being compared to Gummo is great. 

AB: So you mentioned these very detailed carvings. Obviously the work that you are making is so labor intensive. 

HB: (laughs) I cry at night. 

AB: Yea, I am sure you do. I am wondering what is the significance of the meticulous nature of this in your concept? Why does it have to be so carefully carved? Why not just make a cut out painting? 

HB: For me once I hit printmaking that's what I wanted to do. I’ve always loved printmaking. I want to stay close to that. We didn’t have a press big enough to make the prints I wanted to do, so I started making woodcuts and jigsawing them out. There are very few people that I see do that. I can’t lie and say that I’m not doing it because no one else is really in that market. Once I started doing more I liked the idea of pushing the idea of a print into a sculptural field. Then people say its not sculpture, fine. Then what is it? Is it a painting? I like that aspect of it. I’ve always been attracted to small details, building up lines... There is always a new way to carve. I am attracted to that. Also its just zen. I can listen to albums and get lost in my own head. It makes you a lot closer to you work. You develop an attachment to it. I’ve noticed when I’m carving I think about what I’m doing. I start to think about the concept. Things jump out at me. Its cheap material, woodworking and carving, everyone thinks of that as a hillbilly southern thing. 

 
AB: Well you are going against that. I think the fact that these are so beautifully and lovingly carved out creates an interesting contrast to these cheap phrases. The Craftsmanship initially draws you in. Then these delicately carved pieces have this image that references the idea of cheap, fast, carelessness, etc. I think if you got rid of that and just started painting it would be a whole different thing. 

HB: Yea you are right and now that you said that I have had people ask me that before. When I first got here somebody said it amazes me how much time you spend carving the goofiest shit. 

AB: Yea that's what makes it so interesting. It makes you want to pay attention. It makes us pause and pay close attention to these silly things that we normally wouldn’t think twice about.

HB: That used to be a part of my statement. Whats funny though is that I have been trying to get looser. 

AB: You can’t be loose. Nothing about that will ever look loose. Its so meticulous. 

HB: I can’t get away from it. 

AB: I think that is what makes your work stand apart. 

HB: That and the rednecks (laughs). 

AB: How long have you lived in Memphis now? 

HB: Probably since mid July 2013.

AB: Do you think you’d be making the same work if you hadn’t moved here?  I mean do you think your move out of that environment affected your work? 

HB: No not at all. I think moving to Memphis completely changed my art. Number one being the fact that I wanted to start making large woodblocks. My last semester at ULM I made a ton of tiny work. Coming over here and working with Greely affected my work. It just hit me to make cut outs. From there I was able to make large blocks. 

AB: Well besides just scale, do you think the concepts of your work have changed too? 

HB: I think I’ve matured a lot. When I came out of ULM I had this idea that I was going to be seriously political. Over time it just melted away. Being around certain people I realized that that's not my field. That is one of the greatest things about being here is having artists thrown at me from Beth, Greely, Richard, and Coriana. I am just constantly getting shown all these different aspects. I finally realized that humor can be art. I stuck with it and then being able to do that solo show was a big deal for me. 

AB: In the Box Gallery? 

HB: Yea. There is a lot of freedom up here. I liked that I met a lot of southern people  who were southern artists and making work close to mine. Looking up and seeing Greely, Tad, and Dwayne dealing with humor. It was like holy shit there are other people who are making similar stuff, who are southern, and who make humorous art. So it was like fuck it I’m going to do it too. I don’t have to be serious all the time. 

Also the opportunities. It pisses me off when people act like there's nothing here. Go to where I went to undergrad. For a long time the only way you could get a show there is getting a piece in the student show. There were no opportunities. You didn’t even know how to submit to shows, you had to figure it out. That area loves safe art. There is a lot of shit here that would never be in a gallery there. 

AB: That is surprising in a town that has an undergraduate and graduate art program. 

HB: They’ve gutted the art program. I was the last print-maker. (laughs) Yea our last print-maker was that guy. 

AB: How has teaching affected your work? 

HB: A lot of influence comes from teaching, and having to look up certain things. You have a student who wants to make abstract art and you haven’t looked at that in a long time. You learn so much. Down the road there are things I want to try because of artists my teachers have shown me. 

AB: So what is next? Do you feel like this body of work will continue or are you on to something else? 

HB: I have a body of work planned that's a mash up of the watercolors I was doing and the blocks. 

AB: So it will be a continuation.

HB: Yea it will be these two bodies of work connecting. Installation is a big thing that came to me in this school. I love installation and I can’t get away from it. I am going to keep working on that. I finally realized that installation doesn’t just mean that you have an area and you just fill it with shit. An installation can also be just having stuff on the wall. Also trying to find a job so I don’t starve. 

AB: What are your goals in that department? What would you ideally like to be doing? 

HB: Well teach one class and get paid 300,000 dollars. 

AB: (Laughs) Ok realistically what would you like to be doing? 

HB: I would love to get a job out of the gate. I mean who wouldn’t? 

AB: So teaching is your primary goal? 

HB: Oh yea, there's a lot of people who don’t want to teach. I mean I would hate to get a job hanging art in a gallery. 

AB: (Laughs) Sooo you don’t want Greg's job? 

HB: No I mean I don’t care where I go I would just love to have enough money to have a place in the city and a place in the country. I mean in realistic terms I would like to have a place and a studio. Even if its a studio in a school. Eventually I would like to be in a nice area with a good art scene, a house, and a studio. I like teaching. I am all for it. I think I would like to have a diverse selection of classes though. I think its tiring to teach just one subject. Then you are limited to teaching just one thing. 

AB: How have you felt about your time here in Memphis and the Memphis Art Community? 

HB: I think its picked up substantially. It was an eye opener to come here. When I first came in I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know shit. It has taken time to get used to coming from a smaller area to a bigger area. I mean I really like it because Memphis feels like a big city but its also like a small town. No matter where I am at I could run in to someone and I am not surprised. I think in terms of the art community I have really enjoyed it. I have made a lot of friends, mentors, and connections. I really enjoy the galleries. Lauren Kennedy with South Fork, the one here at U of M, Joel at Rhodes, David Lusk, all those... Crosstown. I think the opportunity that Crosstown gives people is great. 

AB: Yea, I think Crosstown is a game changer. 

HB: I mean that is awesome. I mean now with the residency program, there are so many opportunities that are popping up. I mean if I got offered a job here I would stay in a heart beat. I think its picking up. I think there's the possibility of being an artist here and still becoming nationally known. I think a lot of southern places are picking up. The north, east coast, west coast dominated the art scene. Then the southern states were this bubble. For the longest time northern and northeast, north coast etc didn’t go in the southern bubble and the south didn’t leave the south. There is a trickling effect much more now. 

 
AB: I think a lot of that has to do with the internet. Now it seems like location isn’t as important as it used to be. 

HB: Yea but I think the south is starting to pick up. I would like to go up north and live there. At least for a little while. If I ended up in New Orleans or Memphis I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Well maybe in New Orleans because I would have to keep myself from getting fat. I think Memphis has been great in terms of opportunities. Before I came here I never knew what performance art was, I didn’t know a lot. Sculpture where I grew up was just steel. I have seen so much art that has opened my mind up. I’ve seen art I never thought I would. I mean Red Grooms, Josef Albers, Jenny Holzer, and Marisol. That blew my mind. I mean even from people in town, Tad, Joel, Greely.. Then coming to this MFA program and meeting you guys. It was like holy shit I am friends with artists. Then its weird because its like damn these people grew up in big cities. Then its funny because they come here because they want to live in small area and I came here because I wanted to live in a big city. I think the only negative in the community is the certain divisions it has. I mean in any community you are going to have people that think this should be this way or that way or art should be this way. I think its been awesome though. I’ve had the opportunity to have some great art shows, I’ve met some super talented people, and I’ve met great students and awesome professors. Like I said I would have no problem staying here if they’d give me a job…hint hint. I think there should be more affordable steak houses. 

AB: Ok, so that is key. 

HB: I think there should be more Popeyes between the distance of school and my house. But no, I have really enjoyed my time here. 

AB: Well I am glad you came here.

HB: Hopefully somebody has liked my art. 

AB: Is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you want to talk about?

HB: Umm how much you look up to me? I don’t know usually everybody’s like what would you say to god…name your top five musicians…

AB: Well I am not going to make you do that.

Thanks Holt! 

Holt's thesis show will be April 11-29th in The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Memphis. 
See more of his work here: http://holtbrasher.weebly.com/