Interview with Jeff

We kept the interview informal and honest. It was interesting because Jeff is a graphic design concentration and I am a painting and drawing concentration. We work with completely different medias. I have absolutely no skill when it comes to photo-shop and videos and his work seemed to incorporate a lot of that. So here is how it went.

JL: This is like a photograph of a collapsed building and i added the hand and the guy and the Buddha.
PS:Was this for an assignment?
JL:Yeah we had to do 15 self-portraits. So this is one of them... here is a video of all 15 installed. They all have some light. I have attached candles or bulbs. This kinda has an performance aspect to it. I like working with multimedia, so incorporated some music that I made.
WATCHING THE VIDEO
I find that I am not too pleased with graphic desgin concentration. Its too late now, but I wish I had done video or mixed media. I like working on collages.. I like working on things that I find. I like working on the surface area. Physical 3-D collage. This one is about pop-culture fascination.
PS: So these are all found objects?
JL: Yeah, garbage really. I dont know if this is done. I wanted to build off it and continue even more. Messing with the idea that frame, and being enclosed. Its never ending and you can always build upon and bridge off the rectangle. With the self-portraits I am completely covering the art I made but there is something about process that I really enjoy. You only get a fraction of the part. I think these self-portraits work better as a set.
PS: How is this a self-portrait?
JL: This one here is a baby in the hand. Relates back to childhood and being held held. I think a lot of people are hand-geld and not let out to go. But its really abstract. I used a lot of photographs of myself but they are covered up.
PS: What did you want to go ahead and do for thesis?
JL: Well, I was thinking about organizing thoughts and creating a database for thoughts. I am really into Peter Grenui (not sure about the name at all). His movies touch upon classifying things and organizing things to understand life. I have a website where I am trying to do that. I dont know what that says but I am trying to figure it out in thesis.
PS: And you mentioned that you came back to school?
JL: Yeah I am lot older than most of the people here. I was an English major and graduated in 06. I took a year off and worked at a newspaper. I never took any formal art classes until I started MG in 08, but I have always made art. I have flown through the program since I had all the other requirements. I still don't where I am going with this in the long run. I thought graphic design was a good field for me since I am older and it serves a function. I have a job now and its totally unrelated to art but it has health benefits...
PS:It pays the bill.
JL: I am always gonna make art. Graphic design is all about interpretation. Sometimes I don't really want to explain it. Somewhere I could be a little be more abstract and creative. Graphic design has to make sense. Not that I don't think this stuff doesn't make sense, but its not as easily explained. I can show you a video. I built this sculpture.
WATCHING THE VIDEO
PS:Are there any other images or work?
JL: Yeah this is my website. I am trying to organize everything I have done. There is a lot music that I make. This is like my musical group/my site. I make a lot of records.
INTERNET FAILS TO WORK... COULD ONLY LOOK AT THE HOME PAGE
JL:This was an assignment where we had to record something for 24 hours and document it. Form was wide open. I made a music album for ----- county sheriffs office... where they booked 119 people in a day. First 24 I have songs for. I got the images from Google. Some of these people are actually real offenders, others I just took the image that came up in the result.
PS: This is really cool!
JL: Yeah I tried to make something positive out of the negative which is getting arrested. I do a lot of writing too so...

And then we drifted of talking about my printmaking class.
I edited some pauses and repeating conversation, but everything else is here. I don't I had ever even seen Jeff before this interview, and so it was fun getting to know someone completely new and looking at their work, and trying to explain your own.