2020…The one to forget! As we leave it behind and stretch a leg into the new year, we caught up with our friend Jack Byers in New York. Artist, Graphic Designer , a mean Mixologist and all round good guy. Jack shares with us a segment of life as a creative, how he heard about Crohn’s disease and how he made it through a testing 2020! Enjoy.
Hey Jack…We hope you’re doing okay? The question we always kick off with is if you look out of the window today, what do you see?
Where abouts are you located in the world?
The neighbourhood of East Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY.
What’s on your desk/in your studio?
What was life like growing up? Did art and creating play a big role as a kid?
When I was young, art played a background role. It was always present and always influencing me, but was never something I deliberately tried to pursue until later. Creating in general was a big part of my growing up. I grew up pre-internet in a rural area so we had to make our own fun, and sitting inside watching TV was frowned upon.
Did you go through a college system or design specific education?
I have an undergraduate degree in Ecological Design, which is loosely related to visual design but actually quite different. Now I’m working on a Master of Fine Arts in Brooklyn.
How would you describe your career journey so far? Do you have a particular path you wanted to follow?
I think instead of an actual career so far I’ve just been laying the groundwork for one and trying to create a path that involves both fine art and design. There are people who are happy doing 100% design or being exclusively a painter, but that’s not me. I have too short of an attention span and as soon as I finish one project I want to start work on something completely different. Variation is the key and the thing that keeps me from getting bored and complacent.
In your early days of design, did you illustrate, print or publish any material you want to talk about?
A project that felt like a big turning point for me was in 2017 when I did a 1 letter a day challenge. Starting from New Years Day I made an ink drawing of a letter each day, but I really tried to question what could be considered a letter. When I was all done I put the letters together and made a print of the full alphabet and sold a bunch of them. I love seeing whole alphabets made by artists in their style, so that kind of felt like me symbolically throwing my hat into the ring and saying, “This is how I see these 26 forms”.
What are your influences from an art point of view? How would you describe your style of work?
For Client work (which is mainly digital) I draw on influences from mid-century poster artists like Cassandre to photographers like Maurice Broomfield. I like things to be photorealistic at first glance but then dissolve into abstraction when you look closer.
On the fine art side of things I’m probably most influenced by the work of Soviet constructivists/suprematists like El Lissitzky. I can then follow that line from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy through Charles Sheeler to Al Held and the paintings of Zaha Hadid. I try to then fold in influence from artists that work with text like ESPO, Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman and Christopher Wool to arrive at something unique. One of the things that I strive for in my work and seem to see in all my influences is this feeling of the elements of an image being “caught” in the act of doing something. I try to aim for a freeze frame of frantic motion.
You’ve dabbled in Graffiti, how did this come about? Was this a rebellious release or purely a creative outlet?
Dabbled is the right word. I rode the ride for a few years and had some good fun and close calls, but was never doing it at a level that would make me feel comfortable calling myself a true *graffiti artist*...the standard for that is set very high. In high school and college I always had a marker on me. After college I was just working nights in restaurants and spent the day finding abandoned spots to paint in the city I lived in. In 2012 I got more serious with painting freights. After moving to a new city and only having the ability to paint a yard that was within city limits it started to cut into my regular art-making. I still paint when I can and hope to be able to make it a more frequent thing in the future.
Who do you look up to as an aspiring artist/designer?
This is a divergent answer but Nicolas Jaar, the musician. He seems to be in a constant state of change and never lets his past success inform his future work. He also hits that perfect balance that I strive for in maintaining an experimental practice to develop new forms and processes to use for commercial work.
Mason London is a visual artist that I really look up to. His work constantly evolves and streamlines itself and is stuffed full of all sorts of references and nuggets waiting to be discovered.
You work across many different mediums. What is your favourite?
I do like them all, so it’s tough to hold one above the rest. Although I could never be strictly digital, I really enjoy working with it and especially integrating analogue processes. There are many traditionalists who say it’s cheating, but I disagree with that. It’s way harder to make digital work that doesn’t look contrived and trendy. What the haters don’t understand is that every medium has its own art and potential. Using spray paint versus traditional oil isn’t cheating because they each give a different result.
What has been the greatest obstacle you’ve had to overcome to get your work noticed?
Myself. It’s easy to keep pushing yourself when everyone tells you you’re not good enough, but once you start getting compliments you gotta make sure you keep listening to the inner critic.
To date what has been your greatest achievement?
I was big into skiing when I was younger, and always dreamed of designing ski graphics. Line Skis gave me that chance in 2019 and the skis just dropped this year.
We met through the powers of social media, thanks to a mutual love of urban contemporary art, but also you seeing first hand the effects of Crohn’s disease on a close friend. Had you heard of the condition before?
I had heard of it by name growing up, but working full time in restaurants I met a lot of people who are living with it. A very close former co-worker has Crohn’s and she was juggling it with full time work and full time school. We tended bar in a very high-stress environment and watching how she navigated the challenges of the condition was humbling and really made me step back and question what I considered an obstacle.
Raising awareness in the way that we do has forged new relationships and opened up a lot of doors and started many conversations. As an artist do you try to provoke something more from the viewer? Is there a hidden message in your work?
I don’t claim to make any grand gestures. There’s not a specific thing in my work to “get” to understand it. The artist Aaron Garber-Maikovska talks about his belief in painting and creating “discrete objects that contain a truth about humanity”, and I can say that’s kind of what I’m striving for. That being said, I like to play with people’s perception, and I try to always make sure I’m overestimating the intellect of the viewer.
2020! The Covid19 pandemic. How did this affect you personally, has this affected your work? And give us a brief perspective on the impact on the city around you? What are your hopes for 2021?
COVID has really excelled at exposing the tenuous balance of the society we live in. I got the virus two weeks after NYC shut down in March and it laid me out for a full month. The neighborhood where I live supposedly had an infection rate of about 40%, so every day from March to May there was at least one ambulance outside my building. Since then, the city has been in this weird state of suspended animation. Tens of thousands have left, but the budget crisis has yet to fully hit.
I hope the newly elected leaders of our country understand how important NYC is to the functioning of the American economy, but if not it’s going to be a bad time.
Outside of getting the virus, I have been able to fortunately avoid most of the ill effects. My restaurant job went away, but I spent the free time learning how to make motion graphics and animate my illustrations. Since August I have been in school full time. This has been a challenge, but the small size of my MFA program means that we’re kind of exempt from a lot of the rules that are destroying the experiences at other schools.
Despite all the craziness, what are you working on right now? Are there any projects you’d like to talk about?
I spent the fall kind of deconstructing and dissecting my personal art practice, which was a surprisingly destabilizing experience at times. I’m not sharing much from that at the moment because I’m not at a place where I’m ready for critique outside my program.
On the illustration front, I’ve done the titles for a ski movie coming out next month called DEVIATE, featuring Jossi Wells and Torin Yater-Wallace. I also get to work with two music artists in NYC to create visuals for their work. Just Win is a ridiculously talented emcee/lyricist and Spoiled Suede is an equally talented producer. Big shout out to both of them, I can’t imagine more creative and driven people to get the opportunity to work with.
Now the quick fire round……
Your favourite food? Pizza
Are you superstitious? How and what? Not really, but I took a picture of a random person in Venice Beach years ago and they tried to cast some sort of spell on me. So far the only thing it's done is given me horrible luck with trying to mail artwork.
Your least favourite colour? Clear
The best book you’ve read? A toss up between L'Astragal by Sarrazin and The Stranger by Camus
Your preferred tool, brush? Pen? Or can? Cheap Japanese airbrush
Favourite surface Concrete? Wood? Paper? Roughcast/ Pebbledash
Your worst habit? Distraction
Your Hospital Radio 'Desert Island' disc? Journey In the Satchidananda - Alice Coltrane
What is your biggest fear? Stagnation
If you hadn’t become an artist what would you be doing? Racing Bicycles
If you could smash something into a million piece what would it be? A Billionaire
Thanks so much for taking time to answer our random/generic/tedious questions; what can we expect to see from you in the next year or two? Expect the best, prepare for the worst! Thanks for chatting Matt!
For more of Jack’s work you can follow him on Instagram or check out his works via his website…
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Words: Matt Strutt, Jack Byers
Images: Jack Byers
Contributors: André Leitão
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