An old Interview with Xavier Lopez, of Murals, Mantras and Post-postmodernism!

 

Five Questions with Xavier Lopez Jr.

1. What is your story--how did you get started?

My father was part of the Chicano Art Movement in California when I was a kid, and so I kind of grew up with art around me.  As a youngster, I alternately spent long hours reading old dictionaries and picture books.  Later on, I was also probably one of the first generations of what would come to be called latch-key kids.  I grew up with TV as my guardian, teacher etc.  watching lots of cartoons and reading lots of comics and I personally spent a heck of a lot of time watching old Batman episodes, daydreaming and drawing outside of the margins. But two things were very important to that period—the first was that my parents were kind of crazy, something that wasn’t clear to us kids until much later. The second was that for some reason as a child I could not tell the difference between what was alive and what was non-living.  I thought all my action figures were alive and just waiting ‘til I left the room to live their lives and that all my stuffed animals were also alive.

My dad used to do puppet shows for us kids, where he would take stuffed animals and make them talk to us and look at us, which didn’t help with the confusion—my brother, who is much smarter than I am was never fooled—but I wasn’t so lucky.  Add to this a song that we heard that went “You’re nothun’ but a nothun” and I spent much of my formative years confused about what was unreal and what was reality. All of this comes up in my paintings, murals and sculpture, but especially in my performance art. 

As a young adult, I went to UC Davis for grad school at a time when they were still a top five art school and took some classes with Lynn Hershman (Important performance artist and feminist) and I used to sneak into Wayne Thiebaud's (famous pop artist) painting classes since I was a sculpture major and didn't get priority for the painting classes.  But even then I was very interested in a kind of conceptual interdisciplinarity.  In fact, back then I was pretty much a conceptual, minimalist sculptor--I considered myself a "Conceptual Expressionist" then and that seems to be even more true today as I begin to mix POP, Conceptualism and Performance Art into something new and exciting. 

 

2. Tell us about the White Center mural--how did that come about and what is it about?

Murals bring a community together,  in fact, there have been many studies published that show that visible art, art on walls, in community centers, on building walls - anywhere that they can be seen - brings the entire community up.  It is an important form of communication and bonding that creates community and uplifts the spirits of its inhabitants.

Places like White Center are even starting to build up mural walks, where people specifically come to their towns just to see the art that is on its city walls.

Slowly but surely, it raises the feeling of pride that inhabitants of a city living with and collectively taking guardianship of shared artworks gain in themselves--especially when they see that others are talking about their sense of culture and the beauty on their walls.  I am exceptionally proud to be part of something like this and proud to speak about the importance that public art brings to any and every community.  Whether that is Fremont, Ballard, Capitol Hill or White Center.

The Mural itself is a kind of series of fairy tales.  Centered around one of my main characters--a girl of various ages and forms called the Muse--initially,  she was based on an ex-girlfriend who really was the muse that inspired the beginning of this current body of work.  In fact it was her that asked me to do the very first painting of this type that I ever did.  Before this, I was working in a minimalist style and she asked me to do a portrait of her, which was the very beginning of all of this.  That was a pretty magical time in my life--a life which tends to be pretty magical in general.

 

3.  You recently worked with the Seattle Art Museum, alongside fellow muralist Ryan "Henry" Ward--are there any more events like these planned for the future?

PARTNERSHIP WITH SAM

Ryan Henry ward and I are currently planning with the museum to do some more work with the Seattle Art Museum in the new year, but I am talking to them about the possibility of doing something sooner--no promises, but cross your fingers and send us lots of hopeful wishes. 

It was quite a wonderful thing to be offered the chance to work on the first two "live painting" events with the museum and hopefully this will be a very long-term relationship.  Originally, I was looking for a way to become more connected to the Seattle Art Museum and the wonderful things that they have been doing with our community.  So you can imagine my surprise and delight when they said yes, they had some very specific ideas in mind that we could be a part of.

The Seattle Art Museum is perhaps the most important art institution in Washington and it is the place that all young artists go to learn about the possibilities of what art can be.   Museums like SAM, Frye, and MOMA are so important to the alternative and street art scenes--especially,  because they are like a translator - they take history and make it something that we can grasp, hope, and dream about.  As young artists, we see ourselves every time we walk into these sacred spaces--we see how we fit in to the panoply of art history.  For an artist it is a place of possibilities, where we meet our artistic mothers and fathers.

It must be a huge responsibility putting together the work, especially in Seattle's art museums, because through what they choose to show young artists they have a huge influence and impact on the future of Seattle and Washington art.  It is awesome when you think about the fact that historically, it has always been the galleries, museums and salons that artists went to learn to paint and communicate. 

6.  So what is this Subpop Art movement we are hearing so much about?

Yes, Subpop, Seapop or Seabrow as it has been called is an alternative art movement that has been building up steam for the last several years.  This is Sub 'Pop Art'—as in something beneath 'Pop Art' or a kind of abject 'Pop Art.'  It is Seattle’s own kind of 'Pop' which is a bit more visceral, a bit more street, a bit more 'wheat-pastey', lyrical, whimsical and immediate than some of the other schools of art and includes such artists as myself,  Ryan Henry Ward, Andy Miller, Tnglr, Hera Won, Jonathan Wakuda Fischer and many others—many, who may not even consider themselves to be part of the movement.  It is art, that, while it may seem to be friendly, even saccharin sweet at times, in fact has much more going on and might even be considered to have a very dark side. 

Seattle's take on art  is actually different than many other art scenes —gone is the purity and the reserved bombast of the moderns and even the identity politics of the post moderns—everything  is messy, carnivalesque and filled with a jouissance that seemed to just be missing from most of the art of today.  It is not a single-issue movement—and does not fit neatly into any one category. 

I believe that Seattle's art connotes a break and a shift from the groups of the most recent post modern.  We are more attuned to the work of and spirit of the Dadaists, the Hairy Who, The Monster Roster, Fluxus and the Funk Artists of California and though it might not seem immediately obvious—to the work of Marcel Duchamp. 

 4. What does the future look like?

For me the future and the present includes bringing all of the various aspects of my artwork together--to find the intersections, breaks and especially the breakdowns of art and especially of Pop Art.   It is especially important to me to use any and all of my abilities, no matter how varied they might be, to take the art of the margins from the margins, as unchanged as possible and bring it to the center/the people.  Street art, wheat-pastes, graffiti, murals, children's art, performance art–this all becomes a kind of sub-popart.

I hold onto the grungy edges and create a kind of “Lo-fi art” that owes more to the static on the radio, the constant rain in the background and the dust-bunnies in the corner of the room; it isn’t always pretty, the edges aren’t always cleaned up, the picture isn’t always framed during a time when everything else is trying to look slick and panders to the sensibilities of the viewer.  Right now art has become needy and pandering.

In fact, this is part of what I see as being the best aspect of Seattle's best artists--they do what they need to do and use any and all means to get the work out to everybody—we  take over, make and become our own galleries.  We use every existing venue available to us from the walls of buildings, telephone poles, electrical boxes, newspaper boxes, antique shops, parks, bus stops, even taking over people’s homes, from wheat-pastes and graffiti, to shoving flyers, posters, stickers and invitations into the local Stranger newspapers —the idea is not to become the machine, but rather  to circumvent the modes and methods of exposure for our work—to get directly to the people and to infest their thinking to the point that we can become part of Seattle’s internal thinking processes.  As Ryan "Henry" Ward, (my main compatriot in much of what I do)--put it, the idea was that these murals, wheat-pastes, etc. would stick in the minds of the people and art would infect/inflect them like a “virus”.

 

 

 

Hello, I wanted to follow up on my earlier message to you. I have taken the liberty of answering five questions that amount to an interview--predominantly dealing with the current mural that I am painting in White Center, Washington. I also speak of art in general and of the Seattle Art Movement SUB-POPArt of which I am a part. Please feel free to use any of these questions and answers in whole or in part at your discretion. Or, if you would rather set up an interview with me--please feel free to contact me via Facebook or at xavierlopezjr@gmail.com.

 

 Five Questions with Xavier Lopez Jr.

 

1. What is your story--how did you get started?

 

My father was part of the Chicano Art Movement in California when I was a kid, and so I kind of grew up with art around me. As a youngster, I alternately spent long hours reading old dictionaries and picture books. Later on, I was also probably one of the first generations of what would come to be called latch-key kids. I grew up with TV as my guardian, teacher etc. watching lots of cartoons and reading lots of comics and I personally spent a heck of a lot of time watching old Batman episodes, daydreaming and drawing outside of the margins. But two things were very important to that period—the first was that my parents were kind of crazy, something that wasn’t clear to us kids until much later. The second was that for some reason as a child I could not tell the difference between what was alive and what was non-living. I thought all my action figures were alive and just waiting ‘til I left the room to live their lives and that all my stuffed animals were also alive. My dad used to do puppet shows for us kids, where he would take stuffed animals and make them talk to us and look at us, which didn’t help with the confusion—my brother, who is much smarter than I am was never fooled—but I wasn’t so lucky. Add to this a song that we heard that went “You’re nothun’ but a nothun” and I spent much of my formative years confused about what was unreal and what was reality. All of this comes up in my paintings, murals and sculpture, but especially in my performance art.

 

As a young adult, I went to UC Davis for grad school at a time when they were still a top five art school and took some classes with Lynn Hershman (Important performance artist and feminist) and I used to sneak into Wayne Thiebaud's (famous pop artist) painting classes since I was a sculpture major and didn't get priority for the painting classes. But even then I was very interested in a kind of conceptual interdisciplinarity. In fact, back then I was pretty much a conceptual, minimalist sculptor--I considered myself a "Conceptual Expressionist" then and that seems to be even more true today as I begin to mix POP, Conceptualism and Performance Art into something new and exciting.

 

2. Tell us about the White Center mural--how did that come about and what is it about?

 

Murals bring a community together, in fact, there have been many studies published that show that visible art, art on walls, in community centers, on building walls - anywhere that they can be seen - brings the entire community up. It is an important form of communication and bonding that creates community and uplifts the spirits of its inhabitants. Places like White Center are even starting to build up mural walks, where people specifically come to their towns just to see the art that is on its city walls.

 

Slowly but surely, it raises the feeling of pride that inhabitants of a city living with and collectively taking guardianship of shared artworks gain in themselves--especially when they see that others are talking about their sense of culture and the beauty on their walls. I am exceptionally proud to be part of something like this and proud to speak about the importance that public art brings to any and every community. Whether that is Fremont, Ballard, Capitol Hill or White Center. The Mural itself is a kind of series of fairy tales. Centered around one of my main characters--a girl of various ages and forms called the Muse--initially, she was based on an ex-girlfriend who really was the muse that inspired the beginning of this current body of work. In fact it was her that asked me to do the very first painting of this type that I ever did. Before this, I was working in a minimalist style and she asked me to do a portrait of her, which was the very beginning of all of this. That was a pretty magical time in my life--a life which tends to be pretty magical in general.

 

3. You recently worked with the Seattle Art Museum, alongside fellow muralist Ryan "Henry" Ward--are there any more events like these planned for the future?

 

PARTNERSHIP WITH SAM

 

Ryan Henry ward and I are currently planning with the museum to do some more work with the Seattle Art Museum in the new year, but I am talking to them about the possibility of doing something sooner--no promises, but cross your fingers and send us lots of hopeful wishes. It was quite a wonderful thing to be offered the chance to work on the first two "live painting" events with the museum and hopefully this will be a very long-term relationship. Originally, I was looking for a way to become more connected to the Seattle Art Museum and the wonderful things that they have been doing with our community. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when they said yes, they had some very specific ideas in mind that we could be a part of.

 

The Seattle Art Museum is perhaps the most important art institution in Washington and it is the place that all young artists go to learn about the possibilities of what art can be. Museums like SAM, Frye, and MOMA are so important to the alternative and street art scenes--especially, because they are like a translator - they take history and make it something that we can grasp, hope, and dream about. As young artists, we see ourselves every time we walk into these sacred spaces--we see how we fit in to the panoply of art history. For an artist it is a place of possibilities, where we meet our artistic mothers and fathers.

 

It must be a huge responsibility putting together the work, especially in Seattle's art museums, because through what they choose to show young artists they have a huge influence and impact on the future of Seattle and Washington art. It is awesome when you think about the fact that historically, it has always been the galleries, museums and salons that artists went to learn to paint and communicate.

 

6. So what is this Subpop Art movement we are hearing so much about?

 

Yes, Subpop, Seapop or Seabrow as it has been called is an alternative art movement that has been building up steam for the last several years. This is Sub 'Pop Art'—as in something beneath 'Pop Art' or a kind of abject 'Pop Art.' It is Seattle’s own kind of 'Pop', and while I can't speak for everyone, much of it is a bit more visceral, a bit more street, a bit more lyrical, whimsical and immediate than some of the other schools of art and includes such artists as myself, Ryan Henry Ward, Andy Miller, Tnglr, Hera Won, Jonathan Wakuda Fischer and many others—many, who may not even consider themselves to be part of the movement. It is art, that, while it may seem to be friendly, even saccharin sweet at times, in fact has much more going on and might even be considered to have a dark side.

 

Seattle's take on art is actually different than many other art scenes —gone is the purity and the reserved bombast of the moderns and even the identity politics of the post moderns—Some of it is messy, carnivalesque and filled with a jouissance that seemed to just be missing from most of the art of today. It is not a single-issue movement—and does not fit neatly into any one category. I believe that Seattle's art connotes a break and a shift from the groups of the most recent post modern. We are more attuned to the work of and spirit of the Dadaists, the Hairy Who, The Monster Roster, Fluxus and the Funk Artists of California and though it might not seem immediately obvious—to the work of Marcel Duchamp.

 

4. What does the future look like?

 

For me the future and the present includes bringing all of the various aspects of my artwork together--to find the intersections, breaks and especially the breakdowns of art and especially of Pop Art. It is especially important to me to use any and all of my abilities, no matter how varied they might be, to take the art of the margins from the margins, as unchanged as possible and bring it to the center/the people. Street art, murals, children's art, performance art–this all becomes a kind of sub-popart.  I hold onto the grungy edges and create a kind of “Lo-fi art” that owes more to the static on the radio, the constant rain in the background and the dust-bunnies in the corner of the room; it isn’t always pretty, the edges aren’t always cleaned up, the picture isn’t always framed during a time when everything else is trying to look slick and panders to the sensibilities of the viewer. Right now art has become needy and pandering.

 

In fact, this is part of what I see as being the best aspect of Seattle's best artists--they do what they need to do and use any and all means to get the work out to everybody—we take over, make and become our own galleries. We use every existing venue available to us from the walls of buildings, telephone poles, electrical boxes, newspaper boxes, antique shops, parks, bus stops, even taking over people’s homes, from murals and performances to shoving flyers, posters, stickers and invitations into the local Stranger newspapers —the idea is not to become the machine, but rather to circumvent the modes and methods of exposure for our work—to get directly to the people and to infest their thinking to the point that we can become part of everyone’s internal thinking processes. As Ryan "Henry" Ward, (my main compatriot in much of what I do)--put it, the idea was that these murals etc. would stick in the minds of the people and art would infect/inflect them like a “virus”.