TODD JAMESINTERVIEW AND PORTRAIT BY JOEY GARFIELD

TODD “REAS” JAMES AND I GO BACK SEVERAL YEARS, but his visual hits now span

decades. The journey to become a contemporary artist hasn’t been the straightest

trajectory, but despite that, one constant throughout has been Todd’s visual voice. It

remains unfiltered and unfucked with. His Kool-Aid colored world is filled with subversive

Saturday morning cartoon characters, with thong-loving ladies and rocket-packing pirates

permeating whichever medium suits his fancy.

Despite the comic book styling, the size of his work is by no means confined to that scale. His are about going big. It’s top-to-bottom, whole car style, and there is no end in sight. Joey Garfield: Given your multiple artistic backgrounds,

was being or becoming a fine artist also something you

had in mind? How did you settle on painting?

Todd James: My dad came to New York to be a painter and I thought that was what I’d do, but my mom did graphic design and that made more sense. The art world was weird to me. I didn’t know how things worked. I grew up wanting to do comics and animation, and even worked as an intern at Marvel. It was reading a lot of fan mail and Xeroxing, and I didn’t want to do it after I saw how it worked. It’s fun to draw that stuff, but it meant dedication to a whole world, and I was drifting in a different direction. I later had a job making graphics with bands that I was into and didn’t really have any real reason to be a painter back then.

With graffiti, I stopped at the age of seventeen. When the trains slowly got cleaned up, I came back and did a whole lot while I transitioned to doing more commercial graphic design stuff and illustration cartooning. The transition from painting trains to any adulthood artwork I’m doing has been a gradual move with some giant leaps here and there, but slow and steady. But doing trains and graphic arts or animation, these things are all their own pockets. There are stylistic connections to it all because it’s my personality that comes through. The approach is probably the most connecting force with the things I say and the way I am saying them. A lot of people I work with don’t know I did some of the other stuff and that’s fine. The dots are there to be connected or not.

Right.

Your approach to the work has such fantasy and deviant

qualities. It also seems like a part of our world that

probably goes on every day, even if it’s not seen.

I like those kinds of moments that are behind closed doors. I don’t even like describing the work; I’d rather just show it. I think there is a lot more going on in the picture than what’s going to come out of my mouth.

To me, it’s everything I would have wanted on my walls

when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn’t allow.

There is freedom involved. It’s not really breaking rules. I’m just giving you permission to put it on your walls. All kinds of people respond to it. I did a big painting of a naked woman on the wall in the ICA, and while I was there, these older women walked in and they loved it. I think there is something about it that’s okay. It’s okay to look at and enjoy nakedness. Do you think any

of this is perverse?

It’s funny, not perverse. Perverse makes me think of something that is wrong [points to an image of a naked women holding a cat in her lap] and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. How do you come up with the content in your paintings?

I am entertaining myself. A lot of times it’s whatever is occupying my mind, like the Somali Pirates or something on the news, and then a lot of it is just entertainment. I’m my own audience first. The paintings I did initially that were war themed weren’t like me saying, “I’m sick of this, I am going to protest.” I was just watching the news and drawing some tanks or something. I came to realize that the paintings aren’t 100% protest. Some of it is, but I’m also intrigued by stealth bomber technology. I kind of think everybody is. That’s why there are shows like Super Weapons. We shouldn’t be involved in a lot of these wars but there are a lot of angles, and they’re both fascinating and really wrong. How did the Somali Pirates come about?

By accident. I saw something about them on the news and did a little sketch and put it away. Then when I started looking through images, I saw it again and thought, “This Somali pirate could be a painting.” This was after I did all those cartoon war paintings. They all had white backgrounds, but when I made the Somali Pirates, it was full-on filling the backgrounds with color. Initially, I just found them fascinating on a gut level. What I think is interesting about them is that a little group of guys in a little boat with hand-me-down weapons can rob something that is bigger than a building. Where do you take something the size of those cargo ships?

Beyond the story

Joey Garfield and John Carluccio made the documentary The Cost of Getting Over that documents the making of the NYC Street Market exhibit in 2000. It is a very rare film if you can find it.

Todd designed the Dusted Elephant logo for the Beastie Boys’ record label Grand Royal.

He designed the Crank Yankers puppets. Oh, and those now infamous bear costumes and puppets that danced with Miley Cyrus on stage at the VMAs? He did those too.

Triangles Don’t WorkAcrylic on canvas

120 cm x 120 cm 2013

Photo by Ronnald Amstutz

50 JUXTAPOZ TODD JAMES

There are a lot of things about them that you know are not one-sided. They are not good guys but they’re not bad guys, either. These are David and Goliath figures. These are portraits of guys at work, and the themes are of survival, ownership, boundaries, justice, and ingenuity. The colors are really bright but the subject matter is serious. I like the ones where they are having tea, or are smoking on their downtime during a break. These paintings aren't judgments, but just a look at what’s going on. I think that deep down everybody loves pirates.

Dude, yes, that’s something I found out. People love pirates. They love all kinds of pirates. Disney has proven that. Content aside, let’s talk about colors. It seems like you

started your paintings by using just a few colors. Was that

a conscious choice?

No, it was an accident that just happened. There was a point when I was starting to make paintings for galleries where I was just using pink and black because it was a good way for people to remember me. And Steve [Powers] had a bucket of this really bright fluorescent pink. I used it for like two years. Before that I was using all kinds of colors, but for this phase of my gallery work, or whatever you want to call it, I started it off in black and pink and gradually more colors came into the paintings.

Working in so many different mediums, what is your

weapon of choice? A marker, brush, computer, spray can?

What’s the most freeing?

I like using pencils…

What, pencils?

I mean, I like using everything, but I’m the freest with a

pencil. It’s one notch up from the rest. I like doing all of it because if you get bored with one thing, you can just move on, but I like drawing on paper a lot. The computer is cool but I feel more connected on paper. With pencil, I can see how ideas come immediately, but

with animation, doesn’t that inspiration get hung up in the

process?

Creating the ideas and drawing the scenes is all fast, though not as fast as doing one drawing. When you make an animation, you never start and then do the very next drawing in the sequence. You are making a series of scenes, and everything is filled in between. You’re thinking fast like, “He is up on top of the cliff, but he’s going to jump into the river, now he’s under water, he comes up for air, cut to somebody else.” You’ll never draw it like, “He is midway down,” unless there is a real reason to. It’s like five different drawings that are sequential. The creating and thinking is the same as just drawing.

How did creating puppets come about? This is an

interesting time for you because the puppets you designed

for the Miley Cyrus performance on the MTV Video Music

Awards went worldwide.

That’s something I just never thought I’d be involved in. I couldn’t imagine I’d be working with people in the puppet world because… there is a puppet world. There is? And you visited that world?

Yeah, for a couple of years when I worked on Crank Yankers, I worked with a bunch of people who were involved with Henson, Sesame Street and other shows. They were all really good at making puppets, and I was the guy who got to draw what they would build. I learned there are certain

THESE ARE PORTRAITS OF GUYS AT WORK AND THE THEMES ARE OF SURVIVAL AND OWNERSHIP, BOUNDARIES, JUSTICE, AND INGENUITY

bottom left Miley Cyrus Bears for the MTV VMAs

2013

rightAvocado Sea and Banana Clips

Acrylic on canvas 120 cm x 120 cm

2013Photo by Ronnald Amstutz

52 JUXTAPOZ TODD JAMES DECEMBER 2013 53

Vandals Bedroom Interior From MOCA’s Art In The Streets,

Street Market Installation 2011

Photo Marcus Raboy

54 JUXTAPOZ TODD JAMES

things that are advantageous to the puppeteer like bigger mouths, and also stuff that can get in the way of a design. But there are so many new, advanced ways to build them now. I always liked the Krofft puppet shows. Like H.R. Pufnstuf?

Yeah! Forget it!

When you called to say you were designing these bear

puppets to dance with Miley Cyrus, who would also

emerge from a bear, I was like “Huh?” But that’s exactly

what happened and I still was like, “Huh?” Was that the

performance you imagined?

Diane Martel had done her video and said, “I want Todd James bears.” I thought it sounded nuts. I knew they were going to dance on stage and she would come out of one, and there were backpack bears too. They first said they needed twelve. I drew a bunch and each face was different. They made twelve suits and then called asking for two more. I made fourteen but then, on stage, there were only twelve.

Well, it has got to be cool to be at the show and seeing

your doodles on paper turn to life.

It was awesome and the media attention was great. Miley is an artist in transition, and change is good. Everyone was entertained. Let’s go back to your art in galleries. I feel like the Street

Market show you made in 2000 at Deitch Projects was a

jumping off point in taking your artwork to a new level.

In 1998, Steve and I started talking about doing gallery work but I wasn’t that interested. Barry McGee and Kaws were just starting to do it, and they were kind of the only New York gallery, post-graff guys. In 2000, I started doing more exhibition stuff, but at the same time, I actually was working on a TV show.

Then there was Street Market, and we used everything we had done up to that point: Steve’s magazine, hip-hop, slogans, snappy copy, graphic designs, and graffiti. Street Market was a packaging of all that stuff. It wasn’t planned out exactly like that, but it was the first record that was a whole bunch of things focused into this one package.

IF YOU GET BORED WITH ONE THING, YOU CAN JUST MOVE ON, BUT I LIKE DRAWING ON PAPER A LOT. THE COMPUTER IS COOL BUT I FEEL MORE CONNECTED ON PAPER

leftCaptain Kitty Is So Pretty

Gouache and graphite on paper 57 cm x 76 cm

2013Photo by Ronnald Amstutz

aboveSwords and Sorcery

Flash drawings for James’ Instagram

@ToddJamesReas2013

DECEMBER 2013 57

You once related Street Market to Kiss’s Destroyer album.

It’s more Ride The Lightning by Metallica because Kiss made so many records before Destroyer. It’s like Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded because it was their first album.

When we were filming back then, it seemed like Jeffrey

Deitch was overwhelmed with what was happening. What

did he know about the show going in?

None of us realized what it would become. We were putting in all this force, all of our experiences becoming one idea we had come up with together. It was the right moment and the right people. Jeffrey wanted us to annihilate the place.

Tell me about the Vandal’s Bedroom.

After we recreated the Street Market, next thing was that Steve, Barry and I were going to create our own new environments. Steve had a church of some sort, Barry had a surf gallery space, and Alexis Ross brought in his Café Legs. I brought in a lot of black books just for fun because I was drawing in them a lot. When we brought Street Market to Venice, the way the space was constructed allowed for this extra little room that was kind of down the alley of the exhibit. We gave the room a window that actually used to belong to my house. We taped up a bunch of graff mags and everybody bombed it while we were installing. People would smoke and drink beer in there and it became this real degenerate little space. That was sort of how the first version of the Vandal’s Bedroom came about.

But the intention from the start wasn’t to make it an

installation thing?

It all came from a history of different components. I always liked that bedroom and thought it would be cool to revisit it one day. Part of the inspiration was from an image of this anime fan’s bedroom, who posted up all this animation from the ceiling, walls to the floor. In Japan the apartments are small, and this guy dedicated his to Sailor Moon. The image was so strong I thought that would be cool to marry these things and do that with all my black books, like a capsule of my influences. It’s pure fun, just marker drawings, cartoons from Blade, Betty and Veronica, and Style Wars. There is a Frank Frazetta book in there, some Bode comics, Wizards… every era that influenced me is represented in there somehow. It’s a fantasy idea of what somebody who doesn’t know anything about this world would think the bedroom of someone who lived in this world would look like. And once I knew that the Street Market show wasn’t coming to Brooklyn, I decided to take just the Vandal’s Bedroom and show that around. I showed it in New York at Gering & Lopez, V1 in Copenhagen, Lazarides in London, and now it’s in Spain at Javier Lopez. And every time it has traveled, it’s gotten more regional. In London, I added some rare car paint that someone lent me, thinking people would really trip out on it if they saw it in there. I’ll add stuff but the art basically stays the same.

Street Market was such a post-graffiti idea, where the stuff was going and where it was leaving. I liked the idea of going back to where it all comes from. It was a great way to exercise everybody’s style that influenced me, and to include friends’ black book drawings. It’s had a weird journey to become what it was. Do you ever wish that really was your room?

No, no. Too much overload. It’s a good place to visit, not to stay.

Todd James’ exhibition at Galeria Javier Lopez in Madrid, Spain will be on display through November 29, 2013

For more information about Todd’s work, visit toddjames.com

JUXTAPOZ.COM / TODD-JAMES

aboveNever Forgive Action

Gouache and graphite on paper 15” x 11”

2013 Photo by Ronnald Amstutz

rightThe Beast MasterAcrylic on canvas

36” x 48” 2012

Photo by Ronnald Amstutz

58 JUXTAPOZ TODD JAMES