Jonathan Hounshell: Since this body of work, I’ve put more and more lyrical elements into my work—not only in the titles but also now into the artwork itself. I love words. I have a piece now that explores the fact that the words for Luck, Death and for Strong obviously don’t rhyme in English but they do in Spanish: Suerte, Muerte, and Fuerte. What impact does this have on the mentality of Spanish speakers that differs from English speakers? It is quite abstract. Our memories are as abstract and intangible as words. The moments of the past were once real and visceral, but now they are fleeting pulses of electricity that run through the brain. My memory is different than your memory while it may be of the same incident. Either way, that incident may now only exist in our minds. There are few ways to capture a memory such as writing it in words, working it out in a drawing or capturing it as it happens with the photograph. Which one is truer? Photographs don’t lie right?— but they don’t tell the whole truth. We can say whatever we want in words, but I like the visual image, because it’s like a game. Viewers can interpret it however they want.

 

N: The images published in this issue of Nantahala are triptychs.  When viewing them either in the pages of the journal or on the wall of a gallery, the triptychs imply a narrative and a progression of time.  In fact, the images look as if they are “still shots” from a film.  Why does this form of presentation interest you?

 

JH: When we conjure up our memories they are often in motion, just as we experience life. Then again, some memories are like still frames of a particular experience that may have happened far enough in the past that we forget the major details. Therefore, we’re sort of left with snippets the memory strung together in a piecemeal sequence of motion.

 

N: Do you think that your viewers relate to triptychs more positively because we are a people nurtured by the televised and filmic image?

 

JH: I’d say 90% of the college students who pass through this gallery never remember when there was no MTV or music video, or color television or one hour photo, or PIXAR or Nintendo, or when it was more fun to play out side. Therefore, yes, I think it the moving color image has become ingrained into our culture—from movies to TV to our cellular phones.

 

N: You trained in painting and graphic design.  When did you begin to incorporate photographic images in your work?

 

JH:  I really gain inspiration from graphic design—particularly the design from time periods where the technology governed the look of it. I looked to propaganda posters and the degraded photograph against flat color background. I love the horsy halftone patterns of advertising from the 1920s to the 1950s. So I’ve sought to pay homage to these interests and using photography in a way that is not “straight” but some how altered. Just like our memories fade with time, and they transform and become something else in the vaults of our minds. All of the original photographs used to compile these artworks have undergone a translation where information is lost and distilled.  Both printmaking and photography, historically, have been known as replicating art forms or commercially broadcasted imagery. Drawing and painting has more of the slow and time-honored traditions. So I like to combine them all because I enjoy mixing the past with the present, the cheap with the precious, the mass market with the bourgeoisie.

 

N: Is there an element of reportage to your artwork?  If so, what do you feel you are reporting on?

 

JH: I’m reporting on my own life, really, and how these people have crossed my path. Honestly I get a high out of “stealing” these moments from other people’s lives. I’m a collector. I collect all sorts of things. If you visited my house, it’s like the inside of a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. Therefore I see image making or capturing as one more collection process. I horde away hundreds of photographs, whether they are about the shapes and colors of European store fronts or about the passing stranger on the street. Maybe I’m trying to document the world before it’s turned under and built over again.

 

N:  Much of the poetry and images you present at your website, 37^th Parallel (www.37thparallel.net) focuses on your travels.  Your art, it seems, combines the transience of a tourist’s travelogue with the deeper ponderings of the nature of reality.  Is this an intentional investigation or something that developed naturally over time, as you consistently worked to represent your experiences within specific art forms?

 

JH: The characters in these little “clips” often are whimsical. But as you may see, several of them are first visually separated from their environment. Secondly, and theoretically, these characters are detached from the culture of the place, whether they are the traveler or the native. There is the young girl smoking who appears to be more concerned about how vogue a 15 year old can be in a backdrop that has played-out the turmoil of countless people for hundreds of years. Incidents in the city seen behind her gave tremendous fuel to the fire of the IRA—people fighting out against a conformity placed upon them (if you will)—while this girl, now, participates in whatever she can in order to fit in with the crowd—or what she sees beamed to her from American television.

So under the bright colors and the apparent comedic quality to a lot of my work, there’s sometimes a deep cynicism. Just like the poetry, I express a clear nostalgia for the locale but at the same time I hold a grudge against people who step all over history, or tear it down. I really feel that history repeats itself and that this is all just a loop of time. I feel strangely connected to people living hundreds of years ago because we are all humans. We all go through the same gamut of life’s gestures, only the scenery changes.

 

N: Your use of color is striking.  Upon first experiencing your images, one is struck by the two contradictory feelings: one of brilliant clarity and the other of blurred distortion.  This evocation of emotion is brought on by the manner in which you use color, which immediately attracts the eye, but upon further analysis the color is actually breaking up, the quality is almost “pointalistic.” Could you explain why you use color in this way and what purposes it serves?

 

JH: Again, this comes from the influence of old poster design. I really wanted to create a disjointed environment, where the human subject is there in the scene but also separated from it. I wanted the backgrounds to be flat up against the picture plane, much like the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. As well, I like the conflict of the flat background (which naturally should go back in space). The figure has more illusionary volume because they are either drawn or have the continuous tones of a photo. Both compete with being in front. It’s a fun dialectic and breaks up the naturalism into a design and not into a painting.

 

N:  Depicting the “self” in both art and literature is a common and long-standing tradition.  The images that depict your “self” at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, beneath the famous windmill, brings to mind Cervantes’s Don Quixote.  I wonder if you are consciously making reference the role of the artist in society as a kind of roving, romantic fool, driven by his own inner visions of the world, fighting imaginary giants who are actually spinning windmills. Also, are you questioning, through the representation of the “self,” your own position in and relationship to the long history of art and artists?

 

JH: After creating the triptych in question, other people have ironically seen the Don Quixote connection. I can’t look at it now and not think of it and it’s funny that you see it too. I did mean to make a commentary on how I hope to fit in with the history of such a place. The Moulin Rouge and many other places in that area of Paris were frequented by a rich cross section of the artist whose work I admire. Therefore I’m comically including myself into this history much like a pop artist thumbed his nose at art history—Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Mel Ramos and Warhol. It’s also in a strong tradition of Marcel Duchamp. But it is the work of Lautrec and Edouard Manet that mesmerizes me. It was men like these who walked under the shadow of this windmill fighting their own demons.

 

N: What advice do you have for younger artists who are interested in becoming image-makers?  Could you speak specifically to acquiring technical skills and gaining vision for one’s work?

 

JH: I think new artist should really embrace technology and all it’s benefits, but not be governed by it. It is a tool and the traditions of the past are an important building block upon which to construct a new and unique technique. Always experiment, combine, and discover. All of these pieces began as photograph, then went through design stages in Photoshop but were ultimately broken apart again and put back together with traditional processes. Digital media can produce some sublime and amazing effect in the hands of someone trained in both technology and fine art traditions.  On the other hand, someone can learn all the latest software but with no way to see things like an artist or without a sense of color or design; all they can make is some complicated rubbish.