Trenton ReynoldsThis is the Dabble On Podcast. My name is Trent Reynolds and I am talking with artists about the materials and techniques they're inspired by. My guest this episode is Jared Clark. who is not only a fantastic artist, but also a brother-in-law and a good friend. Here is my conversation with artist Jared Clark. I wanted to give the personal history a little bit from my point of view. Jared Clark and I were at Brigham Young University undergrad at more or less the same time. You were about a year ahead of me. Okay. And 94, this was a name, Jared Clark. You were the one that the professors loved. This is from my point of view. Interesting. I don't know if this is something that, you know, a perspective that you felt, but I always felt like when a, an example of a successful, like, somebody who's doing cool work. You know, because there's always the students that kind of, they fall into camps like this guy's a wolf fight, this guy's a Bruce follower, and they kind of like start mimicking the... But your work always kind of didn't seem to like fit neatly into one camp, you know, that was a follower of a professor at the school. Anyway, so I was always aware of you as somebody that was a year ahead of me and beloved by professors and students alike. And anyway, and so I was aware of you back then. And then, you know, school, we both, you graduated, I graduated. We both went to separate ways in life. Then turns out. I marry a woman whose name is Laura German.
Yep.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd through a series of life circumstances, one of your best friends, who is also somebody that I know, a BYU artist from the same years, right, basic years, married the younger sister of my wife. Correct. Correct. And you were introduced the day of their marriage to a different sister. Yeah, third sister. Third sister who you married a couple years later.
Yeah, yeah, a year later. Was it just a year later? Less than.
Trenton ReynoldsLess than a year later. I didn't realize.
Jared ClarkThey got married in July, and we got married the next March.
Trenton ReynoldsSo we had had these kind of overlapping years at BYU. I'd say we were more acquaintances, and I certainly felt friendly towards you, but I don't think we were hanging out all the time. Right. And then life kind of turned out, as it does, kind of... And strangely enough, now we're brothers-in-law. How would you... Tell me who Jared is from your perspective.
Jared ClarkThe question is, who am I? Yeah. I felt like I should give you my perspective introduction of Jared Clark. You know, the thing that I always mention that I'm always interested in in students is this... searching around of like, what should I be doing with art? And like you mentioned, they end up globbing onto a professor or a mix of professors because by their actions, they're showing what they believe is, the path was for them. And there's so many paths, you know, and I think the thing I had going for me, actually, this will, will dovetail in later. I'm sure the thing I had going for me is before college, I had tried to look at everything I could at the library and, visual art history. And so I had, besides... You worked at the library? No, I would just go there. You just spent a lot of time there. That was my mom's thing. She would take us to the library since we were kids and we'd get books. But at some point, I became pretty serious about looking at everything I could find about contemporary art. And so I think I had more than just a passing familiarity with some of those artists. I was really into some of those artists. And so I wasn't any different. I was also taking cues from professors and kind of putting them through my own. my own style, but I was also putting these other artists through that, that mill. Right. Um, so I think that's one thing I had going for me is just there. It wasn't just the professors that I was looking at. And then, um,
Trenton Reynoldsat that, I'm sorry. Yeah, you go. I was going to say at that, at that point before you get to BYU before undergrad, um, you had been looking at these books, um, you're already starting to form kind of a taste or an idea of what are you like and yeah maybe that you'd like to emulate yeah what does that look like who who are the artists and what had you been doing before you started developing that opinion was there a moment when you said like I kind of this is what I want to do and that kind of separated you from just like going to art classes at high school and you know doing
Jared Clarkeverybody else is doing yeah I think in high school I just gravitated towards what a lot of kids do which is can I paint realistically can I draw people can I actually pull that off right and a lot of times a solution is drawing from photographs and but I was really into the idea of drawing and painting from life and I think that's a normal kind of thing and developing artists as they want to see if they can do that and some my high school stuff is all over the place but there's a lot of paintings of my sisters and there's like trying out surrealism as a lot of high school people do. And then when I, the artists that I remember most at the Orem Public Library, for some reason they had a lot of Jim Dine books. And so I really was interested about what he was doing. It looked so different to me from the couple of art history books I had. and where that fit in.
Trenton ReynoldsI've seen Jim Dine books before and I don't think I was blown away when I first was exposed to Jim Dine. What was it about Jim Dine?
Jared ClarkTwo things. He had the stuff he got famous with, which was very simple paintings of robes and hearts, but he would often do things with gluing... or attaching tools and brooms on his paintings. It was kind of, I guess a spinoff of some Jasper Johns kind of, kind of stuff that I was really interested in using objects in the paintings.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd so it wasn't necessarily that it was like visually compelling. It was like the process and the materials that,
Jared ClarkYeah, there was some. I was actually more compelled by the minimalist stuff he did, not so much by the imagery. Like if he just did have like, you know, a massive field of paint and these clamps on there or something. or something were impressive to me. And then he also later in life started drawing himself obsessively, all these self portraits and pencil and drawing. He was drawing a lot on charcoal. He was drawing his neighbors, friends, his wife. And so I was really fascinated that what he was doing with what we as high schoolers were trying to do, just I was drawing myself and my sisters and but like he started doing that in his midlife career and I was really interested in a lot of things he did stylistically with um with pencil and uh with charcoal just were were new to me and now they're they're kind of common just mark making and using you're having both marks to describe the form but also just to describe abstraction and maybe some kind of Cy Twombly stuff in there in a representational
Trenton Reynoldsdrawing. So there's both those things going on. Was that the beginning of your interest in using common materials or like non-art materials? It might be, you know, you reminded me
Jared Clarka couple days ago of Charles Arnoldi. I don't know how you pronounce that name, Arnoldi. But I had also, in the same library, come across some California artists. Was also impressed by the way he used sticks as painting, as line, as... in his work. And so those are the two Jim Dine and Charles Arnoldi that I can think of. And then Nelson, you have, um, you know, Robert Rauschenberg and, um, Jasper Johns as well. I think we're, we're probably my early influences in, um, being very interested in putting objects in paintings or on paintings next to paintings as paintings. Right. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsDid that seem like it, was there any kind of dissonance for you? Like psychological dissonance where you're like, that's not really art. or could that be art or did you was that a revelation like all of a sudden new options open up to you
Jared Clarkyeah more B it's like it was like it obviously was art because it had been approved right it was in the books so like this is art you know but I think with everything I'd had a process a lot of times where I would see things like my dad had bought me a art of western world book when I was a kid because he knew I was interested in art and it was sort of the basics of the European, mostly the European arc of development of art. And so, yeah, there was things in there that I'd always see and was like, I don't understand that including minimalism and, probably probably Rauschenberg and stuff um and then slowly I would kind of get to a point where it would there would be a light bulb where I'm like oh I get it in my own way I get it so yeah there it wasn't immediate with everything but yeah there was definitely with those this excitement of um there's possibilities. Right. Yeah. And another thing about the way I grew up is I grew up around thrift stores for my back-to-school shopping. And when I started earning my own money I would go to thrift stores to find ties from the 70s to wear at church and stuff. In college, I was pretty familiar with what was available there. I think in college, I started going to thrift stores, trying to find things to put into paintings, a la Rauschenberg or Dine. Right. Yeah. and kind of figure some things out.
Trenton ReynoldsI remember you using not just like thrift store found stuff, but like wood, like chairs. Maybe just give us an idea or like the breadth of materials that have been incorporated in your work.
Yeah.
Jared ClarkI did end up using found wood from an empty lot, junkyard, behind a dumpster, making my own things with muslin or canvas and wood as well. But when I, I guess in college, my big breakthrough finally, which ended up in my final show, came from... when I finally got interested in minimalism. And it's through Mark Magleby and his class. And he kind of just... Contemporary art history professor. Contemporary art history professor at BYU. He mentioned in his lecture that Donald Judd's rows, columns of boxes coming out from the wall were a comment on painting. And I never thought of that because it came out so far. And that idea excited me and changed how I looked at minimalism from that. on. Many minimalists at the time were using fabricated new materials. So my idea was if I use found wood, found stuff, they're not going to be as empty of content as other minimalist objects because they automatically have stories and their use or in how old they are. And,
um,
Trenton Reynoldsdid you feel like that was what was, or was that lacking from minimalism?
Jared ClarkWas that, that was my, that was my idea was that was lacking on purpose for minimalism. Right. and but it's still but because of that it still didn't do enough for me so i thought here's something where i can come in and do what i want to see in minimalism and so um sometimes i'd have to the wood was decaying and if i'd have to repair it i actually would put bondo in the wood and then sand it and you could see kind of in the grooves where the bondo um filled in you know gaps and i use plaster and and wood glue. And I just started dreaming up kind of minimalist shapes and forms. And oh, the other big influence was Ava Hesse and how a lot of her work was, taking those elements of a painting and exaggerating them into sculpture. So where you have like the really huge, uh, cord coming out of a frame shape, it's like the hanging wire coming out into the space. So I was really excited about that idea. Um, Because I wasn't trying to make minimalist sculpture. I was trying to make minimalist objects that commented on painting. And so I did a lot of things with string and tubes that I would find, like these old yellowing tubes and stuff.
Trenton Reynolds- Would you say that's true of all your work is that there's always this tether or reference to painting? 'Cause a lot of your work could be just as easily seen as sculpture, right? But it's important to you that it kind of is seen through the lens of--
Jared Clark- Yeah, I really kept that up to this day where almost always I want that tether. to painting and sometimes i sometimes i get surprised when people call me a sculptor but i've really been working mostly with sculpture since since that show at byu right that that idea of um strings coming out of these blocks um and not um using, using surfaces, like using color field painting, essentially like a, in, I use a lot of beeswax. I'd mix it with house paint or, or layer it, um, with gesso. And so I was doing a lot of things to try to make painted surfaces that weren't imagery, but that was kind of how I would show,
um,
Jared Clarkthe painted side of things but some some of those objects they didn't have any of that it was just like the the sanded bondo in the wood was the painting surface right right um and uh one one object from thrift stores that i still am obsessed with is uh kitchen cutting boards because the form is so attractive as a painting itself like the thick board just hung on a wall is attracted to me but then the knife marks and the stains the oil stains or other stains you know are a found painting itself a found drawing and so um I've been working with those since that same time about 2003 right it's a problem that I like the the marks and the stains because then it inhibited me from doing anything else with them really so it's taken me a lot of years to finally get over that enough to um make paintings on them so now now I've come kind of full circle to where I'm using those objects but I'm I'm painting abstractions on them. So they really are becoming just supports. Yeah, so they're finally becoming just these supports. And it makes them different, you know, when you see this in real life.
Trenton ReynoldsWith the cutting boards, though, and this is something that seems like a through line in a lot of your work. There was, you know, you called them cut lodges. because you cut out parts of one cutting board and then kind of embedded it in another cutting board. So it was like these, and they'd be these little kind of minimalist shapes, but you'd see evidence of, you know, an image or a kind of, use that was on the other cutting board. And then the pun of cut lodge, in reference to cuts and cutting boards and lodging in the board. And there's a lot of wordplay in there. And you've done a lot of work that involves that kind of pun and wordplay. That's true. Is that an important part? It seems like that's a generative at the very least. It is. I think what it reveals is the
Jared ClarkI guess the fun I'm having in creating that, that idea, um, that there's sort of the pun or a joke involved in it. Yeah. And the, the cut lodges were a way to, um, to preserve the cutting board, like as a found painting, but also to preserve parts of the toll painting, um, And those are like basically boards that other people have painted on in a cutesy way, in a kitsch way.
Right.
Jared ClarkAnd a lot of the abstraction I was noticing at the time was coming up with kind of quirky shapes and patterns. And a lot of these toll paintings, if you cut pieces out of them... You cut them away from their whole of being a duck or a girl holding flowers or a pig. You can get these funny little abstractions that look very contemporary in the world of quirky abstraction. Yeah. And so by taking that little piece, yeah, so then I would, like you said, I would cut a hole in the cutting board and it would fit in there. But I also was doing them mostly, I had a couple of different ways I was doing it, but one way I was doing it was, making them like portrait heads because they weren't it wasn't a painting of a face but i would put it at the bottom center in sort of a blob form and so they so to me they were like these abstract portraits also right and i think that's and that and part of that is because that's i kind of circle back to that just like in high school where when I do want to paint from life I want to paint someone's head you know someone's face right so it's like I'm
Trenton Reynoldsreferencing it before I get back to it right so I want to go back to the transition from doing like drawings from your family and learning and when you learn how to draw in high school or any art class they they usually start you with drawing from observation right and And at what point did you give yourself permission to see art as something more than just representation, right? For me, that took me a year, like until maybe two years ago to let, to... I don't know, let go of representation, of needing representation. And for me, it was like more of an emotional attachment, I think, that I had a hard time letting go of than anything. Anyway, so I'm curious, because that happened for you before you even got to college, right? When did that happen? When did you go from drawing family in portraits in life and started seeing the possibilities of abstraction.
Jared ClarkSo the library studies... And then... Oh, so I started looking at the BYU library, which, you know, upgraded my local Oram Public Library to everything but also Art Forum and Art in America backlogs. And I... And so... you know, I had some academic classes and if I went to the library, I would always just end up going to all the periodicals that were out, like all the art forums. And I was just like learning, learning, learning, like what, according to art form in art in America, what was, what was art, you know, what was painting.
And,
Jared ClarkI think I finally let myself try stuff out that had been percolating for a few years in high school and into college and it would have been like 1995 right and I made oh also I never oil painted much because in school you're always using acrylic right if you're doing thick painting and so um I I made these large oil paintings where I was gluing trash and sticks into them like I had like a um kind of a big rusty lid and these little all these steel parts and i was just like hot gluing them on to canvas and no i didn't know what i was doing craft wise but i knew that all these guys i mentioned before were putting stuff in their paintings and so um Yeah, I was just smearing paint around and having a great time and trying to... I had gotten into Terry Winters and Bryce Martin when I looked at the magazines and was really captivated. by Cy Twombly. And so those sort of similar people in a lot of ways were people I was really thinking about when I thought about paint and abstraction.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, I think it's... Having gone to a bunch of different art schools now and seen and been teaching art for a long time, I just think I recognize how... unusual how remarkable it was that you were able to kind of start developing your own voice independent of you know you know I said at such an early age a and by just I don't know developing appetites and and and developing um I don't know, just by osmosis, by kind of absorbing what you were seeing and experiencing. That's ideal. That's what you want an artist to be, right? But it's not so easy to do, right, without more training. I don't know. It seems like you were able to start developing a voice at a much earlier age than I think a lot of artists.
Jared ClarkYeah. I guess when you say that, I'm thinking about interviews with musicians I hear sometimes where they just get a passion for things through hearing something, and that's what I want to do. And they just, I mean, so the passion. Yeah. I think that's what I'm trying to get at
Trenton Reynoldsis like, it seems like you found something like that's what I want. Right. And you were able to chase that. I don't think I was able to kind of lock in on any one thing for, I don't even know if I'm there yet. Right. Yeah. How, how does that, I don't know. I don't know if there's an
Jared ClarkYeah, I remember kind of speaking on that like so My I think a lot of AP high school teachers are like this, but they're good at trying to teach you to work in a group of Paintings or group of drawings like having a an emphasis concentration project mm-hmm, and so I think I started to learn that like in in I noticed for the teachers, like herding cats, they're like, you have to have a concentration project for your AP portfolio. And then I would watch our professors, especially Joe would work really quickly. And he'd have like, he'd make, you know, 20 panels and they were almost all the same, but he was trying out. you know, different things with one structure. And I definitely took that idea where I like, I have an idea for a set of paintings. And, and so, um, I, there was basically two large series of paintings I did before my final project that I just, um, was passionate about like I've got an idea and one of them was based on Spanish mosques that have Christian sculpture iconography kind of inserted into all the detailed tiles and patterns and architecture of a mosque because it was such a beautiful thing, they didn't want to destroy it, but they're like, let's put the Christian thing in instead of tearing this amazing thing to the ground. And so I was making paintings that were trying to show that tension,
and I was like,
Jared ClarkBut I had this idea of how I could make panels with undulating sides. And so they're basically rectilinear, but they're kind of carved on the edges. And a lot of them were two panels and. with a photo in there. And so like there was that series could have been my final show. Right. And then I did another one where I was making panels that were thick with two by fours and they were off measurements of my body. Like there's a measurements of my head, the measurements is one panel for my head, one for my shoulders, my whole height panel and with kind of stuff. And, And that one was hard because I wasn't... It seemed like that was the idea and I shouldn't be painting imagery on it, but I ended up trying out some sort of Bryce Martin-y kind of lines to draw body parts that became flowers. It was really... I was trying to figure something out that was me. And that could have been my final show. But then when I had the epiphany with... with Donald Judd and I started using found wood and all the stuff um by the way I was gluing objects into that other other series the measurement series um like uh like Jim Dine but the funny thing was when I when I when I had my final show when I I I think I spent a semester or
or so
Jared Clarkcranking it out and it looks so different there wasn't any oil paint like my first the other two series yeah people were just like, where did this come from? Like what? You're like, but then they couldn't like both friends and professors were just sort of like, I mean, it's, it's good, but where did this come from? Like you were doing, like just appeared and it was just like my obsession, my, my focus on it just came out of, out of that. And so, um, yeah, But from the outside, I realized it started to look strange. Even though I was a serious art student, like it was surprising to people to see me all over the place and then have like a fully large, thought out...
Trenton Reynoldsfull show of stuff. Do you think that, well, first to say that your dad is an archaeologist?
Jared ClarkCorrect. I didn't want to get the title wrong. He also teaches anthropology courses, but I think
Trenton Reynoldshe's officially an archaeologist. An archaeologist. And you, he was directly involved in actual archaeological digs, right? And you as a family would go to the digs. Not to the digs.
Jared ClarkTo the locations? We lived in Mexico, but we didn't go to his work locations. We do some touristy things, but not.
Trenton ReynoldsDo you think that there is anything from that history or from that being part of your formative years? Is there an archaeological element to it?
Jared ClarkI don't think so. I mean, I guess you could find a similarity. A lot of my career, my work has relied on me hunting and gathering.
Right.
Jared ClarkAnd when I started doing on-site temporary sculptures, I was really relying on hunting for a site that had enough junk lying around that inspired me and that i could have an idea but yeah thrift stores and and stuff and um there's that finding old things kind of thing well i'm also wondering like you
Trenton Reynoldsknow like in an archaeological dig you find these fragments and remnants of and and you have to start trying to imagine the story that explains why they're there right right And I wonder if that's not part of the appeal of going to the thrift stores. You can find these bits and pieces of people's lives. Yeah. And they suggest some kind of narrative or background or history. And they're rich with that feeling of humanity or story. But it's up to you to kind of fabricate from these bits and pieces some kind of cohesive narrative.
Jared ClarkYeah. Yeah, I think maybe part of the thrill of finding certain things – could be related to it. As far as what other people see in the objects I use, it's very different, right? Like an archaeologist is trying to find some truth to the materials, and I'm just trying to employ the materials in a way that feeds my interest in um being a part of the art history narrative uh so a lie instead of the truth yeah i don't know i i don't think you give yourself enough
Trenton Reynoldscredit or maybe that's not something you're even interested in considering but i think there is a There is kind of a truth or at least a through line, you know, there seems to be something that you're poking at or trying to get to that is a revelation of some kind of truth or some. Sure. You know, I don't know if you would if you could characterize that succinctly, but it does seem there is there's something there, right? Like there's a consistency and. Maybe there's a consistency in the humor. There's a consistency in this tension between the cold visual vocabulary of minimalism and the very warm, hot, bloody, messiness of these found objects and the historicity that's implied by that. Right. I don't know. I don't know what that's all about, but there it, I don't think it's just about like a cool, you know, kind of trying to locate yourself in the history of contemporary art. Right. Right. There's something there beyond that. Right. There's, there's humanity.
Jared ClarkThere's, Oh yeah. I just, I just, when you, in, in making a direct connection to archeology, I don't know. I don't know if there's much to go on.
Trenton ReynoldsRight, that's not perhaps a...
Jared ClarkBut yeah, when you're talking about that kind of stuff, yeah, I hope so. And I think my jump from using rectilinear found objects like cutting boards and pieces of lumber to using figurines really... I think that finally pushed the idea more of like, it's easy to forget or not care about a used piece of wood. And especially you've seen a lot of stuff like that in art galleries. But when I started using the kitsch figurines, I thought that that... pushed the idea more for the viewer. This was grandma's set of figurines on the mantle, you know, behind her glass case. And now they're being sort of abused but rearranged and glued and then painted in a different it's a probably surprising way that people i think when i started doing those those are more more unique people haven't seen something quite like that well it's not like it's not like wood
Trenton Reynoldswhere you're repurposing it as a material you're repurposing it as a Like not just as a material but as as what the object means as meaning right you're repurposing meaning and not right it as a material
Jared ClarkRight. Yeah, I think it's yeah, so
Trenton ReynoldsWhat and this is I want this podcast to be about how materials Themselves how they inspire artists like right, you know You see these things and all of a sudden you just want to go out and start making stuff Right. Yeah. And you've talked a little bit about seeing these the the cutting boards as ready made paintings or as paintings. Maybe just describe what how do materials inspire you or what materials inspire you and why?
Jared ClarkI guess I've sort of described how the cutting boards inspire me. Almost any kind of painting on a beefy cutting board is exciting to me.
Trenton ReynoldsHave you ever seen a Peter Bruegel painting? He used to paint on really thick pieces of wood. You'd go up and you can see they're like, you know,
Jared Clarkboards that he's I did not know that but that thrills me yeah going to thrift stores is starting to get by wooden things wooden knickknacks and wooden boxes and wooden whatever I can hit I start to experiment with making into sculpture paintings or just paintings. I, I would notice the ceramic figurines and think, I don't know, like, I don't, I don't know if I should get involved with those. Like, I don't really know what to do with them. And then I had a school assignment where we were supposed to buy something from a store and, and base a series of paintings on them. And I, I bought this little yellow ceramic teddy bear.
Mm.
Jared Clarkand I based these paintings on it. And I started really slowly collecting a few things in college and having them on my shelf. And I actually did a weird thing with three of them. There was three. There was a toy and two figurines that all had relationships between each other. So there was this... yellow ceramic bear, and then I had a white ceramic baby that was crying. And then I had a plastic baby that was yellow, was wearing yellow. So they all had relationships. And I put these posts below them, glued them on, and I found this block and I drilled holes. And I had the, it was like you could change their spots, like remove them like a toy. And I just kind of made it just for myself, not knowing. I was like, I don't know what this is. This isn't anything. But when I'd have my studio visits with the professors, that's what they were interested in. They're like, what's going on here? I'm like, ah, it's just a toy I made. And so this percolated for a few years. And when I was in grad school, I spent my first semester working with stacking things. But then I thought, okay, I'm going to break my rule, which is I don't glue things in my builds, my builds, my installation series that I call builds. I had a rule that I wouldn't nail or glue or anything. It was just stacked. And I thought, well, if I break that rule, I finally had an idea of how I can make these figurines into paintings, which was gluing them together and using the bottom, the bases as these abstract shapes. Once I had that idea, and I remember I did it with these bunnies, Then it just exploded that, all these ideas that I've still been working on today of how do I use these kitsch figurines and relate them to painting, and sometimes minimalism too. and sometimes they get away from painting. They just become sculptures. So I felt like I had been inspired by them, attracted to them in the thrift store, and after a while, I finally had an idea that fit within what I wanted to do with the narrative art history in making. objects be about painting. The other thing with those was a really technical issue that led to what I'm doing now as far as inspiring by materials leading to epoxy resin. so I had someone in my studio and I was having all these problems working in the figurines because the first thing I had used was gorilla glue it was really messy and didn't really like all the air bubbles and I had to fill you know I was filling stuff with bondo and I was gluing things together with bondo and I didn't really, I was just kind of floundering with technical difficulties in putting these figurines together. And this guy was like, "What about epoxy resin?" And I had never really known about it. I didn't know what it was. and he directed me to the stuff they use on boats.
Trenton ReynoldsWhich is poly, right?
Jared ClarkThat's the poly resin? Yeah, I guess. Like West Systems two-part. It's very stinky. Very stinky. Yeah. Yeah, and so I was like, okay. But I started using it just for structure, just as a glue. But then I realized it had this kind of glassy, finish. And so I did some things with that. Then I found out you can mix paint in there, house paint. So I did some things with mixing just house paint in with the resin and making these sort of painterly things that were also keeping all the stuff together. And then as I worked more and more with it, I figured out how to be more sophisticated with coloring. I could do opaque and transparent and translucent. And I liked for my own purposes that the stuff was necessary as the glue to keep these figurines together. Yeah. but also was the paint. So in essence, the paint was functional. And that was important to me for this idea of it's a painting and a sculpture at the same time. And the paint is actually holding it together. So I like that. that relationship with the stuff. So, um, and we talked in your studio about how inspiring epoxy resin is. And, um, as I think as a painter, sometimes you're, you're excited when the paint is wet, then it dries and it dulls. Right. But with epoxy, it's always wet. It always looks right as it was when it was exciting. So, uh, that's, that's some inspiring stuff about it.
Trenton ReynoldsOh yeah. I'm just, I just like how, rough and tumble it is. How hardy you can really fight it. Yeah.
Jared ClarkI've always been intrigued by encaustic, but it's just the barriers to get all the stuff and the expense in trying it out. I just never try that.
I think I'd be into that too.
Trenton ReynoldsIt's a ton of fun. And with the lasers too, it's Yeah. Kind of a... Yeah. Cool. Cool lasers. Cool thing to use. Laser cutters.
Jared ClarkI mentioned that I worked with beeswax for quite a few years. And I found out later that it's really toxic. And I was just enjoying the sweet honey smells. It smells so good. When I should have been covering up. Right. But I used... Yeah. So like the paint as object, you know. Yeah. The beeswax is really, really nice. Right.
Trenton ReynoldsThat fits right into the same idea, right? Yeah. I wanted to paint a word picture of your studio. You know, you had a studio before you, so you bought a house and now your studio is at your house. But before that you had a studio, it was pretty close by to where you're at now, right? Yeah. Oh, is that the pieces? Okay. Yeah. So I walk into the studio space and I just remember it was like wall to wall ceramic figurines. Yes. And it's not just like a mishmash of ceramic figurines. You'd have like five or six of the same figurine. Like it was just this mess. It was like a warehouse, you know, all these figurines. Anyway, I would so love for people to be able to experience that because it, is it's kind of amazing seeing how how much how many ceramic figurines and that's how your garage is to this day you still have a pretty amazing collection of these ceramic figurines
Jared Clarkthe studio before that was in my apartment and that was it was an old building and I was using the basement and there was, there was a door that was just like a, a dank dungeon, small room and it had shelves lining it. And I had all these figurines in this tight little dungeon room without fail. I would show that to people. I'd open the door and they'd, the first reaction was fright. You're like, there's totally something about that. all those grandma figurines in a dungeon setting, looking at you. It's very, very scary. What I've done the last few years since having the house studio, which is, I guess is five years. Um, is try to stop buying so many figurines and work through my inventory. And this happens a lot where I'll have some figurines that inspire me and I'll be sketching ideas of like, oh, I can put these together into a block that hangs on the wall. Or a couple years later, I'll be like, actually, I want to make a tower out of these. And then I start making furniture. Like, well, maybe I'll make it into this table. and since it takes so long, if you take one of my pieces and if you could know when I collected each piece, you would say, oh, it took you 15 years to make this piece because that's how long it took you to collect every single figurine and then put it together. And it usually takes me two or three years to slowly jigsaw it together and, and then do the painting process, which also takes me a long time. So I finally was like, I just want to work through and use the stuff up that I've been, I've been making it too precious. Right. And so, uh, So I started making a lot of furniture pieces because I had a couple of commissions to turn my work into furniture. And then I started making a lot of smaller pieces back because I was I started to focus really large. And I thought if I make a bunch of smaller pieces again. There's actually your piece here that I can see in your studio that inspired me because for the listener, when Trent visited my studio that he described, I was showing him some work. And one of my issues I hadn't resolved was how to hang them safely on a wall. And so I'd kind of glue in these wires or hooks, and I would – they'd be hanging – these ceramic pieces are hanging on the wall by a screw. They're heavy things. Yeah, and they can get heavy. And I had this one that I really loved. It was a large white cat, and glued on it were these – these little ceramic girls in dresses and they're holding a number. So they grow up from babies to young women and you give them to girls on their birthdays or put them on their cake. So they're holding the number of the age they turned. So you have like one through... 18 or something. Anyway, this piece seemed to jump off the wall by itself and crash right in front of
Trenton ReynoldsTrent's eyes.
Jared ClarkI was mortified. He was mortified. My wife to this day talks about it. She's like, Trent couldn't even look at you. He was so mortified. He thought you were going to have a meltdown.
Trenton ReynoldsI felt so bad.
Jared ClarkI was like, well, I guess that was meant to be. And so I had made the decision when I finally decided I was going to repair it and remake it. I made the decision I was going to give it to Trent when I was finished. And so I don't know. So that was... Yeah, I mean five years in the making where I finally glued the pieces back together and I actually added some more. I found more of those girl figurines and I figured out a way to just incorporate French cleats. And in my work, going back to my interest in cutting boards, I'll find a cutting board or a toll painting on wood that fits the size and shape I want for the piece. And so now, instead of building it just of the figurines, I'll build things on a board. Yeah. a connector through so much of my work is the cutting board. Like, because I have so many cutting boards itself. I have the cut lodges. Then I use them in my builds and I use them now as the French cleats. And now I'm painting on them with my abstractions. I'm painting it. So like the cutting board is the object that spans all of my work. So I'll still buy a cutting board, but yeah, So it's a long story, but my idea with throwing together smaller work was that I wanted friends to have this work, this technology. type of work and they could never have it because I would take so long working on it and then we go straight to my gallery for whatever show they were doing and then I never get it back because my galleries in Virginia and they just keep it there so that if it ever happens to sell they have it in their possession and so I decided I wanted to make a bunch of small work that I could just give away mm-hmm after I gave you that piece. So I'm just starting to finish a group of about 30 pieces. Most of them are done, but I've given some away. It's really, really cool just to know, 'cause they're so weird. And so if someone loves it, you're like, "Well, you really should have one." And so I started to give those away to friends who appreciate them.
That's awesome.
Jared ClarkYeah. And that goes back to something we read. How was it? There was some art writer who talks about art is a gift. Like it never really works as a commodity because it really, at its core, can only be a gift. I want to say Susie Gavlik, but maybe it was someone else. Anyway, I... I like that idea. I think about that because, you know, I'm just making it out of my passion and my love for creativity and materials. We're talking about materials here. And if someone truly loves it and they have a relationship with you, so they're actually thinking about their friendship with you when they think about the people. it's cool to maybe that's the highest form of art transaction
Trenton Reynoldsit is one of my favorite things one of my favorite all my most of my favorite possessions are work that I've collected over the years from friends. I always have that little zap of connection when you see that work hanging up on the wall or you encounter it. You get a little bit of a person around.
Jared ClarkThen I have a third person version where whenever I come to your house every two years and I see that Sean Morello piece. I'm like, Sean Morello. What a great guy. I remember him painting. And I was in the studio with him when he's painting those. And so I have that zap of connection too. And I,
Trenton Reynoldsfor sure, I see that. Jared, thank you for spending vacation time recording a podcast with me, man. This conversation makes me wish this was a video podcast. But even that wouldn't capture how cool it is to see Jared's work in studio space in person. Audio and video aren't enough, y'all. Go look at art in real life and go make some art. If you like this podcast, support it. You can subscribe at dablon.com forward slash podcast. Give it a five-star rating on iTunes. and tell all the people. I will have another wonderful artist to share with you next week. In the meantime, get to work and send me images of what you're working on. I'd like to see. You can send images to dabbleon, D-A-B-B-L-E-O-N, at gmail.com. And that's it.
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