what message are you trying to convey to your audience through your art?

Well, it’s all very subjective for me. It’s all about me me me! Seriously though lately it’s been around family dynamics, the way I perceived things as a kid and how sometimes those perceptions need to change. Part of getting a grip on who I am and all that kind of thing. I don’t know whether these things are apparent in my art or not but that’s okay. It’s just what’s cycling through my head. The idea of “home” has always been a recurring thing with me. In my pictures, home is usually represented by houses which are bent or half submerged underwater. The piece, “Caged” was inspired by my older brother. He has a special condition that makes him seem different. He looks and acts just like you and me but he’s on a different (maybe better) plane. Talking with him opens me up to seeing life through a different lens. The way I might not have seen without him. But I know he isn’t able to fully articulate what he wants to say without a great deal of misunderstanding him. I wish there was a key that could open the door up for him. “Her Best Dress” was inspired loosely by the story my Mom told me about her first communion. It wasn’t a super happy event for her nor was the rest of her childhood for that mater. Stuff like that carries through to adult life.

in your early years, what did you feel influenced your art more other artists or “outside” influences like writers, directors, musicians, etc.?

Music was and is a big inspiration. It lets me get into my own head where I don’t get to spend much time. But not everyone creates work that is about themselves or feeling and emotion and such, I’ve learned very recently, to appreciate the objective stuff from other artists as well as the inner turmoilish work. I mean work that’s driven by other things other than personal emotional stuff. Back to your questions, photography inspires me too like Diane Arbus, Eugene Atget, Joel Peter Witkin. Film director yes: Kubrik, Gilliam, Jeunet …In my earlier days I remember staring at flyers and posters by Pushead, or some other cool album art. I did a bunch of flyers and t-shirt stuff for my friends who were in local bands. Lots of skulls and guitars drawn back then!

it seems like music influences some of your work, what has been dominating your eardrums as of late?

How did you know that?! It’s true. Right now the soundtrack is this band called Japancakes - a totally random suggestion by a friend. Other than the occasional good suggestion, lately I’ve been tapping into the music I grew up with more and more which is a mixture of 80’s and 70’s punk and some “mod” music as we used to call it.

When I’m drawing or painting it’s the moodier, darker, slower, stuff that I tend to listen to. Otherwise my musical tastes are all over the map. My itunes library on shuffle mode might go like: The Tiger Lilies, Japan, The Cure, Lemon Jelly, Rush (don’t laugh!), Death Cab for Cutie, Fugazi, The Shins, The Vandals, Stiv Bators, 7Seconds, Descendants, The Damned, Rolling Stones, 45Grave, The Chemical Brothers, X, Beatles, Pixies, Bauhaus, Frank Black, Magnetic Fields (and The Sixths), Minor Threat, The Replacements, Red Kross, Boston (again don’t laugh, my older brother got me into them in high school!) REM, David Sylvian, Eeels, Elliot Smith, Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, 7 Seconds, Fang, The Cramps, The Germs…I love music.

your first solo show recently opened at Rivet, was it hard for you not to be there in attendance opening night?

Yes it was hard not to be there but Laura was so sweet. She sent me a bouquet of roses. On the other hand, I’d have been a bag of nerves wondering if anyone would show to see my work. No one really knows who I am as an artist so I thought it was really cool of Laura to let my art take up real estate in her space for a month. It really means a lot. I’ve been trying to do art for a long time now but as life goes on it seems I can’t seem to find the time to do it. Hi-Fructose, which is a very special thing to me, working, trying to provide for my daughter…things like that. My one selfish wish is to be able to devote myself 100% to doing only art, for at least a year….in an Airstream trailer in the middle of the jungle somewhere. Ah but Daniel (Attaboy) would hate the jungle so scratch that part.

you have a nice mix of watercolor and acrylic work, do you tend to favor one medium to another or is it just the idea of the painting that determines it?

The idea of the painting definitely determines it. I learned to just go with my gut after several attempts at trying to render something in acrylic that I already knew was meant to be in watercolor. I WANT to be better with acrylics and oil but watercolor and ink is winning.

available to purchase at Rivet

with a degree in film, do you ever see yourself do something that combines that and your art?

Definitely! When I’ll have time to do that is anyone’s guess. I might be 80 years old. People like Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Terry Giliam are really inspirational. Their visuals are such an integral part of their story telling. Kubrik beats everyone in my book hands down. When I finished “movie” school my daughter and I had been living with my folks and I just needed to get us out. My kid needed me to be able to support her. Anyway, as it turns out, my mother did most of the raising and nurturing. I was just the provider and disciplinarian. It’s a long story but I made the right choice. My daughter is 18 now and planning to go to college. I let her down in many ways so if I can at least provide everything she needs then I feel alright. Things are shifting around a lot. As she gets more responsible, possibilities for me doing the art and film projects I’ve put on the back burner for years seem more tangible now.

as some folks may know you co-founded Hi-Fructose, how did the idea of Hi-Fructose come about?

Honestly we just did it for us. At the time we both had such different goals it seemed, and not to be corny or anything, but didn’t want to drift away from each other. We thought if we had a “project” we did together, it would ensure we’d spend time with each other. Atta thought of the magazine. Haha! Seems like such an off the wall thing now, but we went for it. It’s evolved a lot since the first issue. A lot of hard work, integrity and hard decision making.

in the early days of the magazine, did you know that you were onto something big with the magazine getting so much acclaim?

Hi-Fructose hasn’t really suffered many setbacks (knock on wood). It’s always been like “okay, there’s a milestone in our way, we need to evolve in some way in order to get past it and climb the next hill” and we’ve always managed thankfully. It’s been steady but slow. So long as we maintain integrity I think we’ll be fine. We’re not so naïve that we believe that integrity is enough but it’s an important element to remember. We’re far from perfect. We’re still learning a lot of things!

There will be an HF book coming out soon with Last Gasp, which will encapsulate the first 4 issues plus some additional fun activity stuff. A hardcover volume with a slipcase.

what is more stressful - meeting a dateline for the magazine or meeting a dateline for a painting in a show?

Doing work on the magazine is a year round thing. Thank Jeebuz for our new highly valuable additions (Ert O’hara and Kirsten Anderson) plus we’ve got a couple of writers and photographers that we can usually count on now for each issue but it’s always a mad dash toward print time and things get really crazy at the HF headquarters. Art shows for me have, up until now, been group shows. I’ve done a lot of them this past year. That and just trying to carve out time to do my own art in general has been tricky. When I was doing the art for my Rivet show, we were cranking out Vol.,6. There was just so much to do to drive the ship between two people, it was really overwhelming at times just trying to string a solid thought together. We were both always just going and going and going.

To answer your question I guess it’s more stressful to get the magazine out on time since now there’s more at stake. From our stand point things are evolving in a very good way.

if annie owens was a board game, which board game would she be?

Scattergories.

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