IDOLS OF ART WALK: Chris Leonard

Chris Leonard

• Age: 46
• Hometown: Ankeny, Iowa
• Influences: A hodge-podge collage of movements and styles: American Regionalism (How could anybody from Iowa not be conditioned to absorb Grant Wood?) Chicago Imagists/California Funk Art/Mexican Folk Art/Nuevo Pop Surrealism.
• Upcoming shows: ¡VIVA LUCHA LIBRE! Group Show, September 5 - 20, 2008 at manichaus, if I get my work finished up and turned in, and the following month some pigged out permutation of leonardland should also land at manichaus. Also semi-locally this fall there's Self Portrait-Inner Voices curated by Carlos Gomez at UT Brownsville. Presently there are some jpegs and $30 dollar checks out and about so I've got my fingers crossed on additional possibilities.
• Website/ Myspace page: Aaron Leonard is supposed to be updating www.leonardland.com but it appears to stuck in 2004 and my myspace is http://www.myspace.com/leonardski

What turned you on to art?

Hmmmm. This is a tricky question because I've been turned on and off several times. Art seemed to always be available and possible but at the same time just out of reach. We had art in elementary school and it was always an option in junior high and high school. The Des Moines Art Center wasn't too far away but in reality I kinda wanted to be a postman. Practicality does appeal to me and art and practicality don't always line up. Meaningful isn't necessarily practical: I think you have to find a way to produce, stay engaged and surround yourself with a supportive system and build up a set of skills, an inner core and some thick skin, too. I'm not sure if your supposed to put all of your eggs I one basket. History, imagination, and education were all emphasized for me growing up. I had a supportive family growing up as a kid and growing my own kids. I think I was given more interest and desire in visual art than physical skill but several key individuals have really pushed and believed in me more than I believed in myself. Jo Siddens told me at a Painting II critique in the spring of 1983 that my ideas would always be ahead of my abilities to execute-but she went on to explain that that isn't necessarily bad, keep pushing through. And we had a wonderful set of students to be a part of. But depending upon one's set of circumstances, art can be a real luxury-there's only so much time and money. I had several instructors that were pretty high on what I was doing at the end of school and just afterward and were pushing me toward grad school but I wasn't ready - I needed more maturity and life experience and through a strange state of affairs ended up teaching math in the Rio Grande Valley. Over a decade past before I was able to squeeze back in through the back door into art with motivation that had been gathering plenty of interest. I sporadically produced work-mostly illustrated algebra Test O Funs with puzzles to crack that read something like "When Kelshal Rivas hits the hole, some Jacket head s are gonna roll!" But returning to the art room, and the kids in the art room at Weslaco treated me pretty well, through a fantasy baseball league connection really got me going into a "It's now or never" point. Frje Echevverria, David Dahlquist and Jo Siddens all wrote letters of reference to Pan Am (new MFA program - sounded exotic - I have a rent house across the street...) about fifteen years after I was their student and Leonardclaus begat Leonardland. Chuck Wissinger, Richard Hyslin, Phillip Field, and Fred Spaulding more or less all lined up at Pan Am and I certainly feel that I have been at the right place at the right time lately and maybe all along.

Talk to me a little bit about "Leonardland."

Leonardland is the sort of place where anything could make sense. The pursuit of sensibility in our/my part of the physical world and the ongoing of assault of mixed messages and multi cultures is my focus. I am examining the human condition-or my human condition-through a humanoid extension of the feline friends that cruise in and out of my life. I like the curious mix of independence and indifference that cats possess. Plus, unless they're black, nobody really seems to care much about what color they may happen to be. Humans don't always land on their feet but cats do.      

Tell me about the role cats play in your artwork?  

I like the multiple possibilities of synonymous meanings that can originate with the word cat. Currently within the multitude feline friends there is a variety of mediations on mortality. When compared to immortality, nine lives certainly seems like a happy medium. Nine times an average of an optimistic seventy years is 630 years, a healthy dose of time here on earth. An optimistic imagination of impossibility? I'd certainly bargain for an additional four or five hours a day. I'd like to control something and time would be a great start. Actually cats symbolize great compromise-I agreed to one and somehow there are seven cruising around our little corner of the world. I think I'm trying to get back to "Two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard." Plus Roy DeForest had already created his dog world, it seemed like a logical experiment to try one or two cats......

Who is your favorite artist?

One!? Today it just might be Clayton Bailey or maybe David Gilhooly. This seems to vary over time-There are several favorites locally, globally, presently, and through history-Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, Jim Nutt, Philip Guston would be big all time all-stars. Current clay artists would be Jenny Mendes, Richard Nickel, Ron Meyers, and Wesley Anderegg -people that are working in a real painterly, juicy style. Within Texas there's Carl Block up in Waxahachie, Michael Seiben and Matthew Rodriguez from Austin, and Austin itself, while locally I've been influenced by Izel Vargas, Carl Vestweber and Paul Valadez.

What is the most interesting place art has taken you to?

This could be another tie in to my feline friends - the original CatMan DooDads (Think Bob Seger, "I think I'm going to Katmandu) were personal symbols of anywhere but here.  But here I am, in the RGV with a whole set of interesting and challenging possibilities. I did get to travel to Guadalajara with Dr. Phillips and see some dynamite cats decorating some majolica vessels a few years back. But how can you count out Austin? Our RGV generated Eleventeen show was lots of fun at the Opera House with Ruby's Jazz Garage and Night Viking this past year. And I've been able to get some of my little buddies shipped around to some fairly interesting places, too. The good old interwebs can take ya lots of places. But I would like to physically travel a bit more. Never been to New York City. Gotta drop in on former classmate Steve Gerberich one of these days in the not so distant future.

If you didn't work in ceramics or paint what medium would you use?

I'm not really comfortable in any other mediums now but if paint and clay were taken way I'd have to sit down and get busy with the cathode ray tube and somehow evolve into a Photoshop king but I don't know if I could give up texture. I liked printmaking as an art form I think Philip Field has been cranking out some small little jewels via the magic of the Mac.

What inspires you?

Every day occurrences, just trying to keep on keeping on and actually take an active role in transforming the ordinary.  I'm a big fan of word play and certainly would subscribe to the design to delight theory, if there is such a thing.