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| James Esber working in his studio |
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James Esber
Birdsong
2008
acrylic on PVC board
approx 105 x 85 inches |
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James Esber is a Brooklyn-based artist who is best known for his Plasticine works that address notions of distortion, stereotyping, and perception. Born in 1961 in Cleveland, Ohio, Esber studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Esber’s works have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including in institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Tampa Museum of Art; Chicago Cultural Center; Laguna Art Museum; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art; Cape Museum of Fine Arts; Huntsville Museum of Art; Akron Museum of Art and the Norton Museum of Art. He was the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Esber is represented by Pierogi Gallery.
Art Interview: James, what was it like for you growing up?
James Esber: I was born in 1961 in Cleveland, Ohio and had a working class childhood. My father was a fireman and bricklayer. My mother was a homemaker. We lived in a mundane ranch house in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where every house looked alike except for the trim color. Our neighborhood was fairly ethnic; there were a lot of Italians, Polish and Czechoslovakians living there at the time. In the 1970’s my contact with the world was mainly through television, books and movies and I felt that everything interesting happened in other places. So, once I finished college I couldn’t wait to settle some place else and I immediately moved to New York.
Art Interview: Cleveland has a nice museum and a decent art school, but coming from a middle class family in the mid-west I would think that you were fairly limited to the arts. How were you introduced to the art world?
James Esber: There was no reason that I should have become an artist other than the fact that I began to see myself as an artist when I was young. I was always very good at making art even at a very young age. My parents weren’t particularly geared towards pushing me in any academic direction. If I had been given more direction or had been more mature I probably would have studied something other than art. But, I found my own way and when I finished high school I was offered a full scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art. But when I was young I had a very limited connection to the professional art scene because Cleveland is geographically removed from its center. I did however make a few trips to New York City when I went through my junior and senior years of college.
Art Interview: Was the Cleveland Institute of Art able to prepare you for a career in the arts?
James Esber: Unfortunately we weren’t given much preparation for an art career there. However the education at the Cleveland Institute of Art was great. Within the first two years it provided me with a complete foundation in drawing, design and color theory. That knowledge was, and still is, very valuable to me in my art-making process. Even though today I don’t paint in a realistic manner and I prefer to break the rules of art rather than follow them, it’s still good to have a solid foundation to work from.
Art Interview: Were there any professors there who influenced you?
James Esber: No single person has had an overriding influence on me. But I did think quite a bit about ideas of one professor named Carroll Cassill, who is not very well known. He taught intaglio printmaking techniques by combining the eastern philosophies that are used in Chinese landscape painting and the mark making principles of integrity and intensity, which he learned from Mauricio Lasansky. Lasansky is an Argentinean artist who must be in his 90s now. He lived in New York City, but he’s been based in Iowa City, Iowa for over 55 years. Those ideas of intense and autonomous marks still carry through in my drawings today. When you look at sections of my drawings you can see that the marks have an expressive beauty to them. They aren’t just marks that function in the service of creating an illusion.
Art Interview: In addition to your use of powerful mark making and linear flow you seem to have a command over the juxtaposition of intense colors. This somehow reminds me of the color theories of Josef Albers. Did you receive a solid introduction to color theory at the Cleveland Institute of Art?
James Esber: I did. I had a teacher named Joseph McCullough who was a student of Josef Albers at Yale and he taught his theory of color relativity. Albers thought about color with a theorist approach and I think it is important not to forget the emotional dimension of color. But I find it just amazing that the relativity of color is so pervasive. Each color you put onto a painting really does affect the identity of every other color.
Art Interview: I understand you spent some time in Italy as a student?
James Esber: Yes, I spent a year in Italy. The first semester I went to SACI - the Studio Arts Center International in Florence. After that I transferred to Temple University in Rome for a little change of scenery and because I had two friends in grad school there whose work I really admired. I also thought it would be fun to hang out with them.
Art Interview: Did traveling abroad at that young age have an influence on your development?
James Esber: I think it did. My sense of color really changed after being immersed in Italian paintings. Caravaggio had a huge influence on me in terms of composition and color palette.
Art Interview: Did you have any other role models while you were developing as an artist?
James Esber: One person I was aware of, very early on, was Norman Rockwell. Most people don’t consider him a real artist; but when I was a kid I really admired his work. It’s a hard thing to quantify, but what makes one illustrator better than the other is their ability to make things seem real. He had a unique ability to articulate and animate detail in his drawings. Every figure and object has an odd presence and intensity of sorts. His work became a source material for me because I could chew on it piece by piece and spit it out as something else.
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James Esber
Soldier Boy
2007
Acrylic on PVC Panel
Approx. 103 x 75 inches |
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(Laughs) Another artist I certainly was aware of while growing up was Picasso. In general he was the role model who indirectly taught me what an artist did and what the life of an artist was like. (Laughs) But my life has turned out nothing like Picasso’s. When I was young I thought there were only two possibilities: That I would completely fail and end up doing something else, or that I would be famous and my work would be in museums. Now I realize there are many levels between these two extremes. Having an interesting life as an artist doesn’t necessitate selling all your work and making a fortune. It’s essential if you’re going to live life as an artist, to love being in the studio. Working in the studio every day, having the privilege of traveling, meeting smart and interesting people and being in shows is a pretty successful life. I’ve accepted that and I appreciate it.
Art Interview: Would you say that working as an artist is a viable career?
James Esber: Yes. There are all kinds of art worlds and all kinds of levels within those art worlds. You just have to find your niche. The longer you do something the more legitimacy it has. So, the trick is to have passion for what you do and survive economically until that passion becomes profitable.
Art Interview: Did you intend to become a professional artist when you were in school?
James Esber: When I was young I didn’t have a clear idea of how I would make a living. But I knew I wanted to paint and draw regardless of whether or not I could make my living from it. Even at an early age I knew I would create art my entire life. When I moved to New York City I certainly had the intention of attempting a professional career in the arts.
Art Interview: How did you begin your career?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with James Esber on December 8, 2008. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and New York, New York, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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