Attorney Alex Ruskell is the Jasper Project’s Featured Artist this month at Sound Bites Eatery.
His Art Show opened on First Thursday, May 5th and will run through the end of May.
Alex, thanks for sharing your work with Jasper at Sound Bites Eatery throughout the month of May. Is visual art a new endeavor for you? We know you more as a musician and member of the eclectic musical group, The Merry Chevaliers. When and how did you get started creating visual art as well?
I started painting during COVID lockdown – my friend, Lila McCullough, of Lila’s Happy Flowers, created Melrose Art in the Yard and asked me if I would like to do something for it. Lila paints flowers on boards, so I thought I could do the same thing but with monsters and aliens.
How would you categorize your aesthetic and what other artists have inspired you?
My favorite visual artists are Daniel Johnston, who is mainly known as an indie musician combatting severe mental illness, and Henry Darger, a custodian who wrote and illustrated a 15,145-page fantasy novel that was discovered after his death. I do like the simplicity of their stuff, but I mainly love the spirit behind it. There’s a kind of wonderful futility and love —these are guys that weren’t supported or encouraged and just did it anyway. My buggy-eyed aliens are clearly based on Johnston’s frogs (famous from his “Hi, How are You?” mural in Austin, TX and a t-shirt that Kurt Cobain of Nirvana used to wear). I bought one of Johnston’s signed drawings right before he passed away, which I have up in my office.
Can you talk about your technique?
I used to collect comic books, so when I was trying to figure out how to paint, I lifted whatever my technique might be from how comic books are made. In comic books, there’s usually a penciller who draws the art, an inker who inks the pencil in, and then a colorist who adds the colors. I pencil, then I paint it in, then I go over the pencil lines with a paint pen. It’s shocking the difference the paint pen makes.
You used unconventional material as canvasses in your Sound Bites show, such as fence posts and ceiling tiles – is this something you do regularly?
Yes – I initially got the idea from Lila, because she uses fenceposts and wood collected from the side of the road for her paintings. But there are a few other reasons I like using recycled stuff – one, it’s cheap so I don’t have to charge much for paintings; two, I started out in environmental law way back when, so it fits with my idea of sustainability and recycling; and three, my favorite scene in any documentary is from It Might Get Loud, a guitar documentary about Jack White, the Edge, and Jimmy Page. At the beginning, Jack White builds a “guitar” out of a board, string, nails, and a bottle and says, “Who says you need to buy a guitar?” I love that sentiment. A few weeks ago, I gave a talk for art day at Oak Pointe Elementary in Irmo to about 500 elementary school students. I have no clue what the students’ socio-economic status is, but I figured if there is some kid who wants to make art and can’t afford much, I could show that kid you don’t really need much except the desire to do it and a little creativity. I showed them paintings I had done on posts, ceiling tiles, and record covers (although they thought the record covers were books). Although I use acrylic paint, I told them about Henry Neubig, who is a Louisiana artist who actually paints with mud. I wanted them to get the idea that there is no real barrier to entry to making art, and I like my own paintings to reflect that a little.
You have unusually affordable price points for your art, too. Is this by design and, if so, can you speak to that please?
My wife, Kerry Egan, is a writer and hospice chaplain. She spreads good in the world with her books, ministry, comforting words, empathy, etc. I am not smart enough for any of that, but I am pretty good at being goofy. The $10-$20 price point is for the exact same reason we dress up as French noblemen and play songs like “Hot Moms” in my band, Les Merry Chevaliers. For the band, I always imagine someone wandering into the Art Bar or someplace after a horrible day and seeing us onstage doing our nonsense and feeling like their burden is lifted a little. My art pricing is in the same spirit – people are so delighted when I say something is less than $20. You can actually see a cloud pass sometimes. Less than $20 is small enough to make people happy and large enough that I can take my wife out to Henry’s after a show without feeling guilty about it.
Do you ever dabble in other mediums or are you interested in venturing into anything else?
I have an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Master’s in Creative Writing from Harvard that I have done absolutely nothing with – I’d like to fix that before I die. I’ve got a finished novel about a lawyer with a unicorn horn stuck to his head, so we’ll see if anyone bites.
Where else can patrons find your work once your show at Sound Bites comes down at the end of May?
I do Soda City every so often, and Melrose Heights Art in the Yard when we have it. A Little Happy in Five Points sells stickers I have made of some of my stuff. There is also a new store opening at the end of June called Lyons General Store on the corner of Rosewood and Assembly in Columbia. They’re going to be selling t-shirts with some of my designs. Finally, I take requests – aruskell@gmail.com.
