Meet the judges – boo! – Create* Inspire* Community* Art* Design* Music* Film* Photo* Project
James Jean: 1) When I first got a copy of Wolverine #37 in sixth grade. The detailed drawings of anatomy and violence shocked my hormone-addled mind.
2) The second was the Kafkaesque breakdown of my marriage in my late 20s and early 30s, which left me bankrupt and forced me to leave the country and go into hiding for almost two years.
3) The third event was the birth of my son – I cried tears of happiness when this happened, much to the surprise of my usually reserved self.
Zhang Feir: 1) Nearly ten years after I stopped using Xanga, I found it still there, which sent shivers down my spine, so I deleted it.
2) April 29, 2011 (Fast & Furious Five premieres in US theaters).
3) Whenever my mom takes me to try fried pork cutlet for the first time (thanks mom, love you mom).
Akiko Stellenberg:1) In high school, I almost joined the military until my mom encouraged me to try “the art.”
2) Art school changed my life – before that I felt like an alien. During this time, Reeves and Molly helped me get out of my shell and get really bad tattoos.
3) Caring for my mom the last year was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it prepared me for motherhood and is an honor I will always cherish.
Evan Prico: tonsThis is something I’ve been trying to find the “source material” for. It’s hard because I always want to go back to when I was 13 and hearing Oasis’ “Live Forever” on Bay Area radio station Live105 – “there’s more out there” than what I see around me every day. Like I have my thing and this is the sound I get when I’m playing in a band a million miles away. But it connected, injected instantly into my subconscious, and became the soundtrack of my life from then on. Just like DNA.
1) Seeing a Barry McGee tag on the streets of San Francisco in the late 1990s and being able to literally piece together who that guy was. This led me to missionary school and Juxtapoz. This is who I want to be. I wanted to do art, I wanted to be a journalist, I wanted to talk about things outside of traditional pop culture, so that was the beginning.
2) I would say watching Tom Waits in concert in 1999. I know I’m being a bit old school here, but for some reason this has always bothered me. I don’t know much about him, I don’t know much about his songs, but I went with some friends and it was one of the most ridiculous, weird, dark, fun, and wonderful pieces of performance art I’ve ever seen. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of art, stagecraft and character. I’ve been thinking about this a lot when I write about artists.
3) A few years ago my girlfriend Kim and I saw a wonderful Francis Bacon performance at the Royal Academy in London. I think it’s about really seeing things, like feeling it in the rhythm of an exhibition, and how much a curator and production design team can change the way you understand and appreciate an artist. My partner is very well-positioned for this in her career, thinking about lighting, space, the way one room speaks to another, and the way you as a viewer reevaluate your own relationship to art. I’m thinking about this a lot now, not just when I’m curating an exhibition, but also how I want people to see, flip through and read a magazine. These things are important, but we often take them for granted.
