Text by Finnian Boyle and Viivi Koistinen | Photography by Daniel Ribar
Nick Jaskey lives and works in Detroit, Ml. He is a self-taught mixed media artist. He deploys photography, painting, and sculpture to reflect and exaggerate details usually unnoticed. Jaskey breaks down and reworks inspiration he finds in his immediate surroundings with an acute attention to detail, color, and composition.
The following conversation occurred in Nick Jaskey’s studio space on Detroit’s East Side. About half an hour too early and too shy to announce ourselves, we walked around. Right next to his door, in a barrel, was a collection of red coke bottles and caps (it might have been a trash can), and his truck, parked perpendicular to the door, had his trademark red circle around the left headlight. His studio was a small room in a renovated garage, adorned with his own work, that of his partner Amy Fisher Price, and the biggest poster of Grace Jones we’ve ever seen. We sat on step-ladders and an old creaky can.
Roughly two weeks prior, we had been presented with the opportunity to interview Nick. This preceded the opening of his exhibition,“A Painting of a Painting”, at Art Clvb’s studio space on April 12th.
At some point in-between then, at dinner, we brought up the interview. Someone at the table interjected, saying, “I remember, a few years ago, seeing all these red circles. I thought, that's weird. I made a big group chat with all my friends and sent like thirty, forty pictures”.
This remark prompted a conversation about the nature of Nick’s work. The dinner attendee’s fascination with the circles was entirely instantaneous and driven by discovery, no concern for whether or not they were ‘art’. We were interested in the framing of these pieces - ready and clean-cut in photography, happenstance and acutely vulnerable to mess on buildings and cars.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
FB&VK: Reading previous interviews, we noted that you accredit skateboarding, graffiti and photography for facilitating your sense of space. How does the unconventional movement of these art forms influence your ideas?
NJ: I got into skateboarding really young. It was the first thing that I loved, the first thing to really hold my attention. It's something that you can't ever win at. You can't be the best at it, you just keep going and try to get better.
FB&VK: Right. When you're skating through a city, you see it differently. A set of stairs isn’t a set of stairs, it’s a potential skate spot.
NJ: Especially when you're skateboarding outside, you're constantly looking at architecture.You're essentially viewing the world in its potential through architecture: how you're going to work with that space and to use that space. As a young kid, you don't really realize what's happening. Your brain is moving in all these different directions and trying to figure out different ways to work with things and adapt.
As I got older, my intent with what I was doing became more defined. I liked working with public space, finding ways to make it a bit unconventional. I was trying to pull the potential out of spaces for whatever I was doing, whether it was skateboarding or art. New areas and new potential were my first inspirations. These ideas were realized in my artwork as I began to get more serious about it over the years.
FB&VK: Do you remember experiencing that sense and joy of discovery early on?
NJ: I’ve always woken up with this desire to produce things. That’s what makes me happy. I grew up right outside of Detroit, in the northern suburban area. Living so close to the city meant I had access to it. At twelve, thirteen, I would take the bus to go skateboarding. I obsessed over skateboarding. When you take a different turn, when you go a different direction, you find something new.
Of course, you don’t always find what you’re looking for, there are a lot misses. But when you do discover something, whatever it may be in the context of that space - interesting architecture, something that might work for skateboarding - it feels like finding gold. And being the first to discover something, to be able to expose or to show it to other people - that this can be used in this way, this exists in the first place - is an awesome feeling.
That opened things up for me, it felt like something untapped to explore. As I got into my later teens and early 20s, I became more aware of art in general, and of how art works in its environment. And, all of a sudden something clicked. And I was like, Holy shit, living in Detroit is, visually, like living in a museum. There were these rich, amazing, unique things to look at, whether historic or being made actively. It seemed like you couldn't make a wrong turn without discovering something unique and interesting.
The specific body of work I’m currently doing [A Painting of a Painting] consists of little gems from these instances. I’m really interested in things made by hand, and things that are able to communicate with people visually, not necessarily on some kind of complicated level. All these things are really basic, everyday things and everyday thoughts that have been translated onto the walls of these businesses: “Groceries”, “Lotto”. It’s simple visual communication rooted in the current moment.
I start by taking photos of signage. When you look at it, it’s really fun, it’s really playful, and really fast. It’s heavy-handed. There is life in it, and that speaks to me. A lot of the work I’ve made for this specific project is gone now. That’s how the city changes. So it’s a way to honor it, to make an homage, to hold something that is ephemeral.
FB&VK: To be clear, your works are replicas, not the actual signage?
NJ: They are replicas.
FB&VK: What led you to signage specifically?
NJ: One of the first things I started to notice when I was younger in the environment, exploring a city, was graffiti. It was something that spoke to me. I was like, oh, wow, this is happening, people are doing this; they are taking a risk to portray a message or to say “I was here”, whatever, I thought it was rad. So I took a lot of photos of graffiti.
Looking at those images, I started to notice the background: interesting details on buildings, signage. And I thought, wow, that stuff is almost cooler than what I’m taking pictures of. So I began to zoom in more, to really examine what I was looking at.
FB&VK: Is this what inspired your book, Signs of Life?
NJ: Yes. A couple decades went by, and I had a large archive of all these images. Around that time, like a lot of people, I started to witness significant changes in the city, things being torn down and removed. I wanted to do some work about that. And like I said, I had this archive of images. I just wanted to start. Around 2017, I decided to put together a book of photography, which I self-published.
FB&VK: As you mentioned, your “Red Circles” project exists in this spontaneous and shifting environment of the cityscape. It is constantly affected by weather and lighting and peoples’ actions; buildings getting torn down, someone dumping a boat in front of a piece. You have no control over that. How did this frame your work on that project?
NJ: Before this space we are in now, I worked from a studio I built in my garage. When I bought my house, this man had lived there basically his whole life - sixty-seven years or something. The garage was full of scrap wood, there was a jigsaw from the 1970s. I had a ton of red paint left over from a job. It was really hard not to look at that stuff and say: “What are we going to do with all this material?”.
At that point, I knew I wanted to do a site-specific project. I knew I wanted it to be outside. I knew I wanted it to be a series. I knew I wanted to have parameters. I knew I wanted it to be a shape. Eventually, I settled on the circle.
And that’s what they are to me - no matter how abstract or wonky or whatever, however they look -, they are all a circle, they all connect continuously. I like to think of it as like a rubber band or something.
The circle, or the zero, or whatever, you can get as deep with the meaning as you want, to me it represents that there is no such thing as nothing. But, I don’t necessarily intend the viewer to see it that way. I want people to have their own experience with it, whatever that may be.
So, it starts with a circular form.
And the red.
FB&VK: Why the red?
NJ: It’s the first color that our eyes recognize when looking at a field of color. Working with a pastel wouldn’t have the same impact. And then, there’s a lot of meaning attached to red: emergency, love, blood, whatever, “stop”, energy, whatever you want to fill in. And our landscape here, post-industrial, is brown, gray, green. Red really works in that space. It looks industrial, and it’s both loud and soft.
The project is just an experiment with unused public space in a city that’s changing rapidly. It sits somewhere in-between art and graffiti. Unlike graffiti, it doesn’t say anything; it doesn’t tell you to do anything, it doesn’t sell anything. It simply is what it is in that space and time.
I don’t put them just anywhere, I look for specific places. I want the pieces to really work in their environment, and to work with the space. There is kind of a checklist that I go through before I situate them. I’m not trying to vandalize, I’m not trying to fuck shit up. The works can technically be removed; I’m applying a surface to another surface. I try to put them in spaces where the buildings are pretty far gone, or are no longer owned. So this little addition is the least of an owner’s worries. Actually, I would say ninety percent of these buildings eventually get torn down.
FB&VK: What’s the timeframe on this project?
NJ: I wanted the project to span a good amount of time. Right now I’m about eight years into it. I would like it to go on for at least ten. Then I’d like to look at all the photographs and put together a book and really talk about what this was or what it is. I’m interested in how the works are interacted with, how they’re dealt with. I think it’s super interesting when they get painted over but they are still there; they just take on a new sculptural form. I like it when they get removed and there’s sun bleaching - something like that only happens with time. I’m fascinated by all of it. I like it.
I’m fascinated with the ones that stick around forever. Some disappear quickly and because I’ve been doing it for such a long time now, I think enough people have realized that it’s recurring and that it’s intentional: people commission that work from me now. It’s in peoples’ homes, it’s in businesses.
FB&VK: What’s the extent of ownership you feel over these works? You mentioned that people rip the circles off buildings. Do you think of them as collectors?
NJ: When you assert things in public, especially things that are unsanctioned, you are too greedy if you feel that they belong to you. Once my work leaves this room, I feel like I have no ownership over it. It takes on its own life. I prefer for it to exist where I initially place it, to me that completes the painting. The landscape, the building; the environment completes it. But no, I don’t take ownership over the works, I don’t feel angry when they get taken. I almost, not expect it, but it’s a reality I prepare myself for.
Yes, it kind of hurts when pieces I’ve spent a lot of time on disappear: I would like for them to have a longer life. But, you know, if someone feels like they have to take a piece, I guess they have to take it. I prefer to do it the ‘right’ way, on commission, where I’m able to make something specific for a person and a space and get paid for my work. But, with what I do with this project, no one is asking me to put the circles where I put them so if they disappear they disappear. So, no, I don’t feel much ownership in that sense.
FB&VK: You have a gallery show coming up. With “A Painting of a Painting”, how do you pivot your works to exist within a gallery space as opposed to working outside within the cityscape?
NJ: I think those are two completely different things. They both have their time. I think the series that will be shown at the gallery looks nice on a white wall. It works in the gallery space and in the home, that’s a good environment for them to breathe and to live their life and to be looked at.
They’re two totally different things. I could also do a red circle show in a gallery space if I wanted to, but I would probably bring some outside elements into the space. I mean, working outside is the most fun. It’s what I find exciting and what comes naturally to me. That’s what keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning. I feel like I work best as a site-specific artist, but both are fun. Both have their time and place.
FB&VK: Kind of like the signs. You are replicating them, visually they are more or less the same. But they go from a piece of functionality on the walls of businesses to a place where they are expected to serve as art on the white walls of the gallery.
NJ: Yeah. It turns them into fine art or something.
I have a problem with wanting to make things neat and clean. I can’t seem to break it. I would love to. So, really, when I repaint this original work it’s almost like I’m putting the stuff under a microscope. I love it so much that I obsess over every little detail. I sit there, hard-edge painting, going over every line meticulously, when the original signage has probably been painted in a matter of seconds. But I love to see the works come to life. I love trying to match the colors. I love cutting the wood, being able to hold it. I love seeing how they look on the wall. They just, they just make me happy. And it’s more so just a way for something to live on, something that maybe wasn’t supposed to.
FB&VK: So we have a couple of loose questions to kind of wrap this up.
Is it safe to assume you are a collector yourself?
NJ: I am.
FB&VK: How do you view your own collection?
NJ: I collect artwork and I collect objects. What I’m most into is a collection of piggy banks by an artist I don’t know - and I don’t want to know. I buy them at a second hand clothing store. For some reason they sell used clothes and piggy banks. It doesn’t make any sense, but for as long as I can remember this place has had these really cheap ceramic piggy banks. They span all these different genres from cartoons to… I have one of Elmo, one of Big Bird, one of a basketball. A naked woman, a dog, a pig, a C-3PO.
They’re spray painted. They’re beautiful. I don’t put change in them or anything, I just like looking at them. I like how fragile they are. And like the signs, I like how quickly they seem to be produced.
I collect Coca Cola bottle caps, the red ones. I don’t know what I’m going to do with those.
The art I have is stuff that I really want and seek out. Or made by people who have been important in my life, whom I admire or who I’ve learned from. I wouldn’t say I have a ton of art by any means, but I have a good dozen things that mean the world to me. They would be the first things I would grab if the house was on fire.
Thank you Nick Jaskey for sharing your experience and insight with us.
To view and purchase Nick Jaskey's work, download the ArtClvb app on mobile.