We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paul Roden a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Paul, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I enjoy working with big ideas that require big executions, for example my current project is a group of 20 intricately carved woodblocks averaging about 5 square feet each that fit together to form a sort of map-shaped timeline of the world. But probably the most successful completed project I made was a double triptych of ‘the history of habitat’ tracking our species’ dwellings from caves to villages to cities to megalopoli to collapse and back again. I feel I managed to render the concept in a competent, approachable, and original style I was developing at the time. I also stuck to hallmarks of humor and optimism while addressing obvious issues with our culture and society—It might be a post-apocalyptic vision, but there’s still rainbows :)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my artistic career as part of a collaborative team with my wife making and selling original handmade woodcut prints. When our union inevitably suffocated itself, I was left with a poor perception of my prospects, feeling like my only skills were in carving and printing woodblock prints, at least half of which I was completely burnt out on. Eventually I started to work in a style that used the same aesthetic but without all the labor—expressive black lines and bold colors underneath. But currently I’m back to working in carved wood, handy for its graphic crispness of line, but I’m unsure if I’ll make a lot of prints from the carvings.
I’m proud that I’ve organized my practice to constantly evolve, learning new things after an early career of mostly the same self-restrictive process. My goal is to connect with people visually, to bring focus and attention to things that are important to me—environment, economy, equality—in a way that is approachable and meaningful. But also pretty.
I really enjoy the opportunity to work with people who like those ideas, and am always excited to feel like part of a team. I do usually work alone, but that is more circumstantial than by design.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We live in a place and time where there are people whose job seems to just be to make money, to invent value—with little to no basis in impact on quality of life. We are told to think of these people as ‘good businesspeople.’ Well, artists are mostly simply not that. But it’s not hard to see that we all need the same food and clothes for our kids, the same necessities of life. If you are working with creatives—you absolutely should, we make life interesting :)—we might not always ask for those things, we might not advocate for ourselves financially as best as we should. We generally don’t have an industry backing us up, a lot of times we are on our own. But when we don’t have money, we have stress. And when we have stress, the product can suffer. So many times people get in touch and ask what so and so would cost. They have the budget and the upper hand—quote too high and they just go to the next creative on their infinite list, quote too low and you’re working for nothing. Most of the time I quote a project (for a big business especially) the immediate response is a 50% counteroffer—if any. So usually when I get an email asking about a project or a job, it’s a sense of dread to be honest. They almost never work out and are usually just frustrating to even get started.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In my early career, I felt like we had it all, a self-contained ecosystem of making and selling. But it was just a miserable life of hustle for little respect and little reward. I think we were really top of the game among the people we were showing with at fairs and markets. But it was lonely and I felt like I was turning into a bad person—someone always kinda agitated and grumpy. So I had to abandon ship and start over, and seven years later little fragments of life are coming back together and I can finally start to say it was worth it. I’m not exactly proud of how that part of my life went, it was humbling and there’s not really anybody to point to except myself. Thankfully I had a ton of support and was able to try many things and still get some big jobs. Most of hem were completely outside my skillset but were with understanding clientele who were willing to work with me while I learned what I was doing. Although I do wish I could do some of those projects over again now that I know even more about what I’m doing ;)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.paulrodenstudio.com
• Instagram: @misterrodensneighborhood
• Other: one of my earliest taglines is “contact for literally any reason”:
  [email protected]

Image Credits

All photos copyright Paul Roden