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

Dennis, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve made stuff since I was very little. I would take drawing materials over toys hands down. My first encouragement came from my great grandfather. He’d look at my drawings when I was 4-5 years old and and say “Oh my gosh! that looks great! draw some more!”. He was blind, which I knew, so I thought the drawings were magic. Later I got into skateboarding. This was the early and mid-eighties, so skateboarding was more underground, raw and untamed. From the graphics on the boards to the information/music/tricks in Thrasher Magazine, I was hooked and would often draw the graphics on school notebooks. As I got older and had all the ups and downs people have, I asked myself, “what do you want to do with the time you have left on this planet”. I knew I didn’t want to work in a restaurant, doing hardwood floors or anything else I was getting into outside of work. I decided to pursue what I loved and see where it led. I went back to finish up a college degree I had started with a focus in art. I later went to NYC graduate school for fine arts at Pratt Institute. My mantra was “if not now, when”.

Dennis, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I had gone to community college in Virginia Beach where I took some art classes. The instructors were really great and one of them had an old etching press for printing woodcut block prints. One day he was carving a block in class and had us come over while he inked the block and ran it through the hand-cranked press. When he lifted the paper of the block, it looked like all the graphics I was into as a kid. It had the same high contrast raw graphic mark as all the eighties skate graphics and punk rock album covers. From that point on, I used printmaking for it’s distinct mark in all of the work I’ve done over the last 30 plus years. I pull income from various projects. It’s like piecing together a living. I make limited edition prints to sell, I make skateboard graphics, I have art show installations at museums/galleries, and I do events using larger 12ft tall puppets. All of these things use printmaking in some form or another. I’ve done events with Vans shoes where I will transformed a 10,000 sq ft music venue in Chicago with backdrops, large cutouts and giant puppets that then interact with the audience while a band performs. I just got back from a visiting artist gig at Coastal Carolina University where I was asked to do mask making workshops with students, give a lecture and work with the Gullah community there for a procession through the town. Right now I am working on some linoleum cut illustrations for a wine company. Everything I do has the distinct mark of woodcut prints and the work is fluid touching all sorts of projects.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Here is a very short version of my story of resilience. When I was younger I had wandered into substance abuse and addiction had ahold of me from age 18 till I was about 27. I got clean in 1998. For the first couple of years of being substance free, I started a business doing hardwood floors while I pieced together what I had left of a BFA undergraduate degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. By 2000 my business was doing well and I had finished up my degree. I felt grateful to have survived addiction, but also like I needed to do more. I had always made art and always wanted to pursue it past just in my spare time. In 2001 I was accepted into a graduate program in NYC at Pratt Institute. I didn’t know anyone there or anything about the city. I packed up my car and dove up. When I had first moved to New York, I was working construction to pay rent and also attending full-time classes. My commute was from Journal Square across the water in NJ all the way to Brooklyn. I felt like I wasn’t giving my art the time it needed to grow and eventually I moved into the studio they provided at Pratt. I stayed there illegally so that I could focus on my work. I lived in that basement studio for two years, slept on a fold out mattress-chair and showered at the gym. I made a huge amount of work during that time and laid a solid foundation for my practice. After I graduated in 2004, I was offered a teaching position at Pratt and ended up teaching there for almost nine years. By 2012 it really started to feel like the teaching was getting in the way of the work I had coming into the studio. I had gallery shows, visiting artist gigs at other universities, I was doing graphic work for companies like Vans and Antihero. I had been asked to do all of the windows at Barney’s In NYC, had works in museums and was just swimming in abundance. I was so very grateful for surviving addiction and to be living as an artist. Since 2013 I have been doing art full-time . It’s not extravagant and sometimes scary, but everyday I am grateful.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For me personally, I feel that the main goal is to show up. Show up for the day, the studio and the next project. I think it’s important to try to learn from each thing I create and do it better the next time. I believe if you show up, the work, inspiration, motivation, ideas, projects, etc… will come. I believe the goal is not to perfect the one thing and do it over and over, but to keep changing, trying new things and being willing to make mistakes. Artists I’ve admired through the years were the ones that rattled my cage or woke me up to a new perspective. I hope I can wake someone from the monotony of a day to day routine and make them laugh, see things in a new way or just be inspired to keep going. I adore doing projects that people can participate in like happenings and procession for this reason.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wolfbat.com
• Instagram: Wolfbat
• Facebook: Wolfbat Studio
• Youtube: WolfbatStudios

Image Credits
Dennis McNett