We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonah Jacobs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jonah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
My journey to becoming a visual artist started with writing. For several years I spent many hours every week writing short stories and poems. I was in love with words and found the editing process excruciatingly difficult. I would write what I though was a beautiful sentence, only to realize that it just didn’t fit with the overall feel of the paragraph. Instead of deleting these sentences I began cutting and pasting them into a folder on my computer. In order to let them go, free them from my mind so to speak, I printed them out on paper. The paper would then be distressed and stained with tea, iodine, and a motley collection of other tinctures. The altered text would then be ripped up or sometimes crumpled up and turned into bizarre organic looking collages. As time went on, I realized that I enjoyed making these strange organic looking paper collages more than I enjoyed writing. Art making felt liberating. It was also more immediate and free flowing while writing seemed laborious and slow.
As a self-taught artist I learned through years of experimentation, with each failure forming the basis for new experiments. I’ve never been able to find any mentors, which has made learning difficult but has also pushed me in directions that no one else has gone. There have certainly been times where I wish I could ask someone for advice on how to create certain works, and not having anyone has led to some catastrophic failures. Finding out for yourself, however, leads to a deeper understanding of what you can and cannot accomplish on your own. I’m sure not having teachers or mentors slowed some aspects of my creative process down, and there are always new things I’d love to try and learn, but I also feel that had things been easy, my work would have been too similar to other artists and perhaps a bit too formulaic.
Essential skills for any artist are having a ravenous appetite for knowledge. Never stop learning. It helps if your knowledge is broad enough to discover new things but also deep enough to master the mediums you wish to work in. Patience is a must. I don’t know too many artists who do not spend long hours, often alone, in front of a canvas or slowly working and reworking a sculpture. Cultivate a sense of awe or wonder. By this I mean take time every once and awhile, to slow down. Sit with your work. Sit away from your work. Open up your senses and take the world in. And lastly, work, work, work. You must constantly be honing your skills. Being an artist isn’t a job, it’s a way of life.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I often tell people that I am a material alchemist who turns up-cycled materials into intricate and beautiful organic looking sculptures. I love turning carboard, cardboard food boxes, disposable cups, and all other manner of post-consumer waste into beautiful works of art. I do my best to make works of art that not only draw attention to environmental concerns but are also made using environmentally conscious materials while pushing my art practice to be ever more environmentally sustainable.
I like to think of my artwork as not just consisting of the creation of beautiful objects, but as a dedication to an idea — a movement. My work and art practices are aspirational attempts at showing others how, with a little imagination, our waste can be turned into amazing things. Simply put, there is too much waste in this world. Let’s do our best to not only limit our waste, but to also turn existing waste into new, previously unimaginable things.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My goal is to educate others as to the potential for using up-cycled materials as building blocks for sculptural work and installation work. I also want to explore further and teach others how to create a more environmentally sustainable art practice.
I also like to push the boundaries of material. Not only do I use a lot of up-cycled materials in my work, but I also bread most of my work with oatmeal which is then dyed with fabric dyes.
Educating others and exploring new ways of art making are always two of my major goals.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
On of the most rewarding things for me as an artist is creating works of art that inspire others to explore their own creativity. I love it when a child looks at my work and realizes that they too can create beauty out of things they find around the house or out of things that would normally be thrown out.
Along my art journey I have also met so many amazing people, come across new ideas, and have seen jaw dropping creations. There are so many ideas and people which have renewed and energize my sense of wonder as to what we can all accomplish when our potential is unlocked.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jonahjacobsart.com
- Instagram: jonahjacobsart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jonahsart
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBD0F2D34AB622CC2