We recently connected with Paul Jach and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Paul, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

My wife, Kristy Brucale Jach, and I co-founded the non-profit, Boonton Arts. Through this organization, we have created the Dog Days of Summer & Some Cool Cats program. The program places sculptures on exhibit in the public helping independent businesses in our town. We have also participated as artists, creating a dog or cat sculpture each year.

In addition, we have facilitated five full-scale murals in Boonton. The most meaningful for me and my community was a three-story flag mural on the side of our town’s VFW post, painted in 2014. To this day, the mural serves as a welcome to Boonton’s Main Street, and the town itself. The gratitude that the veterans expressed and the overwhelming appreciation that our community demonstrated, made this project stand out as one of my most impactful to date. I feel honored to have had the opportunity to design the mural and paint it through Boonton Arts along with my wife Kristy, and fellow artists Anthony Weird*Eye*One and Rob Hessler.

Paul, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in Northern New Jersey and moved to San Francisco after high school to attend The Academy of Art University, majoring in illustration. After graduating, I began working with Bill Graham Presents creating lobby posters for the historic Fillmore and Warfield theaters for music acts of the time like Blur, Fiona Apple, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and more. It hardly paid, but otherwise was such an ideal first gig for me coming right out of school.

In 2001, I decided to return to the east coast. Once back in NJ, I participated in multiple groups shows and landed a solo show at Jersey City’s L.I.T.M. gallery. During this time, most of my work was abstracted figurative paintings on canvas. Soon after, I formed the collective, Speakeasy Art, working with a local music promoter to put on pop-up exhibits at clubs, bars and lounges in Jersey City, Hoboken, and Manhattan. I saw this as a great opportunity to not only promote my work but also provide a platform to showcase the work of other artists as well.

The collective got a permanent location in 2009, opening Speakeasy Art Gallery in Boonton, NJ. We curated monthly and bi-monthly solo and group shows for the decade after opening the brick and mortar location. The exhibits featured the work of local, domestic, and international artists. I had always been a fan of art found in publications like Juxtapoz and Hi-fructose. So the gallery set itself apart from other nearby galleries, by showing work by artists who had a less traditional approach to their art.

I received an MA in studio education from Kean University in 2010. During my last semester there I took a wood-working class as an elective. I had no idea how this one class would completely change the direction of the art I make. Initially, I took the class to make frames for the printmaking work I was doing at the time. Quickly, it led me to a completely different approach and way of working. I stopped going to art stores and instead began shopping for my art supplies at the hardware store. Moving away from painting and printmaking, now focusing more on creating dimensional work that utilizes found objects and industrial elements. I knew I wanted to work in a non-traditional way and place the focus of the work on the process and medium.

My wife and I also formed the non-profit, Boonton Arts in 2013. Our mission is to help independent businesses in the community, aiming to increase foot traffic and beautify the town through art. Boonton Arts has facilitated five murals in Boonton and implemented and ran the Dog Days of Summer and Some Cool Cats program for over ten years.
Throughout those ten+ years, I was most definitely burning the candle at both ends. My time was split between teaching, curating, running a non-profit, trying to create work of my own and of course raising my son, born in 2011. This forced me to take a step back from my responsibilities at the gallery. In the beginning, most of the gallery classes were taught by me, but my wife Kristy began teaching with me and eventually took over as education director at the gallery. In 2020, we took a hiatus from curating, choosing to focus more on the education element of the gallery.

In October of this year, Speakeasy Art Gallery returned to exhibiting art, with a two-person show featuring current work from my wife Kristy Brucale Jach, titled “Hallow/Hollow” and my own, “Shiny Objects”. Moving forward, we plan to continue to exhibit our own work but also keep with Speakeasy Art Gallery’s tradition of inviting other artists to showcase their work along with us.

In recent years, I have developed a technique of mounting sheet metal to wood, then creating a stipple effect by drilling hundreds of small holes into the metal. I actually enjoy the tedious and repetitive aspect of the process, it almost serves as a comforting meditation for me. Working this way, juxtapositions organic and industrial elements, creating vastly contrasting textures. My earliest influences in art were music, comics, and pop culture, elements of these often surface as an underlying theme in the work I make now.

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

As an art teacher as well, I feel society plays a crucial role in arts education. Keeping the arts in public schools is extremely beneficial to the art ecosystem. Not only for the growth of young artists, but also teaching non-artists to appreciate and support art. To me, true success as an artist happens without the support of society, both emotional and monetary. I think each artist needs to define what being a “successful artist” means to them. When I make a piece of art, it’s for me first. I make it because I love the process and find it incredibly rewarding to create. When the piece is finished, that becomes my own personal success, that I am able to enjoy long before I share it with anyone or ask anyone to spend money on it.

With that said though, once I do put art that I initially made for myself out into the world, that’s where support from society becomes really important, essential even. If you like art and have the means, you should support artists in every way you can. It can be as simple as liking a post, going to an opening or bigger commitments like commissioning an artist or purchasing a piece of art. That support affords artists the opportunity and time to create and enjoy even more of those personal successes. Ultimately, I feel that the experience of making art itself is what most artists are really chasing.

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

Since finishing school, I have been fortunate and grateful to have consistently worked in the arts. As an educator and gallery owner, I have “paid the bills” through art. I am honored that my role in the arts has been to assist students and established artists and I will always find a way to still do that to some capacity. These have been full-time ventures though, pushing the making of my own art off to the side, unfortunately making it a part-time thing.

A driving goal for me these days is to find a way to reverse that ratio and make creating my main focus and for it to be how the bulk of my time is spent. In an effort to achieve this, I have spent the last year utilizing every spare moment I have, creating and developing my art. Also focusing on the promotion of my new work, trying to build a social media presence and exhibiting throughout the country, to connect with collectors and galleries. I’ve found that the two film and editing classes that I took in art school have served me well recently, creating process videos for platforms like Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok. I’m not ready for early retirement from teaching yet, but I feel that if I keep working consistently and moving in the right direction, I feel that will get me there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pauljach.com
• Instagram: @pauljachfineart
• Facebook: Paul Jach (Fine Art)
• Youtube: @pauljachfineart
• Other: TikTok:
  @pauljachfineart

  Speakeasy Art Gallery:
  www.SpeakEasyArt.com

  Boonton Arts:
  www.BoontonArts.org

Image Credits

Jayme Januszanis