This week, on a very special episode of Art I Heart, you guys get to meet the super talented Brian Kappel (AKA the creator of the coolest piece of art in my living room). I love Big Bot!
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When my husband and I went to Portland to celebrate our second wedding anniversary, we fell in love with your exhibition CEREAL: a View of Break*Fast that was on display at The Original. We decided to buy Big Bot as an anniversary gift to ourselves and we love it! There were so many great pieces in that exhibit that it was hard to choose one. What inspired you to develop that series of work?
Fun fact was that the show was supposed to be called “Cereal Numbers: Views of the Broken Fast”, but alas, Elroy “didn’t get it.” Gallery owners….
Honestly I wanted to take a break from robots, which had been a theme that I had worked for a little over a year. Trust me, I can draw robots until the proverbial cows come home, but I wanted to get pieces out there so folks didn’t think I was a one trick pony.
When I had first started with the large scale paintings, my theme was “False Advertising and Movies That Never Existed.” This was a continuation of this theme, in something near and dear to me, breakfast. The aesthetics of The Original are very mid-century, which made it easy to zone in on an era look and feel.
What makes Portland so freaking cool? Seriously. I live in Seattle, which is also cool, but judging from the short spurts of time that I’ve spent in Portland it seems to have a great artist community and there was a certain warmth to the people I encountered there. What brought you to Portland, how long have you lived there, and can you put Portland’s “it factor” into words?
Portland is a cool town. I actually came out after meeting my soon to be wife when I was an intern at NIKE in 1997. I have lived here for 13 years and love the town and all the different neighborhoods, foods, and “scenes.” I think that is the strength of the town. There is such a wide variety of people and points of view, a little something for everyone.
I equate it to going to a big college like Penn State. There are 41,000 undergrads running around. If you like football, there are friends for that. If you like playing board games, there are clubs for that. If you like sitting around, doing nothing but hating the people who need to belong to groups, there are bars for that. Everyone has a group and it is perfectly acceptable to check out EVERYONE else’s groups.
Balance is a constant struggle for me. I have a husband, a one-year-old, a full-time “day job,” and I’m trying my best to start a new career as a blogger/writer/photographer/graphic designer/collage artist. You do a combination of your own artwork and freelance graphic design for clients. You have a wife and two children. As we’ve already established, you live in a cool city with lots of fun things to do on a regular basis. How do you create balance when you have so many things that you want to spend time doing and so many competing obligations?
I actually have a full time 9 to 5 job as a design director for a small firm here in PDX called Gallagher Designs. I’m the head designer, among other roles, and then I have the freelance graphic biz, and the paintings. So yes, balance is something that I have learned to strive for.
I take probably the unhealthy approach of doing all the “fun stuff” after the fam goes to bed at night. I usually say that Space Monkey Designs is open from 8pm to 4am. I never want to compromise the family time, that comes first. Work is work, 9 to 5 pays the bills, but then it is left at the office. Most of the sketches for my last robot show that was at Black Wagon in north Portland were done at my stepson’s baseball games. They were then inked and cut after hours. Note from Melanie: I LOVE Black Wagon. :)
My balance is making sure that everything gets done, but is still enjoyable to do. If the paintings ever become laborious, I will put it down. I never want my drawing/painting/illustrating to become “work.” It’s a release, and one that I look forward to.
You graduated with a Visual Art degree from Penn State. Some of us didn’t have the foresight to know that what we really wanted to be when we “grew up” were artists, writers, photographers, and/or designers. What’s the best advice you have for those of us who didn’t start out in a creative field or don’t have professional experience, but want to eventually break free from our unrelated “day jobs” and make a living doing something that we love?
I want to make action figures when I grow up, so I am not quite there yet, but as soon as I figure out how to not fear my wood lathe, I’ll be SET.
The thing that I learned when I enrolled in college is that to TRULY succeed in life, stay true to who you are. I know it sounds horribly cheesy, but I have crossed paths with it more times than not, and I have found that true happiness is on the same path of knowing who you are and not compromising on how it exists in your life. I enrolled as a landscape architect. It didn’t fit me, it wasn’t something that I enjoyed, and I didn’t see the purpose in “sticking it out” when there were opportunities to explore things closer to my heart.
Follow your true passions. “Means to an end” – it’s the phrase that gets me through the bad projects, jobs, whatever. If there is something that you want to achieve, only by keeping that in sight do you have direction in life. I want to take over the world with my artwork. Everything along the way are steps to get me closer to it.
What are you working on now?
I am working on the follow up to the Original show that will open in October in Phoenix at the After Hours Gallery. It will be called “Cereal Killer” and have a little bit more of an edge than the May show. Nothing along the lines of Mapplethorpe, rather more Zombie/Devils/ and Monsters…it is for an October show after all. There will be some pieces from The Original, remixed in new colors, but the majority will be new.
I am also working on my submission to No Bones for Halftones which is a free screen printing event that is held in town in October.
All images courtesy of Brian Kappel. All rights reserved.