ROBERT RYAN: Baphomet & Shangri La

"Love is All", Robert Ryan

I first met Robert "Bink" Ryan when he set up a show for Crazy Dreams Band in his one-room studio slash gallery slash third floor walkup off one of Asbury Park's Cookman Street. His walls were covered in gorgeous framed works in a metaphysical-flash style and a third of one wall was entirely given over to a monochromatic cosmos mural by Daniel Higgs. Nobody at the party seemed particularly interested in our music, but Bink's fridge seemed to grow beer and everyone was pretty nice. The next day, I walked miles in a freak hailstorm to Robert's tattoo shop one town away where I received a rainbow ice cup and my clothing was dried in a laundry room filled with Chihuahua figurines. Asbury Park, New Jersey is sort of a magical wasteland in itself, and now Bink lives in the neighboring village of Ocean Grove, a plot of mansions and cottages on Methodist-owned land that closes its gates at midnight. He spearheads the musical entity Harmonize Most High and continues to execute dazzling works of art for flesh and paper.

What do you do?
I make paintings and tattoos and try to work on music as much as the painting and tattooing will allow for me to do.

What are you doing the most lately?
I feel like I have been traveling a lot lately and studying. I have been working with plant medicines and working on my posture and breathing. Of the aforementioned things I feel like tattooing has been occupying a big spot because that's what pays the bills.

How long have you done these things?
Tattooing for 14 years. Painting for about 16 and playing music for about 23 years.


How have the things changed?
Well I feel like its always expanding and contracting. Its always growing I'm always purging expelling all the bullshit that attaches itself to you on these paths. Earthly snares and such.

Why do you do these things?
For the Love

How does it make you feel?
Like my hero Sun Ra said "Music can be your greatest ambassador or your worst nemesis."

What's it like when you are unable to do these things?
I feel like I imagine a worried mother must feel like.

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are?
When I was young I used to live in an old house that belonged to Eugene O'Neal's widow and daughter, Agnes and Una. They lived there after Una divorced Charlie Chaplin. One night my cousin and I were playing in the yard and we both saw what we thought was Eugene O' Neal's

ghost walk past us. At that moment my mind was open to anything. I was Eleven.

How has your life changed to accommodate That Moment's effect on you?

Well I figured out right away that I wasn't taking the easy way out. To see ghosts and UFOs and consume LSD or live in Hare Krishna temple might be hard to explain to your friends and loved ones yet is still worth the experience.

How has your work affected your life in return?
I could be the poster child for what you should or what you shouldn't do with your life. It all depends on who you ask. Tattooing has shaped me as well as destroyed me, like my psychic baphomet. Music on the other hand is my Shangri La and painting might be the strongest of my personal connections.

How does your location affect what you do and who you are these days?

As you know I live between "Gods square mile" Ocean Grove & "The city by the Sea" Asbury Park. I feel as though I'm very lucky to work with some of the greatest people I know, I live four blocks from the beach and I play Frisbee with my dog almost every morning. The music scene here is so backwards and the art scene pretty much sucks despite the fact some of the best illustrators and painters I know live within 10 minutes of here. We all just exist outside our locale and I think there is something to be said about that.

What do you think of the future?
I think its an oblong oblivion.

What has David Lee Roth meant in your life?

He is like my favorite rock roll trickster. Giant Surfboards, Samurai Swords, Assless Pants, High Kicks, Monster Trucks! The guy is a Titan guarding the temple of Rock and Roll but then he gets busted buying dime bags of downtown julie brown ( middle school jersey weed slang) in Washington square park? This was a task I mastered in the 10th grade. He really is mystifying. I spent a whole summer surfing and watching the "Just a Gigolo "and "California Girls" videos on what felt like a perpetual loop.

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
I would like your advice on my retirement idea. Dig it! A small shack, One man (or woman) in a hazmat suit and a dogbowl on his head. He makes burritos named after the famous songs of one of the most important rock and roll bands of our generation DE EVOLUTION BURRITO! Customer: " I would like one Mongoloid with medium salsa please and can I get cheese on that? Burritista: "Yes sir we can whip it." Customer : "Oh then whip it good"

All images courtesy Robert Ryan.

www.sanitaryelectric.com
www.myspace.com/americancloudsongs

Robert Ryan works at Electric Tattoo
314 Main St. Bradley Beach NJ 07720
p: 732- 988-8882
www.electrictattoonj.com

MIKE TAYLOR: Rad to Look Like a Carnie

MIKE TAYLOR is an artist living and working in Miami, FL. His drawing and printmaking style reflects the environment of his artistic post-adolescence in Providence, RI, as well as a broader range of influences from Gary Panter and Raymond Pettibon to the psychedelic palette of the seventies and sixties. His tattoo work, similarly reflects creative contemporaries Daniel Higgs, Robert Ryan and others: a mythic sensibility that transforms the interpretation of the myth, in a traditional style. While reactionary, politicized and endowed with sneaky commentary, Taylor's work is often light-hearted and excitable.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
Mostly I draw. But that has lead to a years-long bout of screenprinting, painting, collage, crappy sculpture, a couple of videos, and a few years back I began to tattoo. I play music, I cook, I hang out with Jessica. I go to work. This month I've drawn a lot of comics, but when I'm working on an image for a print, it's all I do for a week or so. So lately, as in this week, I'm doing comics.

How long have you done these things?
Not to sound snarky, but since I could hold a pencil I've been drawing on stacks of the old computer paper my dad would bring home from work. I would draw pictures of guitars, barbarians, superheroes, and later, all the bands I knew I would be in. Of course, by the time I was in bands, it would have been fully uncool to look like the carnies I drew back then (however, I know that right now, it's back to being rad to look like a carnie, and I love carnivals too!). I started screenprinting in college and then immediately shelved the skillset...I only screenprinted t shirts when my band toured. College makes you hate art, you know? Or it made me hate art. I went back to screenprinting a couple of years later, like in 2001, and then hit in earnest. I started tattooing in 2004, maybe? A friend kind of arranged it...I had been getting work done for many years and expressed interest in learning, but at 29 or whatever felt I was too old to begin another path. Turns out I wasn't. We're never too old to feel like amateurs!

Why do you do them? How does it make you feel?
I may be unqualified to say why I do these things. I could make a list to tackle both questions, and that will touch around the issue:
-I love immediacy
-I have an innate need to feel understood
-I have to keep my hands busy (I grew up in a smoking household)
-as a child I was very skinny with very hairy arms
-art had always moved me
-I feel unqualified to live in the world as -it-is-becoming

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?
Mostly it was movements against what I interpreted as the world trying to predetermine me into submission. I suppose every artist that draws gets told as a child that they'll grow up to be an artist. So when I went to college on an art scholarship I wanted to be a history teacher. Then I taught for a while and realized that I was on the right track with the art thing and I shouldn't be ashamed to feel compelled towards such an "irresponsible" calling as the fabrication of images.

How has your life changed or not changed to accommodate that moment's effect on you?
Hmmm...well, I'm not married and don't have any expensive diseases. But I am poor, so I guess I'm doing it right. Maybe the seriousest answer is that my needs are modest, which is practical for an artist in a capitalist economy.

How has your work affected your life in return?
I am seldom suicidal because I feel compelled onward by a purposefulness that comes in and out of focus...when I'm trying to be serious I sound like a dick. I just want to be wonderful at what I chose to do. So I don't make time for what a lot of people think is fun and I'm bad at keeping touch with my extended family. I analyze things to much/enough to enjoy them.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about David Lee Roth?
Diver Down's pre-eminence as a classic record EVEN WITH the lame covers. It can be enjoyed spiritually, academically, and physically. DLR's early support of punk. His relationship with Henry Rollins. He claims to read a book a week and know three languages. The fact that he publicly stated that spending early Van Halen money on cars and women wore out, so he began taking classes, because knowledge is an actual investment.

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
Lexie, do you think I should move to Baltimore?
Yes, definitely! You will not be homesick for humidity, mosquitoes and violence.

Do you think you make "feminine" art?
No, not really. But probably. I think all good art embraces the masculine/feminine as recombinable elements of the same mutating whole. I'm not saying I make good art. If I make anything feminine, its definitely fighting against itself.

What attracts you to Baltimore?
It is weird, affordable and crammed to the brim with creative, interesting people.

What artists do you admire?
Ashley Snow Macomber, Shaun Flynn, Jen Kirby, Kehinde Wiley. Every one who gets away with it. Whoever it is that designs tapestries you can buy at the MegaMall. My roommates Nate Nelson, Sarah Jablecki and David Spelce Jr.

What was your first band like?
Pop punk. We covered "Skulls" and had one show. It made our friend Janaka barf.

Do you make art every day?
No.

Would you prefer to not work a day job?
Yes.

Thanks, Mike!
Mike Taylor's work can be seen at www.emptymountain.org

images by Mike Taylor. Top to bottom:

Pursuit, 200?
(Mike Taylor's self-porttrait)
Orthodoxy Looms, 200?

His favorite book is Crime and Punishment, his favorite movies are Blue Velvet, The Bicycle Thief and The Wizard of Oz.
He loves all animals and all colors, but especially cyan and bright orange and mint green.