Jim Blanchard
Another artist profile for What’sUp by Callous French.
Jim Blanchard looked me in the eye and summarized his point.
“That’s the true test of art.”
I don’t have a fuck’s idea what his point was by then, because we were both pretty drunk already. But it shows up in my “notes” from our conversation, so I know he said it.
Also in the notes are some other profound statements similarly orphaned of context, like:
“The medium is the message.”
“I’ve been rejected by many printers…” and
“When you have a toothache, you just can’t stop touchin’ it (with your tongue.)”
Blanchard, or Jimm b as he signs his art, has a lot to say. But he is most often given to saying it with images, not words. His vast and varied body of work spans three decades and includes most of the limbs of the craggy visual art counter culture monster, from fanzines to comics, rock flyers to original art. His resume includes extensive collaborative work with the Peter Bagge, Jim Goad and Pat Moriarity, as well as creditsin Exit, Answer Me! and even Newsweek.
He’s one of us now, having moved to Bellingham on September 11, 2001 with his wife Diana, the saucy lead singer of the DTs. His path here has been a long and staggering one, with his most recent headquarters being Seattle-- a cultural universe away from his formative home of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Can growing up in a hideous void like northeastern Oklahoma cultivate in one’s brain a fascination with double-dick Satans, exploding eyeballs and coprophelia? If not, then Jimm b’s got some explaining to do, because there’s this and a lot more lurking in his highly-developed style which includes mediums as diverse as collage and sticker art.
But his out pitch, the one that is probably most central to his most important work is the trusty pen and ink.
“It’s kinda my freak” he said of the medium, drawing on a tall glass of bourbon, no ice.
And what freak. The startling detail in Blanchard’s pen work absolutely boggles consciousness. Whether conveying the multi-frame descent into mind-mashing psychedelic death in The Execution of Carl Jung or laying down the sincere and literal milk in portraits of middle-shelf 1960s celebs like Lee Marvin and Captain Beefheart, Blanchard exhibits that hyper-keen scientific gift that the great realists have in common where proprietizing likeness and freezing time are concerned.
There’s always commercial work available to artists with these skills, and Blanchard supplements his creative projects with “commercial” work to pay the rent. But when your day clients are Loompanics, Hustler and the Stranger, you can hardly call it straight work.
After the wild success of 2002’s sticker art series, for which Blanchard created 4’ x 4’ portraits of Teli Savalis, Steve McQueen and other offroad personalities composed primarily of produce stickers over black acrylic (a favorite juxtaposition was James Caan and kosher stickers), the frontier might have seemed just about conquered to even the most adventurous artistes. But new to Blanchard’s todo list this spring is an interpretation on Chicken Little, actually commissioned by the Kings of underground destruction themselves, the Disney Corporation! Thirty respected artists from across the wide world of Disney were approached with the task of applying their own peculiar spins to a common 8” Chicken Little figurine. The results will be auctioned off in Los Angeles and New York this month and next, with proceeds going to charity. How Jim Blanchard of Bellingham, Washington—an artist much more interested in serial killers than cereal boxes—wound up on this short list seems a bit of a mystery, even to Blanchard himself.
“Disney didn't actually approach me,” had admitted. “It was some firm in Boston that specializes in promotion and hooking bigwig companies up with hip, underground artists. I'm sure Disney doesn't have a clue I exist, and that suits me fine.”
The Disney-commissioned Chicken Little project might suggest than Blanchard has “done it all,” coloring the inevitable question “what’s next for Jim Blanchard of Bellingham, Washington?” But there’s always something evil lurking in the heart of this man.
Set to a backdrop of unorthodox music and coffee (a.m.) or beer (p.m.), Blanchard is currently immersed in a compilation of his portrait penwork for an 80-page coffee table book to be published by his old buddies at Fantagraphics, for whom he worked during his years in Seattle. Beasts & Priests is due out in December, and will probably not be suitable for just any coffee table.
I guess that’s the true test of a coffee table.
--Callous French
www.jimblanchard.com
www.comicartcollective.com