//Interview: J

eff Slim

1121SOUTH

“I Start With The Left Side” / stencil on discarded photograph / 2013

//INTERVIEW: J

EFF SLIM

By Robert Franklin

Current temperature reads 82 degrees on my iPhone, the Phoenix sun is currently being blocked by a canvas canopy over-

head. It’s midway through March and luckily, a cool breeze is making its way across the concrete slab that makes up the downtown Phoenix area. For the past twenty-four hours I’ve been play-ing phone/text tag with Navajo born artist and Phoenix resident Jeff Slim, who will soon have a solo show at the 1Spot Galley in Phoneix, AZ. Our conversations are cordial and acco-modating of our daily schedules, neither of us wanting to be a burden to the other. Finally we decide to meet at a local coffee shop called Lux on 4400 N. Central Avenue. I stand out-side wandering around looking for a sign with “Lux” on it when a person rides in on tenspeed, chainside pant leg rolled up and a courier bag slung across

his chest. I figure that he’s the only native dude here, aside from myself and arriving at the same time. So I awkwardly walk up and introduce myself.

Jeff Slim, 26 year old artist from Arizona, is a very chill dude and very approachable. We shake hands and I follow his lead into Lux and where I feel instantly awkward amongst the cool college kids behind their glowing Apple logo’d shields. Jeff is very much at home as he comfortably makes his way to order his food and find a place to chat.

We find ourselves a nice spot outside on the wood-en tables. I place my iPhone on the table between us and switch on the voice recorder app as Jeff sets down his food and sits across from me. Jeff then reaches into his courier bag and takes out a hand painted cassette tape and says “I made this for you”, he also hands me a piece of paper with a play-list scribbled in ink and we begin our conversation.

“YAZ From The East” / Stencil on discarded photograph / 2013

JS - My name is Jeff Slim I’m 26, will be turning 27 next month, born and raised mostly through-out Arizona. I’m kinda residing here in Phoenix. I’ve been painting with an art collective, basically making a living by just painting and doing com-missions, which have been picking up a lot more lately.

RF - So, what got you into the art thing?

JS - I started out at a young age. I’ve always done a lot of artwork and been apart of different contests. The first piece I sold was probably when I was in 2nd grade, to a tourist, and it was just a doodle... it kinda went from there. JS - Soon I became more known for what I was ca-pable of doing but It wasn’t really until high school when I met an instructor who saw what I was do-ing and pushed me into the direction of pursuing art as a career. JS - Then I got introduced to doing murals through the Black Sheep Art Collective. It kinda started In late 2008 when I helped some students at ASU with a mural, Julius Bedonie,

Thomas Greyeyes, and Ave Chee. Ave and I were already friends and he was al-ready part of the Native Movement Art Collective. JS - Later I was invited to help do youth workshops over the summer with Native Movement, which later became Black Sheep Art Collective, and their cordinator Cy Wagner. It just kind of went from there and I started trav-eling and we’d do workshops with the youth in Northern Arizona and even went as far as Kansas. With those guys we did projects all over.

RF - Now you’re here in Phoenix and... 1Spot Gallery?

JS - Yeah, 1Spot! Well, I know Damian Jim. I’ve worked with him in the past through Ziindi Magazine. I kinda just kept asking him, “who else is gonna show at this gallery? I’d like to be able to show there” and it wasn’t until after the first Friday of last month that he asked me if I wanted to… it was really cool. It will actually be one of my first solo shows at a gallery and I’m gonna have the entire, both rooms. I’ve been working on it... it’s twelve pieces.

“Nude Traditionalist” / Acrylic on Canvas / 2013 “Hayiika” / Acrylic on drop cloth / 2012 “Death Becomes Us” / Acrylic & Spray Paint on Canvas / 2013

RF - New stuff?

JS - Yeah, it’s all gonna be new. The small-est canvas is like 18 inches x 36 inches and the largest is 4 feet by 5 feet. I feel confi-dent in it, a little nervous, it’s a lot of work. I walked through it with Damian, he’s helped out a lot in terms of coming together with a story.

RF- The show’s called The Space Between Two Worlds? JS - Yeah, it’s actually the title of a Nujabes song and also the title of another piece that I have, which was of a butterfly landing on a wom-an’s nose and they’re looking at one another. I’ve tried to connect animals and humans, a life-style, I feel has lost its place.This is kinda the first time I’ve ever had to pro-duce a lot of work as well as having my own show. Never really had this much attention, it’s really cool.

RF - Do you try to tell a story with just one piece? JS - I look at it like comic books, see how they do it, how they convey something with just one panel.

I just pick up certain subjects and kinda place it in there and hopefully the point will get across. I mean with a title right there next to it, I’m sure will help out a lot. I always try to convey a section of a story, I look at it more like a comic book where the paintings I have on the wall are like panels in a comic book.

JS - With the stories lately I’ve been getting more in-volved and learning more about traditional stories, I’ve always found them interesting and I want to continue to paint them. I want to try to paint the sto-ries that haven’t really been painted or depicted. I always see either the Twins or Changing Woman, those popular iconic figures of our tra-ditional stories. So with this show I feel I’m de-picting someone that no one is really aware of. As soon as I hear a story I feel like I want to paint it. JS - Also my grandmother’s stories, one room is gonna be paintings of my grandmother when she was a teenager. We kinda got close with one another several years back when I moved in with my father and started hanging out with my grandma. She’d always share stories with me

“Peacock Flair” / Acrylic on drop cloth / 2012 “New Traditionalist” / Acrylic & Spray Paint on watercolor paper / 2013

and I always thought the stories were really cool. She’s always been really supportive of my art. JS - I feel like that’s the way I’m learning about all these different traditional stories, is by painting them and getting them in my head, like how people write notes in class. JS - By painting these stories and drawing them, illustrating them, I hope it creates a discussion. RF - Are you sticking with native artists out here? JS - Most places I show are not native owned, they just liked the artwork that I do. I kinda try to stay away from making art look ‘native.’ I felt like, since I was Navajo, I would do Nava-jo art, that that was what was expected of me. A friend and I were talking once and if you give someone who’s Navajo materials, their art is gon-na look Navajo. We’re always talking about it, when we walk up to murals, or anything we’re working on, or when we’re working with other Navajo art-ists, it’s like... what do they expect us to paint?

But I try to stay away from that, I want to try to make the paintings more universal to get them to fit in different areas. I try not to make a big deal of it. RF - In Flagstaff it seems that very talented native artists rarely get proper recognition, is that an issue here in Phoenix?

JS - I think it’s more along the lines of net-working and making an effort to get to differ-ent locations. Like, no one really knew who I was and I had to put my artwork out there. I do come across a lot of different natives that are amazing artists but they don’t’ know how to put themselves out there, don’t’ know how to cre-ate a website or a blog, or go to gallery shows. It just seems like they want to be apart of it but they hold back somewhere, I don’t know why, but I think it’s more of a personal conflict. If artists could get over that then I’m sure there’d be a lot more artists, native artists out there who are more known. I feel that sometimes it just turns into a lot of na-tives trying to create native art, trying to stick with-in that… like at the indian markets, I kinda feel like

“The Day The Moon Was Azul” / Stencil on Metro Pass / 2013 “A Platonic Gift” / Ball Point & Highlighters on Watercolor paper / 2012

“Learn Your Language” / Acrylic on drop cloth / 2012

they have to stick within that medium. There’s a friend of mine who does comic books, he’s Navajo and he doesn’t really know about his own culture. He grew up, born and raised here in the city. He’s a bad ass comic book artist. He does what he wants, and that’s why I like him. He felt the same way, he felt like he had to create ‘native’ art in order to be seen, “do I have to do that in order for my people to see and for people to appreciate it, who are non-native?” I try to stay away from that, I kinda feel like I’m creating art because I want to tell a story with it. I’m not trying to create or use my cultural back-ground as leverage to make money, or profit off of.

RF - Are there paintings you don’t want to sell?

JS - Whenever I do sell a piece, I like to get to know who I’m selling it to. Like, that painting is apart of me and a piece of me is going to be sitting in someone’s home. I’d like to get an idea of where it’s gonna be, is it gonna be in a positive place? Every now and then it’s a determining factor of whether or not I want to sell a piece or raise the price. I don’t’ want to be rude about it but there are certain paintings I don’t’ want to sell and I’ll put the price really high cause i know they won’t buy it. haha, I’m kinda still like that but not as much.

RF - You’ve mentioned comic books. What comics are reading now?

JS - I read a lot of Heavy Metal and Dark Horse Presents, my favorite artists are Ashley Wood and Jaimie Hernandez.

JS - Orginally I was going to school to become an illustrator and work on comic books, it was an interesting transition from working with graphite and ink and then jumping onto canvas where I sketch out everything with a spray can and work in with the acrylics. Working on a stencil is a little different, if you mess up, that’s it, you have to work with that cut out. Where as with a painting I can keep painting over and over it and if the paint-ing doesn’t sell, I can just recycle the canvas. There are actually canvases and paintings I have in galleries that still have paintings underneath it.

RF - So how did you get into stencils?

JS - It kinda just started off as a birthday gift. I’d never really done stencils and a friend of mine, his name’s Ave Chee, he does really good sten-cils. We were on our way home and I just asked for his exacto blade and just started cutting. From there it branched off. That was in 2009. RF - It’s pretty intricate work.

JS - Yeah, the intricacy came with story, just a lot of it was based on stuff I read, some being Sci-Fi. Then it sorta branched off into using pho-tographs since I’ve been running with 35mm. That first roll of film, I was just getting adjusted to

the camera and instead of just trashing those pho-tos, I ended up just practicing stencils on them, and that’s where the idea of doing stencils on pho-tographs came from.

RF - I noticed that some of your paintings and stencils have some intense line work.

JS - Oh well, I uh… filled the hair. That kinda just started off as a quick design and it start-ed a few years back with little wheat pastings and just to get things quickly done but yeah, I feel like I’ve moved on from that moment. I still continue to do it somewhat but not entirely, I’m always trying to change my style.

“My Cheii Was A Greaser” / Acrylic & Spray Paint on Canvas / 2013

RF - You’ve mentioned before from our earlier communications that you use music while paint-ing. How do you make that work for you? JS - Well, I listen to more mellow music. The tape I made you is probably more stuff from the 50’s to recent years. JS - For this series I’ve been listening to a lot of Slow Dive, My Bloody Valentine, and earlier stuff form the eighties, or whatever CDs I have. Lately I’ve been listening to Figurine, Dntel’s proj-ect, do you know Postal Service? The guy who creates a majority of the music for Postal Ser-vice is Dntel and his side project is Figurine. I’m also still listening to a lot of stuff from high school which was 10 years ago, I still have tapes and CDs from then.

RF - You brought me a mixtape, thank you!

JS - Yeah, I stayed up late, got a little lazy, you might fall asleep on side-b, I was trying to look for the thickest lines on the record. I’ve been getting better at making mix tapes now. I haven’t really done one in a while, maybe since high school, just because I didn’t own a tape player and it wasn’t until recently that I started owning records. Records are a little pricey but a majori-ty of them are used and older, stuff that I like. Every now and then I’ll fork out the money to buy something that’s a reissue, I enjoy it. It wasn’t until a year ago that I got an iPod. JS - Music definitely helps while painting, like during crunch time, house music helps out a lot. Music plays a heavy part in it, in a lot of my work.

Catch Jeff Slim’s new work at his show The Space Be-tween Two Worlds this First Friday April 5th 6pm-10pm at The 1Spot Art Gallery / 918 N. 6th ST. / PHX. Additional information about the show or questions contact - 602.281.0697.

Self portrait “slap” on stop sign