SNP Episode 110 - Juan Logan
SNP Episode 110 - Asking Better Questions w/ Artist Juan Logan
This week the one and only, Juan Logan, joins Studio Noize!
Juan is an incredibly prolific and creative artist whose work touches on all kinds of materials and issues. Using his head symbol he has created paintings, sculptures, installations, prints, and videos questioning America’s status quo and expressing his thoughts on the Black experience. We talk about Juan’s amazing 7,100 sq ft studio, how he is constantly working, the various levels of meaning to the symbols he uses, and how his passion for art translates to his collecting.
Note: Studio Noize is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
[00:00] Jamaal Barber: This is your boy Jbarber. And I'm here with a man he was born a grown man, sat up and ask the nurse for that pencil she was holding it so he could get to work already. We got Mr. Juan Logan on the podcast. How are you doing, man?
[00:14] Juan Logan: I'm doing well. Hope you are.
[00:17] Jamaal: I'm Good, man. I'm good, man. I'm so glad I get to talk with you, man. Yeah. I've been a fan of your work for a long time. Like a quick story Me and Charlie Palmer, we were setting up my show, the 400 show at UNC chapel hill and on the way back and it's like, yo, we gonna stop by and see Juan. It's like, we just going to have a little visit, say hello, shake hands you know what I'm saying? Stuff like that, man, I walked to your studio, man it was amazing. It was quite something, man. So I really, yeah Oh for sure, man. And, and your studio is something else, man. It's 7,000 square feet, 20 foot ceilings. Like tell us about that man.
[00:55] Juan: Yeah, I mean, it's a wonderful space to work in. It really is. It's an old, part of an old mill. But the floors are Maples 20 foot ceilings. And when we moved in, we had to, put in a new wall, one new wall anyway, that was about 115 feet long, 120 feet long. And that particular wall runs on the 20 foot side of the room, in terms of height. but it goes up 12 feet and then, half inch plywood behind it and then five-eighth inch sheetrock on top of it. So you can, you can hang pretty much anything you want to hang on the wall, that sort of thing. And the thing that I think I enjoy most about it is the ability to make something lodge, but also to be able to leave it in place and not worry about it, taking up all of my space. So you can do a 15 to 20-foot piece if you want to and just leave it hanging on the wall. And it doesn't really matter that much you don't even have to work around it. There's just all the space to work in and on. And, but as I said, maple floors, a brand new HPAC system, new lighting, new bathroom, all that and then we were ready to roll.
[01:58] Jamaal: Oh Yeah. Oh, you ready, man, water ready? And it's such a huge space. And you are such a prolific artist too, because even like you said, you had the big 15 foot, 10 foot pieces, like hanging on the wall all the way down the wall. And then like the whole middle section was full of boxes and stacks of like all kinds of work that you had have done over the years. And you still had room to be working. Like it was such a great space, man it was so inspiring, man. It's like, it's like a dream like if I could ever get myself together and have something like that it would be amazing man.
[02:39] Juan: Well, I work seven days a week, normally. And my son told me that a few years ago, he said, dad it's been 18 years since you've been on vacation. You need to take a vacation. I said, I'm working toward that. I'm getting close, but I always feel obligated to put my time in the studio. I mean every day. Sometimes it's just a couple of hours, sometimes many, many more, but, nothing happens unless you spend the time, you know.
[03:12] Jamaal: That's for sure and was that something that you got at a young age, like were you always like that or did you develop?
[03:19] Juan: I've pretty much been that way all my life. I was never one to no believe me when I tell you I had a good time growing up. I mean, and doing my, when I referred to my youth, in my twenties and all that sort of thing, I had a great time, so I was out there in the world, living large, doing everything you're supposed to be doing and not doing.
[03:43] Jamaal: Yeah, good times, good times
[03:44] Juan: Anything God left out. But also I remember a conversation with Elizabeth Catlett though, and the whole notion of, she was saying one time that, come up to a curator for a museum on the king by this, I think it's as soon when she was living in New York and, wanted to put some of her work in the exhibition, but she had been living large as well and didn't have any work because she hadn't been spending any time in the studio. And then I always, I had this, Ziggy, the cartoon character had a cartoon about Ziggy hanging on my wall probably for 15 years or more. And he was coming home- he came home and there was a note on the door and the note said knocked while you were out and it was signed opportunity. And I said, that happens so many times to so many people, sometimes me, I said, but I'm never going to let that happen again. So when you knock on the door and you need something, I'm gonna have it for you,
[04:42] Jamaal: That's for sure any need, they pull up yup. Spot they are liable to find anything on there.
[04:51] Juan: I mean, I have to admit there is a little bit of everything in there. I even have this is a 1910, 1920, coffin, that I found in the store years ago. And I've been carrying that coffin around for a long time now. But it's just a small coffin. There's only is clearly it was for a child, but always imagined I would do something with it. And then I have this little miniature not miniature really, but, it's life size, what looks like it would be a gas chamber, it's not, it was actually useful measuring your emissions, your, breathing and everything, but it was used by the EPA. And I said, well, I bought it from EPA surplus years ago. And I said, well, I don't need it right now, but I might one day
[05:46] Jamaal: A giant contraption to check your emissions.
[05:51] Juan: My dad and all that sort of thing They had so much stuff, and they'd really didn't need it at the time, but maybe one day I just like to be prepared. That's all.
[06:04] Jamaal: Oh man, that's crazy. So, so, if people don't know your work, please go look them up at www.juanlogan.com.
[06:11] Juan: Yeah. Well, that's the website and probably the best bet in terms of looking right now, is just @Juan.Logan on Instagram.
[06:17] Jamaal: Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely check it out. I was going to mention that. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely want to check it out. And I think, I guess we'll start, I want to introduce, the one concept first. Cause I think that's the most important thing to know, like going into your work is to understand like the head symbol that you have. but I think it's important because like Juan Logan does so much work, he does paintings, drawings, sculptures installations, videos, is, is an amazing breadth of work that you're able to do just by like how much time you put into it, but also is centered around this head symbol and the amount of creativity that you have and in representing it as a multifaceted thing. I think it's super important for people to know, like the origin and the structure of that as we talk about your work.
[07:07] Juan: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because this, the, I started using that head actually in 1967, started using that head or something similar to that head over the years, over the decades. And, always imagined that everything we ever were, will be takes place there first, it has nothing to do without bodies per se. so, all of our imaginings, I mean, everything, is who we are is what we've always been it's our genius is our intellect is it's all there, if you will. So I've used it to talk about us in varying ways over the years. And I think the first time I used it, I was defining more about who I was. And the first thing I did was entitled, I am black and I didn't want there to be any confusion about that.
So, unfortunately, that painting was later stolen, but, fortunately I had a good old tuba to image of it that, I saved over the years, but now I think I've used it for that. And it morphed into clouds when I talk about dreams morphs into boats when I talk about how we traverse this land of ours and both psychological and material. And I think that I've used it in so many ways to talk about so many different things. I did this painting recently, talking about the children that were being held captive on our Southern border. And, there were 5,700 heads in that representing 5,700 children. So again, it gets used in many different ways to talk about humanity, really just to talk about humanity.
[09:02] Jamaal: It just reminds me of this assignment we used to do in foundations design before I got my degree and they gave you a square with a circle in the middle. And it's like if this is the aerial view of something, what does the shadow look like? And they used it as sort of a test of people's creativity because normally people can like, obviously you'll go through the first like amount of shapes that you can think of for the first 10, but like, can you get 70 of them? Like, can you make 150 of them? Like, can you conceive of these different shapes that will look like this from an aerial view and that the elasticity of your creativity is tested because now you have to think beyond and give it more meaning that wasn't even there before. And so that's what I see that you do with this head symbol if you've done it with hundreds of pieces, like I would dare to say a thousand pieces over the last, however many years that you've been.
[10:05] Juan: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean so many pieces. I mean, sculpture, that was one piece of sculpture that I made that had 1100 heads in it, that were cast and, interesting story regarding that it was being shown at a museum here in North Carolina, and it was being shipped to, another museum in Tennessee. I was doing a show with Willie Cole and, the pieces arrived all but 25 of them had been destroyed.
[10:35] Jamaal: Wait out of the 1200 pieces? You say 25 of them?
[10:44] Juan: 25 survived?
[10:46] Jamaal: What in the world?! What happened?
[10:47] Juan: Well, one they weren't necessarily packed well, at the originating institution. And then they set them out, sat on the dock, waiting for the shipper to pick them up. And he did, but he didn't really care so much about art. And it was, below freezing that morning. So all these pieces were actually cast in wax, but they all sort of these three-dimensional heads, you know? And, he tossed them in the truck and they all but 25 shattered.
[11:19] Jamaal: Wow. That's insane.
[11:24] Juan: The curator called me and said, you know how people are talking slow, sometimes and they call your name with a long call.
[11:37] Jamaal: I'm like, oh Lord.
[11:39] Juan: She didn't say, are you sitting down? But she might as well have. But any rate. But yeah, I mean, that things happen, of course, and I still had the molds for all of those pieces.
[11:52] Jamaal: So who paid for them?
[11:53] Juan: Actually a company out of, London paid for it they were insured by some company with institution, in London and that was fine, but it took a year to settle because the, company, said, well, you have 25, you can still sell those 25. I said, but the installation was about 1100. Yes I could sell 25 [Inaudible 12:16] one of those things, but, but I've made, there were other head that were cast in polyurethane resin with the [Inaudible 12:27] coating . There were the big heads that are probably five feet tall and four feet wide and, made out of wood. And I guess they are about 9 and a half, 10 inches thick, if you will, are deep and they're covered in metal, various metals, and all that. And then there are others that are, made out of porcelain. I was doing a residency at Kohler Company and made a whole bunch of, porcelain pieces while I was there, as well as cast iron pieces as well. You know,
[13:01] Jamaal: You mentioned so casually all these different, like mediums, like, oh, it's, nothing, a little metal, little wax porcelain, like, like you just rattling it off like it's normal. It's not normal, man.
[13:16] Juan: Here's what it comes down to though. And I think you would agree. I would sooner identify myself as an artist rather than a painter, sculptor, printmaker, being an artist that gives me the ability to use all of the disciplines, if you will. And, and why not? I mean, I think sometimes, a particular project requires a particular, media. I mean, most of the, the outdoor things that I've done have been stone or steel. And, we were just discussing one recently and it was done in granite, you know? And I think in the end, the piece ended up, I mean, initially it weighed about 70,000 pounds. Yeah. It was a heavy piece. I tell you, the thing is always interesting to meet and really sort of funny is I say, are you doing that in your studio? I said, you know what? I'm just swinging that thing around the studio all day long. No, I'm not that strong anymore.
[14:24] Jamaal: So I slowed down a little bit. Yeah.
[14:25] Pulling down there, come on but the idea though that, there isn't much that we can't do, more times than not. We just have to figure out how to get it done, you know? And I think probably the most important thing is, our collaborations because there are so many things that so many other people are better at than I am, and I'm more than happy to engage them, to help me do whatever it is I need to do, because they're good at it they know what they're doing. And then you want that level of expertise, you know?
[14:57] Jamaal: Yeah. For sure yeah Oh yeah I love it. Collaboration is my thing too.
[15:01] Juan: [Inaudible] as a printmaker because you are so good at what you do. I mean, you're a massive printmaker and I'm not, so of course, I will come to you, you know? And then engage, I mean, so that we can do a project together.
[15:15] Jamaal: Yeah, for sure. And so tell me, tell me just in the foundation of it, like how, how much does that material conversation, like add to the concept of what you're trying to explore as you go,
[15:27] Juan: I think in terms of printmaking or in terms of just generally speaking?
[15:30] Jamaal: just in general.
[15:31] Juan: Yeah. I think the idea of looking at, we'll say stone, for example, there are so many things you can do with it. We were using a black Maasai granite, and out of that, we were able to extract the Polish granite, which looks really, really wonderful. But then we use a water jet on part of it, which gave it this very, very soft appearance. A laser on it, was changed the appearance of it as well. But it's almost like using heat on some granites, which, have a gold appearance, but the moment you use heat, it it's going to turn it pink. And we, we got granted from China. I mean, from everywhere, we could find it that had this really gold color that we were trying to used. And every time we heated it so that it would be safe to walk on because it gives a little texture, if you will. It changed the pink every time, no matter where it was from around the globe.
But you learn so much, you it's, this opens up so many other possibilities simply by knowing that's all Yeah. And it allows you to increase your visual vocabulary in ways that you are not imagined. And that's the best part of collaborating because you learn so much from the person you're working with.
[16:47] Jamaal: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
[16:51] Juan: yeah. There's a whole thing too Jamaal that, I was listening to the Hugh McCall who used to be the president CEO of bank of America. And my son often says the same thing that you give up, nothing by helping others. You don't lose anything when you help, you really don't, it's a gain-gain kind of experience. And that's sort of how I feel about it, you know? There’s very little that I know I have, come to know that I'm not willing to share with someone else.
[17:20] Jamaal: Yeah. And when I approach the collaboration, it's a similar idea, but it's more about, what is the new level I can take my creativity to? Sure because cause you will have an idea that I couldn't even imagine, have thought of at all. And like I found that-, I always think that's fascinating to see like, oh, this new, new, random idea that like, how did you make that connection? Cause art is, to me, the genius of art is connecting, not A to B, but A to H, A to Y. Like, and you just take these leaps and that leap is the genius that that's required of art. And like everybody can't have it. And so it was fascinating to like be able to witness it and break it down and then be part of it. And like, it changes how you can think about stuff.
[18:04] Juan: It does. It really does all day long. It really does. And it's also interesting too, that sometimes I'm sure that you probably, I know you've experienced this, but you will create something and then time goes by and you have a chance to look back at it. And there were things you were doing there. And sometimes you question how you were doing those. Because most of the work isn't like that and then other times you, you do something like some of the larger pieces of the way I've used puzzle pieces on them. I mean, thousands and thousands of puzzle pieces. And I'm thinking halfway through that project, I'm thinking, why did you start this? Cause you've been on this piece for months now and yes you all tired of it.
[18:52] Jamaal: That's crazy. I mean, I, let's see what puzzle piece was it was it I'll save you tomorrow is that a piece?
[19:01] Juan: Yeah, possibly, I'll save you tomorrow or a sugar house, one of those in terms of the big pieces
[19:06] Jamaal: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about like, making like a big piece, like when you do have, cause one of the things about it is that you use to assemble in various sizes. And I think the multitudes in which you show it, like you said, having just a puzzle piece and it's, 11,000 of them or however many, like you put up there, like that's a lot of stuff and then it becomes accumulative, like the effect that it has when you see it in person.
[19:29] Juan: Oh i does I mean there's a level of depth associated with that rather than just that singular layer, sometimes you're creating this very three-dimensional piece that sort of undulates, as it moves across the page, if you will, that you can sort of rollover into if you will. There are some heads that have been made out of puzzle pieces that are fully three-dimensional, that sort of thing. There are, puzzle pieces that have been carved as puzzle pieces, onto a surface, rather than using real puzzle pieces, you simply carve them into the surface. So I mean again, so many ways of using materials and ideas of those materials and Places you can take them if you will.
[20:16] Jamaal: Yeah, for sure. Like tell me all right, well, what was the piece that was about, people outside of the Katrina?
[20:24] Juan: Oh, that was help me say you love me.
[20:26] Jamaal: help me say you love me and you use the puzzle. Was that the first piece you use puzzle pieces on?
[20:30] Juan: Probably, but they were puzzle pieces slightly before that, that I've used when I was talking about leisure spaces and, it's where I'm looking at spaces that we're, where we like Martha's vineyard or Atlantic beach or some of the beaches that were sort of ours, if you will. Mark Haven beach in Virginia, just depends on where they were a painting, called black even there's one that deals with Santa Monica beach where we, would give- when I was doing the research on the piece, on that particular spot, if you will. I didn't realize that the no trespassing sign where these two people were standing was actually, relating to that particular beach. We were allotted I think it was 200 square feet of space on the beach.
[21:23] Jamaal: 200 square feet?
[21:24] Juan: I think it was about 220 feet. So when I did the painting about that had this massive sort of black cloud, I see my clouds, as I said, I made up of all of our head shapes that come together to make up that cloud. So this massive black cloud with this very tiny thin, I mean, so almost like a paper thin beach that we had access to and no way in the world we could all fit. Of course and we didn't. But, it sort of explain, our situation in that moment. It’s like looking at, Lake Pontchartrain down in New Orleans and how there was the other park, or boardwalk, if you will, that had the rise and had everything there. And then there was ours, which was surrounded by fisheries on the other side, and they would dump their waste in the lake there and it would wash back into our beaches.
[22:24] Jamaal: Oh no.
[22:25] Juan: I mean it's always interesting what I try to do in my virtual model is not so much to historicize it as much as look at it in terms of where we- where, things were and I think about where we are. And so I'm talking about where we are. It's always interesting to me when people historicize things and they, I'm not sure if they were trying to keep them there or we, suggesting that that was, that happened once upon a time, but it's no longer a part of our culture, but most things remain they don't go away. So if you look at the trustees, if you look at the police during slavery and you look at the police today, there's not really a great deal of difference between the two. Not really. It's sort of like, when James Allen wrote without sanctuary and put that book together, and it was a book of postcards primarily, and he was looking at, the fact that with all the lynching that occurred in America people would often document those things and create postcards so they could mail them to their friends. And this is where we were, three weeks ago, didn't we have a great time, and people would bring their families, their children, and have picnics for the lynching. And it was bizarre in the sense that when we talk about this American culture of ours and making America, great again, one would have to question which America we talking about.
[23:52] Jamaal: Oh yeah. What's your definition of America is.
[23:57] Juan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly So, I mean, so I think what I've always tried to do Jamaal, is to, I try to provide very few answers. I spend a lot of time trying to provide better questions. So most of my work has surrounded, based on trying to ask better questions about various situations, social generally irrelevant political, Elizabeth Catlett and I were having a conversation he said, political simply means you're taking a particular position, social symphonies, that you are exploring, the things that are going on around you. And so I'm exploring the things that are going on around me, both as I say, the physical and psychological landscapes that we exist in. And, I have lots of questions about that constantly. Because things, as you know have continued down certain paths and you, are trying to place that in the visual context. So what does that look like?
And so the questions I'm raising are not, questions necessarily for you as much as they offer me. So my paintings are based on those questions that I'm examining. And so we ended up having to seek our own answers because my answers may not fit with you at all. And that's okay.
[25:21] Jamaal: right. I love that because I think that your use of symbols like leaves it very open-ended because nothing is like completely represented in a perfect space. So like you use the Red Cross symbols, you have the head, you use bolts a lot. And then, the puzzle pieces like start to take on a different meaning. And to me, I think that the, the way that the meaning can change from piece to piece, I think also makes it makes you wonder because you're never all the way set up on what the puzzle pieces actually means. So when you see it in context, in one piece, I'm going to go back to the Katrina piece. What was the name of it?
[25:59] Juan: Yep. Help me, save me, Love me.
[26:01] Jamaal: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about that piece for a minute, because I think that is when I really start to see, because I saw that piece after I had seen like more pieces from you that included the puzzle piece, but the explanation of that one really started making me question, like what I was seeing.
[26:17] Juan: It's interesting that you bring that up because I've been asked many times about the puzzle pieces in that piece. And if you remember, when we were, when people were waiting outside the Superdome waiting to get in, because they were seeking shelter, there was this overhead shot of them waiting outside of the Superdome in New Orleans. And if you took the time to blow that up, it will pixelate pixelated, but it looks like puzzle pieces. You couldn't discern individuals at all. You could only discern the color of the bits and pieces of the clothing they were wearing, all the things they were carrying with them, but you couldn't discern any individuals at all. And at that moment, it looked like this massive puzzle that had been taken apart that you could never put back together again. So the Red Cross that you see in that painting, in that piece, was actually a vintage Red Cross flag that I used in that.
And then it seemed appropriate that for all the folks that did not make it, I actually use a color called gold scum made by Matisse that floats underneath everything that's happening on that surface. So, I mean, things have- there is, a certain intentionality about the things that I try to do in these individual pieces, because all those individual elements matter to me, in one way or another, for one reason or another. And so I'm trying to, I guess, put down, make express how I truly feel about that particular situation, when felt about it in the moment, you know?
[27:44] Jamaal: Yeah. And, and I loved that and how, it adds a certain amount of layer into it. And so it's never really like what you're looking at is never really the intention of it. And you do have to, sit through each piece in the series and your series are like these long pieces. We were talking beforehand about how, when you make series, you never really end them. They just develop into another thing.
[28:10] Juan: They do. They, they evolve in something new and that's how I've worked. Most of my life in that so far, this current series deals with, allergies I've made, I guess maybe 120, 125 paintings or so in that series. But there are other series where they were 140, 150 paintings and, and it doesn't really matter so much. I work on them until, as I say, until they evolve into something else. But until I realized that they're no longer part of what I started with and that's okay. I don't mind that at all, but I also realized that my paintings sort of, lag behind my drawings. So the drawings that, studies that I do today, I may not actually get around to making those paintings, until six, eight a year from now six, eight months or a year, because, it's always a lot easier to do drawings than it is to make paintings.
[29:07] Jamaal: I would imagine so.
[29:08] Juan: It just takes more time that's all.
[29:10] Jamaal: Yeah. So when you, when you do do your drawings and you think about, like, you talk about using flag, the Red Cross flag in it, and like the puzzle pieces, I know you've lottery pieces. Like, like you use all kinds of stuff, like, do you, so do you think about that at the time you do the drawing or does that come later?
[29:28] Juan: No, I think about it when I'm doing the drawing and well, we'll have it in the drawing is that they may have a, almost like a, a sample, if you will, of what it is I'm looking for, because I don't want, I, I will say there's a lot of us, there's so many great ideas down on the shelf, and they do. I mean, because you have this wonderful idea is that that will be a hellacious piece that would be really, really great, to do this thing and then time passes. And you're trying to recall exactly what that great idea was. And you can't, because you didn't write it down, you didn't draw it, you didn't do anything with it. You put sort of put it on that shelf in the back of your mind that you are going to go back to it and you never do. You just can't recall it in the same way. And so what I try to do now is to spend more time documenting those ideas, when I have them I put them down and sometimes I get back to them, in a very immediate sort of way. Other times it takes a bit longer and that's okay. Again, generally speaking, the way I work is that I'm not really in a hurry.
I'm just not I mean and because I think because I work every day, then I get a lot of work done. I do, but there's no hurry. It's just a painting takes as long as it takes, same thing with sculpture whatever it is I'm working on.
[30:59] Jamaal: Yeah, so are you super Structured when you work in, in like, like, do you come in and like, I'm gonna do drawings for an hour and then paint for whatever, whatever.
[31:06] Juan: That's a great idea Jamaal I really need to consider that. No I just Come in, get, a double espresso. And I sit down and look at the work that's on the table that I'm working on. And I'm trying to decide if that's really what I left with when I left the night before, where it is the next morning when I go in the afternoons, I look at it and I said, yeah, that's not quite working. Aw, that's looking pretty good. You know? We can go ahead and finish this thing up, that sort of thing. But it's always a matter of again, it's almost a very casual approach if you will, but a very intentional approach as opposed to formal.
[31:58] Jamaal: Right. I think you, you also embodied like what I tell a lot of young artists when I'm teaching at Georgia state or a workshop or somewhere is that never make work for a show, like make work just to make work and you'll see what happens. And I think that's exactly what you're describing is like, you're just making like all of this stuff and with no consideration of where it's going to go, because I think that the creation is more important.
[32:24] Juan: I have no idea where it's going to go. I do admit that sometimes when I make really large pieces, I know they are not going to somebodies house. I know that up front. And so sometimes you make something, I mean, I have this 10 by 10 foot paintings and I'm thinking, I don't know of anybody, who's going to accommodate that immediately in their homes, you know and it's okay. It doesn't really matter. It really doesn't. but I always think back to, Thomas doze Koski, because he talked about making paintings that were 16 by 20 inches and he made a tremendous number of those things and he said he did so because his friends who lived in these fifth-floor walk-ups did not have huge apartments to start with they couldn't hang big paintings in their homes.
[33:18] Jamaal: They had no room for it yeah.
[33:19] Juan: They had no room for it so he just made really small paintings most of his life.
[33:26] Jamaal: How do you, consider scale when you are making, like, do you think about it when you're making your drawings, do you think, man, this would be a great, like 20 foot by 40-foot piece
[33:35] Juan: You know what I do sometimes, many of the pieces that are part of this series of really, really small pieces there. We just photographed, 44 of the 22, by 30-inch pieces. And these are the larger ones. I mean, I think the largest paintings in this particular series is only, I think 4 by 5 feet, maybe a little bit bigger, something like that. So nothing really huge at all but it's been a really, really comfortable way of working right now, you know? But what I will do though, is project these images, finished images, or sometimes drawings and then blowing them up on the wall. I can make them as big as I want them to be, you know? So you look at them that, and now the piece is 10 by 18 feet, whatever it is. Are you looking at that would be really nice and you know it would be, it looks great, but then you say, yeah, I'm gonna have to be on, a lift.
[34:45] Jamaal: Yeah, yeah, yeah you have to make some scaffolding for that yeah,
[34:48] Juan: Because I'm not going to work on the floor I put the thing, on the wall, hang it on the wall and work on it and I'm thinking, do I want to do that? So rarely, rarely, I know I'm supposed to be starting on a painting that is 12 by 30 feet, something like that. And, as a commission thing And so yea the occasions to do big things do occur and all that sort of thing, and that's sort of fun, but I think we, find that, for the most part, I just enjoy working on whatever it is I'm working on in the studio regardless of scale. And sometimes Jamaal if I have a 4 by 5 foot canvas stretched and ready to go, okay, that's what we're gonna work on today.
[35:35] Jamaal: Like whatever is available.
[35:36] Juan: Yeah it's what is available. And many times I buy this, Waterford paper. the sun is a Waterford 300 pound hot press paper that comes, I think it's 40 by 60 inches that's a wonderful paper to work on super smooth, really strong it's workable, same thing with, Fabiano Cisco hot press paper, really strong, great to work on. I love it. So those are my primary. Those are my main two papers, if you will, and they can sort of take a beating and just keep giving it back to you, you know? Yeah.
[36:13] Jamaal: Yeah. I guess those paper ones, like you, can move them around on different tables and stuff [Interposed talking36:19] have like a lot of them going at the same time.
[36:21] Juan: Well, surely not more than three or four, three or four, something like that.
[36:26] Jamaal: I think there's a certain level of intricacy in your work too, where like, you not only think about the large, like macro composition, but you think of a lot of the very antiquated, detail for the heads too. Like you might put a hundred heads in a piece like an individually paint each small head, like around at a time, like
[36:45] Juan: Yes, indeed. Yeah, yeah you do that.
[36:50] Jamaal: No, it's great to see because it makes you think about levels. I think, artists, as they develop, you need to add levels into like the way you work in and not just kind of get past your first obvious message. And I think you do a great job because, your background might be a thousand heads, like put together, but then you paint on top of that too. And then you add like material on top of that too. And then, so it just kind of builds and builds and builds. Like, I think that's a great way to work.
[37:18] Juan: Did you ever see the movie of the film, watching paint dry?
[37:23] Jamaal: No,
[37:25] Juan: it is, is probably only about 15, 20 minutes long, something like that. And you're watching 10 or 12 artists, work in a 10 by 10 feet, maybe 12 by 12 foot space on the floor. And the first guy starts out and he does his painting he covers the whole space and everything. And you literally sort of watch the paint dry in a way, cause you can see it drying. It changes from this glossy thing to a flat thing and all that. And then the next guy comes in and it paints on top of that, leaving some of what was started with behind sometimes painting it out completely. And then the next person or the next person, the next person, and the idea being is it, I think there's a tendency for us to, particularly for young artists to always be willing to stop because either that, or they go too far, of course.
But stopping is always really, really, at the forefront of their minds, in that they're afraid to risk destroying what they've done. Without realizing that it's just paint, and there's nothing really precious about it. And in that regard and you did it the first time you can actually come back and do it again if you need to, but at the same time, by taking a risk, you may come out with something much, much better than you ever imagined. And I think that's really the important thing there, to be willing, to take that risk.
[38:42] Jamaal: Yeah I went through that when I was making my, my thesis show. Like, cause I'm, I'm a printmaker, I'm not a painter. So when I started painting, I was thinking in a way that printmakers think in terms of layering and, and covering things up and I didn't have to get comfortable with it. Like even if I liked it if I saw that it needed a shape that would cover up the area that I needed to let it go and not think about trying to save like any one thing as if you couldn't do it again.
[39:14] Juan: Yeah. Or, just the possibilities that you see, you said this looks good, however, it could be so much better and to be willing to take that chance.
[39:25] Jamaal: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[39:26] Juan: But you grow so much because you were willing to take that chance though.
[39:28] Jamaal: That's true.
[39:30] Juan: You really do. I mean, it's just amazing to me how much you can, expand your vision of what it is you are about and how you achieve those things. That's all.
[39:42] Jamaal: Now tell me, tell me a little bit about, kinda the heart of your work. Cause I think the heart of your work is kind of this caring for black people in a major way and a lot of the questions you asked, have to deal with, the circumstances of black life, how we are, where we are and how we change, where we are. Like you say, you don't give answers, but you have a lot of questions. Where does that concern for blackness come from? Like how did you grow up in, like, how did it get instilled in you?
[40:09] Juan: I think it's sort of always been there. Yeah. I mean, I sort of grew up with it in terms of my, grandparents, that sort of thing. My grandparents, my, my family, I grew up with lots of aunts and uncles around who went through lots of things, in their childhood and also growing up. But having that extended history the people around you, the house those foundations only thing that's left now, of where one of my great grandfathers lived after he was free from slavery, one of my other great-grandfathers lived in the house that I live in right now. And, so I mean, it's all of that, he was born in 1848, and, died in 1937. So I mean, there's a history associated with the things that I do. Other things that I consider in my work and of course you see them in your own family, but you also see them.
Well, let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. The wax piece I was talking about earlier, was titled unconscious bias. The actual, hairs were hairs of aunt Jemima I allowed her to, morph from being very, very dark all the way up to the point where she was almost translucent because she had changed over the years. Her hair becomes straighter, her features cuter and her skin lighter, but she was still aunt Jemima. So the title of the piece was unconscious bias and unconscious bias was based on a study in the New England journal of medicine where they surveyed, I think about 1500 cardiologists. And the only thing that varied in the survey was race and gender, but all the cardiovascular problems were the same. And what they found was that about 98% of the time.
So the same cardiovascular problems, African-Americans and white females were given medicine then sent home and white males referred to specialists when they were shown the results of the surveys, they say, well, it's not being done intentionally, so it must be an unconscious bias. So in my life, when my father was dying, he had heart issues we call the doctor said I would love to come see you, but I just got tickets to this baseball game I don't want to miss the game. It's the last game of the season so he went to the baseball game and my father died a couple of hours later at home, [inaudible 42:56] dead serious.
So then there was Aunt Estelle and Aunt Estelle is one of my favorite aunts. And also my daughter's really, really favorite aunts. She would see a doctor here in town was given medicine then sent home and she was dead about an hour later. And then my cousin, junior and junior, I always talk about him and Junior was that favorite cousin we all have one. Drove fast cars gave me liquor to drink way early that favorite cousin, he was checking out with Charles medical center in Charlotte. And the nurse said, well, listen, And he was sweating profusely and all that sort of thing, And the nurse said, well, when you get home, just take an [Inaudible 43:33]you’ll be fine. And he died in the front seat with me about a block from the hospital.
[43:39] Jamaal: Oh no.
[43:41] Juan: That's unconscious bias playing out in my life. So in making that piece about that, so I used aunt Jemima to talk about that issue You see, because she was not only created, so to sort of maintain the stereotype and because that stereotype was created, it also when you think about it medically, it changed the medical treatments that we were able to get. Even today, we are treated differently. So how do you talk about unconscious bias in real terms? You know? And so that was my question. So what do you see when you see me and the issue more times than not is that you don't see me at all. You see the color of my skin and my treatment is based on that color and lots of other factors as well, but it's tied more to skin color than it is anything else because nothing me.
[44:38] Jamaal: that was real I think that we have, an example, just in the news about, Ma'Khia Bryant is that her name? Ma'Khia Bryant the girl that the police shot four times She had the knife. But you learn the circumstances of what happened. It's way more, it's not as cut and dry as people want to make it seem. And they want to make it seem like her life, like she should have been shot or whatever, like this, like she had no choice either. Police always have a choice and it seems like they never exercise that choice when it comes to black people because they don't value her life, as a black teenager .maybe she was messing up maybe she was doing something she shouldn't have been doing, but she shouldn't have had to die for that. Like, it was a way they could have intervened in a different way that they would have intervened in a different way if it was like a white girl, for instance.
[45:28] Juan: The thing you have to look at, is here she is with a knife in her hand. And then you have the young man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who had just killed two people walking down the street with a-
[45:40] Jamaal: AR15 yea.
[45:44] Juan: AR15 yea and somebody is offering him a drink. And the, some police officers actually gave money to his defense fund what's this guy's name? Roof who shot the people in Charleston?
[45:58] Jamaal: Yeah Don Roof.
[46:00] Juan: Don Roof I think they took him to get a sandwich from burger king before they took him to jail. Now, I mean, there's a long history. It's like that one of the shootings that occurred a couple of weeks ago where they were walking the guy out, away from the school or whatever it was and [Inaudible 46:19] and again, the treatment is so vastly different, of course, as we all know. So again, how do you talk about those things? What are the questions involved for you? I mean, I've created lots and lots of different kinds of pieces over the years as, what do you need to see to see me? I guess is the question that's being raised. I did this when I was, doing a residency in Wisconsin. I watched this woman, empty her waste and she looked across the room and saw me on the other side of the room. So before she got to the trashcan, she went back to a table and picked up her purse and then went to empty her waste.
And I said, you don't know me, but I could be the guy that could save your life. So I did this large drawing about this. I think the drawing was maybe 5 by 12 feet and in three panels. And the first panel was this little black anthropomorphic form simply said to see at the bottom of it. And the second panel is this a five-foot black pens this said myself and the last panel was completely empty, except for the words as you see me. So to see myself, as you see me means you can get past my blackness, or my sexuality. So you never actually see me at all. And you are afraid of me and you know nothing about me. So again, how do you talk about varying situations? That we are forced to encounter, to deal with endlessly, it seems.
[47:57] Jamaal: Yeah. And I like how you use your work to talk about like a lot of these deep issues. But it's kinda this balance between something representational and something abstract that requires you to think about it, right? You have to, you bring in your biases into the work itself. So as you have to, you won't understand it unless you are looking for the deeper meaning.
[48:25] Juan: Right. I mean, it's the piece of, I did this piece called waiting, that, some years ago at this point, these were all of the guys that were killed in 2014 by police officers.
[48:38] Jamaal: I remember there's this one with the, with the writing.
[48:41] Juan: Yeah. Yeah. And it says Micheal brown is still waiting. Tamir Rice is still waiting and blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on. And at the end of it, all, it says, I'm still waiting we're all still waiting. And those guys never got any justice at all not really and none of them were armed. So I think that's, and it would be different if we could. And that's, I can think of, I think they were maybe 16, 18 people involved in that situation. It would be not wonderful to think that was the end of it. Yeah. It's just, that's been going on for centuries at this point in terms of how we are valued as human beings or not, and what happens, because of it.
[49:31] Jamaal: Yeah. And I think it's easy to forget that when we get caught up in kind of the newness of every interaction, like George Floyd feels new, it feels like it's something. But there were George Floyds in the, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, like every, every decade, every month for the last, however many hundreds of years there's been a George Floyd.
[49:54] Juan: Right. I mean, and when you look at, there were always trustees, people who were given the right, if you will, they were slaves, but they were trustees. So they were giving them the right to beat, other black people,. So when you think about that, then you look at black police officers today and use, sometimes you have different questions for them. You do. I do
[50:23] Jamaal: No that's real. That's real.
[50:25] Juan: Yeah. I mean, that's all, and it's a black and brown thing primarily that I talk about it in my, for the most part, the series I'm working right now, allergies is normally when you think of allergies, you think about a poem for the dead, and I'm not really using it that way. I'm really using it more in terms of loss. And the loss of them often referring to is the loss of memory. The absence of it's like imagining all those kids on our Southern border that are being held out there depending on their age, in a very brief amount of time they won't know anything about where they're from. They won't hear the language in the same way no culture and traditions that will be a part of that experience. I mean, so many of the things will be forgotten and then, and in our effort to Americanize them of course, since we're going to keep them separate from the one that parents and [inaudible 51:21] which is what we were doing with the last administration, it changes everything for them forever.
And then I look at some of the people that I've known during my lifetime, who were far older than I, and, who because of Alzheimer's because of dementia because of, whatever it is, cling to certain memories, but they're only fragments of those memories, the meaning of the paintings that I'm doing now, all right. Stress as those fragments, it's not that they aren't of value that's all they have and they hold onto those things with a great deal of effort. I don't know my, well, my stepdad's, primarily lived 50 years earlier. He always talked about his mom and where he lived and so on and so forth, but that was 50 years ago, and his mom had long since passed away, but that's where he was. So those are the things we talked about.
So again, when you think about that and what does that look like? those fragments that he's expressing to you, the stories are oftentimes limited in nature, they're not really expansive narratives, so it's not as if you guys create this grand narrative about what he's telling you, because it doesn't exist that way, just bits and pieces and fragments and forms and color and texture and those ideas, that narrative, it gets translated into those things. And that becomes the painting.
[53:05] Jamaal: Yeah. I love the allergy series like that. I think that might've been an introduction of me to your work, in seeing it, but, I love the, the kind of, how do you-, it's hard to describe, but it's a symbology that's involved in it and then it's like a way that you connect in it. So it was almost like, charts, you know what I'm saying [Inaudible 53:31] on map it's textural and is-
[53:30] Juan: Mapping it away.
[53:32] Jamaal: Exactly, yeah. It's exactly like that. And [inaudible 53:34] the heads in various sizes and they seem to be represented various things and like each one is different. So as I described the series, it's hard to talk about it in general because each one is a variation of the idea and it seems to keep expanding as you go along.
[53:49] Juan: Sure. You're absolutely right. And again, I think the best bit for those who have not seen them, would just go to the Instagram site, it's Juan. Logan, and there are a whole bunch of them on there.
[54:04] Jamaal: Yeah the whole bunch. How many did you say you've done by now?
[54:06] Juan: Oh, probably 125 or so thereabout.
[54:10] Jamaal: Wow. That's a massive number of stuff, you know? Yeah. Talk about this a little bit where we taught, even we were at your studio, you show me some stuff and it's like you complete series and you doing it at such a pace that you can have work that you haven't even shown like entire series of like hundreds of works that you haven't even shown. And that you told me, I know you were serious about this but it came off, like almost like a joke almost where you were like, if anybody ever wants to come and show my work from the 1980s, I have an entire series that no one has ever seen that they can look at.
[54:44] Juan: I can give a show it's not a problem.
[54:49] Jamaal: That is wow. That is a massive amount of work.
[54:52] Juan: What it comes down to. I don't want to be Ziggy, I knocked while you were out and signed opportunity. I want to take advantage of that opportunity.
[55:00] Jamaal: right? Yeah.
[55:02] Juan: That's All
[55:04] Jamaal: And that's why you need this master studio to keep all this stuff.
[55:12] Juan: It's always, but you know what we do though, of course, is that we work up to the space that we have. I mean, if we have a big space we make bigger work, if we have a smaller space, we make smaller work and, but we keep working, we don't stop because of it.
[55:24] Jamaal: Yeah. I thought about that when you would talk about the 10-foot painting and stuff like that. Cause if you do have that 120-foot wall with a 20-foot ceiling, like that, that expands your possibilities of what you could do.
[55:39] Juan: It really does. I mean, and you can just knock them out, I'll roll them out, whatever's necessary and just do them and not worry about it so much, you know? And at the same time you leave it in place and then go work on that 22 by 30 inch piece.
[55:54] Jamaal: Right. So you always have like different levels of work going on at the same time.
[55:57] Juan: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
56:01 Jamaal: So one thing I want to, I want to talk about it a little bit is, you're creating and collecting show like right now, The Bo Bartlett center in Columbus, Georgia, I'm sorry. I definitely want to try to get down there and see it, it's up until June 18th, creating and collecting while Logan creating and collect. And tell me about the show a little bit.
[56:19] Juan: Well, when it was originally at the Hickory museum of art, last year and [Inaudible 56:30] was with all of the museums into The Bo Bartlett e center, and then it ends up, at the Sedona Gallery in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania. But the show looks back at some of my early pieces. I mean really early pieces, pieces from the earliest piece is probably from 1965. And then comes forward, through and including, some of the allergy pieces. So they are large pieces there [Inaudible 57:00] Dr. Lion there is a really, I always describe it as a really heavy piece I think the piece weighs about 4,300 pounds. And then, I mean, it covers over a wide range of my work, but then the collecting aspect of it, I've been collecting art for a long time now and not because I collect the work by artists that I really admire and simply enjoy looking at, they are not always famous artists there's sometimes they're total. They haven't even emerged yet.
[Inaudible57:41] process of immersion, but what they make though is really good art. And that's the important thing about it. I mean, there are pieces by Mark Bradford and Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg and, Louise Bushwa and all those people too. But, then there's just, again other artists that I have admired. And, so what you have in that exhibition is a nice collection of work, from the collection, it's called the Logan family collection. So it was sort of held by members of the Logan family.
[58:18] Jamaal: That's Awesome, man. And so how big do you think the Logan collection is ?
[58:25] Juan: I don't know Jamaal. I try not to go down that path.
[58:34] Jamaal: I guess you treat your collecting just like you treat your artwork just kind of just do it as you go along just whatever happen will happen.
[58:41] Juan: On the light side of things, I've collected enough to start at 12 step program for collectors. [Inaudible 58:52]Okay my first objective years ago, this is going back a long way, was to, my intent was to buy, 10 pieces a year. I was going to spend a thousand dollars apiece at least that. And I was going to do that for 10 years. So I think I would have a hundred pieces of art. I would spend a hundred thousand dollars and that will form the foundation for my collection. And, pretty much did that part, you know? But at the same time, you know how things get out of hand, you know? So then things cost more. You ended up buying.