December 2015 - Page 4 of 10 - HUMANITY Magazine

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT IN VENICE

Posted on December 14, 2015February 21, 2018 by Jessica Bowler

The call came one evening in November 1982. It was my friend and colleague Larry Gagosian telling me that Jean-Michel Basquiat was in Venice, painting for a new show and, more to the point, wanting to know if I would be interested in working with the artist to produce a special new work in silkscreen. At that time I owned a print and multiple publishing business in Venice called New City Editions.

I met with Jean-Michel for the first time that same evening and thus began an incomparable experience—one I was unlikely to repeat. I was seeing a rare talent at work, apart from the New York art world from which he usually drew his inspiration. I was taken aback by the unique vision and conviction of this young man of just 21.

Jean-Michel came to Los Angeles with the desire to produce a truly ambitious silkscreen print. Starting with a group of 16 original drawings, he asked me to first reverse their content through photography (everything depicted in black would become white and the white background would become black) and then fuse together the entire suite of now reversed images into a single image which would be silkscreened onto a very large 8 x 5 foot canvas. This work, which Basquiat titled “Tuxedo,” was the first of six silkscreen prints which I produced with the artist in 1982-83. With the exception of one other silkscreen produced in New York earlier in 1982, these are the only limited-edition prints he produced in his short lifetime.

Continuing Basquiat’s interest in the silkscreen process, my small print studio facilitated production of approximately 30 original paintings on canvas which the artist executed in Venice in 1984. In these breathtaking works, Basquiat seamlessly integrated painted, drawn and silkscreened images into some of his more complex, multifaceted paintings.

Tamra Davis filmed Jean-Michel working at New City Editions in Venice in 1983-84, and this footage became a central part of her now acclaimed documentary, The Radiant Child.

In Venice, Jean-Michel worked from the ground-floor gallery and studio space Larry had built below his home. There, he quickly commenced what was to be an extraordinary series of paintings. They were for a March ’83 show, his second at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in West Hollywood.

Jean-Michel usually worked from late afternoon until the following morning, and I would regularly show up at the studio after dinner, confining myself to a bed set up in a corner of the room. I was mesmerized by his self-contained focus, his intensity and fluidity. He seemed to make time disappear, and evenings would quickly pass into the next day’s dawn. Overnight, paintings would undergo a transformation. New, seemingly more complex imagery would appear, and other imagery and surfaces that had seemed so perfect would be painted over and eliminated.

As an example of Basquiat’s working practice, one late-night experience still remains fixed in my mind. Arriving at the studio one evening, I observed Jean-Michel standing before approximately eight newly gesso’d white canvases. I had already retreated to the bed in the corner when Jean-Michel turned to me and declared that “tonight I’m going to paint the history of contemporary painting in California.” He then proceeded to attack each of these blank canvases with passages of paint, calling forth the styles of many of the leading abstract California painters, including Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Chuck Arnoldi, Ed Moses and others. It was uncanny how this young New York artist could quickly and effortlessly capture the spirit of these considerably different pictorial sensibilities. As I was watching each painting evolve, I must have drifted off to sleep. I awoke several hours later at dawn. Jean-Michel was no longer in the studio. Virtually all of the references to California abstraction in the paintings he had been working on were no longer visible. Rather, each picture had been painted over, leaving only the smallest passage of paint referring to the California painters.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Fred,” 1983 Acrylic, oil stick, spray paint, and Xerox photocopy collage on canvas, 96 x 74 Collection Fred Hoffman, Santa Monica

When he returned to the studio the next night, he was now ready to turn each painting into a fully realized “Basquiat.”

The more I came to know him, the more I understood why Jean-Michel was drawn to work in Los Angeles. Here was a truly gifted young man who was quickly having to adapt to the increasingly complex demands of newfound success. Remarkably, only about 18 months after his work had appeared in two important New York group exhibitions—“The Times Square Show” in 1980 and “New York/New Wave” at P.S. 1 in Long Island City in 1981—he had become a victim of his triumphs. Although he certainly expected and sought out the public’s attention, he was finding it increasingly difficult to deliver to the ever-demanding, even usurious, art world.

Fred Hoffman and Jean-Michel Basquiat at New City Editions, Venice, California, 1983

Jean-Michel lived and worked at a furious pace. No one I knew could keep up with him. Although this served his incredible capacity to process the world around him, it did not serve his stability or physical well-being. In the removed environment of Venice, he seemed to find a security and solitude. Away from New York, this emergent talent was able to get on with his mission with significantly less distraction.

Los Angeles and environs also offered new source material and stimuli. While I was working with Jean-Michel on his silkscreen print editions, one day he experimented on an image containing references specific to his Venice experience. In this work, which was never released, the artist showed his fascination with Muscle Beach—things which he would not have encountered anywhere else. In this work Basquiat included the texts “How to Perform Strongman Tricks Without Strength,” “Barbells,” and “Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds.”

Several of the works in his second show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery referenced famous boxers, musicians and Hollywood films and the roles played in them by blacks. One painting, “Hollywood Africans,” produced in Venice, is most telling. It depicts the artist and two of his New York associates, Toxic and Rammellzee, essentially placing their black footprints into the history of Hollywood at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

That Hollywood was a focus for Jean-Michel was driven home to me when I was asked to accompany him and Madonna to lunch at the commissary at 20th Century Fox studios. At the time, neither of these two future stars had received enough recognition to evoke any response from the sea of Hollywood talent. This lack of attention only made both even more determined that one day the focus would be on them. For me, it was a revelation: I was witnessing the determination and conviction of two clearly destined talents.

After his ’83 opening at the Larry Gagosian Gallery, Jean-Michel departed L.A. for a time. When he returned a few months later he wanted more privacy; and so I found him his own studio at the corner of Market Street and Speedway, a block from the Venice boardwalk. He worked there for about a year, through the first half of ’84, producing many important paintings.

Out the back door of the studio was a small patio, separated from the alley by a wooden slat fence. Early on I noted that parts of the fence were deteriorating and that the patio was not secure from the transients ever present around the boardwalk. After his usual routine of working all night, Jean-Michel stepped out onto his patio very early one morning, only to be startled by someone sleeping there beneath a blanket. He recounted the incident, and it was decided that, for safety’s sake, the fence should be removed. But rather than let the planks be thrown away, Jean-Michel wanted them brought inside. Within a day or two, many of the wood slats had been reassembled horizontally and attached to long vertical shafts of wood—a new form of picture support born directly from the Venice studio experience. The first wood-slat picture support was painted bright gold and became the background for the now acclaimed painting “Gold Griot,” depicting a looming and regally positioned head and torso. The discovery of a new means of presenting a painting had enabled the artist to push his work in yet another new and exciting direction. The Venice years were not only a prolific but pivotal period in Basquiat’s career.

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MUHAMMAD ALI

Posted on December 14, 2015September 27, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

Every great person has a story of how they came to be. A moment when their purpose became clear and the journey began. For my father, it happened at the age of 12. One sunny afternoon his bicycle was stolen from a local fair in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

“I was so upset. I had just gotten the bike for Christmas. I walked up and down the street shouting how I was going to find the person who took my bike and give him a good whoopin’,” my father remembers. “A policeman named Joe Martin [who trained boxers at a local gym] overheard me. He said that I better learn how to box before I went challenging anyone to fight.”

And so he did. Every day after school and on weekends, he was the first to enter the gym and the last to leave. “They never found my bike or the person who took it,” he said. With widening eyes, he flashes that old sharp look. “Sometimes I wonder if it was an angel.”

Everyone knows about the 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist who became the world’s greatest champion, winning the heavyweight title for the first of three times at the age of 22. With his remarkable confidence and dazzling speed, he danced around his opponents while rhyming and successfully predicting the rounds in which they would fall.

We all know about his religious conversion when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali and about the stand he took refusing to fight in the Vietnam War on religious and moral grounds. Before entering the induction room on the morning of April 28,1967, he was offered deals—told that he could perform boxing exhibitions and would never see the battlefield—but he refused to compromise his principles.

When the hour of truth arrived, and the name Cassius Marcellus Clay was called at the induction center, Muhammad Ali stood perfectly still. “As I stood there, something was happening to me. It was as if my blood was changing. I felt fear draining from my body and a rush of anger taking its place. Who were they to tell me to go to Asia, Africa, or anywhere else in the world and fight people who had never thrown a rock at me or America? Now I’m anxious for the lieutenant to call my name. I was looking straight into his eyes. ‘Hurry up!’ I said to myself. People in the room were watching in anticipation. ‘Cassius Clay—Army!’ he shouted. The room was silent. I didn’t step across the induction line. ‘Mr Cassius Clay,’ he began again, ‘please step forward and be inducted into the United States Army.’ Again I don’t move. ‘Cassius Clay—Army!’ he says another time. I could hear whispering circulating the room. ‘Cassius Clay—Army!’ he repeated, as though he expected me to make a last-minute change. I stood straight, unmoving.”

He knew there would be consequences, and he was ready to pay the price. When he walked out the door and stood on the federal steps of Houston, he walked into an exile that would eat up what boxing experts regard as “the best years of a fighter’s life.” He would be unjustly stripped of his heavyweight title, banned from boxing, fined thousands of dollars, sentenced to five years in prison, and have his passport revoked. He never wavered in his resolve, and on June 28, 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction. And we all know about his return to glory, and the legendary fights that followed.

“They can take away the television cameras, the bright lights, the money, and ban you from the boxing ring,” an old man said to my father back home in Chicago, “but they cannot destroy your victory. You took a stand for yourself and the world and now you are the people’s champion.”

“It takes courage to be who you are,” my father says, in reflection. “When most of the world is going in one direction, it takes courage to walk against the crowd. A man who is not courageous enough to take risks in life will accomplish nothing. I’ve accomplished a lot because I took big gambles. I hated every minute of the training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”

“When he first came on the scene, it was like the world had been asleep in one eye,” says the boxer George Foreman, who lost his title to my father in Africa in 1974. “He opened the eye forever and we’ve never been the same.”

If you could borrow my eyes and see my father in the calm of his daily life, you would not mourn what he has lost. When we observe the source of true strength, we find that the power of a hand is best measured not by its weight but by the amount it can lift. My father’s vitality comes from a place deep within. It comes from his courage to fall and his will to rise. It comes from his awareness that every moment under the sun has a purpose and a time. If you could borrow his heart, you would not question what he has sacrificed, but rather pray for the happiness of his further journey on this earth and for the peace of his gentle soul.

The question that my siblings and I are asked most is, “What is it like to have Muhammad Ali as a father?” so I’ll do my best to share and put into words an answer: “It was an expensive price that I had to pay to be the most famous man on earth,” says Muhammad Ali.

By the time I was 4 years old I realized that my father did not belong to me, he belonged to the world. I can remember when I was a little girl, looking down from the top of the staircase at my father’s luggage gathered by the front door. He was preparing to leave for Deer Lake to train for the Larry Holmes fight in 1980. I raced down the steps, as though it was the end of the world. Shouting, “I want to go with you Daddy!” I leapt into his arms and hugged him with all my might. “Please take me with you Daddy!” When he softly told me, “You have to stay home, Hana,” I pushed him away crying. He then walked over to the corner of the room where I lay sobbing on the floor, picked me up and carried me back over to the sofa. He wiped my tears as I sat on his lap and explained, “Hana, I’m your daddy, but I am also Muhammad Ali, the Champion of the World. People all over the world look up to me. I inspire them. So I have to go to Deer Lake to train for a fight that will help me continue to be a champion. I’m not only your daddy, I’m also a ‘daddy’ to the world.” I jumped out of his arms again, sobbing down the hall, into the living room. My father followed me. “Hana, I have to go. Give me a kiss goodbye.” He picked me up. Arm’s crossed, I said, “You’re not my daddy. You’re Muhammad Ali.”

When people achieve great success, something in their lives has to suffer. With nine kids, from different relationships, living in four different states, he could not be present for us all. Dad had Laila and me with his third wife, Veronica Porche. He had Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, and Muhammad Jr. with his second wife, Balinda Boyd. And he had Miya and Khalilah with women he was never married to.

Like any family we’ve had ups and downs, sorrows and regrets, happy and unpleasant memories. The difference is we had to share our father with the world. In spite of his busy schedule, all the traveling and having to divide his attention between all of his children, he found a way to make each of us feel loved and cherished.

As my sister Miya remembers, “My father was never married to my mother. So I didn’t grow up living under the same roof with him. But he called me regularly and flew me to Los Angeles, where he brought all of my siblings together for the summers. Since we lived in different states, he didn’t spend a lot of time in my neighborhood or take me to school. After a while, the kids began teasing me, saying that they didn’t believe that Muhammad Ali was really my dad because I didn’t look like him and they never saw us together. Being fair-skinned with fine light hair didn’t help. One day, when I was 8 years old, I called my dad in tears about the teasing. The next day he flew into town and walked me up and down the street so everyone could see us together. He took me to school the next morning, and they called an assembly. When all the students were in the auditorium, he had me point out the kids that had been teasing me. One at a time they walked up to the stage, he shook their hands and told each of them that he was my daddy. That meant more to me than words can explain.”

The Muhammad Ali we knew really wasn’t so different from the one the public saw. As my sister Laila says, “He was and still is a humble man—all of the bragging and boasting was mainly to promote fights and inspire people. What I remember most growing up is how my father’s office door was always open. He would be sitting at his desk, surrounded by friends, fans, hangers-on, etc. talking on the phone or entertaining. I remember Hana and me playing every evening in his den. No matter what he was doing or who was visiting, he would let us play on the floor in front of the fireplace making all the noise we wanted. Sometimes he would sneak out a tape recorder and tape our conversations. Later he would play them back to us explaining how, when we were adults, we would appreciate them. He was right. My dad has always been aware of the value of time. He is an amazing human being that enjoys the simple pleasures of life and knows how to make ordinary moments feel extraordinary. It’s one of his many gifts.”

While most people recognize my father as Muhammad Ali the fighter, in contrast he is really just a sweet, humble, gentle man. Although his voice and movement are not as sharp as they once were, he has a clear mind and pure heart. No matter where he is, his intentions are always the same: to help others.

My dad is truly happiest making people smile. Sometimes the lives he touched were further from home, but he was no less effective. In 1985, he flew to Lebanon in an attempt to secure the release of four hostages. Then in 1990, he flew to Iraq and successfully negotiated the release of 15 American hostages. Stories like these are almost commonplace; he really wanted to make a difference.

Today we are in greater need of heroes like him, especially in a sports culture where athletes seem to be chasing fame merely for the pleasure of making money or breaking records. There is little awareness of the responsibilities that accompany it. For over 50 years, my father has exemplified accountability of fame.

We all admire our own great person and each of us has our own understanding of him or her. My great person is my dad. He has an inner light that transcends his physical body and enables him to reach the furthest corners of the world. He has gentleness in his touch that sets him apart from most. He has a deep spiritual forbearance. He has something open in his heart that can communicate a feeling without employing words, and he enables people to recognize the greatness within them. Most importantly, he is a loving father and an ambassador of peace, hope and good will.

His legacy truly lies beyond his victories in the ring and athletic accomplishments. It encompasses the spirit and sense of possibility that he has inspired in others. The genuineness of his heart, the warmth of his smile, the very gift of himself—his charisma, humanity, and conviction have gained him respect and love from all corners of the globe. Millions of words have been written about him and there are more books that examine the complexity of his character than any other human being.

Today he stands as a beacon of light and hope. He shines through troubled times. Bearing a message of peace and tolerance, the voice of his silence has reached further than his infamous ringside shouts ever did. He is a composite of all the great qualities that can be found in the human spirit. “I’ve lived the life of a thousand men,” he tells me, wide-eyed. “And you’ve loved a thousand times stronger!” I say back to him.

Not too long ago I asked him what he thought about the future of the world. He had this to say: “I can’t predict the future of the world, I’m not that great, but I think the children are going to have to be the ones to change the world. The younger generation does not really know that much about the history of America. They don’t look at each other and see color or religion; they just take each other on face value, for who they are. I think our children can turn things around if they take our mistakes, progress by them and change. It may take another generation or two before a lot of our problems are solved, but it’s going to have to start natural, with the children.” He paused before answering my second question, about what advice he has to offer up and coming athletes. “No matter how famous we get, no matter how wealthy we become, it is only the heart that makes us great or small. Stand up for each other. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and always be true to yourself. When you reach the mountaintop try not to look down at anyone and remember the responsibility that comes with fame. There will be little boys and girls looking up to you—lead them well.”

As long as I can remember, people have told me stories about how my father has changed their lives. They found the courage to face their fear, stand by their convictions, follow their dreams, or simply love themselves. He made them believe that they could do anything and convinced them that they were The Greatest too. The courage and confidence that he inspired in people around the world strengthened the will of a nation as they fought for their human rights. My father passed that inspiration on to his children and grandchildren. With the grace in which he triumphed over difficult times, he refined the standard of a hero and blazed a trail for his family and future generations to follow.

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ISAMAYA FFRENCH

Posted on December 14, 2015April 9, 2018 by Jessica Bowler

THE LONDON-BASED MAKEUP ARTIST ISAMAYA FFRENCH IS MAKING WAVES IN THE FASHION WORLD WITH HER UNEXPECTED APPROACH AND REFRESHING ATTITUDE.

As one of the most in-demand makeup artists in the industry, Isamaya Ffrench has the kind of schedule that would make even the most tireless workaholic feel a little weary. The past few weeks have seen London-based Ffrench travel to Morocco, Switzerland, Capri and Paris, juggling work for brands including Chloé and Nike alongside editorials for POP, Vogue Italia, V Magazine and i-D, where she also works as the magazine’s beauty editor. Oh, and on top of all this, she’s just moved house. No wonder it took us four failed attempts before we could finally meet up.

Given this frantic pace you might expect to meet someone who’s tired, perhaps a little grumpy, even. On the contrary, opening the door to her airy East London house, Isamaya Ffrench radiates a warm energy, her almost indecently pouty lips breaking out into a wide smile. With her standing barefoot in her kitchen making tea, it feels more like sitting down to a girlie gossip than an interview.

Known for her confident, colorful, creative makeup, it’s ironic to see that Ffrench herself is almost barefaced. “Chefs eat fast food,” she laughs. “If it’s for someone else I enjoy it, but for myself, I’m not really interested.”

She might be a girl in serious demand, but Isamaya Ffrench’s success has something of a serendipitous quality to it. Her current career is more of a happy accident than the result of a ruthlessly executed master plan. Raised in Cambridge, she moved to London aged 18 to study 3D Design at Chelsea College of Arts, followed by a degree in Product and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins. During this time she began a weekend job face painting at children’s parties “because I didn’t want to do waitressing!” What started as a way to make a bit of extra money really got her creative juices flowing. “It was a bit like a training process,” she explains. “If I had enough time I’d go really overboard. Children think really creatively and it’s really fun to work with that.” Her lightbulb moment came when a friend asked her to paint his girlfriend’s face like a tiger. “I thought, ‘This is working, there’s something in this.’ At that moment I realized that this was an area that hadn’t been really well explored.”

Ffrench began to be booked for professional makeup jobs, her career propelled by word-of-mouth recommendations. Her first fashion shoot was with artist Matthew Stone for i-D, where she body-painted naked men to transform them into gods. Although she might be best known for some of her more theatrical work, Ffrench challenges the idea of being pigeonholed in this way. Her work often has a 3D quality—an echo back to those student days—but her aesthetic is versatile. “I don’t really have a set style, which at first I was afraid of but I really like now. I feel there’s more progression if you don’t. Sometimes you have to minimize yourself for the benefit of the bigger picture. If you want to make good work you have to put your own ego aside.”

What Ffrench does is about so much more than making someone look pretty; without straying into potentially sanctimonious territory she has found makeup gives her a platform for exploring issues of identity and gender. “I’m interested in the idea of trying to project the internal externally,” she muses. “I always go back to this idea of identity, maybe not so much a comment as an exploration. Makeup changes the face—if you put a mask on it, distort it, it not only makes the viewer question what they’re looking at and who they’re looking at, but also question themselves in response to that.” In today’s selfie-obsessed society these issues are more pertinent than ever. Ffrench notes how the digital world gives people a platform for “self-curation, self-projection.”

In an industry as oversaturated as fashion and beauty, it takes more than just talent to succeed. To have the kind of success that Ffrench has had by the age of just 25 is almost unheard of. Her success, she thinks, is down not just to hard work and vision but also her ability not to take herself too seriously. “I hope I can help create a happy environment [on set] and that people can trust me,” she says, adding that being able to have a laugh is her secret to staying sane in what can often be a crazy business. “I try as much as possible to have an element of some sort of humor in my work,” she says. “People are so nuts, if you can’t laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, you’re going to have a really hard time.” With that warm energy and infectious, conspiratorial giggle it’s not hard to see why Isamaya Ffrench thrives in a collaborative environment—she must be a dream to work with.

Part of the reason Isamaya Ffrench carries herself so lightly is that her interests range way beyond makeup. “I’m obsessed with other things; makeup just happens to be the outlet for it,” she says. A creative polymath, Ffrench also designs window displays and dances with the Theo Adams Company, a collective of dancers, singers and actors. Certainly she has that earthy quality of a tomboy, and you can imagine she’d be happier running around climbing trees than talking lipstick. Indeed, nature is something of a recurring interest to Ffrench. “I got really heavily into mycology [the study of mushrooms] and at one point managed to get an interview with the head of mycology at the Royal Botanical Society at Kew Gardens.” Would this have been her back-up career? “100%” she laughs.

The way things are going, however, that mycology career will have to stay on the backburner a little longer. Her star might continue to rise but for now the refreshingly grounded Ffrench is happy to just go with the flow. The adventure must be fun? “Definitely! It’s really colorful and I don’t know where it’s all going, which is interesting. Of course there’s sacrifice but I think if you’re creative it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, so long as it’s creative.”

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DANNY WAY

Posted on December 14, 2015September 27, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

A SKATEBOARDING LEGEND TAKES PAUSE TO DISCUSS HAWAIIAN MICROCLIMATES, TIMELESS SHOE DESIGN AND BUILDING SKATE PARKS FOR THE COMMUNITY.

Danny Way has dominated professional skateboarding for the last 25 years and has still found time to start successful companies and perform unbelievable feats of daring. In 1988, Way went pro at the age of 14. In 1993, he was a crucial part of the founding team of DC Shoes, a company that helped take skate shoes to the masses through the last two decades. Just a year later, in 1994, the death of a close friend left Way in charge of Plan B, a skateboard deck and accessory maker, which he still heads. Picking up numerous X Games gold medals and championships along the way, Way also became known for his outlandish stunts. In 2005, he performed the unique and seemingly impossible trick of ollie-ing over the Great Wall of China.

Today, Way is focusing more on what he calls “giving back.” He has devoted a lot of resources to designing, supporting and fund-raising for a series of public skate parks in Kauai over the last six years. His enthusiasm for this project is obvious, and for anyone who knows the amazing skate parks that Way has been involved with in the past, there are high expectations and a lot of anticipation for the forthcoming projects.

Thanks for taking the time to talk today. How’s Kauai?

Kauai is good, man. Well, it’s raining right now, but other than that, it’s been good.

That gets right down to a question I wanted to ask. You are designing and building a couple of huge skate parks/ ramps in Kauai, which is a super wet environment—how is that going?

Off and on throughout the day it’s sunny and it rains, sunny and it rains, so many times. And due to it being so warm, the water evaporates on the concrete so fast that the rails and surface of the ramp literally take 10 to 15 minutes to dry out. Let’s just say this: it’s a non-issue.

So where are you at with the skate parks?

We’re at a place where we have complete approval from the mayor, the parks and recreation department and the community for the first location in Hanapepe on the west side of Kauai. In addition to the approvals and support, we’ve raised some money, and the county has some money as well. We think the first part will be under construction and breaking ground hopefully by the end of summer, and completed by the end of the year. And then the plan is to go on to build four more parks over the next few years. So, it’s an ongoing project. The first one will obviously be the cornerstone to getting the rest of them built. We just want to get this first one done so we have a benchmark of accomplishment, and then we’ll move on.

Speaking of benchmarks of accomplishment, I think you’ve been considered the best skateboarder in the world for quite some time, right?

Oh man, that’s a big, big statement, but yeah, I appreciate that.

I recall your pro-model shoe popping on my radar around 1995. Was that your first pro model?

DC launched with my shoe and Colin McKay’s shoe, mine being the first pro model, and those were the only two shoes we had for a while. Of course, Colin and I are the founders of DC, so that probably ties in somehow more than just being a team rider or whatever.

That shoe was so good. I still see it around, worn by people who know.

Yeah, well we re-issued that shoe, like two years ago now, and it did really, really well. Apart from a few streamlining touches and a few tweaks that you can’t even really see, it was basically the same. It’s funny because it’s been like almost over 20 years and people are still hyped on it, you know?

Looking back over a pretty amazing career, what are the things you’re most proud of?

I think over the course of my career, I’m most proud of being able to grow as a person so that I’m able to use what I’ve been given in a responsible way. I started skating pro when I was 14 and I’m 39 now, so for the last 25 years I’ve been building relationships, and now I’m to the point where I can use those connections for the good of others. As I’m getting toward the end of my career, it’s really important for me to give back. And I’m proud that people give me the time of day and want to hear what I have to say. I’m proud to be talking to you today.

On the opposite note, what was your lowest point in 25 years of being a pro skateboarder?

I would say that back in the early 1990s a couple of events happened simultaneously that were really hard for me to deal with: my friend and mentor at the time, Mike Ternasky, the founder of the skateboard company I rode for at the time and still own today, was killed in a car accident. Then, shortly after that, I had a bad neck injury where I had pretty bad neurological problems and was bedridden for over a year; that time was pretty dark for me. I have a lot of residual effects from that injury still today, but it gave me a lot of perspective on my body. I think some things happen for a reason, as hard as they are to deal with. I have to look at things as a blessing.

As a kid I grew up in a pretty volatile, traumatizing situation, you know, a lot of domestic violence and drugs, so I was in a pretty dark place, but nothing like when I had that injury when I had everything I knew taken away from me. I went from being on top of the world to getting it all taken away and getting left in a dark place with no answers. There were no phone calls and no information on how long it would take to heal and why this or that was happening. So, anyway, that was the worst time.

Where did it happen?

I was surfing in Carlsbad, at Tamarack. It was a perfect, sunny, mellow day. Hard to believe something like that could happen on such a mellow, small day.

In a career built on pushing the limits, what’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken, in business, skating, whatever?

The biggest risk… Well, shit, I’ve done a lot of “stupid” things and lot of things I didn’t see the consequences of. I guess the one story that comes to mind is when we were traveling through Europe on trains when I was a lot younger, going from country to country competing in events and contests. All my friends would end up on the same train, and we would get bored on all-night trains, and we would go out and transfer from car to car on the outside of the train, you know, like on the side at night. It sounds pretty stupid, and it is. I watched my friend do it, and then I did it. As I came back in the train, we entered a tunnel, and I literally felt the wall graze my back. I got in and was looking out the window at a cement wall like 6 inches outside the glass. If I would have waited literally a few seconds… well.

What’s one thing skating taught you?

The ability to appreciate what I’ve been given in my life.

What’s one thing that skating made it harder for you to learn?

To follow the rules.

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JUNICHI ITO

Posted on December 14, 2015September 26, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

HUMANITY: When and how did you first get interested in photography?

JUNICHI ITO: When I went backpacking to Europe I bought my first SLR camera. I thought it would be nice to capture the moment, and then naturally I got addicted to taking pictures.

H: What is it about photography as a medium that interested you?

JI: You can catch a moment, and what you see can be made into unlimited images and possibilities.

H: Tell me about Japan as a source of inspiration for your work. How is it manifested in your art?

JI: Cleanliness, perfection, graphic design, minimalism, precision

H: Where do you go for inspiration?

JI: Museums. I like being in nature, traveling, bookstores and surfing.

H: In general, what are your favorite aspects of Japan—what do you miss most when you are away from it?

JI: First thing that I have to say is the food. There are lots of options, and affordable prices. The second thing I love is the people. The hospitality is definitely some of the best in the world. The customer service is great.

H: Who are some of your artistic heroes?

JI: Irving Penn, Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Tadao Ando, Ralph Gibson. Sometimes random young artists inspire me. I also get inspired by athletes, their mentality. Guys like Kelly Slater, Drake Jester, Ichiro.

H: What are some of your favorite places to shoot/work?

JI: The majority of my work is shot in the studio. I have a few favorite studios I like to work out of in NYC as well as my studio in Brooklyn. This is why I also love pictures from the road and taking photos from my travels. They are all different.

H: Enjoyable places to relax?

JI: I love bookstores. I stopped by Tsutaya bookstore in Daikanyama the other day. It was amazing. If I had time I would easily hang out there all day long.

Photos by Junichi Ito

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THE HAAS BROTHERS

Posted on December 14, 2015September 26, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

“I sort of came out with a bang and I started dressing in drag,” recalls Simon Haas, one half of acclaimed design duo The Haas Brothers. “I knew I was going to get heckled. It’s kind of the worst social position you could put yourself in. But going through it, at the end of it, you’re like, ‘I’m not really afraid to do anything now.’”

Simon relates this story at his new design studio in the West Adams area of Los Angeles, where it’s clear that his hard-won fearlessness has paid off. He and his fraternal twin brother Nikolai now have 15 employees, a massive studio space, and an upcoming solo exhibition at R & Company. Not to mention a very impressive client roster; they have designed costumes for Lady Gaga, added their artistic touches to the Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, and collaborated with Versace.

Simon and Nikolai were born in Los Angeles and grew up in Austin, Texas. They learned stone carving and construction from their father, a stonemason who now works in their studio. Their mother, a writer and opera singer, has chipped in too, designing a shell-adorned altar for their Ace Hotel project. And their older brother, actor Lukas Haas, will soon join the family; he is building a recording studio in the front of their new space.

Simon has a formal art education—he attended Rhode Island School of Design—but Nikolai doesn’t, and they reap the benefits of both Simon’s technical know-how and Nikolai’s lack thereof. Simon says that Nikolai “has fewer fucked up problems” because he never went to art school. But Nikolai is quick to point out the benefits of Simon’s schooling: “There are certain leaps that he can make because he’s been taught that I can’t.” Thus, it’s the perfect symbiotic relationship. But no, they don’t live together, and no, they do not want to share a hotel room.

“When people send us around the world to places, we have to say, ‘Don’t book us the same hotel room.’ Because, like, we’re adults,” laughs Simon. A couple of times, Simon and Nikolai even showed up to find one hotel room with two twin beds next to each other. “We’re like, ‘what the fuck!’” says Nikolai. “We’re 29 years old!”

Humor is central to both The Haas Brothers’ dynamic and their work. In fact, their naming system is largely inspired by Garbage Pail Kids; think “Dame Judy Bench.” But according to Simon, the humor serves a greater purpose than just getting a chuckle from a prospective client. It makes the work accessible. “You laugh immediately, and then you’re already in a different headspace and you approach the piece from a different spot,” he says.

Another tool they use to disarm is sex (sex and more sex). Some of their animal-shaped furniture is adorned with golden testicles, some of their pottery is more than suggestive of lady parts, and then there is The Sex Room…

But according to Nikolai, even The Sex Room isn’t about sex. “We were using sex as a tool to talk about the fact that we are very, very avidly anti-shame,” he says. “Shame in general to us just doesn’t really make any sense. It requires the participation or at least the perceived participation of somebody else. It’s not an individual feeling that you would decide to have. It all has to do with imposition and it all has to do with trying to please somebody else, which is just bullshit.”

And he speaks from experience. Learning to tune out the opinions of others has been integral to The Haas Brothers’ success. Before the Versace collaboration, for instance, “people were saying, ‘That’s gonna stop your career dead in the water,’” recalls Simon. “They say, ‘You’ll never escape Versace.’” But ultimately, Simon and Nikolai ignored the naysayers and followed their own inner compass. Or as Nikolai puts it: “You’re like, ‘No, fuck it. I want to do this.’”

Nikolai and Simon are incredibly opinionated, and will happily share their thoughts on atheism, feminism, and everything in between—however, their core message seems to be a simpler one: that love is natural, but hate is learned.

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SIUDY GARRIDO

Posted on December 14, 2015September 28, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

In 1914, Spanish composer Manuel de Falla wrote El Amor Brujo (or Love, the Magician), basing the music and movement on his study of the Andalusians, a gypsy population known as the originators of flamenco music and dance. The gypsy girl at the plot’s center is forced to marry a man she doesn’t love, and after he dies, he haunts her.

When the piece debuted in Madrid, it was more or less a critical failure. Mainstream Spain had been suppressing the gypsies for centuries, and a celebration of their culture seemed ill fitted to their symphony halls. So Falla turned El Amor Brujo into a classical ballet and orchestra piece.

When Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic, and Siudy Garrido, the Venezuelan dancer-choreographer who fell for flamenco as a child, restage Falla’s piece in Los Angeles this spring, its flamenco roots will be revived.

“Our challenge with this production is to make the orchestra feel in harmony with the flamenco flavor,” says Garrido. Her company of flamenco dancers and the musicians will have to be completely in sync.

Garrido officially met Dudamel about four years ago. She had come to Los Angeles with her husband and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Pablo Croce. He had a round of meetings to attend. They received an invitation to a Venezuelan symphony event, encountering Dudamel at the dinner afterward. “Oh my God, I love your work,” the conductor gushed upon meeting Garrido. “We need to work together.”

“Of course,” said Garrido, a fan of his as well. “Whenever you want.”

Years before, when both were at early stages of their careers, Dudamel had seen the second show Garrido ever choreographed. Called Body and Soul, it featured an on-stage collaboration with salsa singer Roberto Santa Rosa. Her company, new at the time, was still fighting to establish itself.

“She’s had no choice but to [put the work out there] little by little,” says Pablo Croce, translating for Garrido, who is often more comfortable expressing thoughts in Spanish. “She had a lot of difficulty and lack of credibility from the start just because of where she comes from.” A blonde Venezuelan with an invigorating, enthusiastic on-stage elegance, she does not fit flamenco’s dark, sultry, traditionally Spanish image.

Garrido grew up around dance. Her mother taught ballet, jazz, contemporary and flamenco at an academy in Caracas. But no one pushed her. “My mom like, oh, you want to dance? Okay, you can do it then,” she recalls.

At 13, she told her parents she wanted to dedicate herself to flamenco. They “freaked out,” explains Croce, “because even though they love and live off of the academy of flamenco and other disciplines, they did not foresee a real easy path.”

She was determined, however, and moved to Spain at age 16 to train. Her teachers reacted to her with surprise. “If you grow up in the flamenco world in Spain and you are talented, everyone already knows it,” Croce says. “But she came from the new world with a great level of skill.”

At 19, she returned to Venezuela with the goal of forming her own company. She choreographed numbers for a tour her mother was leading, and after a Florida performance, two Disney executives who had been in the audience asked to meet the choreographer. They wanted her to choreograph a performance for Disney’s millennial celebration the following year.

“My mom said, ‘I think this is your first work. It’s not my company’s work, because they asked for you,’” Garrido remembers. A year later in 2000, with a newly formed company of mostly Venezuelan dancers, she did 80 performances in Miami.

Similar twists of fate have propelled her career forward in the years since, leading her to Romeo Santos, the Latin pop singer she performed with in Madison Square Garden, and to the Cirque du Soleil artistic directors who invited her to teach their dancers flamenco.

Her upcoming performance with Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic is another chance to experiment. “The benefit of all of this,” she says, “is to bring flamenco to wider audiences, so more people fall in love with it.”

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DOROTHY LICHTENSTEIN

Posted on December 14, 2015March 12, 2018 by Jessica Bowler

THEY SAY EVERY GREAT MAN HAS A GREAT WOMAN BEHIND HIM. DOROTHY LICHTENSTEIN PERSONIFIES THIS STATEMENT AND AT THE SAME TIME EXPLAINS WHY HER HUSBAND ROY WAS MUCH MORE THAN A MASTER OF CONTEMPORARY ART.

One of my earliest memories of art is the work of Roy Lichtenstein. As a child, I can recall staring up at the work and liking it for no apparent reason, other than just the pure enjoyment. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it was the patterns, I am not sure. But one thing was sure: I was completely unaware of the impact it would have on me for the rest of my life. Art has the ability to impact you in inexplicable ways. It influences thought, stimulates senses and affects emotion. It was Roy Lichtenstein who I have to thank for the beginning of an exploration that has brought me so much. As your tastes evolve and opinions form, it’s easy to over think art. But there is one truth that doesn’t get lost—the pure enjoyment of standing in front of something that truly puts you in a state of awe. When the opportunity presented itself to sit down with Dorothy Lichtenstein, Roy’s widow and president of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, well, needless to say, I was excited. Often, I think that you can learn more about a person by the company they keep, and spending time with Dorothy exceeded my highest expectations. She is truly a special woman. It left me wishing even more to have experienced the pleasure of meeting Roy.

JF: I guess we should start at the beginning. How did you meet your husband?

DL: I was working at an art gallery in 1964. We did an exhibition called “The Great American Supermarket” because some of the artists were doing things that dealt with food. Even Jasper Johns had done beer cans, and Andy’s soup cans were in the exhibition. We thought instead of a poster, it would be great if we could get Andy Warhol to put an image on a shopping bag. Those times were very simple. We asked them. They agreed. I actually met Roy when he came in to sign the shopping bags. Andy had put a soup can on it, and Roy drew a turkey on it. So that was, you know, our announcement for the exhibition.

JF: What were some of the qualities that you initially liked about him?

DL: Well, his sense of humor. Let’s see. I met him, but he actually had a girlfriend at the time, and I had a broken leg. We went out and we had lunch. I just thought it was endearing. He was having a show in Europe in Paris, and he told me, he promised, he was breaking up with his girlfriend, but he had promised to take her to Paris, and so he had to keep that promise. He called me when he came back.

JF: And in 1968, you were married, right?

DL: Yes. But we met in ’64, 1964.

JF: And at that time, was there any way to possibly imagine what the art world would become?

DL: Well, absolutely not to what it’s become. I think people, artists, were happy if they didn’t have to have a day job. I mean, artists either taught or drove taxis or did something so they could earn a living. Even though money was certainly different then, but I think they were just really thrilled to stay afloat. I remember living in a kind of loft space that was something like $120 a month, and a friend of ours who used to call himself “slumlord to the artists.” He used to fix up lofts. He would actually put hot and cold water in and make spaces livable. He sold a huge bank building on a corner to this photographer. It’s still there, on the corner of Spring and Bowery. It’s a huge corner building, and it was built as the Germania-America Bank around the turn of the last century. When World War I broke out, nobody would put their money in the German bank so it was empty and it was used for records. Actually, the photographer still owns it. Anyway, we took a floor in it, and I remember the rent was like $300. We were thinking, well that was probably 1966, 300 dollars, how are we going to pay him 300 dollars? It was just sort of a different time in New York and all over the world. I think nobody ever thought they would actually become rich making art. I was at the Koons show last night, which is pretty great actually. I was thinking about how we used to joke. The first time Roy got a check that was from the gallery that was a little more than 10,000 dollars; I remember he said, “Look, we are thousand-aires.” He grew up in New York City, in a kind of upper-middle-class home, but as an art professor, there was very little; the salary was low, so we thought it was amazing [to be paid more than $10,000]. People still thought of artists in terms of the starving artist. Now that idea seems like something that was 100 years ago, like Van Gogh to Andy Warhol. You know, 1860 to 1960.

JF: And now it’s just like completely gone, it seems like.

DL: It is. Well, the truth is, of all the artists working or on the planet, there is probably a tiny percentage that actually make it, you know, actually become—

JF: Successful?

DL: Well successful, and make an impact. The ones that I have known, they are just sort of generous by nature I think. Bob Rauschenberg was a good friend, and he just thought art could save the world, bring peace, and he acted on it.

JF: I am curious. When did you both start to realize that he was going to be considered one of the premier artists of his generation?

DL: You know, he had a show in Paris in 1968. I somehow convinced him. Those were days when you stayed away on a trip for something like 24 days or more. You could get a discount on your airfare. It’s a crazy idea, but I convinced him that we would save money by going to Morocco. We were down to the southern tip of Morocco. Suddenly, in the middle of this sandy town in the last village, someone started calling, “Hey Lichtenstein!” And Roy turned to me, and he said, “I must really be famous.” It was a poet we knew, Ted Jones. He had been living in Holland with his girlfriend, and by coincidence, he was in the same small village in Morocco. I don’t think he ever, I think he thought that fame was fickle. He used to joke and say, “I’ll be sitting in my wheelchair with a crooked hat that someone just put on my head, and the nurse will be shaking me and saying, ‘Mister Lichtenstein, it’s time for your medication, get up.’” This all would have been a dream. I think he took it more or less with a grain of salt.

JF: What was your favorite part of watching his creative process?

DL: He really took time. He loved being in the studio. He was pretty regular to get down there. He really always managed to be down in the studio by 10 because people would come to work. Although, at that time, he only had one assistant and a kind of secretary, he was really willing to put in the time. If he was stuck, he might just come down and clean brushes, rinse them off. He put in the time, and whenever he was having an exhibition, there was never a question of meeting a deadline. He was already working on the next group of paintings or a sculpture or prints. I think even if it was graphic work, which people considered less important than paintings, I think he brought just the same creative juice to that.

JF: It’s interesting because the reputation I heard about him is almost contrary to what you come to expect from a lot of artists.

DL: I know. He was a secular humanist; that was kind of a nice thing. He treated everybody really as an equal. But talking about his work habits, he was very musical; when he was a teenager, I guess he heard Charlie Parker play. He had a friend—even though they were underage, they used to go down to the jazz clubs on 52nd Street. He had this ability—I was taking flute classes, and he had this ability, he could just pick up this flute, and if the radio was on, or television, he could just hear something and play it. His favorite instrument to listen to was the saxophone. I bought him a sax for his 70th birthday. He was really good at it, but he actually became a beginner. When I saw that, I realized what a gift it was. He practiced every day [just like a beginner] before we were going out. He’d actually leave the studio an hour early. Our friend, who helped me buy the saxophone, and I gave him six months of lessons with it. And at one point, our friend said, “Look, I know you know you have a sort of talent, but if you are not going to really study, then there is no point taking lessons.” Then Roy really did. He brought this beginner’s mind to doing it, and I realized that was really the gift he had with his painting. He had this enormous power of concentration and would direct it when there was something he wanted.

JF: I suppose that’s how he could really work on such different bodies of work?

DL: Well, he usually worked in groups. After he did something that might be very elaborate or involved, he might do something minimal or that could almost pass as abstract. He definitely brought that approach to his work, and he would make little sketches in notebooks or plan a group of paintings, and then if he was going to use it, he’d decide what size they should be and then project them. He had this opaque projector. Then he would loosely draw and then kind of redraw it on the canvas. His early work looks very artistic comparatively. To make the dots, he used a brush that he would dip in paint so they were very spotty. Later, he was able to get a piece of metal that was perforated which he’d have to clamp onto the canvas. He used oil and magna, which is unusual. Artists usually use oil or magna, but the dots had to be done in oil. Then eventually he could order perforated paper that you could just glue onto the canvas and rip off and wash. Actually, the methods of how he could paint changed as he learned different systems.

JF: What was it like among other artists—was it competitive? What was it like with dealers? What was the community like?

DL: He was lucky with Leo Castelli, really, the entire time of his career. They never even had any kind of contract. It was kind of a celebratory time, because people were paying attention. There’d be several openings on a Saturday. At one point, the openings were Tuesday nights. If it was a friend who was having a show, we’d usually wind up going to Chinatown afterward, because everyone could afford it at that time—a lot of food for a little bit of money. They really didn’t discuss, they didn’t get into, you know, the philosophy of art really, the way the abstract expressionists did, which would lead to big fights, of course. There was a lot of camaraderie.

JF: I read somewhere that you really loved Matisse. What artists did you both like to collect?

DL: Well, we did [like Matisse]. When we collected, we collected mostly drawings, Rauschenberg, Jim Rosenquist. I think Roy really felt that you could see, even if it was rough or exact, you could really see the hand of the artist; that drawing was the essence, the base of, you know, all art.

JF: What did the two of you like to do together?

DL: When we weren’t going out, we used just to like to hang out; maybe watch something on television, or just go out to eat. We stayed pretty much together. When we moved to Southampton in 1970, we were alone so much of the time. It wasn’t even called the Hamptons. It was pretty quiet. We had some friends—Larry Rivers, and we actually met De Kooning.

JF: Any memorable trips? Where did you like to travel?

DL: Roy only liked to travel for work, if he had an exhibition, or if he was working. He loved going out to California, to Gemini. Do you know that place? That was his idea of having to leave New York in cold winter, and we always used to stay at the Chateau [Marmont]. It was great, because we had an apartment, and we had friends there. That was his idea of a really great trip.

JF: Was there any specific body of work of his you liked most?

DL: Well, I really loved different ones at different times. And then, when Roy did these mirrors, I just loved them, because they looked like complete abstractions. You could read them as a mirror. One of the last groups he did, which were these landscapes in this Chinese style, I really loved. And then later on, he did a series of nudes, of two women, and it’s kind of ambiguous, but especially when I saw them at The Tate, because they have them high on the walls. I thought they were really different. At times, you could almost say that style was his subject matter. He did paintings that were made up of conceptualized brushstrokes and, well, actually the brushstroke itself. I think painting a conceptualized brushstroke is ironic—his work always had some irony in it. He wasn’t celebrating cartoons, but really more portraying archetypes of, say, the lovelorn girl, or sculptures of brushstrokes. I just think, how come nobody thought of it before. I thought that was an amazing idea.

JF: What’s your view on the art world today? Because of its popularity, do you think people are collecting art for love of the work or getting sidetracked, and missing out on the real enjoyment of collecting art?

DL: Well, I think, for whatever reason, maybe they enjoy having paid the highest price ever. Maybe it is more conspicuous in art, but it’s sort of this idea that money became the measure of everything, and that is so disheartening, because it reduces everything to what it costs. I do think that’s become a big part of the art world, but conspicuous consumption is all around us. It gets so, I don’t know, slick. Even myself. I used to like the fact that I had an old 1951 Ford Woody or this crazy old Jaguar that you couldn’t drive more than 15 miles without having it stalled. I guess I just have just seen it all. It’s like in the movie Get Shorty. In the end, when he comes out and there are all those black vans parked. I don’t know. I think that if you are an artist and you are working and that’s what you are given in life, that you go to art school. I am just comparing it to the fact that once upon a time no artist ever expected to really make money unless he was Picasso.

JF: It is funny, because at least for me, I am in my 30s, but I have romanticized about that generation of artists and now it does feel so slick. Sometimes it just feels like there is not enough substance.

DL: Yes, I know. I have that too, and sometimes I think I am just a dinosaur. The truth is that in the late ’60s, and even in the early ’70s, for minimalism artists like Don Judd and Karl Andre, it was really a struggle for an artist and the art galleries. They would close in the summer, but it did seem that certain things had more value. I mean, even a professor or a really good teacher was something that was valued.

JF: My last question [almost]. Who are today’s artists that you like?

DL: Let’s see. I really like Ellsworth Kelly, who is 91 now. I still really like the work that he does. But of the younger artists, I like David Salle’s work a lot, but I have to say, I don’t follow [it too closely]. I don’t really go around to galleries so much like I used to. Part of it is that I am not in New York so much, so it’s really hard for me to judge.

JF: What do you think Roy and his peers would think of it all?

DL: Well, I think Andy would have absolutely loved it. When I was in Paris last year, I opened my mini bar, and I took out a Perrier with an Andy Warhol on the Perrier bottle. Andy Warhol is, like, as famous as Elvis Presley.

JF: Maybe more so.

DL: Maybe more so. More famous than God. [ laughter]

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SHINJI KAWAI

Posted on December 14, 2015September 28, 2017 by Jessica Bowler

Nestled in the mountains of Okayama Prefecture, a few hundred miles west of Tokyo, sits the unassuming Nihon Menpu denim mill. There, president Shinji Kawai heads up a business that’s been in his family since 1917, crafting premium selvage denim on 1920s-era looms and then dip-dyeing it in vats of natural indigo. The process is time consuming and old fashioned, but Kawai, with his reverence for tradition and quality, wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kawai’s been working at Nihon Menpu (which translates to “cotton cloth-maker in Japan”) since graduating from college 41 years ago; his ancestors started the business, so it was a foregone conclusion that he’d end up at the company. “It was a matter of course,” he says. “When I was little, I’d visit the factory, so learning how to work with the fabric was a natural evolution.” But over the past few decades, he’s seen the denim industry change tremendously. “The number of makers has rapidly declined,” he says. “In Okayama, there used to be cotton machines centered on denim, and synthetic-fiber machines related to polyester. But the synthetic-fiber machines have all been abandoned.”

Nihon Menpu produces fabric that’s revered by denim freaks the world over, and its methodologies are still kept secret, so competitors won’t copy them. But Kawai says his factory differs from that of other textile manufacturers because it has a hand in every stage of the denim. “We bring in the thread and turn it to cloth with dyeing, manufacturing, and finishing, then we link everything up to shipping,” says Kawai. “We can create many types of raw material: cotton, wool, flax, polyester, rayon. Dye-wise, we also have exceptional knowledge of indigo and deep blue.”

Why did denim take hold so aggressively in Japan in the first place? “I think the surge of interest in denim here happened around 1990,” Kawai recalls. “I guess it was because the blue color of denim was thought to resemble America, and young people in Japan took that in.” Now, Japan is a mecca for denim collectors, and is renowned for its jean-centric vintage stores. “We’ve studied old Levi’s jeans, old Lees and old Wranglers,” says Kawai, “and we’ve reached the point where we can analyze data like the shape of irregularities in the thread, the depth of the indigo color, and the shape of the selvage and number of threads. As a result, we’re able to produce various indigo colors that express subtle mixed emotions.” And Kawai notes that denim has a unique property that sets it apart from nearly all other fabrics. “Normally when buying clothing, a suit for example, it’s at its best at the time it’s purchased,” he explains. “But with denim pants dyed with indigo, it’s best six months or a year after purchase. That’s about the time the color fades, and it becomes just right.”

Speaking of fading denim, Kawai is as much a fan of vintage as the next jean connoisseur. He says he still gets a thrill from “analyzing secondhand garments, and reusing cloth techniques that experts created many years ago.” But Kawai is aware that in order for Nihon Menpu to thrive, it needs to keep moving forward. “Our company does business with about 100 other companies, both inside and outside Japan,” he says. “We get information from those customers, and have discussions with designers and brands about their visions. We try to deepen our understanding of denim by talking about current worldwide trends.”

While his company may be forward thinking, Kawai’s a traditionalist when it comes to hard work. The best piece of advice he’s ever received? “I was once told, ‘A person who is most severe with himself does it for his own good.’” Still, he isn’t all business all the time. He says he values people with “affectionate hearts,” and that the most important life lesson he’s learned is, “to have an attitude of thanks toward those you’re close to at home and at work.”

Kawai loves to travel to New York (which he calls “the center of the world”) and spent his college years in Tokyo, but otherwise, he’s lived his entire life in Ibara, Nihon Menpu’s home. And he says there’s good reason the company couldn’t make its premium denim anywhere else. “Nihon Menpu aims to produce high-class products, and for that reason, it’s imperative to have various Japanese cultural and emotional influences,” says Kawai. “On the production side, we currently employ 60 people, and everyone takes their job very seriously. We can also obtain world-class raw cotton for making products; the spinning industry here is at a high level.”

For first-time visitors to Japan, Kawai recommends some must-see experiences: “You should definitely visit the temples in Tokyo, Kamakura, and Kyoto, and even experience Zen meditation,” he says. “After that, you should see the Jeans Street in Kojima, in Okayama Prefecture. In Tokyo, it would be sumo wrestling and kabuki theater.” They’re classic picks—after all, temples, Zen meditation, and kabuki have existed in Japan for hundreds of years. At the same time, the country’s always been at the forefront of technology. Asked about that dichotomy, Kawai says the past and future are actually more intertwined in Japan than most of us realize. “Japanese people basically have a serious and methodical temperament, so pushing technology and placing value on tradition are actually the same thing,” he says. “In general, I think the Japanese are good people—they don’t lie that much.”

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THE GALLOS

Posted on December 11, 2015September 28, 2017 by Sacha Cosentino

HUSBAND-AND-WIFE COLLABORATORS ANDREW AND CARISSA GALLO DOCUMENTED THEIR TRIP TO ALLURING, WONDROUS ICELAND.

Using photographs and film, husband-and-wife collaborators Andrew and Carissa Gallo tell stories that are artful and unique.

She is the photographer. He is the director. Together they are Sea Chant, a name that is inspired by a line in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

As Andrew Gallo explains it, “You give the sea your thoughts, your dreams, your feelings, and those who look into it receive those thoughts and dreams and feelings… all that stuff is hidden in the soul of the sea, and we’re just trying to tell those stories.”

Andrew and his wife Carissa founded their “storytelling outfit” last fall when they moved from the East Coast to Portland. They work for clients producing branded web series and campaigns, as well as create their own personal projects. Their style is ethereal and lovely, imbued with purposeful, thoughtful simplicity. They are inspired by all things natural—the coast, water, trees. “We use nature to our advantage,” says Andrew. “Working with natural light, beautiful environments, our locations are huge in what we do.”

And so, naturally, Iceland played the perfect backdrop for the pair. It was on both of their destination wish lists even before they met each other, and a work trip allowed them to extend a layover there in August 2012. For 10 days, they worked their way around the island in a beat-up rental car, cruising past glaciers and steaming fields, stopping to dip into geothermal pools.

“There’s something really unique about that place, where it’s almost like the earth was created and then it just stood still and stayed that way,” says Andrew. “It’s just these really ancient reminders, a beautiful, natural landscape that seems like it hasn’t changed at all. It was unlike anywhere we’ve ever been before.”

Getting lost and exploring with no distinct purpose was the point. They’d be going 60 mph down the highway and would come to a screeching halt and throw it in reverse to go back and capture something. With 19-hour days they had virtually limitless opportunities to explore. “The sun never technically set, it would just lower and rise again,” he says, “so it’d be midnight and we’d be swimming in this natural hot tub in the middle of this grassy knoll somewhere with sheep.”

There is one photo of Carissa in a cloudy geothermal pool, shot from above. All that’s visible is the top of her head and her brown hair floating, her hands clasped by the side of her face. “That was one of the first photos we took on the trip-just a few hours after we landed,” says Carissa. “That milky water was kind of magical in itself, and after we had waded around for a few hours, we went to grab our cameras in hopes of capturing the feeling. I don’t remember why I asked him to take the photo, but now, when we see it, it kind of encapsulates the other-worldly, isolated land we were venturing into.”

They met when Carissa was 17 and Andrew 18, through a mutual friend when Andrew was vacationing in San Diego. They connected initially over the piano and married three years later. And now they are parents to a 9-year-old girl, whom they adopted from Uganda last year.

Having just celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary, their sensibilities are so integrated that their influence on each other is both profound and imperceptible. Andrew describes their union as if two small trees were planted next to each other and over time their roots grew together into one. “We just rely on each other and balance each other out,” he says.

Adds Carissa, “I am very introverted and he’s a little more extroverted, and we fill in each other’s gaps.”

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