ART SCHOOL | Q&A with JAY RIGGIO (LOS ANGELES)
After one day cutting up a polaroid and gluing it down to paper from old magazine he had laying around, New York native Jay Riggio began his journey with collage art and as an artist. As Jay’s work grew so did his ideas, and his work began to expand beyond the confines both in his storytelling and level of craftsmanship. Moving away from traditional collage making with scissor, paper and glue, Jay’s new sculptural collages with resin can take up to weeks to finish. We checked out his new LA based workspace in our post In The Studio | w/ Jay Riggio, and instantly we knew we’d like to chat more with Jay and find out how he started first making collages to his current work of massive 3D sculptural collage pieces made out of wood and resin.
Make the Leap!
Photography courtesy of the artist | Portrait by Yon Na
Introduce yourself? My name’s Jay Riggio. I was born and raised in New York. Six months ago my girlfriend, myself and our two dogs moved from Queens to Burbank, California. I make art, listen to music and read a lot of books on true crime.
How did you first get into making and creating collages? In high school I was drawn to movies and writing. I remember distinctly being moved emotionally by things I read and saw. Essentially, it was my visceral response to an artist’s creation. Somewhere along the line I got a polaroid camera and started shooting photos. The notion came to me that I could tell a story, a long story even, all with a single photo. This concept consumed me. I was overwhelmed with the possibility of composing what existed within the four corners of a frame. One day I cut up a polaroid, glued it down to paper and added some cutouts from old magazines I had laying around. That was the start things. To this day, I still get that overwhelming feeling of possibility when I make art.
Was there a moment when your fascination with collage shifted into you creating them as a career? How did you start selling work? I actually spent over 10 years working different full-time jobs. I was raised to believe that you needed job security. It didn’t matter if you were happy. It mattered that you had something steady that enabled you to pay the bills. Working desk jobs, it felt as if I were pretending to be someone else. Like I was some kind of paid actor. I made art in my free time but rarely shared it with anyone other than close friends. I was always intimidated by the art world. I was aware of so much incredible art out there and felt I had no place in that world.
When social media began, my idea of the giant, scary art world became a lot smaller and easier to comprehend. About four years ago I decided to share the collages I was regularly making on Tumblr and Instagram. The combination of positive feedback on social media and the daily agony I experienced at my 9-5 job pushed me in the direction of full-time artist. I started selling work via Instagram and slowly moved towards selling through galleries as well.
We spotlighted your studio in a post called In the Studio early this year where you’ve been taking your collages to another level. When did you decide to go bigger and work with chemicals like varnish or lacquer? I’ve always dreamed of making larger, more 3-dimensional work, but my tiny New York apartment only allowed for small scale stuff. My new body of work really only began 6 months ago when we moved to California. I turned our two car garage into a studio. Now I can make a giant mess and not have to clean it all up before my girlfriend gets home from work.
Originally, I experimented with layering hundreds of pieces of paper, cutting them out one at a time beneath an existing collage, using the thickness of the paper to create a sculptural effect to the work. Not only did it take months to finish a single piece, I quickly learned that layered paper warps, the larger the piece gets. That’s when I decided I needed to work with wood. Without having done any woodwork before, I bought a bunch of saws and started cutting my own wood shapes. I wanted the imagery I created within a frame to became the actual frame… for the piece to exist as sort of a hanging wood sculpture. My new work consists of a combination of acrylics, spray paints, handcut paper, glue, wood stain and resin on woodcut panels. Lately I’ve been experimenting with the layering of resin. You can achieve a 3D effect with multiple resin layers. When you get it right, it’s as if the imagery were floating in a shadowbox. The new process has been super exciting. I never went to art school, so it’s been humbling to try new techniques. I’ve learned something new every day since I started working with wood and resin.
What’s your process for assembling and creating an original collage piece on paper. Take us through your creative process? My process has changed so much in the last few months. I still use old books and magazines as source materials, but these days each piece takes more planning from start to finish. For pieces that will end up being a few feet long, I need to make sure my source material is large enough. I still compose the imagery as I’m working on the piece. Once I get the imagery right, I paint borders, cut the shape of the wood with a scroll or jigsaw. When it’s time to glue down the imagery, I make decisions on how I want to layer the pieces within the resin. Some pieces can take up to 9 layers of resin. I wait 24 hours for the resin to dry and then it’s sanding out bubbles and imperfections before gluing down more imagery and prepping for another resin layer pour. These new pieces can take a couple weeks to finish. It’s hard to believe I used to make multiple pieces a day when I was just working with glue and paper.
What are you looking forward to artwise in 2018? What’s coming up for you? I’m participating in a few group shows. I’ll have a piece in the Spoke NYC “O Cohen Where Art Thou” Show opening in February. It’s a tribute show to The Cohen brothers films. I’ll have a piece at the Night on Broadway art and music festival in Downtown LA at the end of this month, I’ll have work in the Grumpybert Red Envelope show in Brooklyn and a piece or two in the Bailey House Auction in March. I’ve also been doing graphics for Lovesick Skateboards, my friend Aleks’ board company. I’m also hoping to find a gallery to show some of the newer large scale woodcut pieces.
What artists past and present are you really into at the moment? I’ve always loved Raymond Pettibon, Mark Gonzales, Ray Johnson, Winston Smith. As far as contemporary guys, I’m really into the work of Kris Kuksi, Fred Stonehouse, J. Grabowski, Porous Walker, Chris Johanson and Adrian Landon Brooks.
What would be your ideal collaboration? Vans would be rad. Doing board graphics is always amazing. Anti-Hero would be sick.
What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist? At this point in my life, I can’t imagine doing anything else other than spending my days making art. If there comes a time when I can’t make rent, I’ll live on the street and try to sell my art.
What are your favorite Vans? Hands-down, my favorites are the classic, all black slip-ons. I work in them, skate in them and wear’em when my lady and I have date nights.
What advice would you give someone thinking about art as a career? Don’t allow the self-doubt, poverty, endless frustration, emotional devastation and heartbreak to interfere with the reality that you’re spending your days doing what you truly love.
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