Imagination, Illustrated: An Interview With Jean D. LinShuttr Prophete
All photos courtesy of LinShuttr's Instagram As told to Jesse O. Prince Sweat equity. It is the basic idea that what you put into something is what you’ll ultimately get in the end. “When you have sweat equity, it means a lot to where you’re heading.” Says Jean D. Prophete, better known as LinShuttr on the topic. LinShuttr, who currently works out of Baltimore, Maryland, is a digital illustrator who has worked with DC rapper Wale, and has a huge following on Instagram. The art is nothing short of amazing with a portfolio that includes renderings of Rick Ross, Nikki Giovanni, and GrandMaMa (don’t bother trying to remember this one if you weren’t a kid of the 90’s). How did you get your start with illustrating? When did you realize that you wanted to make this a career path? I started to do illustrations to support my portfolio. A couple of months before I graduated, I said to myself, “Imma do these illustrations for one year and see how good I get and the first one I did was a Wiz Khalifa one. I remember, I was in Pittsburgh and that’s when I started. And then In March, I was graduating; I had to do illustrations to support my portfolio. That’s how it started and I kept going from there. Looking at your Instagram and your Facebook, you have a portfolio of some interesting and cool illustrations. What inspires your work and could you cite some influences? Just pop culture, current events, past events, sports, all of that in one.
That’s the Bizarre Ballet. Its part of a series that I made. I just revamped it two more times. Just recently, yesterday, I said I would revamp it again because I’ve gotten way better; colored it better, and put some Jordans on the ballerina. One of your posts that caught my eye actually wasn’t an illustration. It was a post that you screenshot from FB or somewhere talking about a patron at the Warhol Museum calling Jean-Michel Basquiat “one of Andy Warhol’s assistants” Tell me more about that instance and how it made you feel as an artist. She was definitely uneducated on that subject and lost. I didn’t really enjoy my time working at the Warhol. (It) was like two years. They’re definitely a very big company that pays you poorly just because they’re non-for-profit. I was just like, “wow!” and the people who didn’t know were being informed and they took that as the truth because that woman, she was showing them around Pittsburgh or was their tour guide for the museum. It seemed something like that because they were really listening to her and following her around the museum. That was pretty funny. One of the continuous fights in the Black art world is the one for legitimacy and acceptance in the larger art world. Does this fight play into your work at all? Also, do you think the lines in the art world are starting to blur in any way? I think that plays into not only the art, it’s the artistic journey period. There was a time when you know your stuff is good and you’re going around everywhere and these people just won’t give you a shot and you’re just like, yo, what the hell! I have stories upon stories. People just won’t give you a shot and you’re really trying and out there busting your ass. They don’t want to give you a shot and that’s why I just look at the art world –just so tight-assed and closed in now where people have this sense of entitlement, like this is my staff, I choose who I want, and it’s just so funny because a lot of galleries, they display European artists that don’t even come over here, add anything to the neighborhood, add anything to the people. They just use the gallery and that’s it. It’s just so much with that. It’s mainly a black and white thing, but it’s a(n) art thing. You gotta know this person, kiss this ass, have this degree. When has it become a job requirement? Give me this, this, this, and this just to put your art here. That’s crazy! I remember watching The Radiant Child documentary and there was a big show called the Times Square Show where some of these legendary artists that’s in textbooks now all displayed their art and it was just a crazy—I won’t say unorganized, but beautifully chaotic where the rooms were just packed with art all over the walls and it’s just like, what happened to that? Where’s the freedom in it? Now you walk into a gallery, it’s pretty much a long hallway and there’s all this space and you have five little pictures on the walls and that’s it. Do you think that there are more opportunities being made for artists? I could only speak for myself. I know people getting opportunities in main galleries and then you have people who jump over that whole gallery world and just get the attention of the people that the galleries attract. Like me doing this stuff for Wale or-- you ever heard of Ron Bass? Sounds familiar. He’s a musician? No, He does clothing. He’s a fashion designer. He’s really good. He just jumps over all of this stuff. He has that free look to his work. It’s not tainted by his journey of people criticizing him. It’s real free looking. It’s not oh, I gotta do this and gotta make sure this is like this. He just looks like he goes in and do(es) it. Its a lot of artists I know like that. Even this artist named Frank’s Ugly Art, that’s what he calls his artwork. He does work in galleries and his stuff is crazy, Basquiat-esque, unorganized, no typeline—it was so wild and I tip my hat off to him. He’s like one of us: young, hip dude, listens to hip-hop. I met him in Miami, just straight-up wearing Nikes with jean shorts with paint all over them. He’s one of those guys where I could compare myself to him. There’s a lane where artists who’s doing homegrown art can leap over nonsense to get noticed by people even bigger than just the galleries, like you can sell your stuff home, and you have things like Big Cartel, where somebody like 40 Ounce Van, who’s making hats, he now makes a living off that now. I see you’ve done some Album covers for Wale. How did that come about? Do you find yourself getting more requests for album covers and other illustration gigs? Pretty much I just contacted (Wale) about getting a poster to him and he said contact this guy. I contacted one of his friends and he was like “hey, we wanna utilize you for some single art.” That’s what happened. I did a couple new single pieces, then I did the photo of the young him for his website. It’s cool as hell because he really interacts with me. Other than me sending him art, he’ll hit me up, “yo, this is hard,” even liking a photo on Instagram, even though I remember when he did that way before I started doing stuff for him. People tell me, “yo I seen blahblahblah liked your photo.
A lot of people think I only do mixtape art. That’s annoying because you got these independent rappers hitting you up and they don’t wanna pay you nothing. I just look at it as doing art. I was doing it before I even heard of Wale. I was doing it while he was getting big. I do a lot of stuff. I really don’t enjoy doing mixtape art unless I know the ends justify the means, meaning I’m gonna get something out of it than just money, like good recognition. That’s why they’ll hit me up, be like yo,we need this in a day. In the last maybe ten years or so, more people have been wanting to get in to more creative fields than ever before. Low key, I blame Kanye West and the advent of tumblr for it. Nevertheless, as someone who’s successful in the arts, what advice would you give to someone who wants to be an artist as well? What advice would you have given yourself five years ago? I was doing photography at the time, in ’09.This is right around the time I really started getting into freelancing, right when I started (to) figure out I could make money doing art. I would say start drawing now, one. Two, don’t be so confident, because your work actually sucks, I was really confident back then, as confident as I am now, even though my old work was terrible. My photo work was good, but my drawings were terrible. I would just say start drawing now, that just would be the main thing, hands down. Just don’t stop working. A lot of people think there’s some magical thing you have to do to be recognized. Just keep working. Everyday, just try to do something that’s a layer on top of getting closer to where you want to be because it’s all about sweat equity, all about how much you put in it. When you have sweat equity, it means a lot to where you’re heading. You got a certain amount of hours into whatever you want to do. I compare it to even musicians or rappers, so to speak who make one song, post it, and tag everybody in it, instead of making a full project. Who the hell just wants to listen to one song at a time?
A lot of people in general just try to copy the layout of all these rappers and everything. Everybody wants cover art now, everybody wants this, everybody wants that. If I were to get into that, I’d be the total anti-rapper. I wouldn’t do cover art; I’d just drop a lot of videos and projects. That’s how I look at art. Art isn’t really a project thing, if you wanna do it like that, but keep doing it. Stop posting the same paintings you did, stop doing the same photos. Just keep making new shit. People wont get old with you. T-shirts ain't the only thing we could sell. Everybody ask me “are you gonna put your stuff on a t-shirt?” And one, I say no because everybody does it, but two, it’s stupid to sell t-shirts at the same price or even less than I sell my prints for and prints cost less to make because it’s paper, it’s not cloth. People don’t understand that and I don’t tell people that, I just let them assume.