Jonah Jacobs

I am a self-taught artist who has spent the last ten years experimenting with all types of strange materials. To date I have participated in seventy one shows throughout my home state of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York city. My work has won awards in each of the last four years. I have also been fortunate to have my work published in two books a college art/literary journal and a London based art zine.

Statement
I am an artist who lives and works in Cleveland Ohio. I was born in Denmark but have lived in the United States for most of my life. I am a graduate of Antioch College. I am also an Army veteran who served in S. Korea and in the 82nd Airborne Division. Nature presents itself in a dizzying array of organic shapes and structures. From the graceful spiral arms of galaxies to the nebulous webs created by tree roots, to the hexagonal geometry of honeycomb – the structures of nature are wondrous creations where beauty meets function, and the repeating of simple patterns give rise to an enigmatic complexity. The main emphasis of my artwork is to recreate the grandeur and complexity of natural structures. Whereas some artists paint two-dimensional representations of bushes, flowers, or other naturally occurring elements onto canvas, instead, my work recreates such naturally occurring structures through the crafting of organic sculptural forms. My work also explores how beauty and complexity emerge from the repetition of simple forms. My unconventional forms are matched by my use of unconventional materials and technique. Most of my work is breaded with oatmeal. The oatmeal along with sand and plaster gives my work a textural quality not seen in other works of sculpture. The oatmeal also acts as a sponge that soaks up the various dyes. This gives my work a strange vibrancy and natural blending of tones, as opposed to the plastic feel acrylic paint would give were I to use that as an external covering. Many of my organic looking sculptures are created through a method of layering. This is similar to the way rings are formed on a tree, the difference being that my sculptures grow vertically from a “genetic blueprint” as opposed to trees which grow outward from an inner ring. Another technique I use so as a to get spontaneous and erratic organic shapes is to use fire to shape my smaller pieces. These pieces are then combined by the thousands to create complex organic forms. This technique imprints nature onto my work by capturing the windy conditions during the moment of creation. The more windy the day is, the more chaotic my individual pieces look. And lastly, my artwork pushes the boundaries of unconventional materials by using such materials as: cardboard, egg cartons, dryer sheets, yarn and other textiles, cardboard tubes, railroad gravel, sand, salt, and of course oatmeal. In summation, my work grapples with how complexity is created out of the repetition of simple shapes, showcases the structural qualities inherent in nature, is a study in the use of unconventional materials, and lastly, explores through the repetitive process of labor, the relationship between monotonous work, skill, and the haphazard and organic ways in which forms take shape.

Interview with Jonah Jacobs

Questions by Marcus Civin

Hi Jonah. One of your works is titled “Pyroclastic Flow.” It is a sculpture. It is maybe also a painting. The materials you used include cardboard, oatmeal, plaster, sand, wood, paint, and dye. I see browns, reds, and some yellow. The piece is large, eight feet in one direction. Can you remind us what “pyroclastic” means and how this relates to what you wanted to accomplish with this piece and perhaps what you’d like to see in the world?
A pyroclastic flow is the fast-moving ejecta expelled from an exploding volcano. Naming pieces is oftentimes a difficult process, especially when you are creating artworks which are abstractions of naturally occurring structures. If you are too specific with a title the viewer tends to adopt your interpretation as opposed to creating their own. This piece was vaguely inspired by magma, especially the bright orange and red magma that peeks out from the black hardening rock as it cools. I did not however, want to call it Magma #1 or something like that because I am never actually trying to mimic nature but merely capture its essence. Naming it something specific would ruin the abstract quality of the piece because it would predispose the viewer to an idea. I watch a lot of nature shows and take a million pictures – I am inspired by nature’s endless mystery, but instead of creating something specific, I just kind of let it distill in my mind, allowing those mysterious connections to form on their own. I trust my mind to make connections that I am not even conscious of. Titles on the other hand tend to be very deliberate, and hence, a pain. I tend to work backwards on them. After a piece is done, I ask myself what it reminds me of. Then I begin to look up names which are technical and which remind me of some facet of the structure. I like technical names because they don’t give much away. Unfortunately, technical names don’t always fit and sometimes they just sound ridiculous.

This piece actually has a connection to fire, for all of the individual pieces were created using my fire sculpting technique. This piece was meant to resemble chunky rock like structures. I love the chunky and clunky feel of dirt and the haphazard geometry of rocks. I also enjoy the compressed strata of geological formations and the story they tell, which is of course, is as old as the earth.

I would like to see more art which reflects the actual structure of nature – not just oversimplified geometric forms. I also have a dystopian or perhaps utopian view depending on your perspective, of trash coming alive and forming colonies which spread across the globe. My work is made of a lot of upcycled materials so I hope someday it will come alive and spread out, repurposing materials as it organizes itself into living biomes.    

Do you mind talking about if and how you work with repetition, iteration, or change?
My work is extremely tedious and painstaking to create. It’s built up from layers of cardboard, or like my “polyp” pieces, consists of thousands of individual pieces which are also packed with many of their own individual flourishes. I like the idea of emergent properties and am convinced that nature’s beauty lies in the repetition of form and color. I like taking a simple form and a few colors and repeating them -- altering each individual piece ever so slightly. What emerges from the simplicity is a complex organic sculpture whose subtle richness captures the true essence of nature’s beauty.  

In your work, I see cotton swabs, gravel, yarn, something like gauze. I think the gauze is dryer sheets! Can you say how and why do you gravitate towards certain materials?
First of all, I am a self-taught artist. I spent the last ten years experimenting with material and color. I use what I find and what I can distort. At first, using strange material was out of necessity. Money of course, was an issue. The limitations of material are exasperating but also freeing. It’s a challenge to see just how far you can push a material. If you have too much at your disposal you tend not to innovate, for you go with what has a proving track record. Using mostly upcycled materials allows me to experiment, for their low cost and ubiquitous availability allows me to do all sorts of experiments on them. I can deconstruct them, burn them, rip them apart, dye them, stain them, basically destroy them at little or no cost. The material however, is not the main emphasis of my work. I hope that when people view my work, they are intrigued by what it is made of but not totally sure of what it is.    

Spiders make webs. Humans might find these a nuisance, a sign of neglect or a space that needs better lighting, painting, dusting, or cleaning, but for spiders, the spider web is a necessity. For mathematicians and some artists as well, it is a marvel. I remember reading about how the artist Vija Celmins cultivated spiders and spider webs in her studio while she was made them the subject of her hyper-realist drawings. Can you tell the readers here about your studio? What do you save, cultivate, collect, or catalog that informs what you do? What is your spider web?
It’s funny you should mention spider webs, because I often tell people that spiders pay my work the sincerest of compliments. Every time I find a spider living in my sculpture, I think ah ha, fooled you. It’s not really and ecosystem. I do hope it reminds them of nature though.

I save a lot of cardboard because I use so much of it. I also save paper, fabrics, yarns, Styrofoam, sand, cotton swabs, Polyfil, napkins, dryer sheets, cardboard tubes, and saw dust – just to name some of the materials I save. I also use a lot of oatmeal because almost all of my work is breaded then dyed with fabric dyes. That is how I get my color. For inspiration though, I turn to the many photographs I take when hiking in the woods and fields. I love holes, dirt, decaying trees, slime, muck, rocks, basically anything that has texture, an interesting color palette, and unique form.   

Maybe I watch too much bad TV, but when I look at your work, my mind wanders to some darker places: biological weapons, germs, toxins, bacteria, fungus...
Yes, yes, and yes. I love all that stuff, well maybe not the harmful things, though germs also have an interesting structure. Sulphur pits are amazing, fungus is always a joy. Fumaroles make me giddy. I like to think of my work as being beautiful, but at times slightly menacing.

I am interested in mess. I work on a University campus. It seems power is often not having to clean up after yourself. At the Barrick Museum of Art in Las Vegas on the campus where I work, Justin Favela and Ramiro Gomez just created an exhibition about the people who clean up in casinos, largely Latinx immigrants. Justin and Ramiro affirmed for me that it is important to think about who cleans up. Is mess a right or a privilege? What mess is waste and what can we use again? How does my mess prevent you from accessing what you need? Can some messes be generative? I come to these kinds of questions in relation to your work because it seems to me you are something of an accumulator or an organizer of various chaos. Your forms contain forms that contain other forms. The forms within forms seem to be on the brink of something. One tube or nub could maybe pop or lunge out. But, in actuality, they stay static, controlled. I wonder: what do you think about organization and mess?
Those are some extremely poignant questions. Mess making is both a right and a privilege depending on the context. A whole dissertation could be written on what it means to make a mess, who gets to pollute, who has to deal with messes, etc. I have a very small work space, too small for my ambitions. I dream of being able to make a mess in a way that does not hinder my well-being or my art. Having space is correlational to wealth and making a mess without worries is a privilege that I do not have. I am always making a mess, and always worrying about how to contain my mess. I use dyes, a lot of paint gets spilled, I burn cardboard, there’s always plaster dust – only so much is permissible when you are renting a small space or worse, working in your bedroom.

I am constantly trying to find ways of upcycling my mess. I recently tried a few experiments using the cardboard dust I created from grinding my sculptures. I also recently began using the Styrofoam I used as armatures for a few mixed media pieces. I do not like to waste things, but unfortunately these days storage is getting to be a problem. Also, messes have inspired many of my art pieces. Sometimes an accidental color combination while using dyes will inspire a color palette I wouldn’t otherwise have thought of.

Organization and mess are constructs we impose on the world. All things tend towards self-organization. Chaos to me, is just the inability to see or understand the laws of nature. We label things as being chaotic only when they do not conform to our sense of order. When we look at an oil spill, we rightfully, frown upon the mess it makes of the environment. I am no fan of chaos or destruction, but such things do conform to nature. They are neither haphazard nor unattached from causality and sometimes are quite predictable. Beauty is no exception. It is complicated, messy, and yet, with a discerning eye, ubiquitous. Take a field sprinkled with wild flowers. No doubt, when in bloom, it is beautiful to behold. And yet, those plants, whose seeds are chaotically strewn about on the wind, carried by birds, or ingested by various animals, proliferate in dynamic, colorful clusters. Patches of yellow mingle with tiny purple and white flowers. A quilt made from wondrous colors and varied shapes greet our eyes. It may look beautiful and it is, but those plants are all in competition with one another. Each root cluster fighting for the soil’s nutrients, each leafy blade fighting for the sun’s rays, as the flower next to it threatens to grow taller and hence shade it from the light it so desperately craves. A flower’s color is not for us, but for its pollinators. The rich odor of a rose, is likewise not meant for us. A field of flowers with its haphazard display of flowers is chaotic and always changing, albeit slowly to our eyes. Everything is always in tension and flux. Unseen forces are always at play, altering the world around at time scales we cannot perceive. To me, “messiness” in nature does not exist. Nature is constantly destroying and renewing itself, but messes seem to be mostly reserved to human activity. The creative mess of an artist, the destructive mess of entire industries – I am sure messes embody within them, not only perverse rationales but are also the necessary beginnings for any creative pursuit.              

How do urban spaces impact and inform your thinking?
Having grown up in a rust belt city hit hard by industrial pollution, job loss, and now renewal, I constantly come into contact with glaring contradictions. As an artist I find myself straddling two distinct worlds. There’s the world of art as commodity where art mingles with wealth and artists only get paid when wealthy buyers buy their work. There’s the world where galleries, intentionally or not march lockstep towards the gentrification of entire neighborhoods. Development comes quick in areas where there is money to be made but in poor neighborhoods the roads are crumbling, and there is little to no investment in jobs. As an artist I identify with and think a lot about social concerns and how my work plays into those concerns, and yet, I am also chasing down opportunities and networking in ways that will secure me buyers. For art to be truly transformative there has to be a way for artists to make a living which is not beholden to wealth and power. Art also has to be in those places which need it most, for it is my hope that art can be regenerative and speak to the grander aspirations of humankind. Art can’t just be about making bold statements or just about making pretty things. And worse, art certainly shouldn’t be about the beautifying and hyping of the latest condo project of some rich developer. When a teenager who hasn’t experienced much artwork comes into a gallery and I see that glimmer in their eye, the twinkle which says “Wow, so much is possible with these hands”. – that seed of possibility is what needs to be nourished. Let them create, let them work, let them make. And let us do everything we can to make that a reality. Urban spaces say a lot about who and what we value. Art for me is about redefining the possible. Art is about transformation and the reconceptualization of space. And yet, I must admit, I do not know how to go about any of this in a manner that gets beyond the physicality of the finished art piece. Most days I am busy working my day job and using what little time there is left over to transform waste into art. There is so much decay and ruin in my home city – thousands of buildings are torn down every year. If I can turn waste material into art why can’t we do more than bulldoze homes, throwing the remnants of those buildings along with the memories they once housed, into a landfill?           

You studied philosophy at Antioch College. What writers or philosophers have something to say that you feel is important to you today?
That was close to twenty years ago now. I hate to say it but I have forgotten so much of what I learned back then. Herbert Marcuse sticks with me a lot, especially when I think about the embodiment of our reason in the physical structures we build. That is, how capitalism and form/functionality intercede with one another. Mostly though, I turn to nature. A good David Attenborough program is far more inspiring to me (artistically speaking that is) these days than a book on logic is.   

What do you think is exciting about where you are in Ohio? Who are your peers in your community?
I like the accessibility of arts in Ohio. Although there are those venues where art is cliquish and a bit snobbish for my tastes, by and large the art scene here in Cleveland Ohio is rooted in a love of expression. Cleveland can at times have a real gritty D.I.Y. sensibility about it. It’s a place where exploration is possible without necessarily having to worry about pissing people off.

Peers? I’m not sure. There are definitely a host of artists whose work I like but not so many working in the same vein as me. Most of the artists I identify with don’t live in Cleveland, Ohio. Still though, there is a lot of talent in this city and many truly inspiring people.  

What are you up to today?
I currently have work in two shows and am getting ready for another show in Columbus Ohio. I am also in talks with a local art museum to transform an entire room into a walk-in cave like bio-scape. 

What’s next for you?
Besides making some amazing new art pieces, I would like to take a little time to try and figure out how to meet people who could open some doors for me. Living in the Midwest makes it damn near impossible for me to get my art into venues where I think it would have a larger impact. I love sharing my artwork with people. I truly believe my artwork deserves an audience beyond the confines of Ohio. I thank Maake magazine for helping me in this endeavor. Without publications like yours, it would be a far greater struggle for artists like me to share my work with the world. 

To find out more about Jonah and his work check out his website.