Steve O’Loughlin’s Multicultural Interlace
SO: My first time being exposed to Celtic art was not till I was a freshman in college at Sacramento State and I had a class in Medieval Art History which I was just dreading because I thought medieval art would be the most boring thing I could possibly see.
FW: Oh, you probably just had books in black and white. ;^)
SO: I had a good teacher. He started through the slide show and came to the Book of Kells and he says, “Wow! Look at this stuff!” and I started looking at it and thought, Hey, I never heard of this (and here I am Irish, right?). He said that this was really an interesting thing because at the time people thought that they were a really primitive, backwards people, and here they are doing this ornate, sophisticated, technically advanced sort of thing when they were living in these little wood and stone shacks. I was very impressed with that, and it was my first introduction to it. Then I bought George Baines’ book [Celtic Knotwork and Design] which was very important to my generation. Other Celtic artists now have other influences that have come in. (It’s kinda like the Chieftains thing in music, you know? People coming up now didn’t grow up with The Chieftains.) That was the bible for that generation. I started copying that stuff and putting them in various things. I started doing that in my art school years and then not until I graduated from the Art Institute and I moved to Los Angeles in ’89 did I start to apply that sort of thing to my artwork. I switched over and started to focus more on that. Then I explored Celtic art styles and patterns with contemporary imagery. I went to art school, and that’s what you do – you reflect the world around you, you choose, and that was my emphasis, and that was what I did. That was after leaning the basics of Celtic art just like with the music. You learn the basic stuff, and once you have that, you riff on it.
One thing I’d like to do is to talk about the meaning of the knotwork, because people see it as decorative design and they see it as Ethnic Symbol for Scots, Irish, Welsh… Celtic designs have an ethnic association, and it’s used that way in the pop culture and you see them on everything now. What does it mean, though? Some of it is just decorative filler that goes in there. What it really does is show the interconnectedness of all things. It also shows the travel of life, the ins and outs in the trail or road. It has a couple of meanings at the same time. Any good symbol works on more than one level. I think that when I use that interlace pattern on my figures, which you often see, it can appear confusing. Sometimes it shows that connection between those characters symbolized in their conforming to that connecting pattern that’s beyond the visible, where it’s functioning all of the time but people are unaware that we’re literally all connected, and so it points the viewer in that direction. At least that’s how I use it in my own art.
FW: That’s what’s so alluring about the freeway patterns. {mosimage}
SO: There’s a good example of using Celtic art and the contemporary imagery because it has that one ribbon that continues all the way on the road of life and there’s this one figure caught up in the constant movement…combined with the pattern it gives it vivid energy. I especially like bright colors, but also the linear quality. Whenever I have that in my art I always caress that line with color and glowing, because you’ve just got to be in love with that line. I have always developed that and now we’re great friends and so when I do put a line down I just really embellish it, so then your eye goes over it. It’s got somewhere to go and something to enjoy there. It’s not just a harsh line, it’s got negative space between it.
FW: That’s what I like about your lines. They’re not just outlines, they’re organic outlines.
One of the things I like about your art is that you bring in all sorts of multicultural influences. Another thing is the energy that comes out of it – there’s a lot of similarity with the Huichol yarn paintings.
SO: Heh heh, I really like those.
FW: I’m not surprised!
SO: We took a trip to Cabo San Lucas and I saw some of that in the galleries and went GooGooGaGa. I have a book with hundreds of them. I just love their linear quality – that’s in all my work.
FW: There’s a spiritual energy…
SO: …and the colors that I use together to make the color pop – it’s always been that way. In that Huichol art they do the same thing where they make outlines by layering it in. Any artwork that’s linear – Aztec, Chinese, African – I’m interested in. If it has a pattern, Polynesian, totem poles…stylization is always fascinating to me as I understand that language.
FW: Now you’ve been doing public art pieces for a while. How did that start?
SO: I started to work with the city of Los Angeles on some public work projects. I applied for my very first one and I got it! I was very excited about that. These angels are 12 feet high by 7 feet. I carved wood in the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks gymnasium there at the park. They look very nice inside the gym and they’re all coated so that the kids can bang balls on them. There are two of them, and the whole theme is park things. I’ve got my little “spirit people” having a barbeque, doing different things you do in the park, like play music and basketball.
FW: Yeah, your “spirit people” are these little Celtic-interlaced, faceless anyfolks with haloes.
SO: You have to compete for these things. Sometimes you get ‘em, sometimes you don’t. So then I did this piece for the fire department. It’s very nice, right? And I worked so hard. But the thing is when you’re doing public art you always have to remember not to make it too religious because it just frightens people…The good thing about it is that I learned a lot, and these are really good designs. When I go to apply for other things they look at it and go, “Oh, Jeez! This guy does really good designs.”
FW: It has the look of Florentine or Sienese altarpieces. {mosimage}
SO: Yeah, I was using these medieval altarpieces for the framework. I had so much fun doing it, too. Then there’s the Reading Room at the library in Chatsworth. I started it last summer. That’s four 7 by 2 foot carved wood columns that arch to the top because the whole building is laid out like a church, so that whole thing’s going on there. It has kids reading at the bottom and above it has kids’ reading images in it. Anyway, that was a hit. That tree piece that you [Brooke Alberts] commissioned from me, with the mermaid playing whistle in the tree, has the same sort of idea, and my Tree of Life piece. I was talking to the librarian and she said “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a wonderful tree like that with a library theme?” I went to the school and took pictures of the kids reading, and here’s the playground, and text in here…Anyway, I printed it out and put it on plywood using a printing process, which is new, and it’s not nearly as expensive.
FW: There’s Harry Potter, an Aztec warrior, Einstein, Where the Wild Things Are…
SO: It’s about 7 feet around, and it’s very nice, and it has all sorts of library related scenes. Now there’s one in West Covina. West Covina had me use slightly different themes, same format, and again I do this on the computer.
FW: You’re becoming this Library Art Guy. SO: Exactly! And the great thing about it is it goes back to What Art Can Do. The kids come in here and go “Wow!” and they’re all excited to look at it. Though the library’s already a wonderful library and it’s doing that, here you have an accent piece to focus that energy that’s already there.
What I’m currently working on is my first big collaborative church piece. It’s fantastic. It’s a great expression of religious outpouring because it has all of these contemporary themes on it. There’s a Mary figure holding Jesus and she’s giant, right? And then all around the base of it there’s Father Peter doing the Blessing of the Animals, and on the other side there’s a couple dancing and musicians playing, and there’s a food table, and everyone has a halo. There’s an arch piece, and on the supports we’re putting Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., and a Muslim woman. There’s a big spectrum of religious representation going on here, but this does have some Celtic knotwork in the pattern. Then we use text. One of the interesting things was that we started talking about the Gay Issue, so we’re going to represent that in there. We’re going to have two men holding hands. It’s one of a dozen different themes but it’s intentionally there. That should be completed before this article comes out.
With public art I really enjoy the collaboration, where I go to the client, find out what they’d like, and then run it through my filter. They know what style I do, and it’s a great challenge for me to visually conform it to my style and make it really interesting, bright, vivid and exciting. But of course I like a whole lot of detail and things like that, so it’s great to get this list of images and text, and involve that client in the artistic process. Then they feel even more connected to those pieces, plus they more accurately reflect that community. I just love that part ‘cause then all I have to do is just Do What I Do. They also have a positive, light message. There are new influences and new themes, and where they take you, it’s very exciting.
As an artist I always want to reflect where I live, and I’ve been in LA since about ’89, and in that time I have intentionally, as in that Riot piece, been reflecting Los Angeles which lives around me. Through public art I’m trying to do it more. I really see myself as an Angeleno holding up a mirror to Los Angeles, but the prism that it goes through is this Celtic prism. It really has become my visual language, and there’s a parallel in the music. There’s a relationship between the music and the art, and who would know that? I would, because I was not a musician for many years and now I am. When I started, one of the things that attracted me to Celtic art was the patterns, the rhythms, the undulations, the color changes, the mood, the flow, and then I started playing the music and I started to realize it has its own patterns. “Oh the tune does this and then it goes over here, then you do it again” and you’re improvising on the same pattern, and you do the same thing. It becomes a very fluid thing, and you can riff on this or that, or do your variations on another tune, and the same is true for Celtic art. I see it’s my responsibility not just to repeat the ancient, wonderful patterns that we have there, but to make it so it’s relevant for today, and so that it’s living, and it’s breathing right now, it’s not just in some medieval bog or some gnarly forest, its life energy’s alive here in Philippe’s and everywhere else, and so that is being reflected with some of that Irish enthusiasm, I guess.
I love doing it but I think that the interesting thing is that what I really enjoy about my art career now is that the money making part of the equation is right in with it all the way, and that’s just as essential as the paint. When I was a young artist and I went to a junior college (American River College in Sacramento) I had a great art teacher. He gave me great fundamentals and was a great colorist, and that influenced me. He was also a Zen kind of a guy, so he told me this story (he’d tell us all these Zen stories we’d ponder, it was exotic, back in the late ‘70s) about a master who has a student who would come and ask him these questions. He asked the master, “How long does it take to attain enlightenment?” and the master said, “Well, it takes 10 years.” Then he says, “Hmm…what if I work harder than all of the other students, I just stick to my studies and apply myself more than anyone else. How long will it take me then?” and he says, “Well, then it’ll take you 20 years.” Then he says, “Oh. Well, what if I just kind of slough off and just kinda take it easy and let it happen?” and he goes, “Well then it will take you 30 years.” Well, I’m coming up on about 28 years, hahaha!…28 years of artistic pursuit, and so I think after all those years it’s taken me this long to kinda connect to society in a bigger sense and to feel like I have something that they need, and vice versa, and things seem to work out better. So anyway, that’s my enlightenment I’ve had over the last year!
FW: Well, thanks for taking the time with me! What a fun field trip we’ve had!
SO: I’m glad!
You can see Steve O’Loughlin’s art in living color at his website: www.stevenoloughlin.com where there are also links to buy some of his art in poster form or on T-shirts and mugs.
[Editor Note: Philippes the Original is downtown at 1001 N. Alameda St. www.philippes.com]