Interview: Jacob Whibley

I like to imagine that Fritz Lang, with his penchant for blown-up science textbook illustrations, and Leonardo da Vinci, with his designs for contraptions both whimsical and practical, would be totally stoked on the work of multimedia collagist Jacob Whibley. A quick survey of his artistic output reveals microscopic vistas of the still-beating hearts of impossible automata and altars for the worship of logic and ideas… or at least that’s what I see. Whibley’s work is like a blueprint for imagination, equal parts Rorschach test and mechanized mandala whose contemplation allows you access to hidden inner truths. Of course, this only raises more questions about the man behind the mysticism. He took the time to address a few of my queries about process, precision, and future projects.

From diagrammatic collages to surreal sculptural pseudo-playscapes, your work, while fantastical, seems to encourage the perception that it is meant to be used for a specific function: creation, recreation, meditation. What kind of purpose does art serve for you? What effect do you want it to have on your audience?

Art has always been about exploration and inspiration for me. I get excited working with new materials and looking for new bits of ephemera. Each piece is both an Lose Weight Exercise in solving spatial/compositional problems and the examination of a variety of themes: interstitial spaces, unfulfilled histories, new combinations of forms, and unfulfilled potentials. For the viewer, I want to instill that same sense of confusion, curiosity, and contemplation.

Are you well-versed in the workings of machines or do you relate to these industrial forms on a more symbolic level?

I definitely relate to them on a more symbolic level. I pull inspiration from their complexity, form, arrangement, and the precision in which they are crafted.

Who and/or what are your major inspirations?

Fragments of things, images, sounds, a miscommunication, the negative space created by two buildings, the specific way a page has been folded or how it is falling apart… Mostly it’s the idea that the piece of ephemera I’m using has a history – it had a purpose, a unique form for that purpose and now that purpose, more often than not, has passed.

The elements in your collages certainly read as abstract, but the materials used to create them are immediately familiar. Is it important that nonrepresentational art still be relatable?

Personally speaking, I enjoy having materials that are relatable in my collages – I enjoy establishing connections and creating confusion in the viewer through how I have used those elements. Commenting on nonrepresentational art as a whole – not at all.

What attracts you to such precise compositions? Do you have a formal process for selecting and arranging these shapes or does it come naturally to you when you have the materials in front of you?

The precision is a result of my need to offset the abstract nature of each collage with a sense of intention. To imply that there is a purpose to the shifting structural and topographic forms, though no end form can be predicted.

Each collage comes about usually in one of two ways: I either have a generalized form i wish to pursue as a starting point or I select a fragment of paper from one of my many envelopes and piles, place it down on the support and then continue from there. The piece grows with each successive addition – resulting in further spatial/compostional problems to solve.

Do you view yourself as primarily a collage artist who uses sculpture and illustration to express ideas that are difficult to capture with found materials/in two dimensions or is collage just a minor facet of your work that most people (myself included) seem to focus on?

I guess all of my efforts can be seen as some aspect of collage – my personal collage/sculputre work and the work I do with Team Macho‘s collaborative drawings/paintings. Team Macho is the meshing together of five people’s ideas, esthetics, obsessions and friendships and each piece is the result of that. We all use a myriad of media to solve the pieces we are working on together. Within the context of the collaboration I tend to focus on more objective collage whereas with my personal work I prefer to work abstractly and non-objectively.

I love the designs you made to mark different sections in The Monkey’s Paw book store. Have you gotten much feedback on those from the everyday customers? Have they been able to decipher their meaning easily? Do they appreciate a little confusion as long as it’s aesthetically pleasing?

The labels were only up for a short time as part of a fundraiser/promotion for the store. A handful of local artist were asked to make labels for certain section and not specifically say what they were. The shop’s owner Stephen Fowler prefers that the shelves remain label-less to help encourage the sense of discovery by the customers and I took that as the starting point for each of the illustrations – to visually remain cryptic and make the customers push for that connection, looking over the books on the shelf and then back at the label to figure out the analogy being made.

What kinds of projects are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on some paper and wooden sculptures for a show happening the end of August at Narwhal Art Projects called “DAZZLE” and Team Macho, the art collective i’m part of, is having its first show in two year at Narwhal called “Hibernation Sickness” this November. I also have a few print pieces in the works which i will hopefully have done for a small print fair in October.