In our final recording from our road trip to Princeton we speak to illustrator and storyteller Chase Bowman, also known as Oddy Gumption. Recorded on a spring day amongst chirping birds and children at play, we discussed how his love for storytelling gave birth to his interest in illustration.
All told, it might be one of our favorite recordings because it truly felt like a representation of life throughout our region. With that being said, our region does not always care for its people equally and Chase gave a wonderful account of his reasons to stay and flourish in a place that can be considered less than hospitable. We truly hope you take as much from this recording as we did!
Chase's Instagram
You can follow us on Instagram to keep up with what we're doing here.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider giving us a review. If you'd like to reach out to us, we can also be contacted by email: themountainmadepodcast@gmail.com
MountainMadePodcast.com
Music Provided by: Darrin Hacquard
In our final recording from our road trip to Princeton we speak to illustrator and storyteller Chase Bowman, also known as Oddy Gumption. Recorded on a spring day amongst chirping birds and children at play, we discussed how his love for storytelling gave birth to his interest in illustration.
All told, it might be one of our favorite recordings because it truly felt like a representation of life throughout our region. With that being said, our region does not always care for its people equally and Chase gave a wonderful account of his reasons to stay and flourish in a place that can be considered less than hospitable. We truly hope you take as much from this recording as we did!
Chase's Instagram
You can follow us on Instagram to keep up with what we're doing here.
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider giving us a review. If you'd like to reach out to us, we can also be contacted by email: themountainmadepodcast@gmail.com
MountainMadePodcast.com
Music Provided by: Darrin Hacquard
Hey everyone, thanks again for listening to another episode of the Mountain Aid Podcast. Before we get into the episode, if you haven't already, please take the time to leave a review on your respective listening platform. It really helps us help artists, which is the whole point of this entire thing. Anyways, we hope you enjoyed the episode and we'll see you again in two weeks. You sir, are Chase Bowman, the only other Chase who ever graced this miserable podcast recording. You're kind enough to let us in your home, so thank you, number one.
Speaker 2:No problem.
Speaker 1:And I genuinely didn't expect to come in here and you have all your works on your wall Right. It's awesome, thank you. We're sitting in your living room, slash. This is where you do your work, i assume.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd call it my studio, sure.
Speaker 1:Is there anywhere you don't do work in this house?
Speaker 2:No, I've got. My house is relatively small, as you can see, And so I've got my kitchen, the studio, the other studio and my bedroom, And that's it.
Speaker 1:So this place is more studio than living space Yes, Do you prefer it that way? Yes, yeah, so where did you grow up, man?
Speaker 2:I grew up in Motoko, west Virginia. It's in Mercer County. When I lived there, there was about 200 people Less now, i think And so it was a really you know small place with a constant cast of characters which kind of comes in later with my work.
Speaker 1:You. By the way, if you listen to Chris DeMaria's recording. We try to ask everybody who's like a local person that they think everybody ought to know about, and you were his.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so nice.
Speaker 1:It's like our stuff goes pretty well together.
Speaker 2:I think it's on opposite ends of the spectrum with a common thread in between. I tell this to everybody Chris DeMaria is my favorite living artist and I'm very lucky for him to be my friend, so I think that's a really beneficial thing to enjoying your local artists more than sort of ones that you never meet because you get to follow their career for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you all meet?
Speaker 2:I read an article about him a blog post I think, and I just can't remember what it was actually the article. but I saw his work and I was bowled over. It had his email in it. I emailed him immediately. He was like I can't believe what I'm seeing here, so let's be friends. And he said okay. And I was like, oh, i don't know what to do now. So we've just been on a separate, but paths within eyesight of one another for a while now, because he's not too far away from us.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, he's in Floyd.
Speaker 1:You grow up here in Mercer County, were you always interested in art.
Speaker 2:No, no. And I would still say that art is not necessarily my primary interest, believe it or not. So I think my first love is story, narrative and poetry, but not poetry that you might be thinking like, the poetry of the story and what it tells you and what values it imparts, and things like that are really what interests me. So from as far back as I can remember, i've been immersed in a world of story. All my books that I read are nonfiction, because I find the reality of people's stories so much more interesting than something. They're wilder stories than anything you could ever make up, you know, because the possibilities are limitless And I just find that I've always found that super, super interesting, and so my art has come about as a means to an ends of getting a story out there, because I'm not necessarily a writer. I do write, but it's not the first thing I go to, so I tell stories visually. So story is my primary interest.
Speaker 1:Do you have a favorite story? personally, i realize that's like asking to make their favorite child, but favorite story? you've ever been told, read or learned of or created yourself.
Speaker 2:It's not a favorite story, but it's one that stuck with me the longest probably. My parents are very, very interesting people to me, and so they tell me a lot of stories about you know the area. That's another thing about living where you grew up is that as you get older, the context for where you're at changes, so you understand where you're at more in different stages of your life, and so I remember hearing things when I was very young from my folks meaning absolutely nothing to me, and then by the time I get to the age I'm at now, the context of that story has changed and I get a deeper, richer understanding of what was being said in the first place. But the story that I'm thinking of in particular is my mom told me a story about when she was a teenager. She was driving with a friend of hers And though her friend's dad was driving in a car in front of them and a car actually hit that car and killed her friend's father right in front of them, and during that incident the song Time of the Season by the Zombies was playing, which is a very spooky song, and so you know she always associates that song with that, and I find that a really compelling, powerful story for me.
Speaker 2:That's taken me in a million different directions because number one is true, but there's this undercurrent of strangeness to it. You know that takes it outside of reality. You know the setting, the song, you know which. If it had been a different song it wouldn't have been as impactful as the story. But this is one of my favorite songs and it's got this really creepy sort of 1960s hippy, witchy vibe to it And so like that juxtaposition of this and I hate that word, i'm sorry, but this juxtaposition of this really stark reality that is harsh, and then this kind of weird flowy, supernatural ask vibe to it, that kind of covers the whole situation, was a really powerful mix for me. That kind of took me in a lot of directions.
Speaker 1:And the growing up here. You probably are well aware of stories that have taken place here and cetera. I don't know if you guys feel this way, but I feel like here, our region in particular, is just full of a bunch of characters.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And they're all like, unique and different in their own way. So you're interested in stories. What made you decide to start putting those on paper, or drawing, or painting?
Speaker 2:My art career started very, very young when my dad showed me how to draw a thing which was happened to be a shark, and I really saw that there was some potential there to I'm like I can do this, i just do this and this and this, and then I have this image that didn't exist before, and I thought that was really cool, and so I did that for a long time. I just enjoyed drawing. I would draw anything. I loved dinosaurs when I was little, and so I wanted to be a paleontologist, like every five year old, and so I made a book of dinosaurs 200 dinosaur drawings And so I liked putting things together, collecting information, i liked collecting all that kind of stuff into a package that felt satisfying to me, and so stories started getting inserted into the pleasure of that.
Speaker 2:Because when I was about nine years old, i discovered Marie Antoinette, and again there's this sitting of two things next to each other. In that story She wears these beautiful pastel ball gowns They're lace and frilly and pearls and roses and all these sort of roco-co, lush, sugary things, and then she had her head chopped off, you know, and that's a bloody, gruesome experience, and so I remember very clearly at that young of an age. Hearing that story and it just the sitting of those two things that didn't seem to go together, made a perfect thing for me, you know, because I enjoyed the frilly beautiful, sweet part of that story, the extravagance of it, and then I also enjoyed the subverting of it with this dark slash across it, and so that's kind of the first time I remember, you know, laying out a series of facts and then tying together with poetry in the middle, and I found that process really beautiful, and so I've just kind of done that one way or another for the rest of my life to this point.
Speaker 1:It's not quit yet, let's have a night. Okay, so you trace this thing all the way back to learn to draw a shark. Yes, when did you decide? because now you are an artist, whether you want to, you know, you consider yourself that as your primary.
Speaker 2:Oh well, yeah, I do, I do.
Speaker 1:And then it's a career for you now. You went to school for this. Why?
Speaker 2:Why? Because when I was a teenager I was having a lot of problems in school. I was getting bullied for a million different reasons, and so I started doing the typical teenage thing, my version of it, which is being rebellious, you know, and sort of you know, angsty 90s kid. You know that I was trying my best to be that thing, which was, you know, in retrospect, really sad. But I didn't care when we're the other, if I went to school or not. I didn't have a career plan. I didn't want to go to college. I did not give one, i would have a care about any of it. But I sort of realized I had to do something. So the one thing I had that I didn't absolutely snarl my nose at was drawing. Like I love to do it, i love to do it. And so I applied for one art school to kind of get people off my back And, shockingly, i got in and it was. It was a life changer. It's funny story about that My guidance counselor in high school.
Speaker 2:As much as I love this area, it's not always fully understanding of a creative personality. There's complications there, you know. And so my high school guidance counselor suggested, with a totally straight face, that I become a car mechanic. To this day, i think, like anybody who's ever spoken to me for more than five minutes would know, that is the most inappropriate advice. What makes you think I would be good at that? You know, i wish I was, but I'm just not. I live in a fantasy world 23 hours a day, you know. So I look at a car and I'm like does it go vroom vroom? Then we're good, you know. And so beyond that I don't know what to do. So that is what started my art career in earnest was going to school at the Cleveland Institute of Art. You know I didn't mention this before My dad was a coal miner, and so he was a coal miner for over 45 years, 40 years, something around. I mean, he's retired now, thank God, but he's gone.
Speaker 1:It's good He haven't had the кож yet What did he say whenever you said, hey, i want to, because that's something we run into is you know you got, like your dad, hard nose dude probably works in the mines.
Speaker 2:He's a Vietnam veteran. Yeah, he works in the mines.
Speaker 1:Is there a more like hard nose experience? All right, i'm going to go over to Vietnam and then I want to come back and work in the mines.
Speaker 2:You know, the number one person that's influenced me in my life is my dad. It's funny that you would say hard nose. If you ever met my dad, he's the least hard nose person you've ever met. He's funny, he's gregarious, he's empathetic, which is one of the things that taught me in my life to never trust a stereotype. because, i list, my dad was a Vietnam veteran. You know he was drafted and, you know, sent to a war when he was 18. He spent 40 years in the coal mines and people would say, oh yeah, he's probably a really rough and tumble character, you know. and then he pops out, this kid who is the opposite of any of that a roly-poly, intellectually bent, sissy essentially. And the thing of it is is he would defy every single one of those stereotypes that you come up with for him.
Speaker 1:What is it about him? do you think that made him that way, Kindness, And is that something that he was taught, or is that just in his fiber? I think both.
Speaker 2:His mother, my grandma, my granny Janice, was very much like it. She was raised on top of a mountain in Virginia. With you know, there's a series of events in every single person's life where you are presented with a choice. This is again the facts of your situation are not going to lock you into place to anyone. Course of action. The facts are just a jumping off point between your choice. Here's I live on a mountain with no running water In West Virginia. I could give in to the stereotype or the choice that someone else tells me I have to make, or I could not. And so my grandmother was a very funny, very intelligent, very classy person who was kind to literally every single human being ever People that didn't deserve it. And my dad is exactly the same way. And so I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of a You, let us come here to your house. You had coffee ready.
Speaker 2:Eh, but I'm more like a teddy bear that has broken glass sewn into it. I have a personality that seems soft, but I'm not as nice as my dad. I'm not as kind as my dad. I wish I was. Well, you all see, he's the kindest person you know, so He is He really honestly, And so that has always been a very interesting thing to me because I grew up here. I grew up in Matoka, a dilapidated I'm sorry to anybody that listening to this that lives in Matoka, but I'm one of you.
Speaker 1:You were posting pictures of it. It looks Everything's grown up. Was there a Ferris wheel in one of these? They're like shiny, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And when I was young, there was a roller coaster, There was a scrambler, and all of them had these kind of weeds growing up. That's changed. You know a lot of those have been taken down, but I drove by that every day.
Speaker 2:And so, like this sort of spooky natural, you know, flowers and berries as a stand in for spiritual, you know signifier or supernatural thing has been from a very. I grew up in a ghost town. There was a ghost amusement park that I drove past to school every day. How does that aesthetic not seep into you?
Speaker 1:Did you finish at?
Speaker 2:Cleveland? No, i didn't, because my dad the whole reason I started. That's No, I was just curious. My dad had a coal mining accident when I was 21, and his arm from the elbow to his fingertips is paralyzed. Most people don't notice it, but he can't actually move his wrist. There was a mine collapse, a roof collapse, and he Both of his legs were broken. His arm was broken. He had to relearn how to walk.
Speaker 2:At the time, cleveland Institute of Art was a five-year school and I quit in my fourth year to come home because of that, and that was another one of those turning point moments, but it turned out for the best. At the time I was devastated. There was a lot going on. I started waiting tables for a couple of years and then I moved to San Francisco from there and then I did that for almost a decade.
Speaker 2:I don't want to get into the ins and outs of it, but basically it boiled down to wanting to see the world. I wanted to be as far away from people who would have a judgment one way or the other. I wanted to see what I was capable of, and so I moved as far away as I possibly could with a suitcase and lived there, went to school, dropped out because I was really wild in and out, and that was another thing. I learned a lot there And so I cut my teeth in the art world there, i think because I was showing shows, not high-end gallery shows that you would think about, but put together ramshackle little things that were really fun and punky.
Speaker 1:Was your work similar, then to what?
Speaker 2:it is now. No, my work is different every 10 years or so. I'm a shapeshifter and so every once in a while I have to shed a skin and then I'm something else completely And I like that. And so right now it's different than it's ever been. But I see common threads, because now I'm middle-aged and then I've got plenty of time behind me and so I can look back and see where there's commonality and that's what the line I'm interested in What's common between this and this and this and this.
Speaker 2:And what do they say about me? Because I'm deeply narcissistic and self-absorbed, so I want to know what makes me tick, because I don't know. And then I want to also give something out from that, because one of the things I noticed in my art travels was that a lot of art is mostly about the artist, and so my goal is to tell a story, to communicate, and hopefully somebody can pick something up from that. I'm not going to tell them what it is, but I want that And I know that's a very broad statement that might be very insulting to people. Artists do things because for the artist or whatever, but that's just been my experience.
Speaker 1:Clearly you're back here in Princeton. Did you immediately get associated with a college?
Speaker 2:No, i moved back from San Francisco and my dad had just been diagnosed with kidney cancer and so it wasn't looking good. He had a kidney removed and so I wanted to move back to be with my family, because, at the end of the day, this is one of the things I love about our region and people do it in different ways, and it surprised me that I felt the same way. It's like I could go out in the world anywhere and have wonderful adventures, and that would be great, but I would not be able to live with myself if I missed time with my dad and my mom and my sister because I was out doing all those things.
Speaker 2:And so it was more important for me to come home and be a part of a unit than it was to go out and do that anymore. And so I decided that if I was going to be home because I'd been a wild child for such a long time, that I needed to finally buckle down and get my degree then that led to my graduate degree, and then that led to the teaching, which was basically kind of an accident, but it was again one of the things that just happened to turn out to be such a good thing for me.
Speaker 1:How did that accident transpire?
Speaker 2:After graduate school I tried really hard to apply for jobs anywhere I could find a position, and I was turned down for every single one of them, And at the time I was going through sort of a struggle And so I was having some mental health issues, partially because I could not find a job. I was living with my parents in my mid 30s. That's nowhere a lot of people want to be If you have dreams and goals for yourself, but that's the situation I found myself in, And then I decided to do whatever I had to do to get those degrees, And the school happened to have a position open after two years of living with my parents and I applied for it and luckily I got it, And I think that the circumstances just coincided in a way that happened to keep me here. Honestly, I don't know if that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:No, i mean. so your father sounds like he's on the up and up now. Yes, so it would have been easy for you to say okay, things have chilled out here with the family, it's time to go elsewhere again. Yeah, it could. Yeah, but then you have like a career that may makes it difficult to leave.
Speaker 2:You know, i could make it seem like this was my end goal the whole time, that I wanted to be a professor, an art professor, and I wanted to have a career. No, honestly, the honest truth is I wanted to be out there being a wild person and drinking, and the truth is that I could not survive anywhere but here. So I am not good at taking care of myself. I'm not good without a support system. I'm not good without my family. You know, i'm not able to do the things that most people do to keep themselves afloat, no matter how much I tell myself that I am. The fact is I'm not.
Speaker 2:So I have flourished in a way here that I have never flourished in my life. When I was trying to run away from here, you know, i would run away from here and I would get in trouble and I'd screw up and I'd lose everything, and then I'd come right back and then I'd go out and I'd lose everything and I'd come right back And the minute I decided to plant roots exactly where I came from is when my life started growing and flourishing. So I wish I could give a really romantic answer about, like you know, i wanted to be here the whole time and all that. But no, i really wanted to run away, and the peace in my life which is the first time I've ever had it has come from just accepting that, just accepting that I could not live anywhere else in the way that I'm thriving right now.
Speaker 1:Functionally, functionally.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Living anywhere Exactly, And where are you creating like this? whenever you were elsewhere?
Speaker 2:Everywhere, everywhere I've ever been, i draw about nine to 10 hours a day.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you because, as most people do, falling to this trap of like playing on my phone before I go to bed and you'll have Instagram stories up if you drawing, and then I'll go to bed and I'll wake up about five and it's like, okay, well, chase just posted something. Oh, then, you just posted something again. You appear to draw constantly. I do you do it for work, also I do. And then you appear to draw some more. I do. Do you ever get tired of art?
Speaker 1:no never, do you ever run out of the ideas no, i don't never could you survive if you couldn't do this?
Speaker 2:no, i wouldn't want to. This is the only thing I care about. As much as I love my job and I do, legitimately, honestly love my job it is a means to an end, at the end of the day, to support my art, and so the job I have now is the perfect job for me, i feel, because I don't think of anything else but art. I don't think of anything else but it. I don't want to. I don't watch TV. I have tons of books that I read, maybe one every couple of, whenever, but mostly I buy a hard copy book and then I buy the audible book so that I can listen to the book, but then I can show people I read that book but I've actually listened to that book, you know, so that I don't have to take a pause for my drawing, like anything that distracts me visually has to be paired out so that I can keep my eyes on my drawing.
Speaker 1:So I listen to podcasts, i listen to books so Chase is sitting in front of a wall of all of his drawings or sitting here recording this. Seeing him in person is so different than seeing him on like Instagram. I'm sure which is no shit, sure locked. I didn't expect him to be so large yeah, most people.
Speaker 2:I want to say, like, what you're seeing on the wall is the handpicked. If you went into the small studio, i've got a three foot high stack of paper that are rejects and then I've got two sets of flat files that are stuffed with rejects. I work all the time but I'm very, very picky about what gets seen and so like I want to apologize to anybody that follows me on Instagram. I know y'all, i know I know what I'm like.
Speaker 1:I'm there, i'm sorry well, when, after uh so Shannon was sick the day that Chris came by and I was a familiar with your work. But then Chris was like hey, you know, chase Bome? I said hey, shannon, you gotta check this out, and it happened to be the day that you wiped everything. I do that all the time except one very realistic, wonderfully beautifully drawn penis. So then I'm just like uh, and I think it's just a dick there. Yeah, the thing of it is.
Speaker 2:This is a perfect opportunity for me to explain the Instagram thing. I get a lot of feedback about my Instagram habit and the way I operate on it. I curate within an inch of its life, instagram is more about me me, i just said. Like people who do that are whatever, but like it's more about me than the followers, i use it as a tool, like it's a real-time tool where I can look and see how things go together so I can make sure my aesthetic is staying cohesive.
Speaker 2:Nothing goes on that Instagram unless it is cohesive to the aesthetic I'm trying to establish. And so, just like you see the works on the wall here, they're individual pieces but they're not meant to be seen individually. They have to be seen as a unit for you to understand what I'm trying to accomplish. So, like, no matter what work I've done since way back in a million years ago, my way of thinking about art is that this is the chase Bowman story, slash Audi gumption story, and so, like I have to control that narrative for right or for right or wrong. That's the way now.
Speaker 1:Are you controlling that more for yourself, or, yeah, for myself. Give a shit. What other people I don't. I don't give too much of a shit sorry what you literally just said yeah
Speaker 2:that's fair. Um so um. I don't give a shit what people think, but I do do. At the same time, i'll listen to the feedback. The feedback affects me, but I know at the end of the day I'm going to do exactly what I want to do, regardless. You know, and sometimes it's very uncomfortable because I put things out there that are uncomfortable, like like the penises. I'm not the best drawer out there. I wish I was but I do it a lot. This is why I say I'm not initially an artist, because I had to learn all this the hard way. You know I do. I was not one of those people who are very lucky, who are born and like creativity just blops out of them and skill just comes to them like a bolt out of the blue. I had to work really, really hard to get as far as I've gotten, which is nowhere near as far as I'd like to be where would you like to be?
Speaker 2:I would like to be what's.
Speaker 1:Everest like what's your mountaintop?
Speaker 2:a lifetime of pictures that are just so perfect for what I want them to be. I'm not interested in selling my work. I want people to see it, i want people to appreciate it, i want people to take something from it. But my these days it's not important for me to make money off of it, because as I've gotten older I've learned that the real deep satisfaction that comes with seeing this stuff on the wall as a group like looking at the time it took me to do it and remembering all that work and the things I've thought about and the story that it's telling internally in the world of the pictures is so much more satisfying than selling it and I'm jealous of it and I want to keep it and I want to look at it over and over again. My Everest is, at the end of my life, that there would be just hundreds of these things that are so polished and beautiful and affecting. That's my Everest. Not a big show in New York couldn't give a rat's ass about that.
Speaker 1:It is about the work do you ever feel like you run out of things to put on paper?
Speaker 2:sometimes I run out of stories, but then there are things in your story that make the world real. So if I don't have a scenario, i think if he's like tabloids or scenarios, i'm not trying to recreate reality, because who gives a shit? nobody's gonna believe this is real. It's just a drawing, you know, and I have this sort of fairy tale, children's book illustration way of working, but the themes inside are very adult, you know, which is a whole nother thing. That comes from my youth, because I just escaped as much as I possibly could. You know, you're fat, you're smart, you're sissy, you're gonna get it from every angle and it just never stops, and so the only way that I could get away from that was to escape through reading and drawing. Solitude and that's, you know.
Speaker 1:That's where this for somebody who is a big non-fiction guy. Yeah, you draw a lot of fictional stuff. Yeah, i do why is that?
Speaker 2:because it's real, it's the truth, it's just. It's. Every single one of my characters is actually me. They're telling a story about me or my life. Again, i poop who own people who do this because of themselves, and I do exactly the same thing. You know, a good story is not any good without a contradiction in there somewhere. So, um, every single one is me.
Speaker 2:You know, i don't make things up, i just remember them and I dress them up in a fairy tale or a poem or a strange supernatural sequence. But when you get right down to it, what is it actually saying? like the remorseful monster. He's remorseful, that's what's important. You know, he's a monster, he's a more. It's right there in the title. You know, like it's a dress up of a very real feeling, i think.
Speaker 2:And so I'm not interested in what people make up, because when I read fiction or I watch fiction or I watch some show on tv, the emotions don't feel real to me because they feel like phony.
Speaker 2:But when I read nonfiction, people behave in the wildest, most unpredictable, complex ways that I find beautiful. I study the old west, i study the Salem, witch trials and moral panics. Those are two really extreme situations where average normal human beings were thrown into. You know how are you going to react and you never know like there are people in those stories that are good people and you stick them in the right situation and they become monsters and you have monsters that will sacrifice themselves to save someone. That's more interesting than to me, than a happy ending or a contrivance. The reality of that unpredictability and complexity is Absolutely beautiful. So I know I do made up stories, but I'm, i guess the other part of my everest the climbing gear I want to get. My everest is just giving into that complexity and trying to get as much of it in my work as possible, which right now I'm not there, but I will be given enough time.
Speaker 1:when you say Put as much into your work as possible, could you really put anymore into it right now? yeah, i could, because 10 hours a day is a lot. Or you say in like emotionally and like intellectually. No, i mean like all of it.
Speaker 2:I want to do more. I want to do more. I want to do more of all of it. I don't like to go to bed. I sometimes resent going to work. I'm sorry Because it takes time out of the studio. I would be perfectly happy with my life if I set up that work table every second of every day, by myself in this world.
Speaker 1:How do you keep yourself in supplies? real question because you use like pigment pens, pigment micron, they're like I'm a bolt By the hundred and I buy colored pencils by.
Speaker 2:This is. This is display the the. The box of colored pencils I have in the small studio is that big so Pigment, micron, do you have a certain like size you like?
Speaker 1:a one, oh one what kind of pencils do you like?
Speaker 2:I like Prismacolor only. I do not like poly multi chromes or polychromos. I don't Prismicolor only. Prismacolor have like various lines within the Prismacolor brand or they I use Prismacolor premiere, which I guess is the standard everyone goes to. That's just my, my go to brand. I'm very brand loyal.
Speaker 1:What kind of paper are you on?
Speaker 2:can some paper and I buy it in rolls and so and pads in bulk. I don't go out to eat, i do not have cable, i do not go on trips. I do not buy new clothes. That's why we're the same three outfits every day. I only buy art supplies. I only buy books. I only buy my Spotify subscription. Anything that I do in my life has to be towards serving the purpose of sitting at that table drawing, and if it doesn't serve that purpose, it's gotta go and you're happy with that, i'm deeply happy with that?
Speaker 1:yeah, right on. do you feel like? Find somebody who actually enjoys what they're doing in life is a rare thing, yeah, and somebody who's willing to I don't say sacrifice, to do all that extra stuff and. I feel like you don't even care. Sacrifice it's not interesting to sacrifice.
Speaker 2:I'm not, i'm not interested, i do not want to watch the friends again. You know I do not find comfort in that. I don't want to go eat in McDonald's. I went to Taco Bell last night and I got like 12 tacos and I eat every single one of them by myself.
Speaker 2:But I do, you know, like I have my interests and I am very attached to them and I do not want to deviate from them and I never fail to get pleasure from those things. And, as a matter of fact, the pleasure to me is knowing as much about things as I can, because every time you learn something new, you get a new perspective on That thing. Like here's my phone, here's the back. I learned a new thing. There's the front, here's the side, and suddenly I can see that object from every point of view, you know. And so As much as I can. And that's so much more interesting than just settling on just one View of a thing. So I find the things that I find interesting, i find the things that have that resonance and that song that I hear. You know it sounds like music, it feels like music, and so when I get that radar, you know sense, i go toward that thing, and then I just start investigating, and then the more I know about it, the more I find it wonderful.
Speaker 1:What was the last thing other than art that you kind of fell into a rabbit hole on?
Speaker 2:Side shows, side shows, and I really enjoy circuses and, if you'll notice, on my bookshelf I have about 20 books on catastrophic fires in places like the circus and nightclubs and a train. You know, i just I like the dark side of things because You know there's a word, vesper team, and it means of the evening. It's not during the day and it's not at night, it's right there in between, and I like that, the long shadow.
Speaker 1:I like that It comes through in your work, in this series of work. I feel like you mentioned that your, your work changes about every 10 years. what year is this of this segment?
Speaker 2:This is me flexing my wings because I know where I want to go. You know, i've spent the last couple of years sort of experimenting with my color palette, doing things like wearing wild, crazy, colorful clothes and putting colorful things in my house, and I noticed that that tends to happen when I'm in a more manic state, and so I like the richness of the colors that I got going on now. Humor is very important to me, but also I use it to keep people as far away as possible, so I want to be a little more vulnerable in the work. I find that to be something that's missing, and one of the things that I do to avoid vulnerability is to try to shoehorn my work and my thinking into already established things, because I know the outcome of that, and so I want to be more vulnerable in my work, and so I don't want to kind of depend on trying to make it palatable to everyone or palatable to. I want to make it a little bit more sharp.
Speaker 1:You original? Yeah, exactly Whatever you want to do, right? When you say, shoehorn your work into things, you saying like, do things the way that they've been done before. Is that what you mean by that? Yeah, like.
Speaker 2:I know how that the outcome of what that could be If I actually try to do what I really want to do. I have no clue how that would read, if people would enjoy it, if I would enjoy it, if it would be a waste of time, and that's really scary. And so I like to know the outcomes of things before I undertake the action.
Speaker 1:Okay, so some of these things that I'm looking at here you've created not because it's exactly what you wanted to do, but it's because it's, like you said, palatable to the masses, right?
Speaker 2:Well it's. It seems something I know I would do okay at, and so I want to do things like be a little more experimental in my materials, be a little bit more experimental in my narratives and the way I approach it. One of the reasons these are all kind of squares because I was thinking like book format, you know, but like what if it's?
Speaker 2:not. You know what if it's not a book format? What if it's not printed into prints and posters? What if it's not for everybody? What if there's only one of those that ever exist and I never sell it and I never print it, and I it goes into a drawer and it's hidden. What does that do for it? That's scary to me, because I don't know what that means and I don't know what the outcome of it would be, And so I want to jump off a cliff a little bit. You know, Do?
Speaker 1:you want to share what cliff you're pondering to jump off of here?
Speaker 2:I want my work to be a little bit more queer. I want it to be a little bit more queer. Okay, i want it to be a little bit more angry queer, because that's what I feel truly inside.
Speaker 1:We are living in a very dark time, i feel, and so if you mentioned this earlier, I'm going to butcher a pair of phrases, but you came home to a place here where you floor it's better than you did anywhere else, Right At the same time. I know the damn place is trying to. It's not all that kind to you.
Speaker 2:Not really, and it never has been really. That's the thing. It never really has been. At the same time, the people I love the most are here, so if you knew that you could help someone you love or be around someone you love, wouldn't you take a punch for them. You know, I could go back to San Francisco and I could have a really great time, but I wouldn't feel good about it, you know I wouldn't feel right. So I'd rather be with my family, and if I have to crawl through snot, i'll do that.
Speaker 1:You should do that probably on a daily basis. Sometimes, yeah sometimes, you post how the recent legislation would interfere basically even with just people's basic rights to do whatever they want. Right, people who are causing no harm to anyone, even if you boil it all the way down, just minuscule things Right And discriminate against people. You saying that and you having the sack to put that out there even helps people like me be like oh you know what That's so wrong?
Speaker 2:I'm not very quiet about any of that because I did it for 20 years. You know I had I hit every single aspect of myself that mattered for 20 years And that's one of the reasons why I've fled is because I cannot describe to you the feeling of seeing yourself for the first time and like not feeling like you had to hide any of it.
Speaker 2:It is a daily struggle and I know people get tired of me saying it, but like I feel like I have to be kind of loud about it and I dress it up in a lot of humor, but it's very painful And the thing I keep hearing during this period in time is like every time you get on the, the facebook, the facebook I'm 42, the facebook or instagram, or you read the news, there's someone on there, sort of like, talking about queer people and what rights are acceptable and what rights are not acceptable, and should we be allowed in your children and should we not be allowed in your children, and is this appropriate and that's appropriate. And I got to say like. To a lot of people that's a very abstract, theoretical thing And those die on the hill of like. Aren't we allowed to have our opinion and aren't we allowed to debate this? And I'm like you are debating a theoretical, faceless person. But when I read that, it's me, you know it's my friends, it's people I've cried with, you know it's people I've loved.
Speaker 2:When you say something like is it appropriate for queer people to be around children, you know I'm like. What do you think I am? What do you think I do? What do you think I'm capable of? To you it's theoretical, but to me, i don't know too many people that could handle being debated. They're humanity, being debated 24 hours a day, on a daily basis, and then you leave your house and you go to the grocery store and somebody licks at the way you're dressed and calls you a faggot.
Speaker 2:It is hard, but if you grow up this way and I have, you know, i grew up in Motoko, west Virginia, flouncing like you would not believe I flounced y'all. I asked for Barbies every year till I was 13 years old. There was no hide in this. And so, um, you learn to survive, you know, you learn. You learn what you're capable of. You learn what you have to do. You learn all that. And so, yeah, it comes in handy when you move back and you want to take care of your folks, or you want to be with your folks, or whatever.
Speaker 1:So, with this new work you want to do, is this kind of conveying a message without you know having to write it down? Yeah, That's the poetry of it A good way to get it out there.
Speaker 2:It's a good way to get out there, and one of the things I want to do is, for the last five or six years I have done semi-sexual charged work. I don't do dirty work, but I do work that is meant to kind of make people go you know, I want to get rid of that because it's not my experience. I live in Princeton, west Virginia.
Speaker 2:I'm not Tomcat on the prowl you know, it's very lonely, and so I want the work to reflect that. One of the things that's always bothered me is when you're talking about queer artwork, it always revolves around the sex part. You know, there's lots of sex and there's lots of nudity, and that's fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with that whatsoever, because clearly that's a huge part of the issue. But my experience is more about loneliness and isolation and joy, oddly enough, and acceptance. My folks have never not accepted me Again, not the stereotype you would expect from a coal mining Vietnam veteran and his my mother was a truck driver, actually, but you would not expect them and they just, they just did because they're the same way, like if they have to accept this and not just tolerate but like love every part of their kid. And they did it. They had no metric for that or rubric. They didn't know what to do and they fucked up a lot, and so did I, and I think that's what makes us so tight is because we got through it together.
Speaker 1:So like you just had, like real stud parents.
Speaker 2:They are the best. They're the best.
Speaker 1:Because it would have been pretty easy to be, like you know, being a stereotype.
Speaker 2:And I have a lot of friends whose parents did that, and I think it's sad Because, you know, at the end of the day, i've lived in so many places and I've met so many people, and the people I interact with and care about now, when it matters, has turned out to be my family. I'm talking like my mom, my dad, my sister and the folks at work, and those are the people I care about. Those are the people I want to do right by, you know. So there are people that matter and you have to do what's right.
Speaker 2:It's also cool that you found a place almost in your hometown to work, that you count amongst your family, that matter I'm very, very, very, very lucky, And so I don't want to make it seem like I don't know that and appreciate that, because I do. But the work itself I prepped segue, the work itself is I wanted to reflect all of that. I wanted to show my reality, even though it's fake, even though it's made up, and that might be the first thing to go, because I've been thinking about that, like what happens if I actually just draw people without horns? You know like what if I just draw people? You know what if I just draw like me? So the first thing I want to do is reflect more reality. What does that look like? I don't know. It's exciting to me.
Speaker 1:So, aside from people just watching, for you know the next thing that you put out do you have shows coming up?
Speaker 2:I do. I've got a show at the Holler House, bristol in Bristol, virginia. I'm part of the Neo Appalachian show there which is for contemporary Appalachian artists. I've got a show at Marshall University as part of the Appalachian artists show there which is called How Close Is That to Richmond? I believe it's what's called, and I've got a few other little things in the works which I don't have pinned down yet. But I'm always trying to show something, and that's the other thing. I want to just firmly plant my flag that you know I'm an Appalachian And so I. Everywhere I've gone, i've gone with that as my North Star. You can't go wrong with that as your North Star. But there are so many stories that are not included in that narrative because we sort of stereotype either ourselves or mostly from the outside. But I'm really really happy to be a part of a group of artists who are trying to broaden the story and muddy the waters and complicate things a little bit, because that's more interesting.
Speaker 1:It's a much more interesting thing that we're all just a bunch of sister kissing hillbillies Which you know exactly.
Speaker 2:There's nothing that chaps my ass more than that, because I'm here, i talk to people. Sometimes I want to strangle them And sometimes I want to like pat their faces and kiss them. You know like it's complicated, and the world does not revolve around big cities, it does not revolve around New York, it does not revolve around LA. There are other people in the world and our lives are just as important and just as beautiful, and the fact that I even have to say just as is annoying. Our lives are beautiful, our lives are important and complicated, and I think the more that we can show that, the sooner we can get rid of words like just as, because even then we're holding ourselves up to someone else to show, oh, we're just as good, just as good as you, who is the default? good, but we are good.
Speaker 1:What else you want to put out in the world?
Speaker 2:Do you have?
Speaker 1:anybody around here or local that you think everybody know about?
Speaker 2:Well, you've already talked to Christy Maria, who I think is one of the four pure creative vision. I think he can't be beat. He's got such a heart for this area. You look at one of his paintings and you know the people. You know them, you've seen them, you interact with them every day at the gas station.
Speaker 1:He captures the characters that are here and it's crazy in a way that I can't describe.
Speaker 2:He's got so much heart. But it's also cheeky, because love is not just looking at the good parts, It's also looking at the parts that are you know you've.
Speaker 1:Eye rolling. You just rolled your eyes, oh my God.
Speaker 2:So for heart, i would go to him. You've already talked to Jamie. Jamie's, like the ability to theorize and understand theory and process cannot be beat, understanding the fundamental workings of why something is successful or not cannot be, beat.
Speaker 2:So those two you've already talked to. I think people should know the Red Scare, who's one of my best friends I also know as Greg Oxley, drag performer from Charleston The sharpest wit of any human being I've ever known in my life can cut you like a knife and make you love it But also the most loving human being, and so that complexity is very, very just, radiates. So the Red Scare, liz Turner, is another friend of mine, the only human being who's ever made me cry at a critique, and she didn't stop once I started. Merciless, smart, brilliant in her work and her thought processes. And for pure whimsy and joy of their work, i'd go with David Harshberger, also known as Snow Crow Studios, my crow girl doll he did. He makes them by hand, he shows their little dresses, makes their heads out of Sculpey or Clay or whatever he does Whimsical he's got. He just posted one that's a pickle girl. Her head's a pickle with a bite taken out, and they're so glorious and fun and just sweet. And there's something alarming about him too.
Speaker 1:You meet a pickle girl with her head half eaten.
Speaker 2:I know It's like and she's just thrilled about it, you know. So, like just the cast of characters that I am drawn to in my life are the ones that have a foothold, that you can get into, and then, once you're in, oh, you're in trouble, you get lost and you get found and you get thrown down a pit.
Speaker 1:It's like everything you do, hence the fires I know.
Speaker 2:I just will say, like in general in life, there is a resonance that I respond to. There is a song that I hear and I just follow it, And usually it's something with a shady side and a sunny side And I just you know complexity. I love it.
Speaker 1:Hey, well, I dig it.
Speaker 2:That's, that's that's it.
Speaker 1:What else you'll say out in the world?
Speaker 2:That's all. I think my Instagram is Addy Gumption, if you want to come and watch me disappear my artwork every couple of days and then take it all down and then put it all back completely different and then take it all down, and so the Addy Gumption name came from. When I moved back, i was really, really depressed, and so my work was not fun, and so I was. I'm really a perfectionist And I told myself, like the only way you are going to be able to have fun with this right now is if you are a completely different human being whose work is kind of shitty, and you're okay with that. And so I just gave myself a new name and I just started doing work that was poorly drawn and garish and ugly and vulgar, and it worked. It got me out of a slump, and now I don't really need to use the name so much, because now I'm I'm Chase Bowman and I'm garish and vulgar and sweet and sour, and I'm okay with it.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, thanks again for making it to the end of the episode. We hope you learned something new about the artists. More than anything, please go out and help support their work. We know they appreciate it more than they can tell you. Again want to say thank you to Darren Hackwood for allowing us to use his song Hurricane Season as our intro and outro music And, lastly, if you want to get ahold of us, reach out to us on our various social media platforms or VRR website, which is linked in the show notes. At any rate, we'll see you all again in two weeks. Thank you again.