The Supersonic Interview: Sail (Uselessarm).
It was January of this year, 11 months ago, that I first posted Sail’s (Pronounced “Sigh-eel”) artwork. The piece, drawn with ink, was of a woman in a samurai’s helmet, her body festooned with arrows. It was immaculately done. I had linked to gallery Roq la Rue’s website for anyone seeking information on him as the piece was part of a group show and because Googling his name or variations of his name brought up no clear results.
A few days later I received an email from Sail thanking me and linking me to his website and joking that “no one knows who I am.”
This has all changed in the 11 months since that first interaction. The Seattle based artist’s narrative driven, mythical Asian influenced work has been shared across the Internet, he’s released a book of his work and he’s fresh off his first solo show at Roq la Rue (“Dead Language" which was based on Japanese Okabe or shapeshifters) and is currently diving deep into new projects exploring the effects literature has on his active imagination.
Sail and I corresponded for over a month for this interview and touched on subjects from his early life in his father’s studio to his current happiness of being able to seek out whatever may come:
Zach: Let’s talk about Oslo. How long were you there and when did you make your way to the United States?
Sail: I was born there but that’s it. I had my first birthday in the United States. My plane landed on the day John Lennon was shot.
Zach: How’d you make your way out west?
Sail: My mom’s side of the family is originally from the Northwest, so - home.
Zach: Tell me a bit about how working with Ashley Wood came to be, you two frequented the same art forums?
Sail: I hung out on his 3A Toys forum. They had art threads on there and at one point I posted a fan art drawing of a Bertie MK3 which he took notice of and challenged me to do 60 drawings in 60 days. About a year later we were talking and he made a comment about me doing another 60 in 60, so I put it to him that I’d do 30 in 30 if he did it with me. Which we did.
When he put out the call for the Goya line of books I dropped him an email that night and he agreed to publish me. I make that sound so nonchalant but the truth is it was a pretty huge honor for me. Ash has been an inspiration for a long time and always very generous to me with his time, his advice, his friendship and motivating me to be a better artist.
Zach: Were you self taught or did you receive any type of formal training?
Sail: No. Outside of high school art classes I’ve received no formal training. My dad was an amazing artist, so some of it’s probably genetic. A lot of it is just doing the work every day.
Zach: My father is an artist as well and growing up in the studio with him has left me with some really great memories. What are some of yours?
Sail: I don’t know that I have any specific moments that aren’t pretty personal and not something I want to talk about on the internet to strangers. I’m a pretty private person, usually. But, I was encouraged from the moment I could hold a pencil to draw, to create, to make things.
So, I think my fondest memory is just being encouraged. I don’t think I’d be who I am today if I wasn’t constantly encouraged by my parents to create and be creative. Whether it was drawing or playing guitar they were always incredibly supportive and it was something later in life I noticed other parents weren’t.
Zach: Is your alias from your years spent on forums or is more of a desire to be anonymous sort of thing? What’s your explanation behind uselessarm, otherwise?
Sail: The “uselessarm” thing, I was setting up a new blog after abandoning my old one a year or two ago. I needed a domain name for it. Sail was taken and “SailArt” sounded dumb… “Useless Arm” is a song, it was playing right as I was trying to decide what else I could use. It made me laugh, I liked the ring of it, and on it’s own Sail is kinda hard to Google. So, Uselessarm! But it’s definitely not one of those graffiti/street artist things. There’s no desire to remain anonymous.
Zach: From what do you bring forth the subjects of your work? Is it from your surroundings or your youth, or a gestation of the two?
Sail: Some of it is pulled out of mythology. A lot of it is personal: personal symbolism, a code I speak into myself. I’m sure my surroundings play into it, though. There’s a large Asian and Native American culture here and I can’t imagine growing up in that environment hasn’t had an influence in one way or another. I’ve always been drawn to Asian aesthetics. I’m not sure what it is but I adore it. So obviously that plays a large role in my work. But I tend not to focus on what influences me and try to avoid direct influence in favor of letting the subconscious do it’s thing. Let those things sink in and show up later however they like.
I’m also a really big fan of the surreal and South American Magical Realism. Magical Realism, especially, as I think it’s a perfect fit for visual arts and when working in a “realistic” style. (I don’t actually think my work is very realistic as I twist and accentuate anatomy all the time but the rendering at least tries to adhere to reality.)
Zach: Do you read much Magical Realism or are you more interested in the visual school of the movement?
Sail: I read some magical realism - I could read “100 Years of Solitude” forever - but I don’t really get around to reading anything as much as I’d like. I am generally more inspired by literature than art, though. I’m interested in the sparks of visual ideas literature will provide whereas art tends to directly influence visually. With Dead Language [Sail’s recent solo show at Roq la Rue] I read a ton of old texts and stories from that mythology and tried to avoid the visual representations of those characters as much as I could. At a point I realized I’d just be doing what amounted to fan art instead of my personal interpretations of the mythology, the ideas, the fears and moralities they were built and born from. For example: in the story of Yuki Onna when the man meets the beautiful young woman, Yuki Onna in disguise, it’s said that she speaks with the voice of a songbird. That’s the visual spark that set my brain into motion. That inspired and interested me more than the terrible monster. However, I did look at a lot of old Ukiyo-e prints and take some influence from that.
Zach: Do you have any favorite times in history that seem to inspire you more than others?
Sail: Anywhere before the 1950’s.
Zach: Your work is strongly narrative driven, piece to piece, and seems very tied to storytelling. Do you have a background with storytelling or perhaps a love for film?
Sail: I think that goes back to what I said about literature. I love storytelling. Books, comics, film. I try to tell a story with each piece or at least hint at a larger narrative. Suggest a history, a movement, even if you’re only seeing a moment… I think the weight of that history should exist in that moment. We’re defined by our experiences. I don’t think art is any different. Pulling from folklore and mythology as I do a lot of these characters come with a story, so it’s hard to not have some of that come through in trying to represent them.
Zach: Your process seems enigmatic - I know you use brushes for your work but would you mind walking me through it a bit more?
Sail: I’ve got a variety of brushes that I use. I have one pencil and two brushes I use for almost everything. They’re nothing special, just your run of the mill brushes.
As for the process of creating an image… I tend to just start sketching loose shapes, either from photos or just out of my head. I let those abstractions start to take an interesting form which I’ll begin to force into some kind of figure. From there I’ll start to build a set of reference photos. Re-draw the idea based on those, defining the accurate reality of the form more than in the previous iteration. I’ll do that step as many times as necessary. I’ll do parts of that on the computer, as well, on top of the scanned in drawing. That’s where the “high concept” stuff comes in. I think in figurative work the central figure needs to be interesting on it’s own before you start dressing it up. So I’ll focus on the figure before I worry about what I’m going to use it for. Sometimes a lone figure will sit in my sketchbook for a while before I decide what I’m going to use it for. Other times I have an image in my head and I work to get it out. There’s really no set way that I work. It’s all pretty loose.
Once I have that I’ll blow it up, transfer it over to the final paper and start inking it. I do all the blacks first and render out from the black. It’s the opposite of how you’re supposed to do water based medium. I approach it more like an oil painter with the black ink being the underpainting. If there’s any color on the piece that’s the last thing I’ll do.
Zach: What’s the most difficult aspect of creating art?
Sail: Deadlines? I don’t know that there’s one answer to that. Art is hard.
Zach: What do you seek from creating?
Sail: Personal expression. Cathartic release. I don’t really seek any one thing or chase any ideal. Like I’ve said, I was encouraged from a very young age to run with any creativity I had or felt the need to pursue and making things is just something I’ve always had to do. It didn’t matter if anyone ever saw it or heard it or cared, I just needed to do it. I get pretty unhappy if I’m not actively making something on a regular basis. I just have things in my head that I need to get out. I try to make things that I want to see and don’t see other people making.
Zach: If everything was beautiful, what ugliness would you seek out?
Sail: Everything is beautiful, even the ugly. I’m reminded of a Brian Eno quote I love:
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit -all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
So, I think we already seek out the ugliness. I mean, look at Instagram. We take high quality photos and crunch them down into garbage seeking an imitation of the flaws of photography methods from yesterday.
Zach: But if all things are beautiful, wouldn’t that mean everything is just normal? Why place emphasis on normal things being beautiful?
Sail: Well, not everything is beautiful to everyone. It’s a question of perspective, I think. I focus on the things I think are beautiful. Not everyone is going to agree with that opinion of beauty but you have to send up smoke signals and see who answers back.
Zach: In a world of existing through using screens to keep in touch with others there is a great deal of disconnect from true meaning, I think. What does reality mean to you?
Sail: Zach, to tell you the truth, I feel vastly under-qualified to talk about reality. I work long hours by myself indoors drawing the weird shit in my head and enjoying fiction across various media. I live in fantasy land.
That said, I like a tactile experience. I like objects. Things I can hold. I like physical books (especially used books) and making art on paper. Printing errors, paper foxing. Anything that can change and degrade over time. Anything with a history you can see.
Zach: I think that’s a pretty fantastic way to look at things. And I feel like it comes through in your work as well. What are your upcoming plans? Where can we see your work next?
Sail: I’ll have one piece in the Unpredictable Gravity group show (to benefit cancer charities) at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, curated by Robbie Lowery (January 9th). There may be another group show this coming spring but I don’t have concrete information on that. I’m working on prints but that’s sort of being fit in when I can find the small slices of time to do it. It’s slow progress but I’m talking to the fine folks at Bellevue Fine Art Reproduction and we’re moving forward.
Beyond all that, I don’t know. Nothing set in stone. I’m open to see what comes, as it comes. I rarely have a plan. I am starting to think about another solo show, what that’d be, or if I feel the need to have it be anything specific. But I’ve got at least a few months to think about that.
Sail: Website | Tumblr
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