Jim McKenzie is an animator and sculptor who currently resides in Los Angeles, California with his girlfriend and their son. I spoke to him via video chat to talk about his career as an artist, and what advice he had for budding creators.
McKenzie was in his living room / kid’s playroom when we connected — in the background was a shelf full of the original toys that he’s made. He was sculpting clouds and stars for the self-portrait he’d been working on for the past two months. It will be displayed in the upcoming L.A. Art Show, open from Feb. 5-9 at the L.A. Convention Center. In the style of a true artist (and dad), McKenzie was running on a lack of sleep, and time.
So, you’ve been working on a self-portrait sculpture; could you tell me about that?
Yeah, that’s what I’m working on now. It keeps changing every day. I have this crazy deadline. Last minute, I changed it to this dream sequence, so I’ve got these clouds and these stars, and then I gave him an eyeball.
[McKenzie holds up the sculpture to show me the third eye that his sculpture had acquired.]
What made you want to do that? Was that your own idea, or someone else?
Yeah, it was my idea. It was kind of like a time-crunch piece; what can I get done. For this one, it’s one of those things where when you finish it tells you about yourself. Like a lot of the time, I won’t know what the meaning is, and a year later I’ll look at it and realize what it was trying to tell me, or what I was trying to tell myself.
Is there a normal amount of time you spend on a sculpture, or does it vary?
It depends what it is — the technicalities of it. “The Scarecrow” took me about two years. I was working full-time. It really depends what’s going on, what the piece is. How much time you want to put into it, also deadlines. I could take this to another level and work on it for like two years, but I’m glad deadlines are there because they force you to cap things off.
What’s been your favourite exhibit to do? If you have a favourite.
My solo show was pretty nice. I had one solo show — June 4, 2016. That was showcasing all of my stuff for the first time. It was very difficult, because they wanted me to fill an entire gallery, so we wound up just doing one room of the gallery, and I had two years to work on it, but I was also working in the animation industry. So I would come home at night — I didn’t have a kid at that time — but I was coming home, a four-hour commute, and working on this show, and I raced to the deadline. I think I had about 12 pieces. I put an invite out, and I didn’t expect a lot of people to come. And it turned out to be this big event. Everyone got dressed up — like circus people, people flew in from New Jersey dressed as scarecrow people. I didn’t expect that either. It was crazy. It felt like how you would imagine: a really nice funeral for yourself. Yeah, it’s not a wedding, but everyone’s there for you. There was a cake of my characters. It was bizarre, but a really nice experience.
Do you often make things out of garbage?
Yeah, everyone thinks I’m kidding. But it’s good to recycle. I think you can see an example of that in the making a mushroom video. It was a mushroom sculpting giveaway, and I used a soda can. Just basic stuff like that, things with a large mass that you don’t need to use clay for. So if I have to make a big head sculpture, I won’t actually do it all clay. I’ll use tin foil or some sort of big mass. But it feels nice to make something out of something that’s just going to be thrown away. It makes you feel like you’re like helping the world, even though it’s like 0.000001 per cent of the garbage, and it saves clay.
What’s the most random material you’ve ever used for a sculpture?
The giant dog, that was made out of a lot of garbage: folgers cups and lots of cans. I’d like to explore more with different materials. The thing about clay is that you can cast it, you can make multiples of it. And that’s great from an art marketing standpoint — if you want to make something that’s easily manufactured, I can make more of them. But I want to do something that is not castable, like incorporate glass into something, more gemstones, so that way when the person owns it, they feel like, this is it. You don’t have another one.
What was the first sculpture that you ever remember making?
Well, I don’t think it was really a sculpture. It’s just something I was always doing — not sculpting, but just creating. The first sculpture I had to do professionally was of my dog Gordo, and that was in December 2013. An artist friend, Chet Zar, asked me to be a part of his show, Conjoined. I had never really sculpted anything at that point, because my job was in animation. I had clay, and it was sitting under my bed for like a year and a half; I didn’t want to open it because I was too afraid. But he asked me to be part of the show; I couldn’t say no. So I had to open it and teach myself in that week to sculpt something. I didn’t think it would be anything really that good, so I did my dog in kind of a satirical way, thinking this is going to be something fun to do, and it worked out okay. At the show everyone really seemed to like it. Out of a hundred artists they put my dog sculpture underneath the show title. Like right when you walk in, and it was also on the postcard. Everyone was looking at this dog sculpture and they wanted to see more, so this gallery invited me back to another show. I did that one, and then after that they said, “You should do a solo show here.” And that was at Copro Gallery. That place kind of became my spot, where I would show. This self-portrait, it’s going to be at their booth, for the L.A. Art Show. They’re really cool people.
You’ve done fundraising stuff, like your Sculpt and Drink events, and some artistic giveaways. What made you want to do that?
It’s nice to give back. It’s always nice to have an excuse to get into the community and make things with people. Sometimes I’ll know a charity, or I’ll seek out a charity and do something together. It’s always free — we don’t charge people — and I’m always buying supplies with my own money. The last one we did was for “Kids In Need of Defense.” I think I spent over $1,000 on chairs and supplies, all that stuff, and we wound up raising a little over $2,000. So not too much, but it’s something. It’s helping people that really need it in this particular time. America is so divided right now, these kids really get overlooked by a lot of Americans, and you know, they’re here, under our supervision and they’re dying. What had actually caught my attention most was when I went to see Dia De Los Muertos and there was this shrine of all the kid’s camps, [for the kids] that just died. And you know, I have a kid, and I can’t imagine him living in a cage and dying and not knowing about it. So I looked into this charity, and they assist those children that are put on the stand in front of judges. There’s no one there to help them, so this charity gets legal representation for them. It’s really beneficial. They’re refugees, they’re coming here because of a situation that we don’t know about. They’re not coming here to steal jobs, they’re kids. And politics aside, I just wanted to help people out. I posted that video and I got so many messages, hate messages, saying things like, “People like you are ruining America!” You know, crazy. All I’m trying to do is help people out. It’s crazy the repercussions just from doing something as basic as trying to raise money for kids that are in custody for no reason.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve gone through, artistically?
I would say time. You never have enough time. When I want to do a project, usually I will get it done, but there’s millions of ideas. You really have to pick and choose because you only have so many years here. So if I’m gonna dedicate months on a piece, it really has to be the right one. I have like a stack of Post-it notes with ideas. Especially as a dad, it’s so hard to really do anything. So this will actually be the last piece I do for — who the hell knows how long. I wish I had more time.
What would be your advice for students working on a budget?
This stuff really doesn’t cost that much. Everybody is under the assumption that you need a big space to create, you need specific tools or materials. But to go back to the garbage situation, one of the reasons I use that is just to show that you really just need an idea to pull something off. You don’t need that much. Doing things under $100 is doable. You don’t need to buy the best clay, just buy whatever works for you. I use the cheapest paints at Michaels, and they seem to work fine.
What about advice for students who want to get into sculpting as a career? Sometimes it’s hard to share your work…
Well they should definitely share their work; it’s doable. There’s a lot of options and career paths for sculptors: there’s 3D modelling, there’s architectural jobs, sculpting for stop-motion, doing miniatures, sculpting 3D for commercials, films — there’s a big range for sculpting. If you want to go into the fine art realm, it’s great to make connections with other artists. A lot of the opportunities that I had gotten were from friends and people that I met along the way. I was always going to art openings, talking to artists, and not for the purpose of making myself, you know, get opportunities, but just having genuine connections. I would say it’s doable, go for it, and put your work out there. Be yourself, don’t try to copy other artists. People will see that, and the art will take you wherever it wants to take you.
What is your take on art’s place in the world?
It’s very needed. From an artist’s standpoint, I look at it as therapy. You can also look at it as therapy as a collector as well, or an art appreciator. I think art plays a big role in shaping the world. I just use it so I don’t freak out. I have a need to create.
Does art influence life or does life influence art?
Both; they go hand-in-hand. I’ll influence a piece that I’m making and I’ll look at it, and it’ll influence me back and help me figure things out, with myself.
Who inspires you artistically, and who inspires you day-to-day?
There are a lot of artists out there who are doing really great stuff. A lot of my friends and their artistic drive to keep making, keep hustling, is very inspiring to me. But the content that I create really gets inspired from how I’m feeling day-to-day, what’s going on in my own life. It’s almost like a journal, or storytelling in a way. Even though it visually doesn’t look like that. For instance, the scarecrow piece was when I was feeling really tied down and kind of empty, working at Aardman. It just really wasn’t a good feeling. So I drew that piece on the commute home. There was a piece I did, a skeleton, called “Friends With Death” and that started off as just a skeleton’s head, and a week later my grandma passed away, and then three weeks later, my son was born. So I think subconsciously those two events happening while I was making this steered this piece in the direction it went. Also, aesthetically, the colour choices and the elements were all inspired by my day-to-day living. I would walk outside and I saw that the tree in my backyard was growing all of these violet flowers, which it never did before. I realized, that’s it, that’s it! This is going to be a purple piece, and I ran down to the flower shop and I got all these little purple flowers. The stones that circled the piece was inspired when I was taking a walk in the woods, and I saw these smalls stones — originally it was supposed to be grass — but I saw these small stones in this guy’s driveway and was like, this is it, it’s going to be stones, and I started scooping up all of these stones from this man’s driveway. I had a glove on me and I put them in this glove — this was in New Jersey — and I took a plane back and I was going through security, and I still had this glove filled with all these rocks, and the TSA was like, what the hell is this? Anyway, I got back, I threw them all on the table and I was like, alright, I’m gonna start putting all these rocks together and putting them on this piece. But they were actually too small and not as controlled as I wanted them, so I decided to make my own rocks and use those rocks as texture stamps. So I took the rock and I pressed it into the clay. So I wound up using the rocks not directly, but in some way.
Has there been a particular artist that’s been a constant inspiration for you?
I would say Mark Ryden has always been a really big inspiration for me. He really opened up the door to the whole world of pop surrealism for me. The first time I met him was in 2013 and I had just made my first sculpture and I showed him; actually, I gave him a piece. He was complimenting it and said it was good. I don’t know if he was just being nice or not, but just hearing that from him, just hearing that you’re doing a good job from someone whom you admire, is very inspiring and reassuring that what I was doing was on the right track, so I think that actually just motivated me to just really push even further. Now especially when I hear people tell me that they like my stuff and they want me to look at their work — you know, I always wanna see people’s work because you never know, just one word can really encourage people and push them.
Is there some random non-art tool or piece of material that you use fairly often?
Well, sometimes if I want to get a good texture, I’ll go looking for something that has that texture but isn’t something that you would normally use. A lot of the times I’m walking and I’ll see bark on a tree or a stone. So I’ll use that as a texture map, or texture stamp. When I was doing “The Scarecrow,” I was making a hat, and I went and bought some burlap and stuck it on there. And I didn’t even test it out, you know, I just assumed it would work and it worked out. I think applying different textures to things with real-life textures is really cool.
I’d like to know a little bit about your Makin’ Things show. Could you tell me the story behind that?
I was working at Aardman and I was watching Bob Ross on the other computer screen, and I had this really dumb idea, and I just ran into my boss’s room and I was like, “Joe, do you have a second to talk about a really dumb idea?” and he was like, “Of course.” I said “I have this idea called Making Things, and it’s just a really stupid show where I’ll be this kind of Bob Ross character, and have a bunch of corny jokes. It’ll be that combined with PeeWee Herman, combined with Pappyland.” He’s like, “I love it; let’s do it.” He kind of agreed to it on the spot, which was awesome. So we put a proposal together, and I actually went and story-boarded every episode. I designed the sets, the clothing, the shots, and the jokes. So we had these four episodes and we pitched it to Aardman, and they were like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” They gave us $60,000 for four minutes of content, which were four episodes. We only had like six hours in this big studio, and they had like 20 people running around the set; it was just crazy. I wasn’t sure if it would go through with more episodes or not, so the last episode, I wrote that it was going to be a cancellation episode and I was gonna be like, real bitter about it. So when we aired those — we aired them weekly — people actually thought that it was a network and it was like a live thing and it had actually been cancelled. Meanwhile, you know, we shot it all in six hours. The idea was to take that, and pitch it to Super Deluxe, Adult Swim. Since Aardman funded it, they own it, so I wasn’t allowed to pitch it myself and I’m not allowed to sell prints or anything of the show, or do anything with it. I realized that they really didn’t have it in them to pitch for this show. They said they were talking to all these people, but it really went nowhere. I’m kind of glad it didn’t go through because I don’t wanna be known for some stupid comedy crap. I’m good doing what I’m doing.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
A mermaid.
Images: Courtesy of Jim McKenzie
Darien Johnsen is a UFV alumni who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with double extended minors in Global Development Studies and Sociology in 2020. She started writing for The Cascade in 2018, taking on the role of features editor shortly after.
She’s passionate about justice, sustainable development, and education.