Jesse Edwards “Dialogue of the Streets”

They say that if you play with fire you get burned, but forged in the embers of Seattle's dying grunge scene, Jesse Edwards has developed a resistance to the destructive powers of the drug culture he grew up in. His solo show at Klughaus Gallery in New York this Friday is a collection of work powered by sex, drugs and youth, combining extremely modern subject matter (for example, cellphone porn and spraypaint) with old-world techniques of classical oil painting and ceramics.

We talked to Jesse shortly after he arrived in New York to take his art career to the next level. In a city that can usually crush an out-of-town art hopeful in under two years, there's something about Jesse Edward's "Nicest Thug You Know" style that leaves us feeling oddly upbeat about his prospects.

You can see some of Jesse's earlier work in Frank151 when he illustrated (not unironically) our Coke: The New Heroine story for Chapter 26: Upcoast.

F151: So what was it like growing up in Seattle?
JE: It was pretty cool because of the whole grunge music thing. All the skateboard sites where we used to like to skate, it was still legal to skateboard. So we would go to the city as kids.There was a lot of legal graffiti walls too. There was graffiti in the streets. But now, now they've kind of put all that to the end.
F151: What were you spending most of your time doing? Skating, graffiti or music?
JE: Skateboarding and tagging walls. Smoking weed. Just being a little kid. [Laughs] Yeah, that's what we were into.

It was really fucking cool back then, but then the music thing died, and then graffiti vandals kinda came in and started fucking up the walls around the graffiti art, so those ended up getting shut down. They started handing out real stiff penalties for the taggers and it just kind of went bad. A lot of graffiti artists started getting into hard drugs and stuff and they just kinda turned into these weird, fucking tweaker, club kids. Jesse Edwards Graffiti

F151: As it so happens, you illustrated our story Coke: The New Heroine for our Upcoast Chapter. Is Seattle really such a druggy city?
JE: I'm not too familiar with the rest of the country but out there it's just kinda crazy because you can just go up the street, go to the store and buy weed, buy plants. You go on Craigslist, you go on Beauty and Health section [and] you can buy pounds of weed and shit. But there's a lot of heroine involved. I used to have kilos underneath my stove. But that was a long time ago.

F151: So how did you avoid ending up a junkie?
JE: I like getting high, but it's just coming off 'em, it's just such a drag. [Laughs] So it's just not worth it. My friends were all into meth. And I did it for like six months, but then my friends stuck with it, and now you know half of 'em have dentures. Drugs aren't going to help you get what you want out of life. Not for me, it's like I love art. ... It kinda gives me its own little high. And drugs, they hinder your ability to express yourself.

I'm not really in a financial position where I can just afford to like, just go get high at my leisure, you know? It's like I've got to really stay on point if I want to survive.

F151: Right. So you've put art first. But the drug culture has a huge influence on your work, doesn't it?
JE: Yeah, there's a lot of [that] influence on my work. It's like rap music. People, what do they rap about? They rap about girls, they rap about drugs, they rap about selling drugs, getting high, you know what I mean? I lived through that stuff. I want to do a painting that's like visually representational of that sort of sound. But not always. But I also live in the fucking hood, man. I'm doing these drug paintings, and my neighbors, I look out my window and see 'em talking to other fiends in the alley, and they'll have rigs in their hands and they'll be like, "Yeah, come up and get dope!" Police raids on my floor. It's just everywhere. What happened was I was doing all these still lifes for this commercial gallery, and they started getting weird on me and making me feel uncomfortable. So I just kinda rebelled against it, like, "Yo, I'm gonna paint the most offensive shit I can find!" [Laughs] And then I started selling 'em for like twice what I was getting for a bowl of fruit and I was like, "Hey, maybe I'm onto something here."

But it's all real stuff to me. Every one of those paintings has a story, it's not just like I put together some stuff because I thought it'd be "cool." Everything has its own meaning, you know?

F151: Tell us about your show in New York.
JE: I got asked to do a show in this art gallery in Chinatown, the Klughaus Gallery and I'm really excited about the opportunity. A lot of times these art galleries want a body of work where all the paintings are all really similar and everything kind of looks the same. But these guys just said, "Do an art show, and do what you do."

I also got hit up by a museum out here, 'cause I do ceramic work. It's the Museum of Sex. I do these pornographic scenes on ceramic cellphones.

They're getting really kind of, uh, harder. [Laughs] Like I'm doing some really nasty ones right now, but whatever. It's hella small, so people have to really look, and they have to figure it out and then it's like, "Whoa!" A lot of people are doing really big things, but in my view there's different types of big. What you're trying to create is not necessarily a big painting, but a big impact. So to create that you've just got to really focus and work hard.

Jesse Edwards Dialogue Of The Streets
Opening Reception: Friday, January 13, 2012
Time: 6:00pm-10:00pm
Location: 47 Monroe Street New York, NY 10002