When I make a post for a new podcast, I usually include a quote or two from the guest. In Wayne White’s case, there were a whole lot of good quotes. I didn’t want to put them all in that post, so here’s a bunch of ’em:
- “Success really messes with your ego.”
- “I think most really famous people — politicians and movie stars — are sorta insane.”
- “Art has to show a level of confidence, or no one will want to look at it.”
- “The movie has given me the opportunity to do bigger and better things, but as far as a psychological concept that I can use in my art, I’m still trying to figure out a way to make work that expresses what I’ve been through. It was quite a unique experience, being in the spotlight. I’d like to do some work that shares that story.”
- “Getting on stage and performing is just another art project to me. It’s a way of manipulating people; that’s what art does. It was just another way of getting over an emotion, or a laugh, or an idea, just like a drawing or a painting does.”
- “Sometimes it looks like I’m going for the laughs, but I’m going for connection, for the emotion. All artists are. What else is there, when you’re looking at a piece of art?”
- “There’s something in the air out here in LA, with the big words in the landscape, the big open plain with the big monumental something sticking out of it.”
- “I gloss over my art and say, ‘I just go for the laughs and I’m just a plain old guy, and I like to entertain people,’ because it’s funny and I don’t like to get too serious about it. But there are a lot of thorny issues with it and a lot of subtleties. It looks like I’m just defacing a painting and being funny, but I’m not. There are a million subtle things going on and that’s what makes it art.”
- “I’ve always loved cartoonists, like Mad magazine. Cartooning informs my work, big time.”
- “Cartooning is the hardest craft I ever did, because it’s no-shit-everything-has-to-work. With a painting, you can fudge things. Everything in a cartoon has to work, like a car, or it won’t run. I learned a lot about craft and discipline from cartooning, way more than painting.”
- “I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had three separate careers: freelance illustrator, then set designer, puppetteer and animator, and now fine artist. I just bluffed my way into every one of ’em!”
- “Like Red Grooms, I travel to a city, I hire local young artists and we build cool stuff.”
- “Like my work, Jeff Koons is a similar kind of notion: Can I just hit it on the head and still make it art? Can it just be a complete, dumb, big idea that someone can get in a second and still be art?”
- “To me, I like the hand-made, the feeling that the artist made it himself. That’s where the human smell comes in. . . . Some people would say, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ but I like to use the word ‘smell’.”
- “I’m a frustrated writer; that’s why I do the word-paintings. Of course I write poems that I don’t show anybody. I’ve written lyrics that I’ve pitched to my musician friends, but they’re not interested.”
- “To live in New York, you have to love the street. The street is your front yard. That’s where you live most of the time. I got tired of that street energy.”
- “My favorite thing to do is just to draw. That’s where it all comes from, and that’s what gave me the confidence to bluff my way into things, because I could draw. It’s the default position for me, my core.”
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. This time around, we talk about the success of the book, the surprises of the book tour, how the sequel’s progressing, how it felt to win a PEN Center USA Literary Award, and more! (There are also some overlapping questions, and I thought you guys might dig hearing their different perspectives on topics like LA vs. NYC, and becoming empty-nesters.)
feeding into a 
digital recorder. The intro and outro were recorded on a 
. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photos of Mr. White and Ms. Pond by me.
“People only have a limited patience for listening to you go on and on about your own ideas, your own mind, your own memories. Art allows you to have that perfect experience of putting that down on paper without anyone growing tired and making you stop.”
, 
, 
, 
, and 
, all published by 
), Random House (
), and Criterion (
). Here are 
, his creative process, his relationship with technology, his non-nostalgic laments for lost urban totems, and more! (4/16/13) – 
, feeding into a 
. Mr. Katchor’s readings and some of the questions from the audience were recorded on a second 
into Audacity. All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Photo by