Ten Minutes with Duluth Illustrator-Animator-Designer Brian Barber

"The best skill is still probably the ability to come up with ideas, and the curiosity and patience to get the work done." ~Brian Barber

Over the years I have privately complained -- and since this is a public forum, my complaint is no longer quite so private -- that there is in this town too much of a divide between the creative commercial artists/illustrators and the fine arts community. That is to say, we have many ad agencies with creative talent, but as I circulate amongst the very channels in the arts I seldom see the artists, designers and illustrators who populate the agencies. It's as if there were a great divide between these two creative worlds, a divide which I feel ought not be there because the fine artists are exploring new territories and can bring something back that the commercial world might be able to borrow and build on.

Brian Barber is an exception. I know this because there must be a half dozen times we've crossed paths at art openings and I'd say, "I'd like to interview you sometime," and then feel guilty when we'd meet again because I hadn't followed up.

Brian is someone nearly everybody looks up to, in both senses of the expression. He's amiable, talented, easy to work with, genuine, and though not originally from here is thoroughly Minnesota nice. His whimsical images connect with children and with adults, and reveal something of who he is... which is someone you'd enjoy getting to know. As the saying goes, if a man is worth knowing at all, he's worth knowing well.

EN: You started out as an illustrator. How did your move into animation and motion graphics come about?
Brian Barber: To be more accurate, I was a designer doing some illustration on the side. In school, I studied equal parts design, illustration and photography. I would tell people I was an illustrator, because that work was more fun and what I wanted to do, but design was always the steadier source of income. Making a living with illustration has always been tough, but lately it’s become even tougher. Editorial illustration projects have completely dried up, and even advertising work has become difficult to find. Print design projects don’t come along nearly as often anymore, and I don’t like doing websites, so I’ve moved toward video and animation partly out of curiosity, partly out of necessity.

I see video as another form of graphic design and art direction: composing shots, combining images with type and design, and making that work with time-based elements like music, pacing and editing. I’ve been in bands off and on for years, with that I’ve learned some about audio production. I feel really fortunate to pull all of these different interests together into a business.

EN: Things have changed dramatically since the early years of Disney animation. What kinds of equipment and skills are needed in our digital age?
BB: I use After Effects, Premiere, Illustrator and Photoshop on a big, old Mac Pro, but I’ve also done things with stop-motion, with puppets, and with cut paper, too. As far as skills, that’s hard to pin down. To be sure, there is a pretty steep learning curve to the software. There is so much stuff being produced in such a variety of styles. Some is super-slick, very technical, but the lo-fi, rough-around-the-edges pieces with a strong idea behind them are just as interesting. The best skill is still probably the ability to come up with ideas, and the curiosity and patience to get the work done.

EN: How much of your work is commercial and who are the people who hire you? And for what kinds of assignments?
BB: Almost all of it is commercial. I don’t draw for the helluvit as much as I should, and that’s always a New Year’s Resolution for me - to just draw more.

I have several companies that I do work for pretty steadily - TV ads, training videos, corporate videos, Instagram and social media animations. The last few years I’ve worked with Maurices, St. Lukes, Loll Designs, WLSSD, ZMC Hotels, and some smaller Duluth clients, and I also do work for some of the ad agencies in town and in Minneapolis.

Live-action Demo Reel

I try to do a music video for the Homegrown Music Festival every year. Those are always fun, and a chance to try something a regular client might not let me get away with.

The Keepaways - Homegrown Music Video Festival

EN: The world of media is essentially an effort to capture eyeballs. I would think that this would create a demand for animation and motion graphics over static images. Is that happening more now?

BB: It depends on the client and the industry. There will always be clients who are more adventurous, and clients who want to stick with what they know and what’s safe or what they’ve seen before. As always, the biggest block is probably budget. Animation usually takes more time, money and planning, so it needs to be part of the idea from the start.

It used to be that a well-done or funny video was guaranteed some attention online, but the bar for what holds our attention has been raised exponentially. And the way we view these things, there’s always something more interesting we can scroll down to. To get people to sit all the way through even a 15-30 second video now takes something really special.

Loll Designs Instagram video

EN: You have done children's book illustration. How did you get these assignments and what do you enjoy most about that kind of work?

BB: I had some work in a group art show in St. Paul, and an editor was at the show. He sent me an email the next day and asked if I’d be interested in illustrating a book. They had a story ready to go, and they thought my work was a good fit for it. Since that book, I’ve done about 8 more with that publisher. I think the character design for the books is my favorite part. I like digging into a new project, but I’ll be honest, by the time I’m done illustrating a 32-page book, I’m really tired of drawing those characters.

EN: You grew up in Nebraska. How long have you lived in Duluth and how did you end up here?

BB: I’ve been in Duluth for 18 years. I lived in Minneapolis for 10 years before that. After college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I knew I wanted to go somewhere else. I considered San Francisco and even had a place to stay out there, but I chickened out when I realized how expensive it was to live there. I had a friend from college who lived in a Twin Cities suburb, and he offered me his couch if I wanted to try Minneapolis. So I started out working at a screen printing shop in Loring Park, about 4 blocks from the apartment I found there. I offered my design services to a couple South Minneapolis neighborhood newspapers and then got offers from other publications and companies. I built up a pretty good list of monthly publications with production schedules that were staggered just enough to fit together, and give me some steady income. Then I’d fit a few illustration projects in between those schedules.

When kid #1 came along, I may have panicked a bit, and the freelance lifestyle seemed like a terrible idea. Long story short, there was a job opening for an ad agency art director in Duluth, and we made the move North for that job. I worked as an art director at Russell & Herder for about 7 years, and then at WestmorelandFlint for 3. I’ve been running my own business for just over 8 years now.

EN: At this point in time what kind of projects are you most drawn to?

BB: I like the variety of what I’ve been doing. I always seem to have enough projects going on that I can jump around. So if I get stuck on a logo design, I can jump over and do something completely different like log video clips for awhile. It’s like procrastinating, without the guilt. The majority of my work lately has been video and motion graphics, I’m doing much less design than when I was at an agency, and illustration has always been hard to predict or plan for, but it still comes along every so often. I am trying to do more drawing just for the sake of doing it, and making some of that work available as prints, cards and originals. I have a show at Beaner’s in December 2016, so I’ve been making new pieces for that.

I have a basic understanding of 3D animation, but I want to dig further into that. The challenge is, it’s not fun at all. When drawing, even drawing digitally, you can be spontaneous, have some happy accidents, and that’s always been the appeal of art for me. With 3D, there are so many steps between the idea and the finished thing, any excitement and enthusiasm can be lost in all the technical problem solving it takes to make and then render something. But I see a lot of potential, and people are doing amazing things with it, so I keep chipping away at learning it and getting more efficient so it can be another tool. It is vast and overwhelming though.

Links:
Animation / Video site
http://brianbarber.tv

Illustration / design site
http://brianbarber.com

Work for sale
http://prints.brianbarber.com

Instagram
http://www.instagram.com/brianlbarber

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Meantime, there's a lot happening again this weekend and as we head deeper into autumn. Check your events calendars, and see what you can see.

Making Room For Art

"We are tricked by a phenomenon of time: Hours and days pass slowly, but years pass quickly. A life passes quickly, but we always think we have plenty of time. Too often we get so consumed with how we spend our days that we lose track of how we are spending our lives." ~Sally Warner

These are the opening lines of Sally Warner's Making Room for Making Art. I like the title of the book. It is not about art appreciation, but about getting the fire stoked to follow your creative urge.

All too many people who were once in touch with their creative selves have lost touch with that drive. Whether being creative with words, music, paint, sculpture, clay, pencils, or folded paper, there is something deeply stirring in the creative process.

You only live once. There is power in creative expression. It feels good for the artist, almost magical when things come together. And it can be enriching to others.

Paul Klee in 1920 said, "Art is a simile of the Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestial is an example of the cosmic."

If you once had a love for the creative process, and that fire has grown cold, maybe it's time to stir the flames again. You only live once. Make a space in your life once more to follow your creative impulses.

Strike a match. Light the fuse. I want to see fireworks.

Ten Minutes with the Young Creative Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein

This past week Ochre Ghost Gallery hosted a show called Black and White featuring the work of a number of young local photographers here in Duluth. One of the artists I met at the opening was Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein with whom I had an engaging conversation. A recent grad of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, his studies have included painting, drawing and printmaking.

The "Artist Statement" which accompanies his online gallery begins like this:

It is never just one thing; there is no answer. My work is a demonstration, the evidence of an intentional process. The subject of my artwork could pertain to anything, but this certainly does not mean it pertains to everything. Meaning is a bound infinity, like the hypothetical space between the number 1 and the number 2. Simply put: I’ll make the object, we’ll make the idea.

I was confident that were i to interview him, it would make for an interesting conversation. Here's how it unfolded.

Ed Newman: When did you first take an interest in art? Who were your early influences?
Rob K-S: I first got serious about art in the second semester of college. I took a painting class that taught me more about drawing in the first hour than I had in any other class or school. I also met my friend Jennie Lennick at that same time and she showed me what it meant to be serious about art. Anything previous to that was things that cumulatively prepared me for a more focused path and specific trajectory, but I don't really count that stuff.

EN: Who have been your biggest influences in recent years?
Rob K-S: I am generally influenced by the artist I have purposefully or accidentally ended up researching a lot. I think that once you have immersed yourself with enough information about something you can't help but love it, and then in turn be influenced by it. The way I see it, it's a little like intellectually Stockholm Syndrome. For example, I was never that into Willem de Kooning's work until I read his biography by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swanson. Now I love de Kooning, and often get caught up thinking about small sections of his life for days. Same thing goes for looking at work. I have looked at so much of Sigmar Polke's work in reproduction, museums, and online that I cannot help but fold it into my everyday life at this point.

When it comes to other people and more specifically artists, I am influenced by specific working practices. Daniel Coffeen runs a blog called The Empathic Umph that I really enjoy. He produces a ton of writing, and is often riffing on one idea over the course of many essays. His work ethic for something that has no financial or socially defined goals is impressive. I am always curious about what a certain person possesses inside of them to create lots of work.

EN: In what ways are art professors similar and dissimilar from other professors you've studied under?
Ron K-S: While the university has remained relatively unchanged since its inception, art professors have always been a little off. For the most part, they are a breed of people who craved some kind of freedom and somewhere along the way ended up teaching. Some love the job, and others clearly don't. But I am sure that happens in every college as well. Art seems to be one of the few fields where the research element of being a professor never required the professor to have the facilities of an institution. At least that is my opinion. Artists can practice at home sometimes, when Biologists rarely have that opportunity. I suppose in this way, all of the professors from other departments seem to have been destined for their jobs and it is a perfect fit for their more academic interests.

EN: You mention in your artist statement that you have an unbound curiosity about things. From whence does this curiosity arise, and where will it take you?
Rob K-S: What I hope is that that curiosity forces me to keep working for my whole life; not becoming boring and apathetic can hopefully be abated by curiosity. But I can't tell you where it comes from. I guess I should qualify this last statement by saying that I don't think it is a mystical force. I just don't find it too important for myself to figure out the mechanisms of curiosity, it's too metaphysical. Maybe a specific question about a specific thing that I have a specific curiosity in could be investigated. I only have experienced a form of obsessive curiosity multiple times in myself so I feel somewhat justified saying it exists in me.

EN: What's the meaning behind your series titled The Rules Keep Changing?
Rob K-S: I guess I just kept thinking that while I was making the work. It was applicable and I truly believe it. I do believe in rules, firmly so.
But I also believe that life requires us to engage with rules, so we can weed out the unfair ones and proliferate the productive ones. When I draw, I am constantly bumping up against my own self-imposed set of rules. I often don't even know why they exist. For instance, I always think "I have to center it" and if not that "It should be symmetrical" and if not that "it should have equal dimensions" and if not that "it should look clean and not dirty" and so on. What happened with that series was that every time I caught myself imposing a rule, I would augment it. I didn't want to destroy the rule or do the opposite of the rule, but instead change it so there would be a new rule. That kind of thinking is good for me because it demands an engagement with the work, but doesn't force me to do anything that will slow me down. I like working quickly and also want the rules to keep changing so I have to create new strategies all the time. This kind of engagement is fun!

There has been a misdirected debate in contemporary culture about who we are fighting and where this fight is supposed to happen. I think that this very ambiguous question is exactly the problem. The only concrete thing that we consistently and concretely relate to is ourselves, and thus begins to be the site for potential change. If you continue to change the rules about how your body works in the world, you can become many people with many different potential trajectories. This is an exciting thought for me.

EN: What is the role of art in our 21st century culture? Is there anyone today whose influence is such that in forty years their work will be worth the millions of dollars that Warhol and Picasso pieces obtain today from collectors?
Rob K-S: I think it is a pretty common sentiment that we need to start being good to our neighbors. Or at least the people who are both physically and metaphysically close to us. I believe these people are the ones I can actually make an impact on. And this doesn't mean they are the ones I am making the work for, just that they are more important to me or at least are of great consequence. I think that the world needs people who care, and on a basic level that is it. I want to be one of those people and hopefully demonstrate that in my community. I don't think people can learn much without seeing it play out or immediately experience it themselves. Which is not to say I'm into some kind of "Bring The War Home" Weather Underground thing. But I think any field has the potential to affect the world, Art just happens to be the one I like and can do the most efficiently. I don't think Art is very unique.

EN: Any other comments you want to make on the "art scene"?
Rob K-S: I don't feel like I know anything about an art scene primarily because I live in Duluth, Minnesota. I just feel that I don't ever want to become bitter and jaded about the whole thing as many hundreds of people have. I will do my best to avoid that, which I think means staying as self-involved as possible for as long as feasible.

You can see more of Rob's art and ideas at www.RobKS.com
Check out Rob's blog at this URL.

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