Fluid style and smiles for miles are words that could quickly describe Stefan Janoski. Behind all the smiles and sweet skateboarding sits a brilliant multi-artist who has found a way to express his laid back and humorous personality in a variety of mediums. I sat down with the messy artist to talk about melting wax, yellow submarines, and the process of making art.
Yeah, that sounds like something I would do… I remember there was this one where I hadn’t even talked to anyone before I got there. It was like through this company official, this hat company. And then everyone just kept stressing out about the prices, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to even sell this one and then I was like, “All right, it’s a million dollars”. I think I was just being a difficult artist. [laughing] And also I found a disfigured peanut M&M and It looked exactly like a yellow submarine and I drew three little portholes on it and I glued it to the wall. Then when I arrived at the art show, someone had removed it from the wall, and I was all pissed off about that, too.
That one was definitely the most expensive one.
I mean, I personally like it. I enjoy art that has humor to it or something clever and funny. It’s more appealing to me than trying to do a serious message or something. I just like to think of funny ideas and then make them into art. Humor for me is always a main part of everything that I do, I guess. If I was going to write a song, I’d like to have some humor in it. To me, humor is the best.
"Don’t take life too seriously, have a good time and be nice, and try not to fuck the place up too much while you’re here"
Yeah, sometimes. Of course, there’s people that are really good, which is its own thing. It doesn’t need anything. You’re just like, wow, look at this beautiful landscape. But I do like it when somebody takes skill and then an idea and executes it really well, like something clever. And especially if it’s funny, to me, that’s my favorite.
I definitely make all art just for myself to begin with and then go from there. But selling it is important, too, because you want to keep making art. Sometimes you need to sell something in order to buy more supplies. It’s nice if the art helps fund itself. But sometimes in the art world, which I’m putting in sarcasm quotes, it seems like people want to know how much something is, in order to know how much they like it, which I think is just weird. It’s these really personal things that you spend a lot of time on, you had this idea and then you make it, and then sometimes it feels good to sell it, and then sometimes you don’t want to sell it.
I’m not in it at all, really. I’ve always liked doing art. I’ve always drawn and painted, my entire life. There just came a point when I lived in New York, we had this really huge warehouse loft that we lived in and it was this perfect art room, so I started getting into doing really big paintings. Also, what you’re doing right now in the winter, when it’s snowing and stuff, you have like this forest rest from skating. So when I was home from trips, in New York, I would just be in my house, making art like crazy. That’s where I really got into sculpting. It was so fun and cool, so for years, all I was doing was making sculptures. But now I’ve just been back into painting again.
To me, it’s kind of like what the idea calls for. If I have a certain idea for something that I think would be a better sculpture than a painting then I would make a sculpture. And the stop motion, I just always loved that whole art form. The one I made with Movie Mountain – God, I Need a Girlfriend – actually was a poem, it was a sculpture, it was a song, and then I had this whole idea for a stop motion. So when I met Foster [Huntington] and these guys who had a stop motion company, that was the idea I had. At the time, I just really wanted to make that a stop motion. I guess the dilemma of every day, what do you do? Do you skate? Do you play music? Do you do all of the above?
I mean, it’s different. A painting you just finish at home and you’re done with it right there in your room but with the bronze, it’s such a process that it’s kind of fun. Because it’s the sculpture you make and then that has to become a wax version of it, which in itself is a whole nother version of the sculpture. Then it’s the wax version, and then you wait, and then it’s the bronze version. It’s like actually a really fun process because you kind of relinquish your piece and then you get back this really cool bronze sculpture. When I first got addicted to it, a little bronze sculpture is just such a cool thing. I just wanted to cast everything into bronze at one point. But there’s definitely something I like about painting right now where you just finish it. Ceramics you have to put it in the kiln and do all this stuff. And these processes, if you don’t have everything at your house, you know… Jessica and I got Ubers in New York, with sculptures in our laps, going out to Queens over these bumpy highways trying to keep these things from falling apart, to get out to the foundry. And it was a whole funny process. I would make ones out of wax because like if you just sculpt straight out of wax, you can leave out a whole step. But it just makes it one of a kind, so you won’t have a mold to make it again, you just melt out the wax and turn it to bronze. But in summertime New York, I’m holding these wax sculptures that are melting in the back of a car, so I’m fixing them in the car. It was pretty funny.
ADHD? [laughing] I don’t know. I’m just one of those people who would get into tons of stuff and I want to know all about it and try it. You know what I mean, instead of just liking photos, you got a camera and you learned about it.
Yeah, you have to do it. You can look up stuff all about things and read as much as you want, but it’s really about just starting. It’s kind of like, the first try is the scariest one when trying a trick. Once you try one, you’re like, all right, here we go.
I have been doing a lot of jumping and experimenting lately. Basically it’s like what we were just saying, just going to the room and starting painting and usually there are a lot of paintings going on at once. You saw my messy room. I kind of just go around and make messes all over the place all day and just kind of see what I want to do.
It’s the ultimate question. That’s like the question of all questions. Is it sitting there, staring at a wall? Is it kindness? Is it gratitude? I don’t know, doing what you want and having fun, I guess. Don’t take life too seriously, have a good time and be nice, and try not to fuck the place up too much while you’re here.
