Interview with Artist Ben Blount: Part 1

If you're not familiar with the work of Detroit born artist, designer, and letterpress printer, Ben Blount , you're in for a treat.

Ben's work often explores questions of race and identity and the stories we tell ourselves about living in America. His work is included in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Joan Flasch Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Newberry Library.

I recently got a chance to sit down with Ben in his Evanston studio to talk about art, full-time jobs, and the delicate balance between the two. I left his studio that day more inspired than ever to keep MAKING STUFF. This is the first of the two-part interview.

Can you start by telling me a little bit about your art?

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I'm a letterpress printer/designer. I make letterpress printed posters and artist books, and those get shared online and at art shows. I also travel around the country, talking to students and people at universities and organizations about printing, about my focus, which is race and identity and activism.

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How long have you been doing it?

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On and off for 17 years. I learned to print in grad school at Columbia College. I got my MFA in 2005.

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Was your focus always on letterpress printing?

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Yeah, the MFA was for interdisciplinary book and paper arts. The pillars of book arts are letterpress printing, book binding by hand, and paper making. But only for the last five years have I been seriously and consistently making work.

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So you've been focusing your artistic efforts on printing for 17 years. But you have, in the last five years or so, kind of stepped into the next level. Can you talk about the process that got you there? Was it a light switch where you woke up in the morning and decided "I’m gonna push harder on this"? Or was it a gradual thing for you?

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It was a slow burn. I had always liked making stuff. I was kind of an art kid, you know, I was always drawing and making stuff, and I would make books. I've liked the book as a form for a long time. Even in college, I would make books for projects. I'd make books for people as gifts. Not really knowing what I was doing, but finding ways to bind pages and put content in. Over the years I've had a sketchbook. I've written down ideas. I've had thoughts about, oh, I could do this, this would be cool, but just never did anything with it. I think part of it was finding the time, you know, with a full-time job and family. And it's like, when do people do these things? And also, is there a value in doing it? It's a lot of time away from your family and your baby to go make these things just for yourself. It seemed selfish. I was working full-time and in grad school full-time, had just got married, we bought our first condo right before I started grad school, had our baby two years into a three-year program. And so for those three years of grad school, I was doing all those things at once.

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Wow.

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And so after that, just to think, oh, I'm gonna go take this time away and kinda do this indulgent thing, I just didn't do it. And I think looking back too, I think I was scared to put the work out there or show what I was doing. The ideas were there, but I waited for the opportunities to come rather than make my own. There’d be a show, like, Columbia was having an alumni show. I was like, okay, I can do something for the alumni show. And I made a book. It ended up being one of my favorite books, and it was fun, and I figured out how to do it. It's called H.N.I.C. about when Obama was running for president.

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So at that point in time, it was almost like you needed an external motivation to make art.

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Yes, for sure.

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It wasn't that you lacked the drive, but you had other priorities that you were really focusing on.

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Yeah. Outside opportunities, a deadline of sorts, you know what I mean? “I need this book for this show by this date.” It's like, oh, I can do this for two weeks and knock this out.

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The deadline is the ultimate inspiration.

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A hundred percent.

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Okay, so that was early on, right? Would you say there were three stages? You had this early stage after you had a baby where you were kind of doing things based on external opportunities. You had the stage you're in right now, which is like, "I'm doing this." Was there a middle stage where you started to be like, "I'm gonna make this thing because I want to make this thing?"

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No, not really. It was another opportunity that came up that it was almost like a switch. It was like a before and after. My friend, Lisa Degliantoni, has a gallery called 1100 Florence down the street from me. She bought this building and it's a live-work space. She turned her front living room with windows into a gallery. She’s a curator or cultivator of artists. My family was in LA for the holidays, and she sent an email saying, "We want to do a show at the gallery." The Block Museum on Northwestern's campus was having a show, and they were going to do it in conjunction with them. "Do you think you could pull a show together for February 4?" And this was January 2. And I was like, "Yes, I can do this. I'm going to make this happen." So I just went all in for the next four weeks, and made a ton of new work and pulled this show together.

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How much of that show was work that you already had done versus work that you had to create in those four weeks?

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More than half of it was new. I can remember staying up till three in the morning at the dining room table. When I had the show, people came to me and were like, "Where did this come from? What is this?" People didn't know. They knew I was a designer, but they didn't know I made anything that wasn’t for a client. It was kind of like this little secret. Like a different identity almost. So, yeah. I did that and I loved the process of making all those things. I think the show came together really well. There was a good response and I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. That was the moment. Before then I was always thinking about the outcome and like, is this good enough? Or is this gonna not be good enough? Is this gonna resonate? Am I gonna make a bunch of prints that are just gonna be for me and not really go anywhere? And so I got rid of that and just focused on process.

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Who do you make your art for?

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I definitely make it for myself. But also, maybe it's the designer in me, I think about the audience and like how it might be received and who might get this or who might not get this, who this might piss off, but who may think the same thing is funny.

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Have you had instances where your art has pissed people off?

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A little bit. Yeah. I've had people with The Make America Great poster. It’s initially off-putting purposefully, right? But then there's other people when it was on the billboard, people were just like, don't even use those words. People were jogging by in Chicago and it's a big Make America Great sign. And they're like, what is this? And I'm like, “No, wait, read the whole thing! Read between the lines!”—“But I'm running too fast!”

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We bought that poster at that show. And we had it up for the longest time in our hallway. And I remember when people came over, I was like, I really hope that they read the whole thing and don't just make a snap judgment.

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Yeah. I've heard people have it up and then the plumber comes by and he’ll be like, “Yeah!” And they're like, “Uh, no, no, no, no, no!” Even the postcard for the show said “I can't be racist, I went to the Recollection art show.” I thought that was funny. But I remember at the Artist Talk, someone was like, “So are you saying we're racist? Or that we're just coming for this show to cover up?” She was kind of offended. And I'm like, “What do you think?” (Laughs). I'm obviously trying to play on something that is, you know, a real thing. It's a trope. It's something that people do believe. And, uh, so that's okay that you are offended by that.

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Even beyond race, I remember on Instagram, somebody saying something about your work that featured the word “fuck.” And they said, I really love this piece, but it would've been better if you didn't use harsh language. And I was like, that's the whole point!

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Yeah! It was like, "Oh, okay, thank you. I will now adjust my art to meet your conditions."

Talk to me about the Black Lives Matter t-shirts, which is arguably your most “successful” endeavor, depending on how you define success.

When Black Lives Matter first came out, some people were pushing back against it and saying like, White Lives Matter, and just adding words like, “only” Black Lives Matter. Even some black people who agree with it were like, it's not a very good slogan. It's not very catchy. There was a lot of discussion about how it did or didn’t suit the moment. And I was like, you're missing the whole context.

So I was like, what if I took a riff on that ampersand shirt and added the context in the middle? I added Black Lives Love and Strive and Hope and Struggle and Matter. Just humanizing what the statement means. Black lives operate like other lives and should be treated as such. I made the first shirts in 2015. A few people in Evanston bought them, but it wasn't that big of an impact. And then 2020 comes around, and George Floyd gets murdered. And Black Lives Matter gets a higher profile. I think I reposted the shirt on Instagram and people were like, I want this. And so there was a huge response.

People wanted to respond in a way or feel like they were being an ally with the Black Lives Matter movement. It was kind of an onslaught at the time of how do I keep up? So I ordered a bunch of shirts and I would be here during the day working for the ad agency, and Lisa and other friends of mine, who were teachers and had the summer off, would come into the studio and pack up and ship out these shirts for me. This is when COVID was early, so I pushed my table to the corner and had my mask on. It was a lot.

Do you still sell those?

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Yeah.

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Awesome. (People reading this, go buy one here ! Or some of Ben’s other art!) So I'm gonna jump back. You talked a little bit about the balance of your job and your art. How do you balance the two?

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Early on I was trying to figure out how do I find the time, and part of it is like, you just kind of make the time. Instead of doing things I did before, which could have been watching TV or watching movies, hanging out with the family, I had to take some time for myself. It’s a lot of nights and weekends. In the evening, after work and after dinner, I'll come to the studio and print or work on a project on the computer or do some sketching. I'm here almost every Saturday.

When the pandemic first hit, I used to get up early before work and be in the studio and like, get an hour or so of printing in before work and then at five o'clock, if I'm done, I'm right here, I can keep going.

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Do you find it difficult after a full day of work and family to motivate to come to the studio and work? Or is that easy for you?

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It's easy now. After that initial hump, it was all about focusing on the process. I love to print, I enjoy doing it, and it energizes me. People ask me “How do you do this after a day's work? I'd be tired,” and it's like, "I'm tired too." But doing that extra thing isn't actually more tiring. It's energizing. So it's a good balance from all the demands of work and then you can have a more singular focus. During the day I'm working on something and I'm managing something else and I'm checking something else and making sure something gets out the door. Then after work, I get to get on my feet, move my body, and focus on one thing. So it's a very different working process.

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That makes a lot of sense. Like, you're not having to sit down in front of the computer again to make your art. As a writer, when I was working full-time, I was like, "Oh my God, I'm just gonna sit at this desk even more." But you said it, you’ve got to be energized by your art to put in the extra work that isn't necessarily putting food on the table. It's really interesting that you have a studio, another place to go, a different environment.

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It feels different. It smells different. The light's different. Like having a different place to be, it's like, this is where I do this work.

We’ve talked a little about your job. What is it that you specifically do?

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I'm an Associate Creative Director on the art side at a healthcare ad agency. Right now we're working on a launch for a drug. And so we work with pharmaceutical companies to market their products to doctors. I come up with concepts for campaigns, work with writers, come up with ideas for what these things might look like, choosing the fonts and the colors and the photographer and/or illustrator that will bring the whole thing together. I also manage a team of Art Directors to get the work done.

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Do you have moments in your job where you feel like, creatively, this is awesome? Like, I may not be creating my own art, but I am doing something that is inspiring me or inspiring others?

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Yeah, it's usually early on. It's usually at the ideation stage. We have an idea for this thing, and this is what we're aiming for. Maybe it's off the computer, I'm with a pen and paper, and sketching thing out, writing out snippets of ideas and working with someone else, a writer kicking around ideas. The fact that you can think of an idea and then make it come to life in the real world is just amazing to me.

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Have you ever found that having those inspiring moments in your job has somehow fed or energized you in your art? Or vice versa? Do they feed on each other in any kind of a way?

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Sometimes I will be thinking about something for work and it will spark an idea for something else, yeah, and I'll stop and get the other notebook and write it down. I think another way it has helped is working within a deadline driven business. I have to find time to make my print work. So if I come to the studio at nine o'clock at night, I'm like, I need to get some work done by midnight or one o'clock. I know how to be creative in four hour blocks of time. You know what I mean? I know how to not be too leisurely with the process.

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So the discipline that is necessary in a full-time work world has rubbed off in some ways. Like you're a better project manager of your art.

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Yeah, for sure. You know, a lot of times I don't have deadlines for my things, but sometimes I'll do a commission piece or a piece that's for a show, there's a deadline. And so how do I get this done in two weeks when two weeks is a few hours every night and a weekend? How do you make that work? Can I pull that off? Maybe I can pull this off if I stay up really late this weekend. That could save one day. I can really project manage the work and figure out how to do it.

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Let's take a finished piece of work. What is the typical process from “I have an idea for a thing” to “Here is the thing”?

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Yeah, it starts with an idea from, I don't know, something I heard or something I saw, or a conversation that I overheard. I'll write it down or sketch it out. And sometimes it comes out pretty freeform, but it starts with a sketch of some kind. Then I come to the studio and because of the way I work, I print mainly with the wood type I have in my collection, so the individual letters are of a specific size. So I'm working with a limited amount of resources. I don't have every font. And so I usually come to the studio and I get a piece of paper, the size I'm gonna be printing on and I’ll start pulling type out and composing. Let's say it's a poster, to see how the things that I have will fit together. And once I kind of can see it visually with physical pieces of type, I'm like, oh, that'll work. And then I'll usually check in with my wife or run it by somebody else to make sure, like, "This makes sense, right?"

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Is that a prototype essentially of what the thing is going to be?

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No, I'll just talk it out. I might take a picture of it. This is what I'm thinking. This is gonna be this color and this is gonna be this color. And if the response is “That looks great, go for it,” then I'll start printing.

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Do you do multiple versions of something in order to find the one that really works for you?

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No. I think that's part of a leftover from when I first started making work. I was nervous. It took me a while to actually make anything. I had this degree and had this equipment even too, sometimes I just didn't really do anything with it. So to get into the process of kind of trusting myself, it took me a while. I had a mantra during that time. It was “Hard work and gratitude.” Because it was difficult finding the time and doing it. But then also being grateful. Like, this is pretty cool that I could even do this.

To be whining about, oh, you have to stay up too late to make your artwork that you love. Let's put this in the right context. So it's hard work and gratitude, hard work and process. I was heads down making stuff. I don't care what people say, I don't care if someone buys it. I had to really get into falling in love with the process. So now I just make changes on the press. I'll line something up and print it and if it's not right, I'll just change it there on the press. I don't have lots of sheets where it didn't work. It's like, this works, or this will work. If I'm spending an hour on this, this is taking too long. Let's keep it going.

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I hope you're enjoying the interview with Ben so far. I'll be back with the second half next Tuesday, where Ben talks about teaching, inspiration, and what's next for him. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments for Ben, tag him in the comments and let's keep this conversation going!