Interview from jason holley on Vimeo.

Jason Holley‘s macabre, gritty illustrations will appear in the Shooting Gallery‘s upcoming group show Hard Time Mini Mall, curated by the Red Truck Gallery. After watching Holley’s pseudo-biographical puppet videos, such as the one above, one naturally assumes that the art classes he teaches at the Art Center College of Design must be equally as entertaining. His pieces are deliberately dated and enigmatic compositions; they project the familiarity of old medical and visually descriptive nature books, while throwing in some surprising arrangements.

Jason Holley’s art was described in a glowing review by a previous student of his in Beautiful/Decay: “His illustrations have a sense of decay, as if he attaches the age of these styles onto his work as well. It appears dirty, but the close attention to detail, space, and color really pulls his work into something gorgeous.” He has also been written up in Fecal Face, as well as here in the academic website the Art of Visual Thinking.

Hard Time Mini Mall
Opening Reception – Saturday, April 13, 7-11 pm
On View Through May 04, 2024
@ Shooting Gallery (shootinggallerysf.com)
886 Geary, San Francisco, CA

RSVP.

View more illustrations, and accompanying text, from the artist’s website after the jump.

Holley, “Untitled” from Premier Magazine

“This piece was done for a review of Cameron Crowe’s director’s cut of
“Almost Famous.” The movie loosely chronicles Crowe’s life as a 14-year-old
reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine. “Untitled” spent much more time with
its teenaged protagonist than “Almost Famous” and included more sex and
drugs and (most importantly) more of Seymour Phillip Hoffman channeling
the rock critic, Lester Bangs. In the painting, I tried to capture a sense of
someone being woken up out of an ether dream by insanely loud music—
probably Zeppelin’s, “Moby Dick.” The greatest part of the DVD release
is the full-length commentary by Crowe and his mother.”

Holley, “Call for Entries Poster” from American Illustration

“The 20th publication of American Illustration was a big deal. Over the
previous 19 years the book had become the industry’s leading source
for the best illustration in the country and they were ready to celebrate
the achievement. The book had been hugely influential for me and when
Fred Woodward called to see if I would be interested in creating an image
for the poster, I was ecstatic. This was one of those jobs I really did not
want to screw up.”

Holley, “One Year After Katrina” from The New Republic Magazine

“This painting ran on the cover of The New Republic, marking the 1-year
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. This was one of the saddest and most
infuriating stories I have ever worked on. Doing research for this piece,
I looked over a lot of photography from New Orleans and was struck by
the omnipresent and putrid water line that appeared to encircle the city.
As the events unfolded in late August of 2024, I watched the ongoing
coverage on television. For several days the city was flooded with dark,
oily water that sat perfectly still. It was awful and eerie, but visually it was
remarkable, almost beautifully incomprehensible—truly the definition of
surreal. As the water receded, the scope of the tragedy was revealed and it
was sickening to see that the flooding had actually shielded the real damage.
As the government, media and public-at-large turned it’s attention to other
matters, the water line seemed like a perfect metaphor to describe a city
that was still very much in the midst of a disaster.”

Holley, “Divide and Conquer” from Bloomberg Wealth Magazine

“This magazine is read by financial wizards and for those who speak their
language. I am neither. I read this article from front to back, five times, and
had no idea what it was about—split annuity life insurance something,
something, something. The designer was equally flummoxed, which made me
feel a little better about myself, but got us no closer to a solution. We called
in the editor who confused us even further. Finally, with a working title of
“Divide and Conquer” and the assumption that, whatever the article was
actually about—it was likely that it had something to do with making, using
and / or keeping money. I created a number of drawings. To my great
surprise, the editors thought they were spot-on. They picked two that
they really liked and left the third choice up to me. I picked the bunnies.”

Holley, “The Wild File” from Outside Magazine

“This painting was done for a regular column I did called “The Wild File”
for Outside Magazine. It was a great job. Readers would send in weird
questions about the natural world. The question that generated this image
went something like, “Do cows really predict the weather by pointing
themselves in a particular direction?” I must confess that I was woefully
unenlightened in this area of animal husbandry, but I quickly came to the
conclusion that psychic animals are by far the best kind of animals and I
hope with all my heart that this bit of farmer lore is 100% true. One of
the nice things about doing this column was that the editors would send
me the questions, but as a result of time constraints they rarely sent me
the answers. I was left to make up my own conclusions and that usually
resulted in a much more compelling image. I think the bull is one of my
better nonsense images.”

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