"Art is like taking a sh*t"
Coming up for air in Ohio, and Jesse Lenz on artmaking as biological necessity
From the studio:
The last time I wrote I was preparing to relocate back home to Ohio.
I’ve been here for over three months now, re-familiarizing myself with my quickly growing hometown Columbus, seeing old friends and family, and pushing forward in developing my personal work.
Mostly, though, I’ve been spending time growing Reed Prints.
I found a space to set up shop in in Columbus. I’ve been reflecting on how the growth of my business has coincided with deciding to invest a real space to run my business out of. It’s paid off to tell the world I’m really doing this. Business is great - but if you are in need of photographic prints of your work, get in touch.
From an artist:
Since being in Ohio, I’ve also been spending a lot of time at Charcoal Book Club out in rural Ohio to help Jesse Lenz, founder of Charcoal, print work for his upcoming July exhibition, Prā, that’s taking place at Rencontres d'Arles, an annual photo festival in Arles, France. The exhibition is his first solo show and a preview of his upcoming second book in a septology, The Seraphim, which will be published by Charcoal Press later this year.
Over the past three months Jesse and I have completed over 30 exhibition-ready silver gelatin prints for the show. This is the first time I've extensively printed from someone else’s negatives in the darkroom. Removing the emotional connection that comes with printing one’s own work has allowed me to hone in some of the more technical aspects of darkroom printing, and I’ve grown a lot through the process.
Jesse’s work that I’ve been printing is inextricably mixed with his personal life, by a combination of design and fate. Jesse used to live with his growing family in an airstream, traveling the country to run Collective Quarterly, photographing other people’s stories. After finally settling in Ohio’s Amish country a number of years ago, he shifted to begin photographing the story of his own life, digging deep to make work of his family, and the land and animals around him, built on a framework of faith and mythology.
As an owner of multiple creative businesses, father of six kids, and a working artist, Jesse doesn't get days off. Yet in the midst of this crucible of constant work and background noise he’s managed to carve out a way of developing a body of work that is both traditional and complex, deeply personal, and objectively beautiful.
Across the countless hours we’ve spent in the Charcoal studio together, smoking cigars in his wood-fired hot tub, and trying to talk over the fever pitch of screaming babies, the conversation always comes back to art, artmaking, and living the life of an artist.
To successfully make meaningful art over the course of a lifetime is a weighty undertaking, something that can’t be done without a commitment to one’s craft that bleeds into obsession. A friend I spoke with recently referred to the need to make art as a chronic illness, but Jesse speaks of it as a biological necessity, comparable to eating or sleeping.
“Art is like taking a shit,” Jesse tells me often. “You don’t do it every day because someone’s paying you to, you do it because you have to - if you don’t do it you’ll die.”
I’ve learned during my time at Charcoal so far that creating art with any hope of longevity must come from a natural place that is a direct outflow of the life one is already living. You are either living as an artist, attempting to make sense of, interpret, and create something from the world that’s around you, or you’re not.
It’s been very rewarding to make these prints for Jesse and I’m excited to be helping out in person with the first international exhibition I’ve assisted on as a printmaker.
We’re flying to France in less than a week to install the prints we’ve been working on this year. I’ll be writing again soon to recap the exhibition and festival in Arles.
-Reed
From me:
Aside from Jesse’s show, I’ve recently made prints for multiple other photo exhibitions. Anna Friss displayed her prints outside in Detroit this spring, Joshua McMillan has a show that is currently on view in Ontario, and Shannon Cavarocchi has an upcoming installation in Australia this July:
Anna’s outdoor show in Detroit Reed Prints totes are now available in limited stock and they’ve been selling fast. Get one while they’re still around:
Amelia with the RP tote in Dumbo, ©Josiah Bice This spring I self published The Acres, a short photobook about the relationship between an aging man named Al and his fabled hermitage in rural Ohio shortly before his approaching death. Only one copy remains available but it can be found here:
