UNM film student Josh Stuyvesant said he’s probably related to Peter Stuyvesant, who had a peg leg after his real leg was shot off by a cannonball. He was governor of New York back in 1647 when it was called New Netherland.
Josh was born and raised in Albuquerque and has yet to venture East to reclaim his family name. He has a stencil-on-skateboard-deck-and-canvas piece of a boy with a zipper for a mouth and a newspaper hat called “Newspaper Hat” in the Warehouse 508 art show, which opens July 29.
He also has work up at Stilo in Nob Hill. His collection includes a large stenciled dumpster.
Daily Lobo: Does the zipper mean you’re socially awkward?
Josh Stuyvesant: That’s not what it means, but I am socially awkward. But maybe you knew that before you started this interview. Sometimes I like to start with a cool image, and on its own it’ll become something deeper and bullshittier, I guess.
It means, like, the figure as a boy or a youth or a young teenager and the fact that he has a zipper mouth and a newspaper hat is cause nobody listens to the youth and they’ve got the freshest, least-sour ideas. That’s what Warehouse 508 is doing I think. People are like, “I don’t care what you say. Go make a hat.”
DL: Do you mainly use spray paint?
JS: I like spray paint the most, stencil art the most, because it’s so simple. You get an easy literal line and then you leave all the abstraction for the idea. I’m fairly new at it. I’ve only been doing it a couple years and not very often in those couple years. I tend to be a big dabbler in everything. I write screenplays and poetry and paint and make movies.
DL: Who are your favorite artists?
JS: Tom Waits. And I’ll have to say Bukowski and Banksy. And I really am liking Luke Bessen lately. He wrote and directed “The Fifth Element” and that one movie.
DL: Do you consider yourself talented?
JS: Yes, sure. Let’s not beat around the bush.
DL: Your work is kind of dreamy and idealistic and sad, like we can’t really get there.
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JS: It’s the poet in me, I guess. I always tried to be a happy poet, but I guess it doesn’t pan out. It’s funny because I’m a very happy person and, you know, I’m doing all right. I got a great life, but for some reason part of me thinks that an artist or a poet has to be struggling with questions of life and always has the blues. At least that’s the way the greats had it.
DL: They say Renoir was the only purely happy painter. Do you like your work?
JS: Mostly, yes. But I do find little things that are wrong that bug the shit out of me. But I just calmly tell myself that nobody knows that.
DL: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
JS: That’s such a good question. I think the answer you usually get is I’d be a snake charmer, right?
I think I’d get off my ass, get out of the way of Facebook and go buy a camera and make a movie that day. Today. It would have action and love. It would be kind of dark, maybe a little noir-y, but not without some comic relief. It would have a femme fatale. And it would have something that only Josh Stuyvesant can bring to a film.
DL: Do you want to make money through art?
JS: Yeah, I want to make money with it. I figure if you put a lot of time into something, you should make some money off it. But that’s a little bit, I don’t know, unsettling, I guess, ’cause the whole graffiti movement, the old graffiti grandfathers, would go “tsk-tsk” at you for doing it. Putting it on a canvas and selling it for hundreds.
DL: Tell me a story about glass.
JS: See this scar here? I punched a wine glass. I punched straight through it with all my force. I was retaliating against my buddies who decided to launch a “gang war” in which I was being stabbed in the neck with a fork and sprayed with Lysol while I was on the phone with my girlfriend. So I got off the phone with my girlfriend, I said, “I love you, and I’ll call you back later,” and I walked out to go punch the brute and he defended himself with a wineglass. We weren’t even drinking wine. And I just punched straight through it. I remember Tiny Dancer was on. And so we went to the hospital.
DL: Did you make him pay your hospital bill?
JS: No, my mom made me pay it.
~ Eva Dameron
