We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Loomis Henry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Loomis below.
Hi Loomis, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
I’d like to think my self esteem and confidence are these continuous bold lines that gets stronger the longer I live and the more I create but they’re more like scribbles by a seismograph in a trembling world. One day I can feel like King Kong on the Empire State Building on the inside and the next like a crushed insect. I am human. I am flawed. Like many artists, so much of my work is done in isolation and the danger there is the rabbit hole of your own ego. It’s like you’re in this underground shelter slaving away without a lot of real input from the outside world but maybe that’s better: relying on your intuition to guide you? Covering your bets with hunches. I mean, you can have your cell phone with you but what in the hell is that, really? Social media? Jesus. It’s a disposable go round on crank. What does it all mean? You may as well watch people with butterfly nets competing to see who can capture the most farts in a whirlwind. So, you’re working alone, trusting this process against all of that, this gut feeling that what you’re creating organically with your own hands, your bloody fucking soul is infused with the unforgettable. A voice that can rise above the rabble in the pit. An act of expression ripped out of your core that, with the right input, communicates something meaningful, something compelling, unique, weird, highly individual, sacred and substantial. Or not. You may be giggling among like minded imbeciles, tickling the balls of nowhere making safe art and hoping for fame, a big score, seven million likes at the bottom of the abyss but that’s not me. I’d rather have “non-self” esteem. I want to be a Sufi master! I want to shed my ego and walk through walls like Dr. Strange! Besides, I think insecurity without any bluff is a better springboard for real and interesting, creative acts. More so than confidence. The Japanese have this art form called “Kintsugi” where they glue back broken vases and pottery but don’t hide the cracks. They accentuate the brokenness. That’s where the poetry is. In our broken places. I mean, hell, I would rather listen to Charlie Brown’s garage band than Superman’s any godamned day…
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
What I am endeavoring to do is stay as faithful as I can to Norman Mailer’s maxim that the role of the artist in society is to be as disturbing, penetrating and adventurous as his courage and energy make possible. For me that’s designing posters that celebrate and honor iconoclasts, deep thinkers, bold creatives and wild ass weirdos from other eras that I feel are criminally forgotten today. Insofar as source material, reverent consideration or impassioned recommendation rarely do I see these cosmic icons exalted online, displayed in galleries or celebrated in the streets. Do we really need yet another fucking drawing of baby Yoda or Spiderman? How about a sketch of Big Mama Thornton or Rod Serling? A street mural of Dorothy Parker? Henry Miller? Blowfly? One of my favorite pastimes, when I’m not throwing darts at the cover of Forbes, is imaging these giants from other eras, these colossal human spirits alive today but re-imagined, say, as rock stars or self help gurus doing Ted Talks! Imagine Wendy O. Williams, lead singer for the punk band, “The Plasmatics” who used to run around on stage with electrical tape on her nipples welding a chainsaw giving an inspirational talk at an esteemed Ivy League school on cutting through today’s societal bullshit while waving a cordless black and decker like Leather face? That’s actually a poster I am working on. I’ve also done designs like Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre as a rock duo promoting an album with song titles like, “Angst for the Memories”, “Hell is Other People” and “Forecast: Oblivion”. What I’m really into now is designing faux book covers for memoirs and self help books written by fictional characters like Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four writing a book titled, “How to Stretch your Budget, Your Energy and Your Ass In A Wage Slave Economy” and another with R.P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest called “I am the Sunshine in Your Madhouse: Studies on Infectious Inner Light in a World gone Berserk.” So yeah, material like this keeps me in a state of aesthetic arousal because I get to hand draw personas be they real or fictional that embody this spirit of courage and rebellion talking shit to the inauthenticity and suffocating shit sludge of the status quo, profit driven death machine.
All of my designs begin with hand drawn portraits that I scan at a very high resolution and then add a few digital elements like text to create these posters which I sell all over the world. The correspondences and friendships that have sprung up out of these transactions from on the other side of the planet has truly been the kinds of diamonds you cannot pawn or wear around your neck like a high priced noose. I’m talking about the value of real connection around a shared idea and love of soul excellence. I designed this one poster of Sigmund Freud surfing on these text waves that are like an A-Z of mental illnesses and 20th century neurosis. A psychologist in Spain wrote me, after purchasing the poster online and said that she’d recently gone through some heavy shit and felt really down about things in general but the design never failed to lift her spirits and make her heart explode with laughter.
Well, I could have died on the spot after reading that. And maybe I did. And maybe every day after, including today, that I get to draw and cultivate more creative ideas that I hope inspire intelligent conversation and intrigue among others all over the world is another day in heaven.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think the power of transmutation is priceless. The ability to adapt in the face of total adversity, dance on the lip of oblivion or shape shift like a werewolf in the long, dark night of the soul and howl at the moon. Creativity need not be confined to any medium. Often, our greatest artistry is simply the ability to outwit attrition. It’s like chasing this dream of being a master concert pianist and then one day you lose both of your hands in a fire but instead of abandoning the piano you learn how to play Beethoven crazily with your elbows!
Integrity is something I hope to never pimp. I’ve always been mesmerized by people who have the courage to speak truth to power when everyone else remains silent, timid and afraid. I love any artist who, like the little kid in “The Emperors New Clothes” points at the naked, delusional King and says, dude I can see your asshole! That kid was the godfather of punk rock. As far as areas of knowledge…hmmm, I would only say that knowledge without wisdom is flat champagne at the wedding of expertise and opportunity, the opportunity to guide others with an enlightened outlook. The so called experts among us, the knowledgable without any wisdom are to my way of thinking some of the stupidest, callous and harmful in society because their egos are stuffed with the kind of learning acquired solely by conforming and never questioning which atrophies the soul and lays waste to the human heart.
My best advice to anyone early on in their journey is question everyone’s advice, even mine. If I tell anyone not to follow the herd but they follow me without having the wherewithal to be their own unique person in the first place that doesn’t mean a whole lot, does it? With that said, I think there is just so much awful art being made today. Bloody awful: toothless, gutless, cute, safe and unmercifully infantile. Is there any intellectual backbone among creatives today? Where are the intense, passionate, creative souls with roots that go deeper than whatever was trendy ten minutes ago? Must it take a nuclear holocaust to end the insipid efforts of the massively untalented and stop them from tormenting the world with their desperate need to loudly and incessantly communicate nothing at all for the sake of attention? I hope not. The thought of even one lion on earth coping with radiation or libraries incinerated in a flash keeps me awake at night.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
Well, this is like asking me to pick one rivet out of a skyscraper to represent all of the steel supporting its structure. Books are my spirits scaffolding and have been for as long as I can remember. But if I had to answer this just as a creative I would point to this one gem of a book, it’s my “De Profundis”, a book by this dude, George Lois called “Damned Good Advice (for people with talent!).
George Lois was an art director, designer, an agent provocateur best known for the Esquire Magazine covers he designed throughout the 60’s which really pushed the envelope in so many ways. George wasn’t the least bit afraid to tackle societal injustice and craft visual content that acted like this swift uppercut to the jaws of the dreary dead, the cultural forces hell bent at the time on preserving a status quo that included segregation, inequality for women and an escalating war in Vietnam. The Lois covers caused many a scandal due to their unconventional but compelling and inventive approach to marketing what was essentially a men’s style magazine by featuring artwork that honed in on controversial subject matter that other magazines wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. So any ways, he wrote this book filled with advice and personal anecdotes from his five decades in advertising on how to create bold, unforgettable design and also communicate bravado and even dissent with real integrity and respect for human dignity. It’s my bible, really. I recommend this little gem to any stick of dynamite looking for a spark.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sketchanddestroy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loomis.henry
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loomis-henry-51427033/
