Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Scott Howard. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Scott, so many exciting things to discuss, we can’t wait. Thanks for joining us and we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with our readers. So, maybe we can start by discussing optimism and where your optimism comes from?
I’ve always looked to history as a guide for where we might be going. You can flip to any random page of a nonfiction book and likely land on something awful that happened in the past, but history is also an endless well of inspiration, where we find people who started with far less than most have today refusing to give up and accomplishing extraordinary things. The past decade of life not just in America but globally has been very tumultuous, and I can honestly say that digging into the past and trying to find historical parallels to where we find ourselves today through my work has helped me make sense of our world. When you look to the past you’ll find a lot of cautionary tales, but also the paths forward and precedents for what feel in the moment like unprecedented events.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m Scott Howard, and I’m a visual artist born and raised in Savannah, GA, currently living and working in New York City. I grew up drawing like most kids, and I was fortunate enough to go to a high school with a graphic design program which taught me the skills that I use to earn a living to this day. Then I fell in love with photography and eventually chose that as my major in college; later I spent many years writing, and working with video. But for the past several years, I’ve mostly been working with archival materials to explore the past with an eye towards the present and future. I love being able to use actual historical objects to interpret stories in a way that’s more engaging and imaginative than just words on a page, and invites you to live and breathe in these worlds a bit without imposing a narrative on everything the way a book or film might.
A pretty straightforward example of what I’m trying to accomplish with the work I’m currently producing is “Now More Than Ever”. For my generation and those younger than me, Nixon is known only as the ultimate symbol of American corruption. I think a lot of people my age might be surprised to know that he won two landslide elections, including 49 of 50 states in 1972. Americans like to think they can spot a con from a mile away but Nixon’s huge electoral success proves otherwise. So in the hopes that we don’t make the same mistake again, I wanted to illustrate the forgotten history of his massive popularity before Watergate, with a little hint of the collapse to come.
The most ambitious piece I’ve attempted so far is “McKinley in the Rainbow City”, which recreates the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. It was essentially a World’s Fair, envisioned as this coming out party for the United States in the new century as a leader in fields ranging from fine art to manufacturing to space exploration (one attraction was an imaginative carnival ride sending attendees on a trip to the moon a full year before Georges Méliès’ landmark film of the same name). But it was sadly defined by a single event: President William McKinley’s assassination by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. This elevated Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency, which is one of the most consequential events of the 20th century, but also signaled an end to a dark and little-remembered era of America ruled by the robber barons and punctuated by our most overtly imperialistic acts – we essentially conquered the Philippines, Hawaii and Japan – of which McKinley was a major architect. It was also a bloody period where three American presidents were assassinated in just 36 years. When I learned that Buffalo built an entire electrified city (a rarity at the time) for the Exposition, only to demolish it after the project was tarnished by this violent act, it just felt like a really compelling entry point to try to pull together all these threads that converged at this single point.
I spend a lot of time and care with what I do, and unveiling this work week by week and seeing people from all around the world really responding to it has been such an exhilarating time for me. You can see what I’m working on at scott-howard.com and instagram.com/scotthowardart
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?
First, realize that very little advice works across the board for everyone. Do all that you can to accept who you are and how you work, because no one way is right or wrong. Try to identify what behaviors are standing in your way and find specific advice that helps you work against them. If you’re feeling tapped out and need inspiration, schedule time to actively seek it in nature or the museum. If you’re the opposite of that (like me), and find yourself overwhelmed with ideas and don’t know where to begin, give yourself deadlines or assignments that spur you into action. Don’t force yourself into boxes of what you think you should be creatively. If you set out to make something that’s rococo and end up with some hyper-minimalist Kazimir Malevich piece, you’ve surprised yourself. Embrace it.
That being said, even though very little advice can apply to everyone, I think one exception is always remembering that creating and editing are different skills. I read this decades ago in Stephen King’s On Writing and think about it all the time. I have a tendency to constantly critique myself as I’m just putting ideas down, when you should feel free to get your ideas out and make sense of them later. Attempting to edit while you’re creating not only slows you down but robs you of the thrill of making in the moment, constantly thinking about the finished product instead of fully experiencing the joy of making something new.
Speaking of experience, my third piece of advice would be to always make time to experience awe. A lot of people talk about happiness and joy, and those are important too but they’re fleeting. Awe is more substantial, it requires your active participation. I’m not that old but just in my lifetime I have seen the pace of life accelerate in a way that has been so detrimental to our mental and physical health both as individuals and as a society. We’ve cut the time we used to devote to our engagement with art and beauty from the length of an album to a single song to sped-up 15 second clips. You have to carve time out of your schedule to occasionally see a challenging movie or hike up a mountain or have some experience that pulls you out of our ever-shrinking world of screens and notifications.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Obviously I’d love any exhibition opportunities, particularly in my beloved New York – not my hometown but I got here as soon as I could, as the old saying goes. I really want my stuff out there in the public though, not just in a gallery environment. Music is my biggest inspiration, and a big ambition I have is to work with bands on their posters and album art, and eventually I’d love to connect with the right band on a long term partnership like Anton Corbijn with Depeche Mode or Peter Saville with Joy Division/New Order. I think what I do is a natural fit for editorial design so I’m very open to any collaborations in that space. I grew up in the 90’s in the golden age of zines and have been so pleased to see those getting a lot more attention, so I’d jump at contributing to the right collaborative project with a writer or collective if that came along. I’m also a massive film nerd (I typically log several hundred each year on Letterboxd) so being given the opportunity to do what I do with a movie poster design would be a very exciting challenge. I’ve also made several short films and will likely make more in the future. I’m also on the lookout for an innovative printer to experiment with how best to replicate these pieces in 3D, not just on paper but on glass, mirrors, metal… To be frank, this is a dire time in many ways, particularly culturally. It’s time for people of vision to find each other and step it up.
Contact Info:
- Website: scott-howard.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/scotthowardart
Image Credits
Photo of the artist by Marisa Avelar, all images © Scott Howard
