Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life (2023) Movie Script
I think it started
as, like, a kid.
Being at home,
really wanting to build a model.
And it's like, yeah,
because you're a kid,
you like building models.
But it was like, "No, no.
I need a way out of life today."
Having that control...
it gives you a taste
of something.
Recognized for
deftly relating design
to time-based considerations
and welcoming
graphically-charged
outsider street subculture
into mainstream conversation,
his work has been mounted
in institutions and galleries...
Who's Geoff McFetridge
to somebody that didn't know?
He is a man of many talents.
Foremost, he's an artist.
You'll see a Pepsi billboard,
an Apple watch face,
but you don't know
his name necessarily.
He's like a hero
or like a Zen master
within the creative industry.
If I want to communicate
something in a new, fresh way,
I think of Geoff.
It's almost
like he's an inventor
of how to communicate.
Everyone's kind of like
desperately trying to be Geoff,
but no one's quite hitting
the mark.
He's just done
everything his own way.
He hasn't listened
to anyone or anything
except what feels right
and true to him.
I was interested in geometry
ever since I was
a little, little kid.
Geometry was almost like a...
like a tick.
I would lay in bed
and look at shadows
for, like, hours.
I would see connections
between lines in the room
and have to,
like, step over them.
Everything is thought through
with drawing.
I draw with a pencil
because a pencil moves
at a certain rate.
I do a lot of drawings
that are this big
because basically
that's about as fast as I think.
I continuously draw and draw.
Once there's enough
out of the way that's expected,
you'll start to get to a place
where it's like,
that thinking led
to this new place,
but it's like small steps.
You don't just go like, unknown!
You travel downward.
I call it the white well,
because it's like...
Unlike a well,
it gets lighter
the deeper you go.
Were you even
aware of art growing up?
It was a mystery.
I remember
looking at a painting,
someone sitting
in, like, a French cafe.
I remember this feeling of like,
I'm never going to be able
to make this.
How am I going to go
to a cafe in Paris?
Like, I don't know.
I felt like should make logos
and do design,
because that's my world.
I'm from the suburbs
and I have friends in bands.
"We put a dent in your car
as quiet as a mouse.
Did you notice graffiti
the same color as your house?"
Oh, man, that's so rad!
"We went out all night
to see if anything was there,
but the streets
were just scribbles
drawn in thin air.
We did all sorts of stuff
because no one was around.
Might as well scream
if you want to hear sound."
It is a little bit extreme
to grow up in Canada.
One of the advantages
of being parents
at such an early age
is that we were very idealistic.
Were you guys hippies?
Kind of. Yeah.
Wait till you see our pictures.
My mom was a teacher,
my dad was a lawyer.
Everyone's houses
looked the same.
It was, like,
very understandable.
There's the things you control,
and then there's things
you don't control.
You're born into a family,
you're born
into a racial identity,
you're born in a place.
I didn't know
I was half Chinese.
I was just like,
"My mom's my mom."
I went to a big high school
that was almost entirely white.
Both sides of my family
were super westernized.
It was all about
how can you assimilate
as fast as possible?
I never found my Chinese roots.
It was like, "I'll just be part
of a new culture."
Skateboarders were brown.
Skateboarders were Chinese.
They were Hawaiian.
They were Black.
I did gravitate to places
that were super accepting.
What a glorious day for skating.
In my teens into my twenties,
I was really angsty
and deeply unsatisfied
with everything I was doing.
Yeah, I was like a wreck
for years.
Really struggling
through finding
my personal identity,
finding a place to belong.
And there's that
from, like, being an outsider,
so you just are like,
"I'm an outsider for life."
In grade one,
he's got these little doodles
all over the place.
They're no different
from all these other little boys
who love to draw.
It's a mystery to me
when it started evolving.
I think it was very gradual.
He literally drew
three hours an evening.
In high school, I made a poster
where it was this drum kit
on a piece of paper.
That was like,
the light bulb going off.
I was just
putting something together.
Someone said,
that's graphic design.
My dad never worked
like a five-day week.
Like, he worked
like, a six day week
my entire life.
And then on Sunday,
he would be building something
in our house.
"I remember digging a hole
for my dad in the yard.
I'd dig and hit rocks,
then have to tunnel around.
I cringe to think
of that clank, clank sound.
'All the way to China'
was what I thought.
All the way to China
was when I would stop.
I imagined a sliver of light
as I broke through the ground.
All the way to China
without going around.
All the way to China,
and the going was rough.
Then my dad came outside
and said,
'That's deep enough.'"
True story.
Growing up
in the world that I was in,
drugs and drinking,
that was, like, the heart of it.
The worst part of not drinking
is when it makes
other people uncomfortable.
Clear-headedness
has always been my sort of goal.
Um, so I've never...
Yeah, I've never really,
have never really been that guy.
In the art world
with a lot of cigarettes
and alcohol and joints...
it hasn't been normal...
to take care of yourself.
Social distortion were wasted.
Minor Threat had ideology.
I could way more relate
to Minor Threat.
What was sort of admirable
was very different.
Nothing was worse
than Jim Morrison.
Nothing was worse
than Led Zeppelin.
Like, drummers who twirl
their sticks.
Even the notion
of being like a heroic artist,
drinking and painting
and womanizing or something,
or whatever, you know,
the equivalent is for a woman,
that was sort of corny.
Growing up in Calgary,
it was fairly isolated.
What you're making
is existing in this void.
There was a local art college
that had
a commercial art program.
I wanted to pursue design.
I was just
sort of like a goofball,
making this very poppy,
image-based stuff.
A friend of mine became
a pro snowboarder.
He asked me,
"Oh, will you do my graphic?"
I was like,
working in snowboarding
and starting
to make skateboards.
I came down to California
to meet the guy
I was doing snowboards with,
and I remember coming
to the door of his house in LA,
and he laughed.
He was like,
I thought you were a man,
because I was like
21 years old or something.
Okay, if I'm doing this now,
what am I going to do
in 20 years?
Being drawn to CalArts
was about like,
this is like a world
of making things
that was unknown to me.
I was in grad school
with people who had had careers
and they were coming to CalArts
to sort of get the new language.
I was outgunned and overthought,
so I sort of
disassembled myself.
I stopped doing everything
that I was good at.
I stopped drawing,
and I just made work
that was focusing on like,
"How am I thinking?"
The computer arrived.
I was just like...
...making the ugliest stuff
you've ever seen for two years,
just like failing,
failing, failing.
The legible design
was a product of great thinking.
What can I do to make
this type of thinking clear?
Instead of having
like ten, 20 layers,
can I just present this,
like, singular thing?
I had the most to say
in the simplest work.
That's the essential
turning point.
The minute I graduated,
I got flown to Microsoft.
Where does that lead?
It's like, to a better job at Microsoft?
Like, it doesn't go anywhere.
The conventional life,
it wouldn't have worked.
I took a job
just to save enough money
to buy a computer.
Okay, now I'm going to like,
just pursue
these things I want to make.
I did a series of skateboards
for Girl.
I was supposed to go
work at Girl
and Chocolate Skateboards,
and then it fell through.
Then I'm just like,
"Oh, I have no job now."
Drawing to me
is like an incredible thing.
The world is fluid in it.
So for me, it's like,
"Oh, great,"
like, "I'll use this language."
I'll surprise myself
by making 100 things,
then one of them
is like a keeper.
It's like looking
for rare mushrooms
in the forest.
In skiing,
I'll be at the top of, like,
a really difficult run,
and I won't know
where I'm going to turn.
There's too much data,
and drawings are like that.
Like, it's like super infinite.
If you tell yourself,
"I'm going to just
fill this page
with drawings of the same car."
And the second time you draw it,
it's a little bit different.
At some point the hand starts
doing the thinking,
and there is a moment
as you're drawing the car
over and over again...
you sense it, and that is then...
It's like,
sort of like this door opens,
and you go through that.
You go like...
"The car just became a horse."
After the job
at Girl Skateboards fell apart,
it's like,
"Oh, shit, what do I do?"
Yeah, I don't know.
There was a lot
sort of happening
at that moment in LA.
Sonic Youthy, Beastie Boysy.
I was on the edge of it,
figuring out
what I needed to do.
You know, we're all
in our mid-twenties
and making stuff and helping
each other make stuff.
Trying to navigate
which way to go and what to do.
Everyone was just making stuff
because they wanted to make it
for themselves
and for each other,
and it wasn't about, like...
branding or really making money.
Glitter Rock was right before
big, overproduced stuff.
We were so into being indie.
Just like, yeah,
let's start a magazine,
start a skate company,
start a label.
The worst thing anyone could be
was like a corporate sellout.
It was a time
when you could be defined
by, like, what you made.
Andy Jenkins
is this pivotal character
that I knew
from the world of skateboarding.
Andy introduced me to Lumen.
Mark Lumen is awesome.
So, Lumen became the editor
of Grand Royal magazine,
and it was
the Beastie Boys magazine.
He called and he says,
we need an art director.
So I was like, sure.
He met good people, cool people,
which wouldn't have happened
if he'd gone working
for a big agency.
To get to work
with the Beastie Boys,
it was like,
the best magazine in the world,
best band in the world
that actually, like, seemed
like the coolest guys ever.
It was crazy.
I saw the energy
of, like, backstage passes,
the after-party,
this whole thing,
and I immediately was like,
I'm not going to be
in the Beastie Boys office.
I gotta leave.
So I had a cordless phone
that, like,
worked across the street.
To maintain my own autonomy
was, like, super important.
I was making
like $12,000 a year.
My girlfriend at the time,
because now my wife,
she works in a cafe
and I have to borrow money
from her.
Living in a one-car garage
that I, like, built a bed in,
and just like, super basic life.
I'd be covered in, like,
eczema, rashes, then realizing,
like, "Oh, these things
are caused by stress."
I was like, "I'm bad
at art directing a magazine."
It looks terrible.
Yeah, I was like a wreck,
but I had Sarah.
How'd you guys meet?
A mutual friend.
She just introduced us.
She was in the back seat,
and I got into the car,
and I was like,
"Hey, who's that?"
He had really curly hair.
Like, big curly hair.
He was wearing a sweater vest.
So I thought
he was really strange.
I don't think
it was love at first sight.
What's your
favorite thing about Sarah?
- Sense of humor.
- Oh, not my looks?
At that age,
you're making a lot of mistakes.
I was like,
burying myself in work.
I just remember not sleeping.
It's super challenging.
You're really not in control.
He felt like
it was really important
to have a job.
I was always like,
"You should do art."
Right then, this way!
Art is so much more important.
I did have a sort of vision that
none of the Grand
Royal stuff fit with it.
How can I find an avenue
for this type of work
that I had a vision for?
Starting my own studio,
it wasn't a business.
I had a computer on a board,
and I was like, that was it.
I was experimenting,
working in new mediums
and working
with different people,
trying to find places
where I can exist.
It was difficult starting out...
just being like a designer
who delivers product
for a client.
You produce 30 things,
someone else decides for you
that that's the one you keep.
It felt very unrewarding.
Even if I'm really successful
at this,
I'm not going to be happy.
I had this type of work
that I felt was my best work,
but no one knew to ask for it.
The only way to have people see
was I had to, like,
slip that work
into a presentation.
I remember working
for, like, a video festival,
and I did an experiment of like,
here's these things
that sort of address the themes
of the festival.
And then I did one
that was just like a tin can,
and then it just said
worms on it.
She was like, "Oh, that one!"
So then I started
presenting stuff
that was like that
for everything.
Having control,
it came to define
what type of work
I was going to create.
Trying to find avenues for that,
it wasn't easy.
The downfall of design
is you're anonymous.
If you make a T-shirt
for the band,
you don't have to be up there,
but you can participate.
You do the graphic
of the skateboard,
but you never have to worry
about making the trick
or putting your name on it
to bring yourself forward
and be visible in the work.
It felt like taking a risk.
There was a lot of,
like, rejected work.
Instead of it being,
like, throw it all out,
what more
could these drawings be?
I was doing stuff for X-Large.
They started a gallery
called Georges.
I was seeing stuff
in my sketchbooks
I wanted to make.
And then showing that to them,
they were just like,
"Why not have a show?"
My first shows
were just all screen prints.
It was the beginning.
To be able to show something
to your friends
that has a personal truth
within it,
even to have one friend say,
that's funny,
that's really
a lot of positive reinforcement.
The early art making
was about like,
I'm going to fill the room
with me stuff, like my mind.
Then the room gets bigger
and you fill more, you do more.
Running on ambition.
Slowly showing it
in more galleries.
The biggest thing
in my life was making art.
How do you like the park?
When Frances was first born,
it was really hard for us.
It's a full, crazy change.
And then it's like, "Oh,
Beautiful Losers is happening
in Cincinnati."
And then he left.
And I'd have to make
an installation on the spot.
I'm trying to mold those,
like, thumbtacks
out of, like, clay,
and I'm totally disoriented.
She was, like, super freaked out
and, like, upset.
I was, like,
having a nervous breakdown.
There was this tension
between my expectations
of myself.
Trying to balance it out,
it gets strange.
Someone asked me one time, like,
what's the most precious thing
you own?
And I was like,
"Uh, my memories."
But I don't know
how long they're going to last,
so I feel like these, kind of,
are the permanent memories
that won't go anywhere.
The Australian
magazine Oyster, it's like a big,
glossy fashion magazine,
asked me to go to his studio
in Atwater Village
to spend a day with him,
photographing him.
What year was that?
This was 2006.
He was doing
these paper weaving pieces,
screen prints, textiles.
You could just see, like,
this guy's going somewhere.
Shortly after that,
he asked me to come
to Eindhoven, Netherlands
with him.
He had a solo show
at the Nieuwe Museum.
I knew, like,
I'm the type of artist
who's changing
and growing very publicly.
Well, this would be good
to have,
you know, Andrew document.
His photographs
are really special.
What had really inspired me
as a young teenager,
a girlfriend gave me
this book by David Duncan
who arguably shot
the best photographs of Picasso.
They felt warm,
they felt
like they let this person in.
The pictures revealed, like,
a whole different side
of Picasso's life
that I would have never known.
His children,
his studio, his home,
all that stuff
was fascinating to me.
And it's really how I approached
what I did in Eindhoven
with Geoff.
When I asked him
to start taking photos,
there was stuff happening
in the making of the things
that was more interesting
than the things themselves.
To have moments shot on film
by a great photographer,
it's like gold.
Do you think
your project with him
will ever end?
I don't know.
Being part of art history
feels like a long shot.
So I feel responsible
for sort of like writing
my own history.
I don't like that idea
of just being forgotten.
Geoff always wanted
to have a responsible setup.
Being a commercial director
in LA, that's a great life.
Like, you have insurance,
you have, you know,
you have stability.
How long
were you working as a director?
A few years.
It was in the rotation for sure.
Okay, yeah,
just dance, no smoking.
You look cool.
It was very easy for me
to write concepts
that would translate to film.
And then I was like,
"I wish
someone else could direct this."
Being a commercial director
is very difficult
because you are
a very small percentage
of what is happening.
Too many people to please.
And I don't think
he felt like he was good at it.
It was a conscious decision
to give something up.
The reality of being a director
is like having a passion
for film
like I have for drawing.
I was sort of redefining
how I worked,
what my work could be,
and where it would go.
I was evolving.
Doing projects
for, like, music clients, MTV,
different companies.
I was in Atwater
on the eastside of LA,
surrounded by people
doing interesting stuff.
I would struggle, like,
early on, I would do a sketch.
The goal is really
to make the
thing that's finished
as good as the sketch.
And often,
the sketch was better.
T-shirt designs or something
was the first time I did it
for a company called Milk Fed,
which was
Sofia Coppola's company.
And that's when I first
experimented
that the sketch
for the thing was the thing.
So it would be
a little tiny drawing,
and I'd be like,
that's the thing.
We just were having fun.
There was, like,
a whole kind of rock scribble.
It was all very, like, homemade.
I asked him to do the
titles for Virgin Suicides
when I was working
on my first film.
Geoff's drawings
have something different
than something that a team
of creative professionals do.
It's not about being perfect.
To take a risk of making art
and applying it to projects
was really working.
Andy Jenkins, Spike Jonze,
and Mark Lumen,
they all worked together,
and they did
skateboarding stuff.
We were sort of moving
in similar circles.
Spike was, like,
the super effective
guru-like guy
that I could look up to.
Making stuff that felt artful
within these constrained worlds.
It's sort of
like navigating systems.
For him, the system
was Hollywood,
which is, like, the gnarliest.
It's like, inspiring.
I was sort of
establishing myself.
I could ask him for advice.
And then he offered
legitimate opportunities.
At that time, my wife, like,
she'd work on a Saturday,
I'd sort of work all weekend
or work late,
and, like, no schedule,
and then suddenly it's like,
this isn't going to work.
You don't want to, like,
get less and less control
of your time.
You want things to get better.
- Hello.
- Hi.
At that time,
I would have, like,
a crew of people
helping with fabrication.
I had to drive
to the screen-printing place,
burn the screens,
bring them back to my studio,
print it,
like, screw a bunch of them up.
Okay, if I take all that energy
of, like, driving around
and making tons of stuff,
but I put it into a painting,
right, like,
what does that mean?
Whoa.
Like, you don't go
and just do the stuff
you can do.
You go
and do the stuff you can't do.
So you fail to the point, like,
that's how you learn something.
It's mostly slamming.
Whoa.
In the beginning, you said
when you first started painting,
there was, like, a three-month process?
- Six months.
- Six months.
I had a painting
hanging here for six months.
I didn't know
what type of paint to use.
I didn't know
how to prepare the canvas.
I would paint the whole thing
and get to the point
where it was, like, not working,
and I... I'd sand
the whole painting down.
I would scrape it all off.
I'm physically rocked...
frustrated, and screwing up.
I've bought a giant compressor,
all these materials.
Right when I finished,
it's a terrifying, like...
is this good or bad?
And then I came in,
like, a day later,
my wife had put a Post-it on it,
and it was just, like,
"This is awesome."
That sort of set in motion.
"Oh, I'm going to follow
this thread."
I need to be outside
all morning.
This room is like sunlamps
from all sides.
I'm focused
on making work that, like,
is satisfying for myself.
Well, so what...
what are you pushing away?
Geoff talks about
the solitary arts.
I mean, I don't really know
anything about Zen,
but it's a Zen virtue.
A mindful skill set.
You have to be able to have
this focused dialogue
with yourself
where you're making
a bunch of decisions
in the moment.
It's constant practice.
You're not like,
"Oh, I'm only a monk
between 9:00 and 5:00."
When you leave the temple,
you're still mindful.
It's who you are.
I got interested
in trail running,
and the logical end
is running ultramarathons.
I'm scheduled to run a 50-miler.
It's a long, long process
of extending miles...
teaching your body.
There's no shortcuts.
You can't, like, fast forward.
When I show up for any race,
in the minute it starts,
I'm just like...
I'm fucking passing everybody.
I'm passing all these people,
and I'm going to run myself
into the ground.
There'll be one last person
that I'll be trying to pass
until the very end.
I am bummed
when I finish
a race and I'm not...
completely destroyed.
It's taking things to a level
like no one would do this.
No one would take this this far.
Working in design,
what's hard is setting
your own standard
for what you expect of yourself.
I like to test myself.
Like, I have an hour
to make this
what I want it to be.
I'm doing revisions
no one's asking me to do.
That feels like a similar thing
of endurance.
What if I go
at this heightened level...
at an uncomfortable pace?
What happens?
Do you ever just, like, chill?
Nope.
The guy is nonstop.
He knows how to push himself
in all these different areas.
Discipline is great
for getting the work done.
It can also be a constraint,
almost this Protestant cycle
where you keep on
whipping yourself,
I must run further,
I must do better.
Let's just say, like,
let's just make
a general blanket statement
that anyone in these fields
is pretty obsessive, you know?
And it's like, how do you manage
your obsessiveness?
I've had moments where I think
Geoff is a control freak,
for sure.
You know,
Geoff is an anal control freak
that has a very specific
color code that he'll wear.
Process or routine,
it's a response to something.
To decide to make work
that's inward-looking
was about, like,
I need to confront being human.
When you're just
feeling down or lost...
how do you work through
inner stuff?
The farther you go,
the deeper it gets.
And you walk
till just your nose is out.
You're on, like,
the tips of your toes.
You could swim into the expanse,
or you could take a step back.
And there's that moment
in between those two states.
What I'm doing
is trying to go to that point.
I don't know that every artist
has to be tortured,
but I think it can help.
There's definitely a lot
going on in his head, for sure.
You know, I have a friend
who has so much energy in her
that she has to run.
It has to come out somewhere,
and I think Geoff
is a similar way
that if he didn't let it out,
he would be a kind of
tortured soul.
Maybe making such neat,
precise work
is suggesting
that he's started with chaos
and has managed to clean it.
It's his way
of making the world right.
In my work, there is a humanity
that I understand as a sadness.
It's talking about,
like, a darker core.
I had my first
painting show in New York.
Hanging paint
on canvas in Manhattan,
like, that's when
you think, like,
"Oh, well, this is
like, this new level."
Around the same time,
our younger daughter
Phoebe was born.
Having kids
is a lot of pressure.
Making these decisions
that have consequence
to other people.
I'm just looking at the data,
and I'm, like,
"Reset, reset, change,"
like,
turning stuff off,
avoiding this.
When you're with your family,
it is like, a version
of being more yourself.
Constantly thinking of,
"How do I find
more of that in my life?"
But there's always obstacles
that make it seem impossible.
It's a super long game.
We've been together
since I started making stuff.
With Sarah,
I don't talk about what goes on
in the studio day to day,
because I save it
for like, crucial moments
of, like, "Okay,
can I talk to you about this?"
Because I'll be confused
or like, need advice.
I'm so deep in my world
that she has some perspective
that I don't have.
I operate purely emotionally.
I will go dark.
I think when we first met,
I tried
to meld him into my world.
Like, you should smoke,
you should suffer.
Art is vulnerability.
Art is
putting yourself out there.
She wants there
to be like, emotional content.
She's completely
disinterested in form.
Like, definitely
I'm, like, the form is the key.
She's the opposite.
It's, like, it's not worth
doing anything unless there's...
I don't even know
how to describe it,
it's like, emotional,
and it's like, intangible.
It's like, this fog.
She taught me how to open up
into new territories.
To express yourself
and be vulnerable,
that was a big jump for him.
I paint so few paintings
'cause I can tell,
"This, I can make a painting
that's going to be
better than the drawing.
And I'm not going to paint that,
because the drawing's going to
be better than the painting."
They're constantly failing.
One color just throws it off.
The only way to make them
as good as the drawing
is for the colors
to make
the lineness of them disappear.
You can't just,
like, fill it in.
It's like, an intangible thing.
The colors themselves
are not what they seem.
A painting that seems
to be bright colors,
the actual colors,
they're very complicated,
muddy colors.
When I like, put
a little bit too much blue in it
and I see how it sucks,
everybody knows.
The UPS guy knows,
and my mom knows,
and my wife knows,
and my kids know.
I mean, my kids totally know,
they'll be like,
"That one's not that good."
I think when you have kids,
the most you can teach them
is just by showing them.
They were
in a Montessori school.
The director of the school
decided that she was
going to have a theater program
and that it was serious.
So I was like,
"Oh, I'm going to make a poster
for each play
that's up to the level
of like, how the school
views the plays."
It's, uh, How the
Camel Got his Hump,
which I remember Frances
was the camel.
Selfish Giant.
There would be times
when I'd be like, doing this,
and spending effort on this,
and be like,
"I spend more effort on the...
You know, the school poster
than some project,"
you know, but...
When you read
artists' biographies,
when they get divorced,
it's like a single line
in a 300-page book.
None of this
is possible without my wife.
My family, my marriage,
it's like, an essential part
of my whole everything.
Time, its value
is so ethereal,
it cannot be compared
to any other thing.
I systemize
to try to take control
over the stuff
that's important
and all the small stuff.
Sorry.
Serious artist.
Super serious artist.
Well?
That was a good one, actually.
You're matching.
Need a duster.
You hungry? Want to get food?
- Well...
- Hold on, you got an eye booger.
My wife says,
"You're never more unhappy
than when you're
just working on painting."
Where I'm like, deciding colors,
and I'm like, "Oh,"
and I'm challenging it,
and it's like,
"What am I doing all day?"
Going into my studio,
and painting, sounds nice.
It's like, how lucky.
I don't want it to be like,
"I use angst
to make better paintings."
So I was like,
"Okay, I'm going to, like,
release that angst,
and I'm going to use
like, a color I just have."
Like, I'm like, "Ah, let's
use that one, 'cause I have it."
The work became clearer.
And so much of it came
from hearing that from my wife.
I love when all the work
is in the studio.
When I do all the paintings,
and they're all together,
that feels great.
But the showing
gets nerve-wracking,
and yeah, it's...
It doesn't feel good.
It's way easier
to be just visual.
Like, I just make this stuff.
I set it with the painting.
To have a show is to agree,
like, "No, I'm going to
be there, too," you know?
Like, so it's like, to be
in the room is like, to be like,
"Well, I'm an actual person,
not a visual person."
What are you
thinking of when you're...
posing these?
Do you go
to the Poop Restaurant?
The Poop Caf, yeah,
he's been to the Poop Caf.
- Have you been?
- No, we've just heard about it.
That was one
of the reasons, actually,
we're staying.
I was like,
"Oh, Poop caf? Yes."
- Walking distance.
- Yes.
Something I always
love working with him
is just going
over to his studio,
and it ends up being
four hours of just talking,
hanging out, drawing.
Can you give a high-level
of the stuff
that you've done with Geoff?
I know
it's like, 20 years of work.
Um, God. Everything, I think.
I think everything, um...
I worked on his film
Being John Malkovich,
so I did like, the logo
for like, the production,
the logo for adaptation.
He did
Where the Wild Things Are.
I did the titles and the poster
and like,
all the marketing materials,
and got really involved in it.
We had fought with the studio
a lot on the movie,
they did not like the movie.
We just sat there,
and just like,
took out our angst
on their logos.
When they saw it,
they kind of got it.
They were like, "Okay."
Definitely Spike is,
like... He's super demanding.
He keeps making
the projects harder.
Her was the first time
I really had work
that was like, in the movie,
besides like,
the title sequence.
It was a love story of a man
falling in love
with his interface.
So it was designing
what this user interface was.
I had to invent
this plausible world
that was like,
a character in the film.
He just hones in
on what the feeling
is supposed to be.
That's why the conversation's
always so good.
It's 'cause he asked questions
that make you articulate
what it is it's supposed to be.
The only description Spike gave
is like, the future's nice.
It's nice, which is great,
because, like, you couldn't
look back on a screen world
in a futuristic movie
that was nice.
It was always dystopic.
It was always, like...
Like, a lot of numbers
and lines and all this stuff.
If anyone else
asked me to do it,
I would never
have taken on the project.
I'm not gonna be able to do it.
Like, it'll fail.
But I knew that we
could improvise our way there.
Creating this sort of backstory,
how AI would have
evolved over time,
how screens would project
themselves into the future.
I've had an iPhone in my pocket
for like,
the majority of my adult life.
Having any kind
of visual vocabulary or language
to be able to communicate
on that battlefield
is important.
There's something
like, built into the way
that he uses graphics
that is particularly legible
in this time
and in this part of history.
It's not an accident
that the largest
corporations in the world
want to pick his brain
about how to communicate
with visual language.
The practice, it relies
on concepts that reoccur.
One would be human connection,
human intimacy,
humans interacting.
Humans like,
like that, you know?
The world is made
of inconsequential moments,
and Geoff is
picking out from the trillions,
and going, like, "Just
look at this for a minute."
One image that communicates
maybe weeks
or months of thinking
using the most minimal amount
of line and shape.
I think it's so much
harder than people think.
Somebody that's trafficking
in that kind of iconography...
we imagine them
not to be tackling big issues,
commentary about mortality
or existence or community.
In that way,
Geoff's kind of hiding
the medicine
in the peanut butter.
The really dark time is like,
when there's nothing to work on.
There's nothing
to keep your hands busy.
There's a kind of heaviness.
That emptiness.
When you're just yourself,
and you're just there.
You don't want
to create an environment
where darkness thrives.
So what you do
is you have a process
that you can take
a step away from it.
What's the easiest way?
It's a pencil
and a piece of paper.
I need outside stimulus,
and part of that is like,
working with different people,
working in different ways.
A lot of companies I work for
are cultural brands.
People can be a bit snooty
about working as a designer
when they also make art.
You're either
one thing or the other.
There's not
many people who do both.
To straddle that world
of design and painting
will be interesting long-term,
because the art world,
in some ways,
might be the most biased,
or have the most gatekeepers
than any creative field.
Do you feel
like, outside of the art world,
even though you are inside it?
Well, I'm not... I mean,
I'm not like,
a blue-chip artist.
Some people, you know, come
fresh out of Yale grad school,
and they're
the toast of the town.
Sometimes it's more interesting
if you kind of
bubble up over 20 years,
and are everybody's
favorite underground band.
What's guiding him
is like, being true to himself,
developing the work,
no matter where it ends up.
There's no
like, musician-type term
for like, visual makers.
We've sort of
decided that artist
isn't the same as musician.
If you say musician,
it can be like, drone,
or it can be,
like, birthday parties.
I want to do drone music
and birthday parties.
I do watercolors when I travel,
because I know like,
this is
the closest thing to a memory
as I can make.
I just sit,
and I sort of
just swivel my head,
and then
I start painting something.
There's something
that these will lead to.
Like, I'm not done
developing my painting.
Look at the sky!
How often do you say no?
87%?
Like, yeah, definitely a lot.
Does that
stress you out to say no?
No, it's super easy to say no.
I find it really easy to say no.
It's way
more stressful to say yes.
Because there's only me,
there's only so much I can do.
The most critical
part of what I do
is deciding what projects
to take or not take.
We'll be, like, calling him,
trying to get him
to do something,
and we won't hear
from him for weeks.
And I'm like, "What do you mean?
We've got to do this right now."
No one does that.
Everyone's just
grabbing what they can get,
and they're taking money for it,
and they're
selling out here and there,
and, uh, losing their integrity.
Like, I don't have
meetings with people,
because I hate meetings.
And it's not a problem,
like, no one likes meetings,
and so I never
had to have meetings,
and I don't work in a way
that I need to have meetings.
How do you get...
Like, I have meetings
all the time.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, are you just like...
If someone's like,
"Hey, can you come meet me?"
No, I don't, I do not.
Like, I say... I say like,
"I don't like meetings,"
but I don't ever
have to tell people,
like, "I don't like meetings,
so let's not meet."
Like, no one wants
to meet with me.
People know, though.
Like, I've talked to...
I've interviewed people,
and they're like, "I heard
he doesn't do meetings."
Oh, maybe that's what happened.
Yeah,
I don't do meetings, really.
He's like, choosing
exactly what he wants to do.
Many of us kind of
look at him and think,
like, "How do I do that?"
When you come into LA,
and you see
people wearing masks,
everywhere is covered
in like, a layer of anxiety.
When your
whole thing is sort of like,
trying to be aware
or conscious of the present.
When the present
is projecting something
powerfully anxious
or intense, you are...
You're very much
like, in it, you know.
In my neighborhood,
the sidewalks
are filled with people
I've never seen before,
masked
and staying six feet apart.
These are not
regular runners or dog walkers.
These are couples and families
out for a walk together.
One of the appeals
of living in Los Angeles
is the suburban normalness
of my everyday life.
Weeks
into the current situation,
waves of weirdness
continue to erode
the familiar rhythms
of my world.
Much of my day
has remained the same,
but enough has changed
to make time feel disassembled.
The days and nights feel like
a strange version of normal.
When this is over,
I don't want
the traffic to come back.
I want all of this extra time
with my family.
I want to hold on
to this quietness,
to see the people
walking in our streets,
and not feel their
presence is somehow related
to the world's falling apart.
This is, uh,
capturing the moment
like, when I...
We sat down with our daughters,
and we talked about, um...
Like, we had heard
that one of their...
Sorry, uh, one of their teachers
had passed away from, uh, COVID.
And, you know, it's like,
we found out via email.
And, uh... And it was somebody
who was like,
really special to our family.
And, uh, she had helped my
older daughter with like, uh...
Like, almost, like, tutoring her
with like, math difficulty.
And my younger daughter,
she was like,
this sort of like, a class, um...
A class sort of a...
Like, sort of similar person,
like a counselor, almost.
This beautiful woman,
and so, this was, like, um...
It's us.
Like, I never do this, really.
Like, it's like, our family.
And it's like,
talking with them about it.
And, you know,
they were really...
They took it really well, um,
uh, but it was that moment,
um, and so in that moment,
I felt like, our house, like,
it felt like a bunker, you know?
Like, so I made this...
Like, a bunker.
So this is like,
a chamber holding toilet paper.
This is like, some sort of
air filtration system.
And there's like, a ladder
to go through this portal.
And this is the world above
that looks normal,
but it's not,
you know, it's not normal.
I mean, I look at this,
and it makes me cry.
Um, it's like, uh,
capturing something
like, really, obviously,
like, super personal, um...
You know, this show for V1,
I never thought
I was going to do this show.
I mean,
I wasn't talking to the gallery,
because I was just
going to be, like,
"I didn't do it,"
which is not my style at all.
I was not confident
that I was
going to be able to make work.
And I didn't want to...
I was very like,
um, hesitant.
But like, Jesse made the model,
and printed out four walls.
And said like,
"Here's 50 drawings.
Maybe there's something here."
We filled the room
with what we thought
would be most useful.
The substance of living.
It took
the shape of the walls...
And went
to the height of the ceiling.
Like a train that has grown
to the length of its tracks.
These Days Are Nameless.
We have no words
to describe the state of things,
and yet
this is the title, the name.
Full of images
that exist outside of language.
They give a name to the time.
Geoff comes
from an era of artists
that looked at artwork different
than just strictly
a canvas in a gallery.
This thing's
like, super involved
and technical.
And it happened
in like, no time.
I don't think
anything compares to this.
It is like,
the guerrilla art project.
I submitted
a whole bunch of ideas
that ranged
from just like, images,
then this is like, the craziest,
like, magic mousetrap.
My goal is, like,
yeah, my daughters
can take
their kids to come see it.
It was meant to be forever.
Please welcome
to the stage Geoff Mcfetridge.
It's a huge honor to be here.
Um, designers can really define
what the future looks like.
And we have to imagine
how it'll be nice.
Everything
about being a designer
in our time is unique.
We're designing for an audience
that's the most
literate visual audience
that I think
there ever has been,
that doesn't have
the words to describe itself.
These gaps,
many gaps in our language,
are an opportunity.
As designers, we can fill
those gaps 1,000 times.
So thank you.
Sometimes
looking at Geoff's work,
and speaking to it
makes me feel bad,
because I... I haven't...
I haven't yet worked out
how to spend my time wisely.
I think everyone's
trying to be able to
just kind of live
in the way that we all desire.
Geoff's cracked the code,
and all us peasants are like,
"Give me the code!"
Geoff realizes
that there is a relationship
between art and commerce
in a way that seems
very authentic and personal.
I would say it kind of
comes from a '90s thing
of not selling out.
We never imagined
that he would have
the life that he has.
He knew what he wanted to do.
Geoff knew.
Is Geoff satisfied?
Probably not.
For anybody who is prolific
or works so hard,
being satisfied
would be terrible.
But I think
he feels super fortunate.
He will have a career
as big as he's comfortable with
before it takes over
too much of his life.
So, it's constantly like,
trying things
and shrinking things,
and trying things
and shrinking things.
I look up to the part of him
that balances work
and being an artist
with life and living
and family and friends
and... and just being alive,
and remembering that that is...
as important.
This idea
of like, creative powerhouses
being dismissed
from all reasonable behavior
in service of creativity,
that's actually the easy road
to be like,
"Everything comes second."
You know what I mean?
And it's like, so much more
interesting to be like the...
Who can balance,
who can create
that like, hybrid-y thing.
Hello.
I definitely am conscious
of turning 50.
You have
this moment to look back,
and then look forward like,
"What is possible
now that I'm 50?"
I sort of invented my own way
to like, have
a studio which is just me.
This idea of self-sufficiency.
I don't want to be tied down.
Oh, no.
We are born in the world,
and we have this heaviness
that we carry with us.
It's just the nature
of being human.
I've created
this customized life
to like, mitigate deeper feeling
of sadness or discontent.
I've chosen a path
that leads me through dark.
It's taken my whole life.
Becoming more clear-headed,
becoming more present,
makes me make better work.
Basically,
if I made something that day,
I'd be happier when I go home.
I sort of create
my own happiness.
In that,
the thought passes through.
Space.
- Space!
- Hello.
as, like, a kid.
Being at home,
really wanting to build a model.
And it's like, yeah,
because you're a kid,
you like building models.
But it was like, "No, no.
I need a way out of life today."
Having that control...
it gives you a taste
of something.
Recognized for
deftly relating design
to time-based considerations
and welcoming
graphically-charged
outsider street subculture
into mainstream conversation,
his work has been mounted
in institutions and galleries...
Who's Geoff McFetridge
to somebody that didn't know?
He is a man of many talents.
Foremost, he's an artist.
You'll see a Pepsi billboard,
an Apple watch face,
but you don't know
his name necessarily.
He's like a hero
or like a Zen master
within the creative industry.
If I want to communicate
something in a new, fresh way,
I think of Geoff.
It's almost
like he's an inventor
of how to communicate.
Everyone's kind of like
desperately trying to be Geoff,
but no one's quite hitting
the mark.
He's just done
everything his own way.
He hasn't listened
to anyone or anything
except what feels right
and true to him.
I was interested in geometry
ever since I was
a little, little kid.
Geometry was almost like a...
like a tick.
I would lay in bed
and look at shadows
for, like, hours.
I would see connections
between lines in the room
and have to,
like, step over them.
Everything is thought through
with drawing.
I draw with a pencil
because a pencil moves
at a certain rate.
I do a lot of drawings
that are this big
because basically
that's about as fast as I think.
I continuously draw and draw.
Once there's enough
out of the way that's expected,
you'll start to get to a place
where it's like,
that thinking led
to this new place,
but it's like small steps.
You don't just go like, unknown!
You travel downward.
I call it the white well,
because it's like...
Unlike a well,
it gets lighter
the deeper you go.
Were you even
aware of art growing up?
It was a mystery.
I remember
looking at a painting,
someone sitting
in, like, a French cafe.
I remember this feeling of like,
I'm never going to be able
to make this.
How am I going to go
to a cafe in Paris?
Like, I don't know.
I felt like should make logos
and do design,
because that's my world.
I'm from the suburbs
and I have friends in bands.
"We put a dent in your car
as quiet as a mouse.
Did you notice graffiti
the same color as your house?"
Oh, man, that's so rad!
"We went out all night
to see if anything was there,
but the streets
were just scribbles
drawn in thin air.
We did all sorts of stuff
because no one was around.
Might as well scream
if you want to hear sound."
It is a little bit extreme
to grow up in Canada.
One of the advantages
of being parents
at such an early age
is that we were very idealistic.
Were you guys hippies?
Kind of. Yeah.
Wait till you see our pictures.
My mom was a teacher,
my dad was a lawyer.
Everyone's houses
looked the same.
It was, like,
very understandable.
There's the things you control,
and then there's things
you don't control.
You're born into a family,
you're born
into a racial identity,
you're born in a place.
I didn't know
I was half Chinese.
I was just like,
"My mom's my mom."
I went to a big high school
that was almost entirely white.
Both sides of my family
were super westernized.
It was all about
how can you assimilate
as fast as possible?
I never found my Chinese roots.
It was like, "I'll just be part
of a new culture."
Skateboarders were brown.
Skateboarders were Chinese.
They were Hawaiian.
They were Black.
I did gravitate to places
that were super accepting.
What a glorious day for skating.
In my teens into my twenties,
I was really angsty
and deeply unsatisfied
with everything I was doing.
Yeah, I was like a wreck
for years.
Really struggling
through finding
my personal identity,
finding a place to belong.
And there's that
from, like, being an outsider,
so you just are like,
"I'm an outsider for life."
In grade one,
he's got these little doodles
all over the place.
They're no different
from all these other little boys
who love to draw.
It's a mystery to me
when it started evolving.
I think it was very gradual.
He literally drew
three hours an evening.
In high school, I made a poster
where it was this drum kit
on a piece of paper.
That was like,
the light bulb going off.
I was just
putting something together.
Someone said,
that's graphic design.
My dad never worked
like a five-day week.
Like, he worked
like, a six day week
my entire life.
And then on Sunday,
he would be building something
in our house.
"I remember digging a hole
for my dad in the yard.
I'd dig and hit rocks,
then have to tunnel around.
I cringe to think
of that clank, clank sound.
'All the way to China'
was what I thought.
All the way to China
was when I would stop.
I imagined a sliver of light
as I broke through the ground.
All the way to China
without going around.
All the way to China,
and the going was rough.
Then my dad came outside
and said,
'That's deep enough.'"
True story.
Growing up
in the world that I was in,
drugs and drinking,
that was, like, the heart of it.
The worst part of not drinking
is when it makes
other people uncomfortable.
Clear-headedness
has always been my sort of goal.
Um, so I've never...
Yeah, I've never really,
have never really been that guy.
In the art world
with a lot of cigarettes
and alcohol and joints...
it hasn't been normal...
to take care of yourself.
Social distortion were wasted.
Minor Threat had ideology.
I could way more relate
to Minor Threat.
What was sort of admirable
was very different.
Nothing was worse
than Jim Morrison.
Nothing was worse
than Led Zeppelin.
Like, drummers who twirl
their sticks.
Even the notion
of being like a heroic artist,
drinking and painting
and womanizing or something,
or whatever, you know,
the equivalent is for a woman,
that was sort of corny.
Growing up in Calgary,
it was fairly isolated.
What you're making
is existing in this void.
There was a local art college
that had
a commercial art program.
I wanted to pursue design.
I was just
sort of like a goofball,
making this very poppy,
image-based stuff.
A friend of mine became
a pro snowboarder.
He asked me,
"Oh, will you do my graphic?"
I was like,
working in snowboarding
and starting
to make skateboards.
I came down to California
to meet the guy
I was doing snowboards with,
and I remember coming
to the door of his house in LA,
and he laughed.
He was like,
I thought you were a man,
because I was like
21 years old or something.
Okay, if I'm doing this now,
what am I going to do
in 20 years?
Being drawn to CalArts
was about like,
this is like a world
of making things
that was unknown to me.
I was in grad school
with people who had had careers
and they were coming to CalArts
to sort of get the new language.
I was outgunned and overthought,
so I sort of
disassembled myself.
I stopped doing everything
that I was good at.
I stopped drawing,
and I just made work
that was focusing on like,
"How am I thinking?"
The computer arrived.
I was just like...
...making the ugliest stuff
you've ever seen for two years,
just like failing,
failing, failing.
The legible design
was a product of great thinking.
What can I do to make
this type of thinking clear?
Instead of having
like ten, 20 layers,
can I just present this,
like, singular thing?
I had the most to say
in the simplest work.
That's the essential
turning point.
The minute I graduated,
I got flown to Microsoft.
Where does that lead?
It's like, to a better job at Microsoft?
Like, it doesn't go anywhere.
The conventional life,
it wouldn't have worked.
I took a job
just to save enough money
to buy a computer.
Okay, now I'm going to like,
just pursue
these things I want to make.
I did a series of skateboards
for Girl.
I was supposed to go
work at Girl
and Chocolate Skateboards,
and then it fell through.
Then I'm just like,
"Oh, I have no job now."
Drawing to me
is like an incredible thing.
The world is fluid in it.
So for me, it's like,
"Oh, great,"
like, "I'll use this language."
I'll surprise myself
by making 100 things,
then one of them
is like a keeper.
It's like looking
for rare mushrooms
in the forest.
In skiing,
I'll be at the top of, like,
a really difficult run,
and I won't know
where I'm going to turn.
There's too much data,
and drawings are like that.
Like, it's like super infinite.
If you tell yourself,
"I'm going to just
fill this page
with drawings of the same car."
And the second time you draw it,
it's a little bit different.
At some point the hand starts
doing the thinking,
and there is a moment
as you're drawing the car
over and over again...
you sense it, and that is then...
It's like,
sort of like this door opens,
and you go through that.
You go like...
"The car just became a horse."
After the job
at Girl Skateboards fell apart,
it's like,
"Oh, shit, what do I do?"
Yeah, I don't know.
There was a lot
sort of happening
at that moment in LA.
Sonic Youthy, Beastie Boysy.
I was on the edge of it,
figuring out
what I needed to do.
You know, we're all
in our mid-twenties
and making stuff and helping
each other make stuff.
Trying to navigate
which way to go and what to do.
Everyone was just making stuff
because they wanted to make it
for themselves
and for each other,
and it wasn't about, like...
branding or really making money.
Glitter Rock was right before
big, overproduced stuff.
We were so into being indie.
Just like, yeah,
let's start a magazine,
start a skate company,
start a label.
The worst thing anyone could be
was like a corporate sellout.
It was a time
when you could be defined
by, like, what you made.
Andy Jenkins
is this pivotal character
that I knew
from the world of skateboarding.
Andy introduced me to Lumen.
Mark Lumen is awesome.
So, Lumen became the editor
of Grand Royal magazine,
and it was
the Beastie Boys magazine.
He called and he says,
we need an art director.
So I was like, sure.
He met good people, cool people,
which wouldn't have happened
if he'd gone working
for a big agency.
To get to work
with the Beastie Boys,
it was like,
the best magazine in the world,
best band in the world
that actually, like, seemed
like the coolest guys ever.
It was crazy.
I saw the energy
of, like, backstage passes,
the after-party,
this whole thing,
and I immediately was like,
I'm not going to be
in the Beastie Boys office.
I gotta leave.
So I had a cordless phone
that, like,
worked across the street.
To maintain my own autonomy
was, like, super important.
I was making
like $12,000 a year.
My girlfriend at the time,
because now my wife,
she works in a cafe
and I have to borrow money
from her.
Living in a one-car garage
that I, like, built a bed in,
and just like, super basic life.
I'd be covered in, like,
eczema, rashes, then realizing,
like, "Oh, these things
are caused by stress."
I was like, "I'm bad
at art directing a magazine."
It looks terrible.
Yeah, I was like a wreck,
but I had Sarah.
How'd you guys meet?
A mutual friend.
She just introduced us.
She was in the back seat,
and I got into the car,
and I was like,
"Hey, who's that?"
He had really curly hair.
Like, big curly hair.
He was wearing a sweater vest.
So I thought
he was really strange.
I don't think
it was love at first sight.
What's your
favorite thing about Sarah?
- Sense of humor.
- Oh, not my looks?
At that age,
you're making a lot of mistakes.
I was like,
burying myself in work.
I just remember not sleeping.
It's super challenging.
You're really not in control.
He felt like
it was really important
to have a job.
I was always like,
"You should do art."
Right then, this way!
Art is so much more important.
I did have a sort of vision that
none of the Grand
Royal stuff fit with it.
How can I find an avenue
for this type of work
that I had a vision for?
Starting my own studio,
it wasn't a business.
I had a computer on a board,
and I was like, that was it.
I was experimenting,
working in new mediums
and working
with different people,
trying to find places
where I can exist.
It was difficult starting out...
just being like a designer
who delivers product
for a client.
You produce 30 things,
someone else decides for you
that that's the one you keep.
It felt very unrewarding.
Even if I'm really successful
at this,
I'm not going to be happy.
I had this type of work
that I felt was my best work,
but no one knew to ask for it.
The only way to have people see
was I had to, like,
slip that work
into a presentation.
I remember working
for, like, a video festival,
and I did an experiment of like,
here's these things
that sort of address the themes
of the festival.
And then I did one
that was just like a tin can,
and then it just said
worms on it.
She was like, "Oh, that one!"
So then I started
presenting stuff
that was like that
for everything.
Having control,
it came to define
what type of work
I was going to create.
Trying to find avenues for that,
it wasn't easy.
The downfall of design
is you're anonymous.
If you make a T-shirt
for the band,
you don't have to be up there,
but you can participate.
You do the graphic
of the skateboard,
but you never have to worry
about making the trick
or putting your name on it
to bring yourself forward
and be visible in the work.
It felt like taking a risk.
There was a lot of,
like, rejected work.
Instead of it being,
like, throw it all out,
what more
could these drawings be?
I was doing stuff for X-Large.
They started a gallery
called Georges.
I was seeing stuff
in my sketchbooks
I wanted to make.
And then showing that to them,
they were just like,
"Why not have a show?"
My first shows
were just all screen prints.
It was the beginning.
To be able to show something
to your friends
that has a personal truth
within it,
even to have one friend say,
that's funny,
that's really
a lot of positive reinforcement.
The early art making
was about like,
I'm going to fill the room
with me stuff, like my mind.
Then the room gets bigger
and you fill more, you do more.
Running on ambition.
Slowly showing it
in more galleries.
The biggest thing
in my life was making art.
How do you like the park?
When Frances was first born,
it was really hard for us.
It's a full, crazy change.
And then it's like, "Oh,
Beautiful Losers is happening
in Cincinnati."
And then he left.
And I'd have to make
an installation on the spot.
I'm trying to mold those,
like, thumbtacks
out of, like, clay,
and I'm totally disoriented.
She was, like, super freaked out
and, like, upset.
I was, like,
having a nervous breakdown.
There was this tension
between my expectations
of myself.
Trying to balance it out,
it gets strange.
Someone asked me one time, like,
what's the most precious thing
you own?
And I was like,
"Uh, my memories."
But I don't know
how long they're going to last,
so I feel like these, kind of,
are the permanent memories
that won't go anywhere.
The Australian
magazine Oyster, it's like a big,
glossy fashion magazine,
asked me to go to his studio
in Atwater Village
to spend a day with him,
photographing him.
What year was that?
This was 2006.
He was doing
these paper weaving pieces,
screen prints, textiles.
You could just see, like,
this guy's going somewhere.
Shortly after that,
he asked me to come
to Eindhoven, Netherlands
with him.
He had a solo show
at the Nieuwe Museum.
I knew, like,
I'm the type of artist
who's changing
and growing very publicly.
Well, this would be good
to have,
you know, Andrew document.
His photographs
are really special.
What had really inspired me
as a young teenager,
a girlfriend gave me
this book by David Duncan
who arguably shot
the best photographs of Picasso.
They felt warm,
they felt
like they let this person in.
The pictures revealed, like,
a whole different side
of Picasso's life
that I would have never known.
His children,
his studio, his home,
all that stuff
was fascinating to me.
And it's really how I approached
what I did in Eindhoven
with Geoff.
When I asked him
to start taking photos,
there was stuff happening
in the making of the things
that was more interesting
than the things themselves.
To have moments shot on film
by a great photographer,
it's like gold.
Do you think
your project with him
will ever end?
I don't know.
Being part of art history
feels like a long shot.
So I feel responsible
for sort of like writing
my own history.
I don't like that idea
of just being forgotten.
Geoff always wanted
to have a responsible setup.
Being a commercial director
in LA, that's a great life.
Like, you have insurance,
you have, you know,
you have stability.
How long
were you working as a director?
A few years.
It was in the rotation for sure.
Okay, yeah,
just dance, no smoking.
You look cool.
It was very easy for me
to write concepts
that would translate to film.
And then I was like,
"I wish
someone else could direct this."
Being a commercial director
is very difficult
because you are
a very small percentage
of what is happening.
Too many people to please.
And I don't think
he felt like he was good at it.
It was a conscious decision
to give something up.
The reality of being a director
is like having a passion
for film
like I have for drawing.
I was sort of redefining
how I worked,
what my work could be,
and where it would go.
I was evolving.
Doing projects
for, like, music clients, MTV,
different companies.
I was in Atwater
on the eastside of LA,
surrounded by people
doing interesting stuff.
I would struggle, like,
early on, I would do a sketch.
The goal is really
to make the
thing that's finished
as good as the sketch.
And often,
the sketch was better.
T-shirt designs or something
was the first time I did it
for a company called Milk Fed,
which was
Sofia Coppola's company.
And that's when I first
experimented
that the sketch
for the thing was the thing.
So it would be
a little tiny drawing,
and I'd be like,
that's the thing.
We just were having fun.
There was, like,
a whole kind of rock scribble.
It was all very, like, homemade.
I asked him to do the
titles for Virgin Suicides
when I was working
on my first film.
Geoff's drawings
have something different
than something that a team
of creative professionals do.
It's not about being perfect.
To take a risk of making art
and applying it to projects
was really working.
Andy Jenkins, Spike Jonze,
and Mark Lumen,
they all worked together,
and they did
skateboarding stuff.
We were sort of moving
in similar circles.
Spike was, like,
the super effective
guru-like guy
that I could look up to.
Making stuff that felt artful
within these constrained worlds.
It's sort of
like navigating systems.
For him, the system
was Hollywood,
which is, like, the gnarliest.
It's like, inspiring.
I was sort of
establishing myself.
I could ask him for advice.
And then he offered
legitimate opportunities.
At that time, my wife, like,
she'd work on a Saturday,
I'd sort of work all weekend
or work late,
and, like, no schedule,
and then suddenly it's like,
this isn't going to work.
You don't want to, like,
get less and less control
of your time.
You want things to get better.
- Hello.
- Hi.
At that time,
I would have, like,
a crew of people
helping with fabrication.
I had to drive
to the screen-printing place,
burn the screens,
bring them back to my studio,
print it,
like, screw a bunch of them up.
Okay, if I take all that energy
of, like, driving around
and making tons of stuff,
but I put it into a painting,
right, like,
what does that mean?
Whoa.
Like, you don't go
and just do the stuff
you can do.
You go
and do the stuff you can't do.
So you fail to the point, like,
that's how you learn something.
It's mostly slamming.
Whoa.
In the beginning, you said
when you first started painting,
there was, like, a three-month process?
- Six months.
- Six months.
I had a painting
hanging here for six months.
I didn't know
what type of paint to use.
I didn't know
how to prepare the canvas.
I would paint the whole thing
and get to the point
where it was, like, not working,
and I... I'd sand
the whole painting down.
I would scrape it all off.
I'm physically rocked...
frustrated, and screwing up.
I've bought a giant compressor,
all these materials.
Right when I finished,
it's a terrifying, like...
is this good or bad?
And then I came in,
like, a day later,
my wife had put a Post-it on it,
and it was just, like,
"This is awesome."
That sort of set in motion.
"Oh, I'm going to follow
this thread."
I need to be outside
all morning.
This room is like sunlamps
from all sides.
I'm focused
on making work that, like,
is satisfying for myself.
Well, so what...
what are you pushing away?
Geoff talks about
the solitary arts.
I mean, I don't really know
anything about Zen,
but it's a Zen virtue.
A mindful skill set.
You have to be able to have
this focused dialogue
with yourself
where you're making
a bunch of decisions
in the moment.
It's constant practice.
You're not like,
"Oh, I'm only a monk
between 9:00 and 5:00."
When you leave the temple,
you're still mindful.
It's who you are.
I got interested
in trail running,
and the logical end
is running ultramarathons.
I'm scheduled to run a 50-miler.
It's a long, long process
of extending miles...
teaching your body.
There's no shortcuts.
You can't, like, fast forward.
When I show up for any race,
in the minute it starts,
I'm just like...
I'm fucking passing everybody.
I'm passing all these people,
and I'm going to run myself
into the ground.
There'll be one last person
that I'll be trying to pass
until the very end.
I am bummed
when I finish
a race and I'm not...
completely destroyed.
It's taking things to a level
like no one would do this.
No one would take this this far.
Working in design,
what's hard is setting
your own standard
for what you expect of yourself.
I like to test myself.
Like, I have an hour
to make this
what I want it to be.
I'm doing revisions
no one's asking me to do.
That feels like a similar thing
of endurance.
What if I go
at this heightened level...
at an uncomfortable pace?
What happens?
Do you ever just, like, chill?
Nope.
The guy is nonstop.
He knows how to push himself
in all these different areas.
Discipline is great
for getting the work done.
It can also be a constraint,
almost this Protestant cycle
where you keep on
whipping yourself,
I must run further,
I must do better.
Let's just say, like,
let's just make
a general blanket statement
that anyone in these fields
is pretty obsessive, you know?
And it's like, how do you manage
your obsessiveness?
I've had moments where I think
Geoff is a control freak,
for sure.
You know,
Geoff is an anal control freak
that has a very specific
color code that he'll wear.
Process or routine,
it's a response to something.
To decide to make work
that's inward-looking
was about, like,
I need to confront being human.
When you're just
feeling down or lost...
how do you work through
inner stuff?
The farther you go,
the deeper it gets.
And you walk
till just your nose is out.
You're on, like,
the tips of your toes.
You could swim into the expanse,
or you could take a step back.
And there's that moment
in between those two states.
What I'm doing
is trying to go to that point.
I don't know that every artist
has to be tortured,
but I think it can help.
There's definitely a lot
going on in his head, for sure.
You know, I have a friend
who has so much energy in her
that she has to run.
It has to come out somewhere,
and I think Geoff
is a similar way
that if he didn't let it out,
he would be a kind of
tortured soul.
Maybe making such neat,
precise work
is suggesting
that he's started with chaos
and has managed to clean it.
It's his way
of making the world right.
In my work, there is a humanity
that I understand as a sadness.
It's talking about,
like, a darker core.
I had my first
painting show in New York.
Hanging paint
on canvas in Manhattan,
like, that's when
you think, like,
"Oh, well, this is
like, this new level."
Around the same time,
our younger daughter
Phoebe was born.
Having kids
is a lot of pressure.
Making these decisions
that have consequence
to other people.
I'm just looking at the data,
and I'm, like,
"Reset, reset, change,"
like,
turning stuff off,
avoiding this.
When you're with your family,
it is like, a version
of being more yourself.
Constantly thinking of,
"How do I find
more of that in my life?"
But there's always obstacles
that make it seem impossible.
It's a super long game.
We've been together
since I started making stuff.
With Sarah,
I don't talk about what goes on
in the studio day to day,
because I save it
for like, crucial moments
of, like, "Okay,
can I talk to you about this?"
Because I'll be confused
or like, need advice.
I'm so deep in my world
that she has some perspective
that I don't have.
I operate purely emotionally.
I will go dark.
I think when we first met,
I tried
to meld him into my world.
Like, you should smoke,
you should suffer.
Art is vulnerability.
Art is
putting yourself out there.
She wants there
to be like, emotional content.
She's completely
disinterested in form.
Like, definitely
I'm, like, the form is the key.
She's the opposite.
It's, like, it's not worth
doing anything unless there's...
I don't even know
how to describe it,
it's like, emotional,
and it's like, intangible.
It's like, this fog.
She taught me how to open up
into new territories.
To express yourself
and be vulnerable,
that was a big jump for him.
I paint so few paintings
'cause I can tell,
"This, I can make a painting
that's going to be
better than the drawing.
And I'm not going to paint that,
because the drawing's going to
be better than the painting."
They're constantly failing.
One color just throws it off.
The only way to make them
as good as the drawing
is for the colors
to make
the lineness of them disappear.
You can't just,
like, fill it in.
It's like, an intangible thing.
The colors themselves
are not what they seem.
A painting that seems
to be bright colors,
the actual colors,
they're very complicated,
muddy colors.
When I like, put
a little bit too much blue in it
and I see how it sucks,
everybody knows.
The UPS guy knows,
and my mom knows,
and my wife knows,
and my kids know.
I mean, my kids totally know,
they'll be like,
"That one's not that good."
I think when you have kids,
the most you can teach them
is just by showing them.
They were
in a Montessori school.
The director of the school
decided that she was
going to have a theater program
and that it was serious.
So I was like,
"Oh, I'm going to make a poster
for each play
that's up to the level
of like, how the school
views the plays."
It's, uh, How the
Camel Got his Hump,
which I remember Frances
was the camel.
Selfish Giant.
There would be times
when I'd be like, doing this,
and spending effort on this,
and be like,
"I spend more effort on the...
You know, the school poster
than some project,"
you know, but...
When you read
artists' biographies,
when they get divorced,
it's like a single line
in a 300-page book.
None of this
is possible without my wife.
My family, my marriage,
it's like, an essential part
of my whole everything.
Time, its value
is so ethereal,
it cannot be compared
to any other thing.
I systemize
to try to take control
over the stuff
that's important
and all the small stuff.
Sorry.
Serious artist.
Super serious artist.
Well?
That was a good one, actually.
You're matching.
Need a duster.
You hungry? Want to get food?
- Well...
- Hold on, you got an eye booger.
My wife says,
"You're never more unhappy
than when you're
just working on painting."
Where I'm like, deciding colors,
and I'm like, "Oh,"
and I'm challenging it,
and it's like,
"What am I doing all day?"
Going into my studio,
and painting, sounds nice.
It's like, how lucky.
I don't want it to be like,
"I use angst
to make better paintings."
So I was like,
"Okay, I'm going to, like,
release that angst,
and I'm going to use
like, a color I just have."
Like, I'm like, "Ah, let's
use that one, 'cause I have it."
The work became clearer.
And so much of it came
from hearing that from my wife.
I love when all the work
is in the studio.
When I do all the paintings,
and they're all together,
that feels great.
But the showing
gets nerve-wracking,
and yeah, it's...
It doesn't feel good.
It's way easier
to be just visual.
Like, I just make this stuff.
I set it with the painting.
To have a show is to agree,
like, "No, I'm going to
be there, too," you know?
Like, so it's like, to be
in the room is like, to be like,
"Well, I'm an actual person,
not a visual person."
What are you
thinking of when you're...
posing these?
Do you go
to the Poop Restaurant?
The Poop Caf, yeah,
he's been to the Poop Caf.
- Have you been?
- No, we've just heard about it.
That was one
of the reasons, actually,
we're staying.
I was like,
"Oh, Poop caf? Yes."
- Walking distance.
- Yes.
Something I always
love working with him
is just going
over to his studio,
and it ends up being
four hours of just talking,
hanging out, drawing.
Can you give a high-level
of the stuff
that you've done with Geoff?
I know
it's like, 20 years of work.
Um, God. Everything, I think.
I think everything, um...
I worked on his film
Being John Malkovich,
so I did like, the logo
for like, the production,
the logo for adaptation.
He did
Where the Wild Things Are.
I did the titles and the poster
and like,
all the marketing materials,
and got really involved in it.
We had fought with the studio
a lot on the movie,
they did not like the movie.
We just sat there,
and just like,
took out our angst
on their logos.
When they saw it,
they kind of got it.
They were like, "Okay."
Definitely Spike is,
like... He's super demanding.
He keeps making
the projects harder.
Her was the first time
I really had work
that was like, in the movie,
besides like,
the title sequence.
It was a love story of a man
falling in love
with his interface.
So it was designing
what this user interface was.
I had to invent
this plausible world
that was like,
a character in the film.
He just hones in
on what the feeling
is supposed to be.
That's why the conversation's
always so good.
It's 'cause he asked questions
that make you articulate
what it is it's supposed to be.
The only description Spike gave
is like, the future's nice.
It's nice, which is great,
because, like, you couldn't
look back on a screen world
in a futuristic movie
that was nice.
It was always dystopic.
It was always, like...
Like, a lot of numbers
and lines and all this stuff.
If anyone else
asked me to do it,
I would never
have taken on the project.
I'm not gonna be able to do it.
Like, it'll fail.
But I knew that we
could improvise our way there.
Creating this sort of backstory,
how AI would have
evolved over time,
how screens would project
themselves into the future.
I've had an iPhone in my pocket
for like,
the majority of my adult life.
Having any kind
of visual vocabulary or language
to be able to communicate
on that battlefield
is important.
There's something
like, built into the way
that he uses graphics
that is particularly legible
in this time
and in this part of history.
It's not an accident
that the largest
corporations in the world
want to pick his brain
about how to communicate
with visual language.
The practice, it relies
on concepts that reoccur.
One would be human connection,
human intimacy,
humans interacting.
Humans like,
like that, you know?
The world is made
of inconsequential moments,
and Geoff is
picking out from the trillions,
and going, like, "Just
look at this for a minute."
One image that communicates
maybe weeks
or months of thinking
using the most minimal amount
of line and shape.
I think it's so much
harder than people think.
Somebody that's trafficking
in that kind of iconography...
we imagine them
not to be tackling big issues,
commentary about mortality
or existence or community.
In that way,
Geoff's kind of hiding
the medicine
in the peanut butter.
The really dark time is like,
when there's nothing to work on.
There's nothing
to keep your hands busy.
There's a kind of heaviness.
That emptiness.
When you're just yourself,
and you're just there.
You don't want
to create an environment
where darkness thrives.
So what you do
is you have a process
that you can take
a step away from it.
What's the easiest way?
It's a pencil
and a piece of paper.
I need outside stimulus,
and part of that is like,
working with different people,
working in different ways.
A lot of companies I work for
are cultural brands.
People can be a bit snooty
about working as a designer
when they also make art.
You're either
one thing or the other.
There's not
many people who do both.
To straddle that world
of design and painting
will be interesting long-term,
because the art world,
in some ways,
might be the most biased,
or have the most gatekeepers
than any creative field.
Do you feel
like, outside of the art world,
even though you are inside it?
Well, I'm not... I mean,
I'm not like,
a blue-chip artist.
Some people, you know, come
fresh out of Yale grad school,
and they're
the toast of the town.
Sometimes it's more interesting
if you kind of
bubble up over 20 years,
and are everybody's
favorite underground band.
What's guiding him
is like, being true to himself,
developing the work,
no matter where it ends up.
There's no
like, musician-type term
for like, visual makers.
We've sort of
decided that artist
isn't the same as musician.
If you say musician,
it can be like, drone,
or it can be,
like, birthday parties.
I want to do drone music
and birthday parties.
I do watercolors when I travel,
because I know like,
this is
the closest thing to a memory
as I can make.
I just sit,
and I sort of
just swivel my head,
and then
I start painting something.
There's something
that these will lead to.
Like, I'm not done
developing my painting.
Look at the sky!
How often do you say no?
87%?
Like, yeah, definitely a lot.
Does that
stress you out to say no?
No, it's super easy to say no.
I find it really easy to say no.
It's way
more stressful to say yes.
Because there's only me,
there's only so much I can do.
The most critical
part of what I do
is deciding what projects
to take or not take.
We'll be, like, calling him,
trying to get him
to do something,
and we won't hear
from him for weeks.
And I'm like, "What do you mean?
We've got to do this right now."
No one does that.
Everyone's just
grabbing what they can get,
and they're taking money for it,
and they're
selling out here and there,
and, uh, losing their integrity.
Like, I don't have
meetings with people,
because I hate meetings.
And it's not a problem,
like, no one likes meetings,
and so I never
had to have meetings,
and I don't work in a way
that I need to have meetings.
How do you get...
Like, I have meetings
all the time.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, are you just like...
If someone's like,
"Hey, can you come meet me?"
No, I don't, I do not.
Like, I say... I say like,
"I don't like meetings,"
but I don't ever
have to tell people,
like, "I don't like meetings,
so let's not meet."
Like, no one wants
to meet with me.
People know, though.
Like, I've talked to...
I've interviewed people,
and they're like, "I heard
he doesn't do meetings."
Oh, maybe that's what happened.
Yeah,
I don't do meetings, really.
He's like, choosing
exactly what he wants to do.
Many of us kind of
look at him and think,
like, "How do I do that?"
When you come into LA,
and you see
people wearing masks,
everywhere is covered
in like, a layer of anxiety.
When your
whole thing is sort of like,
trying to be aware
or conscious of the present.
When the present
is projecting something
powerfully anxious
or intense, you are...
You're very much
like, in it, you know.
In my neighborhood,
the sidewalks
are filled with people
I've never seen before,
masked
and staying six feet apart.
These are not
regular runners or dog walkers.
These are couples and families
out for a walk together.
One of the appeals
of living in Los Angeles
is the suburban normalness
of my everyday life.
Weeks
into the current situation,
waves of weirdness
continue to erode
the familiar rhythms
of my world.
Much of my day
has remained the same,
but enough has changed
to make time feel disassembled.
The days and nights feel like
a strange version of normal.
When this is over,
I don't want
the traffic to come back.
I want all of this extra time
with my family.
I want to hold on
to this quietness,
to see the people
walking in our streets,
and not feel their
presence is somehow related
to the world's falling apart.
This is, uh,
capturing the moment
like, when I...
We sat down with our daughters,
and we talked about, um...
Like, we had heard
that one of their...
Sorry, uh, one of their teachers
had passed away from, uh, COVID.
And, you know, it's like,
we found out via email.
And, uh... And it was somebody
who was like,
really special to our family.
And, uh, she had helped my
older daughter with like, uh...
Like, almost, like, tutoring her
with like, math difficulty.
And my younger daughter,
she was like,
this sort of like, a class, um...
A class sort of a...
Like, sort of similar person,
like a counselor, almost.
This beautiful woman,
and so, this was, like, um...
It's us.
Like, I never do this, really.
Like, it's like, our family.
And it's like,
talking with them about it.
And, you know,
they were really...
They took it really well, um,
uh, but it was that moment,
um, and so in that moment,
I felt like, our house, like,
it felt like a bunker, you know?
Like, so I made this...
Like, a bunker.
So this is like,
a chamber holding toilet paper.
This is like, some sort of
air filtration system.
And there's like, a ladder
to go through this portal.
And this is the world above
that looks normal,
but it's not,
you know, it's not normal.
I mean, I look at this,
and it makes me cry.
Um, it's like, uh,
capturing something
like, really, obviously,
like, super personal, um...
You know, this show for V1,
I never thought
I was going to do this show.
I mean,
I wasn't talking to the gallery,
because I was just
going to be, like,
"I didn't do it,"
which is not my style at all.
I was not confident
that I was
going to be able to make work.
And I didn't want to...
I was very like,
um, hesitant.
But like, Jesse made the model,
and printed out four walls.
And said like,
"Here's 50 drawings.
Maybe there's something here."
We filled the room
with what we thought
would be most useful.
The substance of living.
It took
the shape of the walls...
And went
to the height of the ceiling.
Like a train that has grown
to the length of its tracks.
These Days Are Nameless.
We have no words
to describe the state of things,
and yet
this is the title, the name.
Full of images
that exist outside of language.
They give a name to the time.
Geoff comes
from an era of artists
that looked at artwork different
than just strictly
a canvas in a gallery.
This thing's
like, super involved
and technical.
And it happened
in like, no time.
I don't think
anything compares to this.
It is like,
the guerrilla art project.
I submitted
a whole bunch of ideas
that ranged
from just like, images,
then this is like, the craziest,
like, magic mousetrap.
My goal is, like,
yeah, my daughters
can take
their kids to come see it.
It was meant to be forever.
Please welcome
to the stage Geoff Mcfetridge.
It's a huge honor to be here.
Um, designers can really define
what the future looks like.
And we have to imagine
how it'll be nice.
Everything
about being a designer
in our time is unique.
We're designing for an audience
that's the most
literate visual audience
that I think
there ever has been,
that doesn't have
the words to describe itself.
These gaps,
many gaps in our language,
are an opportunity.
As designers, we can fill
those gaps 1,000 times.
So thank you.
Sometimes
looking at Geoff's work,
and speaking to it
makes me feel bad,
because I... I haven't...
I haven't yet worked out
how to spend my time wisely.
I think everyone's
trying to be able to
just kind of live
in the way that we all desire.
Geoff's cracked the code,
and all us peasants are like,
"Give me the code!"
Geoff realizes
that there is a relationship
between art and commerce
in a way that seems
very authentic and personal.
I would say it kind of
comes from a '90s thing
of not selling out.
We never imagined
that he would have
the life that he has.
He knew what he wanted to do.
Geoff knew.
Is Geoff satisfied?
Probably not.
For anybody who is prolific
or works so hard,
being satisfied
would be terrible.
But I think
he feels super fortunate.
He will have a career
as big as he's comfortable with
before it takes over
too much of his life.
So, it's constantly like,
trying things
and shrinking things,
and trying things
and shrinking things.
I look up to the part of him
that balances work
and being an artist
with life and living
and family and friends
and... and just being alive,
and remembering that that is...
as important.
This idea
of like, creative powerhouses
being dismissed
from all reasonable behavior
in service of creativity,
that's actually the easy road
to be like,
"Everything comes second."
You know what I mean?
And it's like, so much more
interesting to be like the...
Who can balance,
who can create
that like, hybrid-y thing.
Hello.
I definitely am conscious
of turning 50.
You have
this moment to look back,
and then look forward like,
"What is possible
now that I'm 50?"
I sort of invented my own way
to like, have
a studio which is just me.
This idea of self-sufficiency.
I don't want to be tied down.
Oh, no.
We are born in the world,
and we have this heaviness
that we carry with us.
It's just the nature
of being human.
I've created
this customized life
to like, mitigate deeper feeling
of sadness or discontent.
I've chosen a path
that leads me through dark.
It's taken my whole life.
Becoming more clear-headed,
becoming more present,
makes me make better work.
Basically,
if I made something that day,
I'd be happier when I go home.
I sort of create
my own happiness.
In that,
the thought passes through.
Space.
- Space!
- Hello.