Why do you think that your work has been accessible to such a large audience?
My work tends to deal with real things in the real world that folks have actual contact with, no matter how absurd. It isn't awash in abstruse theory. You don't need a huge amount of art education to grasp it. Of course, the humor helps too. It makes the work somewhat user friendly. Folks tend to be a bit wary of art, they rarely expect it to be humorous. In addition, my work isn't didactic. It doesn't hit you over the head with the mallet of "depth and "significance." (I better write that down, it sounds like a good title: THE MALLET OF DEPTH AND SIGNIFICANCE.) Also, my work may be satirical, but I don't think It's mean spirited towards my subject matter(except towards myself, perhaps.)
Your work incorporates humor in a terrific way to examine social issues. How has this evolved over time and how do you see current social ills as an inspiration?
Humor is obviously very important to me. Humor and absurdity constitute a huge part of my life philosophy, and I take it very seriously. As a jaded middle age man, I'm pretty much incensed by everything, and humor is the best way to mitigate my anger and hatred and make it somewhat palatable. When I address so called "social ills", say things in the landscape, media, art, political, celebrity worlds, etc. I actually get to make art out of it, in other words, I get something positive out of the stuff that drives me crazy. That's a pretty good deal. So I enjoy the current social ills, and look forward to new ones.
“Landscape with Homes (Hard Times #5)”, 2008, pencil/colored pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches (matted)Does serious art bother you or can you live with it?
I love serious art. What I don't like is art that doesn't earn it's seriousness. Art that masks its lack of ideas and quality with pseudo theory and veils of erzatz obscurity. I think that happens a lot, and art writers love to contribute to that. Basically, I like good art in any medium. Any medium. Even carpet cleaning. The enemy of art isn't seriousness, it's pretension.
Does traveling through dense urban areas give you the same sort of inspiration as exploring the suburban landscape? More to the point, do you find urban areas embody the same attitudes, ideals and icons as suburban culture does?
For a long time my source of inspiration has been the suburban landscape, with the redundancy (repetition) in it's franchises, homes, roadways, etc (etc). I like blandness. I've always been drawn to the horizontal aspects of the plains and suburbs more than the verticality of the mountains and cities. Urban areas are a bit too interesting for me. But that is changing somewhat. My Babel piece is quite vertical and urban. Currently my main muses are the Stapleton redevelopement and the new Northfield shopping area. The new urbanism. I like the strangeness of their near normalcy, where everything seems just a little bit off. I want to do some disquieting DeChirico type plazas based on them, perhaps with a lot of really creepy baby strollers...
“Art Homes”, 2008, pencil/colored pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inchesWhat is a typical day like in the life of Bill Amundson?
Jesus. The dullness would tax the interest level of a tree sloth. I get up around 6am. Try to exercise a little. Read the paper and watch about 20 minutes of the morning tv shows. From 8-9 I take care of business and answer e-mails, etc. Then I draw from 9-12. My studio is in the basement of our house, in Park Hill, so on a good day I don't have to go anywhere. I take an hour long lunch, try to read an article or 2 or watch the tape of the previous day's Daily Show. Then I work from 1-about 6 or 7, with perhaps one coffee break. Then Anita and I have a cocktail, make dinner and watch an hour or 2 of a movie and sometimes the local Fox News for the absurdity factor. Almost always in bed by 10. On weekends I try to work at least 4 hours a day. I like an established work schedule that I stick to, and after my years of work in radio, I'm a morning person, as they say. At my age there really isn't that much to do at night anyhow. The best way to get work done is to lead a fairly dull existence. Sad but true.
Your work is easily recognizable for its precision and often displays an attention to detail that at times borders on obsessive.. Is the completion of one of your larger scale drawings a relaxing process, or something that is very laborious for you?
I've been graphomaniacal my whole life. My parents bought me a little black slate desk when I was about 3 and I drew at it non stop for about 5 years. All my school folders were covered with obsessive doodles. I don't know if I'm creative or if drawing fanatically is just my way to stave off a serious obsessive compulsive disorder. It might not be about art at all, but it helps me maintain control. I wish I could be the kind of artist who throws paint around and could nail the giant meaningful creative gesture with ease and aplomb, but that just ain't me. I'm a pretty uptight little man. I keep meaning to buy some pastels or at least some pencils that are a bit softer, but I just haven't gotten the confidence to do it yet. So you try to work with the skills you've been dealt, and move out of your comfort zone a bit at a time. Lately, I've been trying to set up some new challenges with each new piece, so I learn something and extend my skills each time out. As far the completion thing goes, I'm a midwesterner of Scandinavian descent, so we're brought up never to beat our own drum. If I said anything positive about my own work I'd be struck dead by a god I don't even believe in. But secretly I'm starting to derive a bit of pleasure from my stuff. I still don't think I've ever made anything good, and I beat myself up over all the mistakes in each and every piece, but I do feel I'm making some progress, and I'm actually excited about the end result and getting on to the next thing. But yes, it is very laborious. I spent 10 weeks on the Babel piece, full time.
"Amundson's New Babel”, 2009, pencil on paper, 51 x 40 inches
Detail "Amundson's New Babel”, 2009, pencil on paper, 51 x 40 inchesI picture you as locked away for hours on end drawing. How do you stay motivated to draw as much as you seem to?
Yep, you've got that right. It's pretty solitary. I draw a lot because I really don't know what else to do, and there aren't a lot of options. Plus I think I really like it-it suits me, and I like doing it better than when I started drawing 50 plus years ago. It's just so much fun to have an idea and then see it become an actual physical thing in the world. As far as motivation, you've got to do the delayed gratification thing. If you think of the end product it becomes overwhelming, so you have to establish little goals to meet each day and shoot for them. You sort of trick yourself. You try to believe that eventually it will add up to something. I have quite a bit of discipline, so I work even when I'd rather be doing just about anything else. I have different tasks as well. I draw the hard stuff in the morning and do the dumber stuff later in the day, or sometime just cut mats or work on some little things. It's nice to have a couple of pieces going at once, so it's not all or nothing. I've always been kind of media compulsive, so that drives my day too. All types of talk radio and NPR figure into each day, and I listen to a lot of audio books. In the autumn I was getting through a couple of books a week. It's nice to feel you're learning stuff while you work, especially since a lot that I do is not terribly exciting. I have a new computer now, so I'm streaming radio shows (WFMU in Jersey City is a current favorite) and all kinds of other programs. I can kind of fine tune my entertainment each day. It's really exciting, and I'm glad I put it off for so long... it's all new to me.
At what point did you start to incorporate yourself literally into your work? Many of your self-portraits have you playing the role of a billboard or other architectural fixture; how do these portraits relate to your earlier works?
When I was in college I used to do photo real drawings, mostly to convince the folks in my small home town that I really could draw. Then I got into the more cartoony/social satire type stuff and that wound up lasting close to 20 years. In the back of my head I was thinking of returning to some more realist work, but the other stuff was working pretty well and I'd developed an audience for it. Then I had a real bad year-1994. Relationships were failing, I lost my drivers license (got a DUI on Halloween while dressed in a real frumpy dress and beret) and things were going quite badly. So I came up with a series to capitalize on my misfortune. I started doing low-self esteem portraits, kind of demeaning pictures featuring me as a character in different situations; as a dickhead, a harlequin, a head on a popsicle stick, with deer antlers, etc. I was this sort of middle aged everyman, a little delusioned, a little scary and a lot absurd, rolling from one bizarre situation to another. A couple pictures in they stopped being self portraits. I was just the model for them, a character. It was sort of liberating. I had a show of them called SELF PORTRAITS OF MEN that got a very good response. So I started doing a few each year along with the suburban drawings. I even did a series as a cowboy for a traditional western show in Loveland.
And I've always been attracted to billboards. I love the way they're real, visual things in the landscape that incorporate language and written communication. I've always loved drawing them, so it was only a matter of time before my visage started merging with the landscapes and billboards, and I started thinking of uniting both disparate aspects of my work to show together. I came up with a title, DISABLED DEVELOPMENT, that summed it up quite well, and I've had 5 or 6 solo shows with that title. It kinda unites the personal and public, the internal and the external, which is the way I think artists, or at least me, view their position in the world.
"Self Portrait as an exciting new Development”, 2009, pencil on paper, 44 x 40 inchesHow do you view your career today, with both representation at Plus Gallery and a major work at the DAM? What are your future goals for yourself as an artist?
It's weird when you use the term "career." I guess that's what it is, but it doesn't exactly feel the way I pictured it as an art student. I've been really fortunate, getting to spend most of my adult life making these absurd objects, but the "career" thing seems more like a series of very fortunate accidents than any conscious decisions that I've made. I never thought much about a career arc. I've just wanted to spend the majority of my time doing something that interested me while paying the bills. I've detoured into radio, art handling and art festivals to make that work, and I'm excited to have a really nice gallery helping me out now. I like the fact that I can make something and get it out to the public right away, and the quality of the art at PLUS is also an incentive to do good work. Having pieces in museums is pretty cool too, cause people assume that if your work is in a museum it must be good, even if they don't understand it. Gives you credibility, whether its earned or not. Attention is great, but it doesn't make your day to day routine very much different. Every day you're faced with coming up with something pretty much on your own, so the challenges are always there. As far as future goals go, I think I'm making up for lost time. After years of doing all sorts of stuff, I feel really focused and have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, but at my age I may be racing the clock to get it done. It would be great to improve and eventually make some sort of contribution, but I don't care about posterity. I just want to work really hard while I have the opportunity, which I feel is an amazing privilege on its own. Lately I've been reading interviews with artists that I admire, like Walton Ford, Glenn Brown and even Bruce Nauman, and they say pretty much the same thing. Maybe it's an older guy thing.
