ALTPICK.COM

Illustrator Joshua Krause can't recall his earliest art memory but his mother can. "It's me painting with my poop on the wall," explains Krause. "She knew as soon as she left me alone I would do it so she enrolled me in painting classes when I was very young." Sometimes mother does know best or so it would seem. Krause's work is still displayed on walls (although these days he sticks mostly to acrylics) including 9Star's 8,000 sq. ft. showroom, AIGA, Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery, as well as his own gallery, District 3, which opened this month in San Diego.

Krause spent the first days of his career as a writer and photographer for a Florida newspaper, before moving to New York to pursue his writing. "I always loved graphic arts but never really knew people did it for a living." He worked at a number office jobs to pay the bills before landing a creative assistant position in an advertising agency. One unusually slow day Krause was rummaging through a closet where he found some source books, "I was just blown away by the art work and I decided that's what I wanted to do," he explains. "I called up illustrator Richard Borge asked him if he had some time to chat and I went over to his place and had my first lesson."

It's hard to believe with a client list that includes: The Financial Times, CIO Magazine, Jazziz Magazine, Pennsylvania Gazette, Revelation Records, and Second Nature Recordings that Krause has had no formal art training. When he's not working for a client or commission he spends about eight hours a day in his studio working on line weight, consistency, and developing his characters. It's part of his philosophy. He explains, "Your art is going to keep changing, if you work at it meticulously but let whatever happens happen then you'll end up where you want to be." Krause spoke to Altpick.com from his home in San Diego.

Tell me about District 3's first show?
Our first show features some hot shots of the emerging art scene here in Southern California-Blaine Fontana, Charles Glaubitz, Shaunna Peterson, Pamela Jaeger, Tim McCormick and myself. Upon opening D3 with Tim McCormick, it is our goal to present the best of emerging and established work. We have shows lined up with some graffiti big-wigs, illustrators like Martha Rich, Ryan Wallace and PJ Fidler, plus some other big-time artists that I've always wanted to work with. Doing the gallery is another full-time job.

Why did you pick Richard Borge to call, did you know him?
I was flipping through the Alternative Pick book and all saw all these people whose names I didn't necessarily know but whose work I remembered from music. I remember looking at Meat Beat Manifesto covers and being absolutely blown away by the beautiful art. And Richard had cultivated a style that was so sophisticated in everything that he did. It just so happened that he was the one I called in New York. He was the one -for no other reason than I gave him a phone call. He said come over and he was just really straight up about it. I really appreciated that. It raised the bar a lot. I realized what an independent illustrator was capable of and not just in a pure monetary sense. There was this whole different style of commercial art that was getting into galleries. It was earlier, a few years before, that I started to realize that there was this whole cottage industry around music and art. I was just so excited to have someone who had similar interests and design aesthetics to actually want to talk to me.

So Rich was a real mentor?
Yes. I think what he really instilled in me was this feeling that a lot of illustration looks the same, and a lot of art looks the same, and he just told me to make your statement on commercial art. He encouraged me to stop relying on collage and the computer and just draw my characters, show my style. I heard that from a few people. And the more I started understanding what they were saying, the better illustrator I became. I was very lucky that I met with a few illustrators and art directors that really wanted me to develop and see what I could do.

What do you get from illustration that you didn't get when you were writing?
There is something about being an illustrator that reminds me of playing sports in high school. If you train and you work and you put yourself out there you actually see the immediate results, you see it in your body, and you see it as you play. With illustration and being an artist, if I am in my studio every day of the week and I'm really painting and really illustrating and paying attention to my work, to the composition and the color and how the paint is flowing, if I really am a student of it, I see it turning into something: a finished product. As a writer, I found myself spending way too much time in my head and spending way too much time romanticizing. When I went back into art - it's not like I ever really stopped doing art - but when I really committed myself and pulled the rug out without having a job or anything else and said to myself, I have to do this, it wasn't so depressing to me. But being a writer was kind of a depressing, hard reality for me. I don't know why. Maybe it was the point I was at in my life. Maybe it was just getting out of college. Maybe it was just getting over a girl. I don't really know but something in illustration, something about doing visual art, has always made me happier than actually writing.

What's next?
I would love nothing more than to start developing a cartoon. That's probably my number one goal in terms of what I want to do. I look at people like Tim Biskup and Gary Baseman and all their stuff really works well with animation. And I've always been a bigger fan of cartoons then anything else in life. So I would definitely like to see my characters animated. I think if I keep plugging away someone might see the movement in my characters and want to help me bring them to life.

- Contributed by Mary-Beth Holland