Art Bytes: Jan Hendrix

Born in a small town in Holland and now based in Mexico City, Jan Hendrix creates complex patterns and dynamic architectural metal installations that mesmerize even the casual observer.

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Where do artists find inspiration? There are as many answers to that question as there are artists. The Dutch born John Hendricks, classically trained as a printmaker and graphic artist, is fascinated by nature, not just the beauty of nature, but how drastically that landscape has changed under the hand of humans. Based in Mexico City since 1978. Hendricks travels the world pursuing the experiences, cultures and training that have influenced his work. His infinitely complex patterns are featured in books, paintings, etchings and architect coral metal installations that have a sense of life and dynamism to them. Just like their botanical sources of inspiration, they mesmerize even the most casual observer. Welcome to Art Bites, a podcast from the Nelson-atkins Museum of Art, where we take you beyond the art on the walls and into the stories of the artist and the ideas behind them. I'm your host, Kathleen Layton. Jon Hendricks, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure. Kathy. Let's go back a few years. You were born on a farm in Holland, and I can't imagine there were many museums in that area. There was. It was it was very rural and it was very, very much a farming area. Although there was one museum that I mentioned in my in interviews about my life there in this very small place. And it's it was a a museum that was founded by missionaries who would bring in each of them. Some of them would bring in the most amazing collections of, for instance, the Scarabs or, butterflies. Or there was a room. I remember there was a room where the the the clothes of the missionaries that were murdered in China in the in the 19th century. and it was, it was one of those strange, eclectic, tiny, weird museums. Stuffed animals. There was a stuffed bear that we were very much taken by. An excursion to that museum for me was like an excursion into the real world. Because I thought my village was definitely something I had to escape from. And the best way to get into the real world would be to get through one of those museum rooms and step into the real world. You know what I mean? It's like I wanted to get away from that farm. I want to get away from that village, and I want to get into the city. And so stories are the way to transport us there. And looking at those objects brought you into those stories. Like all those stuffed animals, they took me as their friend and they said, We're going to get a bit like it's almost like. Like Alice. Alice. Alice in Wonderland. Like Alice. Alice. Alice in Wonderland. Sensation going down the rabbit hole. Yeah, I think the rabbit hole. That museum with the rabbit holes actually out there was a museum very much when I started out. So you were searching for something all along here? What were you searching for? Did you know at that time or not? You just knew that you didn't want to stay at that farm. You just knew that you didn't want to stay at that farm. One thing I knew for sure that I wanted to get out of there. And second, I. I wanted to get as a as a profession, as far away of any profession that was professed in my family. So I said, well, this hasn't been any artist in the family. There has been a doctor and it has been the bishop and it has been all sorts of professions. all sorts of professions. Well, then you probably didn't even know any artists in your community. No, there was no artist. No, there was no artist. Art was not part of the the language of that place. And and I think by by sheer deduction, I thought that that would be the best profession that would get me into the biggest cities in the world, that would get me out of the place. That would be my passport into down the rabbit hole into something else. That would be my passport into down the rabbit hole into something else. So and then I started to get obviously when you become an adolescent, you start to go into, well, defense, obviously. But I went very quickly into what was it? The first record I got for John Lee Hooker and the second one was Blond on Blond by Bob Dylan and and all of that became Jack Kerouac. And then the books and Ginsberg and the Beat Generation became very important. And I think all of that created a nice confusion that confused me, but confused everybody else as well. And probably was again, my, my, my luggage to get out of there. And that confusion felt comfortable for you. It must've or you would not have kept searching it out. I think it's a method that if you add up, you create a certain personal chaos. It can be very helpful. But I think our way of working and I think as an artist till now, it has never been linear. It's way more, a puzzle that you are putting together, a puzzle that you are putting the different, the different ideas of your work. You put that in place gradually during your whole life. So art is sort of a puzzle you're trying to find the answer to. You're trying to solve it. You try to solve it, you will never solve it. You try to solve it, you will never solve it. You know, you're never going to solve it. But you at least you have a method. That's your method. That's your method. When you started by printing for other artists, but then you began to print for yourself. How did that transition happen? How did that transition happen? That happened as as a young artist, obviously, that nobody was asking for my work or interested. So I arrived in Mexico with. With it, I mean, a challenge to make a living. And since I turned out to be quite a good printer, actually, if I turned out to be a really good printer, silkscreen printer, little bit of etching and lithography as well, I, I saw that there was a lack of print shops and I set up a tiny print shop, started to work for mainly Mexican artists, became quite known and became quite notorious of doing stuff. My work well and I got to your home lexicon of, of, of established artists in my studio all way older than I was. And I got along with quite a few of them, and I made some really good friendships there. And also I saw them at work, all of them. They were coming in to the workshop and at the state for the day to do a drawing or to prepare something. And actually, you know, I learned on one side, I learned a lot from them and on the other side I learned what I should never do. That's the best education you can ask for. A better to know what you should not do than to know what you than you that you think you know what you should do. So. what you than you that you think you know what you should do. So. So the whole thing became turned into a a another academy for me, a print academy, a graphic high level print academy. And and I really then I started to get more attention for this. I kept on doing my own prints, always, but in reduced time, because I was dedicating more time to working for the other artist. Then I realized that it was time to jump into the deep and say, okay, now I'm going to do my own work, and that's it. And I still print it for a few people. Like it's very much out of friendship. But that was it. But that was it. Was it thrilling to do that or was it really scary. What. Jumping in and just doing your own thing? You think jumping into deepest is easy? No. You remember when you did that for the first time in the pool? I do. I do. It was thrilling, though, and that's why I wanted to do it. I, I don't know if I liked it or not, but I had to do it. It's also that you start to get into a I did that for ten years printing for orders, and you get into a routine that maybe you want to get out of. And when did nature capture your fancy as as an inspiration for your art? That was always there one way or the other. That was always there one way or the other. So that was always a a theme. But very much at the beginning it was still very much the representation of landscape and very much the conceptual, study of what landscape is about and what nature is about. So it was always the question mark there, what is this? What is this in landscape painting? And so I started to look at and study the end of the 19th century painting, landscape painting that actually you have great examples here. And in the States you have the most amazing landscape painters from the 19th century. So I was very much taken by that. And there was a certain probably a certain romanticism that was influenced by people like Caspar Friedrich, by the Dutch landscape. Painters from the 17th century was Irish style. I up to Vermeer's landscape painting is tricky to say What is landscape painting? Because if you look at a at a 14th century medieval Flemish Flemish painting, you'll see a st up front and you see or a garden Jesus or some biblical scene. But there's a tiny window at the back, and through that window you see a Flemish landscape and it's probably only 5% of the whole painting. But that tiny landscape is the beginning of landscape painting and still goes on until now. So I feel very much part of a whole line that that keeps on studying in different ways, the same subject. And you travel around the world taking photographs that you use in your work. How does that work? Well, the photography Well, the photography is I started out as a filmmaker and a photographer, and I very much gave up on both filmmaking because it was too much of a of a financial circus. Photography was too much of a of a lonely profession. It's very singular. profession. It's very singular. Very singular. Very singular. Photography has that peculiar. It's one eye as well, not two eyes. One I this. There's that too. I don't know. I loved it, but I couldn't deal with it. And then I went into printmaking because of that. Because printmaking has a nice mix of of of collaborations, of collective work, of understanding and and teaching and understanding and exploring and researching. So And you So And you took an entire month to be in isolation so that you could prepare for your year ahead. And that's something that you did years ago. Is that something you still do regularly? Is that is that helpful for you to to just disconnect? I need it again, but I haven't done it for years now. I think of it sort of cut it off. Before the shock of it I would go away and stay away. I would go to France or it would go somewhere and I would just stay quiet and there's a stack of books in New York work. and there's a stack of books in New York work. You have said that artists need to be stubborn. What do you mean by that? Well, what if you're not? I think if you're, if you're not, you won't make it. You have to you have to sort of push yourself through, which the things that you encounter, but also the you have to you have to I think you have to be extremely stubborn. You have to be really you have to believe in what you're doing. You have to not to be worried about any setback. You have to just go on. You have to just go on. You have to be your own advocate. Sorry. You have to be your own advocate. Sorry. You have to be your own advocate. Yeah. You have to develop your own language and then you can be maybe a bit less tolerant. But since you learned how to be stopped, why you're going to keep on being stubborn. being stubborn. It's a good lesson to learn right now. You use pen, ink, paper, metal, you use all sorts of different materials. Your scale is from tiny to monumental. So you're kind of all over the map with that. How did that evolve to be your practice that you could just choose your material like that? What do you do? You remember there was a a period of that was all over the world. There was a craze, not really, but about the multiple, multiple like edition. And there were lots of artists and lots of print shops and printmaking. They were exploring monumental scales. You remember the big paper works that Hockney would make with Gemini. With Tyler, there were the great workshops in the seventies and the eighties would create the most amazing works. Frank Stella You name of Robert Rauschenberg is a great example and they would create works that would be complex. They would go away from the print, the print on a small sheet of paper. They would add more sheets of paper together, and therefore they would create an enormous, monumental piece made out of different sheets of paper. Then somebody like Rauschenberg did the Rocky Project, and he went to travel around the world and start to work with ceramics in China. And, and, and, and and they were always thinking about how to reproduce this, how to make this mechanical. So we could make it in addition of five copies of six copies or 20 copies. So there was this sort of it was in the age of of of it was it was a certain certain hunger for how to create works on a different scale. And it didn't matter how you made it, if it was made out of paper or steel or whatever material. So I think I was brought up, brought up in that atmosphere as a printmaker, and I think that influenced me very much into into always do not worry about the material, worry about what you want to tell, worry about what you want to tell with that material so you can use it all. You can use textile, you can use anything. Glass, but do know what you're going to do with it. Try to figure out what you why you want to use that and how. And how do you figure that out? You take these photographs all around the world and then you're looking at something. How do you know this is going to be fashioned out of metal? This is going to be drawn on paper? Well, that depends on the scale is going to be that depends on it. Well, that depends on the scale is going to be that depends on it. So first I have to figure out what skill I'm going to use. Then I have to figure out what material goes with that scale. Then I have to figure out if I want to have it inside or outside. Then I have to figure out if it has to be framed or not. So then you get all the other considerations. But at the beginning you have just a simple, maybe a drawing or a photograph of both. And that sort of gives you that the the information, which is very simple and very, very little. And out of that that you have you have to have your mindset to say to understand what you want to do. That takes some time before you know, if it's going to stay small, it's going to be bigger. I have I have a process of work that sometimes the process, apart from taking way longer, the process becomes the work itself, which is scary as it's a bit you know, you want to get to a result, but sometimes you get stuck in the middle. It's like you work on a manuscript of a book for such a long time, you never get to the publisher. you never get to the publisher. Is the process the the place that you find your passion, or is that frustrating for you to go through a long process before you even start to create a piece of art? Yeah, that's that's a good one day. That's a good question that the process is fascinating and therefore very frustrating because it can it can end up with no final product, can end up with nothing finished. Do you have that? Because I get into it, select, say I have a I have a project Because I get into it, select, say I have a I have a project that deals with botany and in the desert. In the desert, just to give you an example and then I start to investigate and research that botany and then the research of that botany becomes so, so fascinated, so fascinated that I just get stuck in the desert with my botany plants and I don't get to a final conclusion. with my botany plants and I don't get to a final conclusion. And then sometimes there's a push from somewhere, or is his show coming up And then sometimes there's a push from somewhere, or is his show coming up or something happening that suddenly I say, Well, I should finish that. This is great. I just finish a glass project based on drawings I did during COVID. And I finally it's I mean, four years later and now finally I'm getting the first finished work that has to do with dose with the use of those drawings. And now I finally found one first step to to show it. So it takes a long time. It takes a long time to do the risk that you just you put a pilot up next to the other pilots. You must have piles all over. What is it that you want to communicate with your art? I know that the state of the world and the state of the environment is of concern to you. Is that is that your major message, would you say to people through your art or does the message change with every piece you create? I think I always want to emphasize emphasize the the need for us to be careful. I think we all of us do agree by now that we have to be we have to do something urgently and drastically. I don't feel that there is no there's no doubt about what's going on. If if my work helps to understand the the the urgency, I'm fine. But I don't make it because I want to get that message across. It's just that it is so that the work itself does put the message across. It's it's something that I've noticed. People see the work and then they start to think about their garden or the nature of their situation or their their worries. their worries. Do you have a favorite piece you've created that was hard to let go? that was hard to let go? Quite a few, but never how to let go. I'll take you back to work for somebody else. You make it for yourself. You make it so somebody else can look at it. That's right. In the times of COVID, I felt that one of the great debate about feelings about that period was very much that you couldn't do a show, you couldn't show your work, you couldn't do it, you couldn't go to the museum. I remember the first time we went back to the museum was after golf. It was like that was a relief to walk into a museum space and see a really good painting, a really good work of art. After COVID, we had some people come into the nelson-atkins that were so starved for a museum, they were dancing as they walked in. They were so happy. And then you realize how important the arts are. And then you realize how important the arts are. The odds are essential for our well-being and are very important for our peace of mind. Where do you see your practice heading now? Into I know it's going the same Chaos is going to continue. It's always going to be nicely mixed It's always going to be nicely mixed and mixed salads. and mixed salads. You've always wanted to design a postage stamp. always wanted to design a postage stamp. Yeah, but I'm too late now. I think by the time the day I have a chance to do it, the postal office is closing. I think that window has a mass. Or maybe. Maybe it's going to be the last postal stamp. Maybe. Well, that's something to aspire to, right? Yeah. And Hendrix, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. You've been listening to Art Bytes, a podcast from the Nelson-atkins Museum of Art. I'm Kathleen Layton. We'll see you next time.