Streetpainting.tv is pleased to provide an interview with Evan Bissell, a street painter we met in 2003 at the Youth in Art's Italian Street Painting Festival in San Rafael, CA. Evan was part of a team of artists who re-created the Sistine Chapel Ceiling as a large street painting. We've been following his work ever since!
Where do you live?
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I was born and raised in Mill Valley, CA.
How old are you?
25 years old.
What is your occupation?
I am an artist educator.
How did you first get interested in street painting?
When I was in middle school my mom took me to the San Rafael Festival and I fell in love with the color and size of everything. It was so different than going to a museum, it made being an artist seem very possible.
How many years have you been street painting?
About 10 years.
How often do you street paint?
Once a year at the San Rafael Festival and sometimes with students through my work with Youth in Arts.
Where have you street painted?
I have street painted in San Rafael, Paris and San Francisco.
Do you have a favorite subject in your street paintings?
I like copying the work of painters who I want to learn from, so I've copied Caravaggio, Goya, Velasquez, Rivera...I usually try to choose work that has a social relevance to it as well. This is public art and the tradition of public work that I have learned the most from is primarily work that speaks to social issues, so I want to respect that as well.
Do you have a favorite artist whose work you like to reproduce?
The above were my favorites to reproduce. I try to choose new people to learn more techniques.
Do you usually work alone or part of a team?
My mom often works on the projects with me and if I bite off more than I can chew any by standing friends are pulled into the process!
How have your grown as an artist in working on team projects?
Most of my other work is about collaboration so I am constantly working with people, trying to assess where our various skills can best be used and complement each other. With street painting the work happens fast and it is in public, so you have to be very present with how you work with people to try to create a unified piece. At the core it is about accessing joyfulness in the process because the piece gets destroyed anyway, so the most important thing is being there and being with the people you're working with.
What is your favorite street painting you have worked on to date?
Hard to say! I have moments that I like about many of them and for different reasons. The Rivera I copied and altered was a huge challenge and I was pleased with how it came out. It was pretty different than most of my other work and much of the work at the festival. The piece is called Pan American Unity and is a section from a mural that is at City College in San Francisco. The lower right side has a section that is about the 'fathers' of that unity, so I changed some of those faces to a more democratic selection of people, including activists like Ella Baker and Dolores Huerta who worked for a comprehensive and long lasting unity.
What do you enjoy most about street painting?
That it gets washed away! I love making things because I love making things, not because I love things. And the relationships, the getting to interact with people, working outside of the studio.
What is the most difficult aspect of street painting?
Choosing the piece. Often times for one reason or another I don't end up doing my first choice because it won't fit or it is too much.
Do you ever compete in street painting competitions?
I have once, I feel ambivalent about it either way though I wouldn't consider myself a competitive painter. I'm going to paint to my ability all the time, it’s about practicing.
Is street painting popular with your peers/friends?
Many people I only see once a year at the festival, it is nice to have a community through street painting.
Have you seen the popularity of street painting grow since you have been doing it?
Definitely. At first it was a strange sort of thing. I remember when people first started asking me to come to different festivals and I realized there was a sort of circuit to it and actually people were getting paid and everything. For me though it has remained pretty much the same. I like the practice, I like getting dirty and talking to people. I like having an excuse to really study a well painted work.
How can this art form be passed down to younger generations?
I've taught a few workshops in schools that were a lot of fun and people were excited about it. One of the things that I always see as a teacher is that art is held as such an elitist practice in our society, both as an issue of class and as an issue of the artist as genius. Street painting is a great entry point because it is so cheap, it is impermanent and it can be done anywhere. You can make mistakes. I think it’s important to emphasize, and this is something I try to do in my teaching, that art is about making mistakes and everyone can make mistakes.
What are your views on street painting as a contemporary art form?
I think it is a great way to shift the importance of art making away from making art needing to be 'ok' within a framing of contemporary art. Street painting is great because people enjoy it, enjoy making it.
How do you feel about experimentation with the street painting art form with new methods of artistic collaboration other than the traditional?
Continuing to work with it in my teaching and potentially for ephemeral public projects.
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