Jeremy Fish is a modern day Griot. Instead of West Africa, his storytelling stomping grounds are cities across the world where you can almost always find someone wearing a t-shirt he’s designed.

“People tend to come up with real heavy themes for their artwork, I’m not really politically driven, a lot of my messages are a lot simpler than that,” Jeremy tells me. “I tend to take a lot from life, like the old man at the bar who tells me the tragic story of how he lost his wife, my next door neighbor who’s cheating on his wife with his downstairs neighbor, I take those stories kinda pull em apart and break them into symbols, and make something visually interesting out of it.”

This loose formula has been the foundation for his entire body of work. For his most recent solo exhibition, Listen & Learn at Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City, Jeremy turned the tables and went for a more narrative driven structure. This time he got others to tell him a story that he turned into a visual piece. Everyone from Snoop Dogg to random people he encounters told him the most outlandish and sometimes mundane stories that become fodder and inspiration for this body of work.

The show is filled with a couple famous people and some not some famous people. When I ask Jeremy his favorite story he tells me undoubtedly it’s Snoop Dogg, who’s story inspired the art for the flyer of the show.

“I didn’t use [the] Snoop Dogg [piece] because he was famous, I used Snoop Dogg for the flyer, because that motherf*cker is the real deal,” he tells me.

Jeremy’s encounter with Snoop was just as you’d imagine. On a break from filming a Pepsi commercial, surrounded by legit pimps and scantily clad female dancers slow grinding to slow jams blasting from Snoop’s mac book, the West Coast legend tells Jeremy the story that sprung the ideas for the show. Snoop literally has three minutes to think of this, everyone else had weeks to prepare and he sat there and tells him the infamous story.

“No notice, in two minutes he says ‘oh shit i have one.’ And off the top of his head tells me probably the funniest story in the show,” Jeremy tells me. “I put him on the flyer because he’s a professional story teller, one of the best of our generation.”

With help from Camp Grizzly, a motion graphics firm out of Portland, the artist filmed every interview. When we speak he’s wrapping up set up which includes a in depth installation that is a first for himself and the gallery.

“It’s probably one of the biggest mural I’ve painted’ we turned the gallery into a wilderness scene.”

Grass, animals, camp fires, a full gallery. Even with two assistants, four of five days is a daunting time to complete the task. For this self-proclaimed ‘workaholic’ Jeremy’s days and nights are coffee and art filled, this is nothing. He’s used to tirelessly moving from project to project and Jeremy tells me, ‘he’s not ashamed of it.’

“I think [being an artist] is one of those jobs, if you’re fortunate enough for a living, if I’m grateful to do this as a job so I work at it non-stop, so I don’t have to get another job.”

Jeremy comes from a blue collar family that didn’t really see art as a profession. A legitimate, putting food on the table profession. This attitude to succeed in art makes Jeremy proudly tell me, “I don’t want to go back to making money for other people’

A jackhammer going on across the street interrupts our conversation briefly. A few awkward moments of silence and we’re back into it. Unlike a lot of contemporary artists Jeremy takes pride in doing commercial work.

“I’m making my work available to a broader audience because I’m a part of that audience,” he says. “At the end of the day when you want to throw fine art on something it has a fancy context, there’s wine and cheese, and rich white people, and lots of money getting thrown around and putting your art on a t-shirt that whittles it down to the basic common denominator, that’s the gallery of the planet, that’s like people walking around wearing your shit saying I admire this, I believe in this, I like this.”

“It won’t pay my rent, but it makes me more proud that someone would rather walk around wearing my art than a wall in a gallery that someone may remember to go check out,” he later explains.

Jeremy’s parents got divorced when he was 8. After moving around much, living in Philadelphia in the early 80’s, being born just outside of Albany made him instantly fall in love with Hip-hop. After buying his first tape, Nuclues’ Jam On It, he was sold.

“I’m narrow minded, I never got into anything else,” Jeremy says. “It’s not as cool these days to say I’m a 37 year old man that listens to only hip-hop. But I’m that dude fortunately and unfortunately.”

In terms of current music, Jeremy thinks Tyler The Creator has “some pretty neat stuff.” But he’s really into Das Racist and Action Bronsten, an emcee from Flushing Queens whom the artist calls ‘amazing.’

“I like a lot of the stuff that’s out, there’s a resurgence of stuff that at least is original, it’s universal through all art forms where if I can identity your heroes, you kinda fail, but if it looks like your heroes but you flip it but that’s the next generation because you were inspired by this and it turned into some thing else that’s what arts about.”

In the future the artist has a show planned in Los Angeles with Mark Moore this fall. But for now, the workaholic wants to take a mini-sabbatical to get back to life and filling his own story bank with good times over a beer with friends. Ah, The life.

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