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.

Z serves me a rumrunner and Dietra and I share a club sandwich with fries, using our bev naps for dinner napkins. We ride to Midtown and veg at Tim’s place on 11th, until they depart for a birthday party in Marietta. Then I walk into the night.

Other side of town, GREATeclectic, AKA Kendrick Daye, displays a large mural he created for the annual urban art show, tonight held at Compound: Art, Beats & Lyrics. Kendrick is co-hosting an after-party called #COOL later tonight at the W Midtown’s Whiskey Park. The show on the Westside ends at midnight, but here in the center of the peach pit it’s about to hit.

I first stop in for a fruity five-dollar martini at Einstein’s on Juniper. Nook is next, right on Frederick Law Olmstead’s gorgeous Southern jewel, Piedmont Park. Nook is a straight bar, complete with the drinkable Bud Lt. in bottle I purchased, piped in rock-and-roll and a group of tipsy girls singing loudly while drinking giant fishbowls of sugared booze cocktails through huge neon straws. A few cute couples are semi-quietly having martinis and beers. I glance back behind me to more martinis, more fish bowls. Off key singing is growing louder, even more loudly talking girls – This is America. So, I quickly finish my beer and get out of there.

The lobby of the W shimmers as I enter and ascend through the lower bars to Whiskey Park. Shannon at the door is more than welcoming and I continue my directional climb to the top. I step to the patio to have a look. Fanti and Obie, AKA Ethereal, and I have a chat about the magazine out on the deck in the humidity of the Dirty South summer night. City lights twinkle all around us, without even the glimmer of a star visible.

Back inside the tip-top bar, the canned air blows fiercely as the bass beats to the lyric, “all these bad bitches.” I notice a few as the track changes, and so does my mood. The VIP velvet ropes move for me as I do see a star: GREATeclectic’s freshly coiffed head appears in my line of sight. We are naturally amped up and VIP sipping, and I finally meet our publicist Dane face-to-face, up in the space.

Kendrick’s art display was a raving success and Art Nouveau Magazine has a new print issue available, which is a huge deal. We’re here to network less than just to celebrate the life of our art party. After all, the new issue is called New Art, New $$$.

Outside the VIP, 22-year-old fashion model Lindsay is celebrating her birthday with her fellow model best friend Devan. I dance with and for them and we make friends. A local photog named Marc shows up, and we hoist a few drinks as I introduce him to the Art Nouveau crew. The night wears on before we all eventually wear out.

Only a few hours later, I’m up and in East Atlanta for breakfast at Australian Bakery with my lovely wife. She has a sandwich while I quickly finish off a tasty meat pastry. We finish with fresh-baked sweets. She departs after a stroll in the sun together, and I head over to the newly reopened Glenwood to see my buddy there, original owner Dan Simpson: “Glad to be back in business.”

Next, it’s the EARL for a High Life from James, who has worked there forever. I meet a few cute flirty girls who are leaving and then Beth Howell replaces them at the bar next to me. A hair and makeup stylist who moved to East Atlanta yesterday from Alabama, she already has a new tattoo to show for it. She slowly sips on a Stoli O madras, and then I buy her a delicious layered shot of James’ creation to welcome her to my hometown of Atlanta.

Last stop is Graveyard for the Atlanta Indie Fest, featuring the Art Nouveau Magazine set and an all day event chronicling the urban music movement.

The Art Nouveau Magazine set on the basement stage was as follows:

1.GREATeclectic featuring Karen Alise – Welcome to the Freak$how / Animal
2.GREATeclectic featuring Karima – Heartbeats
3.Madam CJ featuring RAHBI – U Know My Name
4.Ben Carson – Selfish
5.Jack Preston – Trouble

Then I’m upstairs to hear Jackie Chain from Alabama rap with more mojo than any other half-Korean, half-white boy in the game. I meet him after the raucous set. I head outside and hang with the Fux Wit Me crew, and they are kind enough to give me a free green T-shirt. I catch Project Pat’s performance and hearing that hook, “I need a money man,” I think and know I am one. We shake hands after, and his people tell me to get in touch with them soon as we exchange numbers.

The last act I catch is the rap group The Canz. I meet Foster from the group and he tells me about how he and his brother, Prominent, have really been making things happen lately. I tell him I like the whole crew. On my way out, I meet a young group called SWC, Smooth World Control, and they give me a free copy of their new stuff. The long event weekend closing for the magazine, while the beats kept hitting.

We encounter madness on a daily basis, hopeful that clarity will soon emerge. The veil between us and the rest leaves us isolated and our vision, cloudy. It’s a funny thing when we slightly alter our perception and come to the realization that the rest is merely an extension of ourselves.

Ironically, this is when everything seems to synchronize. We humans are the remnants left to make sense of it all, this universal clutter. Regardless of medium, left or right brain related, the manifestation of our thought process all falls under the same categorization: A-R-T.

I cannot reiterate enough the complexity of art, for art is life. Art is our being and our thought process. Art is the way in which we convey our insides to the outside world. Whether it be via words, music, clothing, or even the energy we emit on a daily basis, the aesthetics of our actions deem each individual a living and breathing art piece.

Even higher than so is that of which we find in our surroundings. And not just in a visual sense, but emotional as well. The radiance we find in a palm that compliments that of our own or the dampness of our toes in the wet sand. We are art and art is us.

Apply this to your daily actualities and open the doors into the creative mind. See as though your third eye is peeled. Step into a new existence.

A writer lives somewhere within his loud and heavy conscience, attempting to filter out his purified thoughts and leave all others inside to reside. And really, there is no better high than the rare occasion of easily doing so. Still, his need to transfer thought and feeling in a most profound manner and overcome perfectionism is, realistically, his job title. And thus presents the ground of which inspired my preceding subject, British-bred artist Alex Daw.

From what I pick up on, Daw too is a thinker; However, his hand performs a different art, and this, I can not help but envy. Using magazine clippings and paint, Daw devises spectacular calamities usually surrounding colorful figures of or resembling humans. In all truthfulness, the message within (if any) is beyond me; hence, my reason to be intrigued.

I took a liking to him immediately upon viewing his art. In fact, I felt an understood kinship between us. As a writer, I valued to his absent-sounded loudness. I related to his spewing of thought onto paper, regardless of any sense from it being made. Although the mediums in which we utilize are two very different, their roots are so very similar: inspired by the abstract and open to all for interpretation. Through my eyes, Alex Daw’s incomprehensibility is what makes him outspoken. As the remainder of interpretation henceforth falls to you, in accordance with me or not, I warn you to proceed with caution. For, the mind of an artist is a damned force that will never rest unreckoned.

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