THINK TANK | Bobby Hill

16Apr08

Even though some of his best work may be in black and white, street artist Bobby Hill’s past is probably as colorful as it comes: bumping into Andy Warhol at a Michael Jackson concert; accommodating rap artist Jay-Z with an art piece; illustrating for Slam Magazine (the first publication to marry hip-hop culture with basketball) and Coca-Cola. This artist is no joke when it comes to connections.

But as a hustling street artist, Hill also knows what it feels like to be evicted. Classic values like hard work and loyalty have laid a foundation for this artist’s career; his humility shines through, giving us a glimpse of street art soul. But soul, as Hill knows it, isn’t always enough to achieve your dreams. In this THINKTANK interview, Bobby Hill takes the Molecule “back to classic.”

UM: You’re a painter, screen printer and illustrator. Which one came first? Did your introduction to one influence how you acquired the others? Is there some sort of symmetry or symbiosis with which you use them?

BH: Illustration came first. When I was in high school I entered an art contest sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I was one of the runners up so my illustration got featured on a bunch of bright orange tee shirts. Months later I saw a woman on the train wearing one of those tees and from that moment on I was interested in screen-printing.

But it wasn’t until I did research on Andy Warhol that I became interested in screen-printing as art. I had a chance meeting with him when I was about six years old. A girl from my class and her mother took me to see a concert with Michael Jackson and his brothers at Madison Square Garden—before or around the time of the Off The Wall album. Rick James was the opening act. Some guy with white hair sitting behind us asked to take a picture of me and my friend. We also took a picture of him. I asked the girl’s mother who the guy was and she told me it was Andy Warhol and that I would find out about him when I got older. So when I got older I did my research and found out he screenprinted his work on canvas and paper. That got me interested in the process.

The painting came years later after splashing paint on canvases which allowed me to understand how color corresponds to one another.

UM: Harlem USA. New York City. The big time. Carrying 48 shirts on your shoulders across town, hustling your art. Tell us about that.

BH: I was getting the rent money up for an apartment I had in the Bronx at the time. I got the money but they wouldn’t take it because it was after the deadline. I got evicted anyway but I learned that I could develop a market for my work.

UM: Your first editorial illustration appeared in Slam Magazine.

BH: I was evicted from a Bronx apartment in 1998. But before I left I sent a letter with some samples of my work to the owner of the publishing company that owned Slam and XXL magazines. This was during the time when the internet was in its infancy so I was still using snail mail mostly. I used my mothers return address because I knew that if they wrote me back at my apartment in the Bronx there was a fair chance I would not receive it. Three years later the art director for XXL at the time sent a letter to my moms apartment wanting to see my work in person. Come to find out later he found my letter and samples in the corner of the owners office while he was cleaning his office out. The guy was about to throw my work in the garbage. He came to my apartment with the art director for Slam. They both liked my work and as a result put me in both of their publications. Slam was first then came two consecutive issues of XXL.

UM: Hip-Hop artist Jay-Z purchased a one of a kind print from you. Which piece was it?

BH: This happened in 1996. I was at a club on stage presenting my work to the audience. He happened to be in the audience with a high school friend of mine. After I left the stage and was walking through the crowd he told me he liked my work. I went downstairs and set my work up in a corner of the club. Later in the evening he and our mutual friend walked over to where I was set upat. We talked for a while and he ended up buying one of the prints. It was a piece that featured street basketball players. He gave me my first big face hundred dollar bill when everybody else was using the small face hundreds. (He wasn’t lying when he said he was spending hundred dollar bills when they had small faces.) The print cost $90 and I went to the bar to get change. I gave him his $10 change.

UM: What is your involvement with Cool Grove Press’s WordBridge Fair?

BH: I met the owner of Cool Grove Press and his friend in 2007 while on the streets of Brooklyn selling my art. He liked my work, purchased some prints and told me he would include me in his upcoming shows. He kept his promise and has included me in two shows so far. I‘m currently involved in another show as a direct result of the Cool Grove Press WordBridge Fair shows.

UM: Your ink drawings have a very classic American feel to them. How have you drawn from your own experience to give these illustrations such a unique aesthetic?

BH: My pen and ink line drawings are what pours out of my soul. At the time when I first developed that style I didn’t want to make decoration art or pictures of flowers and things of that nature. I’m from NYC (the big city of dreams) and I wanted the subject matter to be about my life and what I go through. As a result, my drawing has that big city urban feel to it.

On a technical level, when I was first developing this style, I wanted to make it very fluid, to eliminate any crosshatching and shading. I was taught to do that in high school and my year at the School of Visual Arts. I wanted to give it the woodcut look.

That style was influenced by Japanese art, an artist named Ernie Barnes (the artist that supplied the work for the 70s TV show Good Times), 80s pop artist Keith Haring, and Al Hirschfield (artist/illustrator for the NY Times).

UM: Danny Boy of House of Pain emailed you after catching your work on Ebay.

BH: I had just left my job doing stock at FIT. I had done some magazine work, used up all my money from my first Coca-Cola illustration and developed a new style in the process. I was selling prints of my new artwork on Ebay and I received an email from Danny Boy saying he loved my work. He then featured me in a magazine called Mass Appeal and suggested I enter my work for an event called Gen Art. I ended up getting selected for the Gen Art events in NYC and was able to showcase my work at various high profile nightclubs and studios around the city. That experience was truly spectacular.

UM: Do you still use clothes as your canvas? Any other medium you haven’t used that you’d like to?

BH: Recently I’ve been focusing on fine art and using actual canvas as my canvas but even as I’m doing that I’m always thinking of how to turn a new painting or drawing into a T-shirt design. So now my canvases influence the new T-shirt designs I’m making. As far as other media, I’d like to get into moviemaking later on down the line. At its essence it’s about moving pictures.

UM: You’ve had a mixture of success and failure. Can you tell us more?

BH: As an artist there is no script on how to make it. I have had a lot of ups and downs. A lot of the ups came as a result of taking initiative with my work and submitting it to different people, being in the right place at the right time or knowing somebody who knows somebody. To be very honest with you the failures have come as a result of hesitating when a move needed to be made and making quick decisions with an unclear mind. I had to make a conscious decision to cut a lot of the extra stuff out in order to be able to make quick decisions with a clear mind going forward.

The success and the failures go hand in hand even though it’s not that easy to rationalize when you’re in the middle of a failure. After having a good amount of success between 2001 and early 2005, I made a bunch of bad decisions that set me back from late 2005 through 2007. At the end of 2007, I decided to hit the pavement, sell my wares on the street again while attacking this art game from all angles at one time. As a result, this year I’ve been in a group show or two man show every month (I’m still looking for that one man show). I also got my work back into magazines, got a new deal with a fine art print distributor, and I’m working on several new designs with a T-shirt screen-printing and distribution company. I am doing all this at the same time because I like the feeling of success a lot more than failure.

UM: Where can we find Bob Hill Tees?

I don’t have any T-shirts in stores at present. Once you get to a certain level in the fashion biz it’s about a lot more than just having dope designs. You need a team in place so you don’t have to do everything yourself. At one time I had my line of tees in about 60 stores on the east coast but I was doing everything myself from the designing and the actual screen-printing of each garment, to dropping them off to retailers, to getting new accounts and policing the bootleggers. I also used my own money to extend credit to stores for months at a time. After a while it becomes too much on your pockets, your mental well being and health.

UM: Three words for Bobby Hill: Relentless. Forward. Motion. How far have you come since your first dream? Where do you see yourself going now?

[Bobby Hill in Willamsburg]

BH: I‘ve accomplished a lot in terms of my artistic dreams. My first dream was to have an art show in an actual art gallery. I accomplished that for the first time this year with The Cool Grove Press Shows and several other shows since.

I’ve done everything I set out to do from working with Fortune 500 companies to selling prints of my work through various frame shops around the country. But regardless of those accomplishments and the fact that I make a living from my art, sometimes I feel like I’ve not come far enough because I’m not financially where I want to be.

I feel like I’ve gone in a complete circle, but the circle is up another notch. Sort of like a spiral journey. It seems as if there is no ONE big break, like there are a series of little breaks that turn into bigger ones over time. Treat every break like it’s your one big break.

Be on the lookout for Bobby Hill mixed media originals at a frame shop near you. For updates goto www.myspace.com/bobhillsparadise, or email him at bkhill83@aol.com.

UM cover art issue 1.3 by Bobby Hill

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