Interview: Hugo McCloud Talks Making Art Without a Plan and Leaving New York for Mexico

Artist Hugo McCloud discusses what drives him to make art, his desire to create art that's true to his experiences, and his plans for the future.

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Complex Original

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For Hugo McCloud, there are no definitive instructions for creating art. Known for his use of nontraditional mediums, the 34-year-old designer-turned-artist prefers roofing materials and blowtorches to paint and canvases. Even his approach to producing his experimental paintings follows no concrete plan. He simply regards each of his projects as an investigation, experimenting with materials to see what will come from his probing.

McCloud doesn't begin any of his art endeavors with a final product in mind. Innovation comes simply as a result of his curiosity about the things around him. His ability to transform found objects like tar sheets and metal scraps into beautiful works of art stems from his background as an industrial designer; it’s one that has recently won him the praise and recognition of the art world. His latest pieces, currently on view in a group exhibition at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, showcase his most recent set of experimentations, which incorporate block printing techniques he picked up during a trip to India.

The last time we interviewed McCloud, he was about to open his “Put in Place” show at Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld’s townhouse in New York. Now the artist is in Mexico, thousands of miles away from his home in Bushwick and all that is familiar to him, on a trip he sees as a necessary step toward defining his voice as an artist. We recently caught up with McCloud to discuss what drives him to make art, his tattoos, his desire to create art that’s true to his experiences, and his plans for the future.

Interview by Susan Cheng (@scheng_)

A lot of people know you started off designing before going into fine art, but not many know the story behind you becoming a designer. Can you talk about the initial appeal of design and how you got into it?

Well, I come from an art and design family. My mom’s a landscape architect and designer, and my father was a sculptor. I just grew up around the arts my whole life. I was always hands-on as a kid, always working with tools, and always building tree forts or rubber band guns.

When I was in college, my mom had a store, and she used to sell water features. I don’t know why I took interest in it, but I did. The first thing that I started to do was water fountains. After maybe about three years or four years of involving myself in the design world, it just took off from there. I went from small little household fountains to huge commercial fountains, to dining tables, to full-on environments. It came to the point where I was doing such large projects that the creativity of it was gone. It became [more about] business, managing, problem-solving, and client relations than it was about the actual creating.

1.

I know that’s what motivated you to go into fine art, but what is the thing that pushes you toward creating in general, whether it’s furniture, fountains, or fine art?

To be honest, I’m trying to figure out what it is. That’s the reason I’ve sort of displaced myself from society, I guess you could say. [Laughs] It’s definitely an addiction—creating, but I think it’s also very much a search, and it’s a search for something you don't know you’re looking for.

But you’re creating this idea that was in your head. A lot of the times, it came from nothing. And that’s the interesting thing about art. You’re creating something that had no starting point. You’re creating as you go, like you’re trying to pull out of yourself something you're searching for. And I think that a lot of my creative drive is that—I think I’m really trying to figure out myself.

You approach creating like it’s an investigation or an experiment. With your art, what comes first—is it an idea that you have or is it looking at the materials that you have?

I think it’s very much one of the materials that I can use. This week, I’m going to this place in Mexico called Puebla. In this one part of Puebla is where they make this paper called Amate paper, and Amate paper is a paper that’s handmade from wood bark … The point is, it’s a material that’s made from another material, and it’s [made from] this very ancient process.

The interesting thing for me is—yeah, it’s just paper at the end of the day, but it’s the process of making the paper that I’m interested in. I want to learn exactly how they do it, but then I want to take that, start making it myself, let it form, and translate it to whatever happens when I’m doing it. It’s an investigation of the material much more than the imagery or the composition that’s created afterwards.

I think a lot of people are fixated on how they can bring an element of the new to their artwork.You do something interesting in that you find a way to use the stuff that’s around you, but is the process for you simply a matter of finding things and being curious about them and experimenting with them? Have you ever felt like you’ve hit a point where you've tried them all?

I think that sometimes you have to give something a break, and when you give it a break and move onto other things, [you] will then formulate new ideas with your other materials. I’ve definitely come to the point with certain materials where I’m like, “Oh, there’s nothing else I can do to it,” so then I move on to something else. Usually, when I move on to something else, then my mind is clear from the pressure that I put on myself to try and investigate this one material.

2.

How do you discover these new materials?

Really, my surroundings that I place myself in. I used to always like the roofs of New York … I think that taking an interest in that and seeing [those working on the roof of my shop], looking at the roof, and being like, “Oh, let me see what’s up with this.” I had access to it, so I went for it. So it’s the same with the Amate paper—it’s a traditional paper down here in Mexico that is used a lot.

You see it a lot in tourist spots, where they try to sell you little postcards [made] from the paper, but I look at it in a much grander, larger scheme of things: what if I made huge mural-sized pieces of this and manipulate it this way or did this? What can I do to it to make it more interesting? Then I’m taking something that has a very traditional meaning, and I’m also putting my own two cents into it.

How did you decide on Mexico and the places you go to look for new materials?

Well, I had been at Tulum several times just for vacation and break, and I liked it. It’s beautiful. There’s the beach. There’s a jungle. It’s weird because now I’m living here, so it’s a little bit different; your perspective of things completely changes when you’re like, “Oh, I’m not actually going home in four days.” I chose here, I think, because of that, that romanticism of, “Oh, it’s paradise, and I can set up a studio here and work, and I can go to the beach, and I can chill and just be silent.” When you’re living in New York, you fantasize about those type of things, like being away and just being in nature.

I’m here, and you don’t have all the crazy stimulation you have in New York, so then it’s like this change of adapting to that. So how does your mind adapt to that, and how is that going to translate into my work? That’s really kind of my interest: what will I create when I’m not stimulated by the chaotic-ness and intensity of New York?

I’m in this kind of environment that is beautiful and tranquil, but then at the same time, I don’t want my work to be just this soft picture of flowers or a picture of the beach. My investigation is more like, what’s the intensity of here? ’Cause that’s really what my work is about in New York or wherever else, this battle between aggressiveness but also the beauty in the aggressiveness. Now what is the aggressiveness in the beauty that I’m in? That’s kind of what I’m searching for. What’s really happening around here besides the tourists, besides the people going to the beach? I think that’s what being an artist is. It’s putting yourself out there in uncomfortable positions. I mean I could very well stay in New York and just make paintings, but after a while, I might be painting the same thing.

I wanted to talk about the fact that, you kind of touched on this earlier, that you stay true to your own experiences. You don’t have assistants who help you, and you make all of your art. You don’t take things from other cultures that you can’t identify with. Why is this important to you?

I think nowadays there’s so much access to everything. A perfect example of this is all the tattoos on my arms—they all are my designs. Most of them are zoomed in pictures of little areas of different paintings that I made. All the patterns, they’re from paintings that I made from 2003 and 2006. [But] one tattoo of mine is actually a Polynesian tattoo, a traditional Pacific Islander tattoo, and the reason why I have that is because I did a project for a store in San Jose, Calif. called Cukui. They’re a clothing store—they design all their own clothing with traditional Pacific Islander, tribal prints. When I designed the store, they trusted me in my designing, and it really became a friendship and a brotherhood with them.

I used to look at other people who would get tribal tattoos like, “What are you doing?” To me, when I did that project, I got to learn what [Polynesian tattoo design] was really about. Every little line, every little circle or design has real meaning. If you don’t have any understanding or real knowledge on it, it’s kind of disrespectful, to me.

So it’s the same with a lot of my paintings. [The paintings] that first started the whole jump in my art career were the block printing where I did these stamp pieces with silver. I was really interested in Indian block printing, so I actually went to India and learned what it was about and learned how they did it, saw the tools, and did the research. It’s the same with the Amate paper.

I was originally just trying to find a distributor that could send me the paper, but I’m traveling on Monday driving to Puebla and then go up to the place where they actually cut the trees and watch these people who have done this from generation to generation and just take that in. Even if it’s only for myself, it just gives me validation for myself. If nothing else, I feel confident in what I’m doing. It’s kind of like my education. It’s how I'm educating myself in the art world. I didn’t go to art school, I didn’t have the art history knowledge or background.

It’s interesting because it really requires a lot of push and drive. Now I’m at a place in my art career where things are going really well, and I don’t have to push as well, but that’s not a healthy way to be either. Even being in Mexico for the last week and a half, I’ve definitely had thoughts like, “I'm going back to New York.” [Laughs] Because it’s the easy way out. It’s easy to do that. Of course, I can go back to New York. I can just make paintings, I can chill with friends; but I’m not gonna grow from that.

3.

Your art is about change, and it’s about growth. How do you think you’ve changed since making that switch from design to fine art? Or, what’s next for you?

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing. It [took] five years of pushing to get to this point, where, to put it in simple words, I was actually accepted into the art world. Now I’m in it. Now there’s no longer that push to try to get into it. Now I’m in it, so now my focus needs to be even more on what I’m actually doing in it. Like, what is my voice, and what is my statement? I’m trying to figure that out, to be honest.

So when you’re making art, do you consider your viewers, or is there something you hope to convey to your viewers?

It depends on what piece I’m working on. Some have very specific meanings, some have concepts or ideas behind it. Some are just emotional releases. I think it’s still kind of what my design and my art has always been about—giving the person that’s viewing it this feeling of, “Oh, I never thought that could be beautiful …” I think it’s like that. When people look at it, it pulls them in because they’re trying to figure out what about it is attractive, not that they find it attractive automatically.

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