The noted muralist, John Cerney, is a Salinas, California native whose artwork can best be described as ‘giant cut-out plywood art’ that’s ordinarily viewed from the comfort of your car. There’s a sense of Norman Rockwell to his work, with a dash of Christo.“In my mind…I need three items to create a scene that’s worthy of…devoting the time to make it interesting for the person driving by. I want someone, and I don’t mind that they look at them and think, “What’s that about?” I kind of like that. Think about it, you know? I don’t know. They’re used to seeing advertisements. My things don’t scream out advertising. There’s just something different about it.”
~John Cerney
After earning an art degree from Cal State Long Beach in 1984, John worked in Southern California as a portrait artist, rendering finely detailed pencil drawings. His patrons were television producers, actors, and writers, with such clients as the late comedian John Candy and baseball star Reggie Jackson.
Wanting to reach a larger audience, John would periodically relocate to Central California and convince a farmer to allow him to paint a mural on his barn, just for practice. This led to commissions from local businesses. A major shift happened when he added cutout plywood pieces to his barn murals. Eventually, he abandoned barns and walls altogether, concentrating on the cut-outs themselves.
When the scale of his work got much larger, it attracted ad agencies and businesses from around the country. By then he had a blueprint for the way to create his art installations, which he still does to this day. John splits his time working on commissions from clients across the country and his own personal projects that allow him to explore his unusual form of public art. John’s work can be found in 23 states around the U.S. And his work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Times.
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Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat:
John Cerney: In my mind, I need three things. I need three items to create a scene that’s worthy of spending the devoting the time to make it interesting for the person driving by. I want someone, and I don’t mind that they look at them and think, what’s that about? I kind of like that. Think about it, you know? I don’t know. They’re used to seeing advertisements. My things don’t stream out advertising. There’s just something different about it.
Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us, as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and Entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.
Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on story. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, the noted muralist Jon Cerney, is a Salinas, California native whose artwork can best be described as giant cutout plywood art that’s ordinarily viewed from the comfort of your car. There’s a sense of Norman Rockwell to his work and a dash of Christo. After earning an art degree from Cal State Long beach in 1984, Jon worked in southern California as a portrait artist, rendering finely detailed pencil drawings. His patrons were television producers, actors, and writers, with such clients as the late comedian Jon Candy and baseball star Reggie Jackson. Wanting to reach a larger audience, Jon would periodically relocate to central California and convince a farmer to allow him to paint a mural on his barn just for practice. This led to commissions from local businesses. A, major shift happened when he added cutout plywood pieces to his barn murals. And eventually, he abandoned barns and walls altogether, concentrating on the cutouts themselves. Themselves. When the scale of his work got much larger, it attracted ad agencies and businesses from around the country. By then, he had a blueprint for the way to create his art installations, which he still does to this day. Jon splits his time working on commissions from clients across the country and his own personal projects that allow him to explore his unusual form of public art. John’s work can be found in 23 states around the US, and his work has been featured in National Geographic magazine, Smithsonian magazine, and the New York Times. So for me, it’s a real honor and a privilege to have the brilliant muralist Jon Cerney as my guest on story today. Jon welcome to the show.
John Cerney: Thank you, Steve. My head’s getting big. Wow. that’s good.
Steve Cuden: Well, if your head is as big as your art, it’s going to be huge. So let’s go back in time just a little bit. How old were you when you first thought about becoming an artist? Just drawing or painting or whatever?
John Cerney: it was. I started college late. I was 26 years old, and, I was finally really ready to settle down and figure out my life. I took a couple of art classes for fun, just to, fill out all my classes, and a switch was turned on in me. I really enjoyed it. it wasn’t. I was that good at it right off the bat, but I enjoyed the Act of trying to make something look real. That was, that was a turn on to me. I didn’t think at the time, well, making a living as an artist, because that didn’t actually make a lot of logical sense. That’s a tough road to go. But that’s when I first started thinking about it. I was probably 28 years old, still in college.
Steve Cuden: So you’re saying that even as a kid you weren’t drawing or anything like that? You didn’t pick this up till much later in Life?
John Cerney: No, I had a brother, a younger brother who went on to have an art career. but he was the one I was doing the sports and the girls, and that was all that interested me. Had my gang I ran with? No, not at all. It was just funny that I would appreciate art, when I saw my parents had books of Van Gogh and, other artists, and I would look at the books and I would appreciate that, but that’s about it.
Steve Cuden: You enjoyed seeing art. You’d go to maybe a museum or something, you could see art and understand it. But it wasn’t something you thought you were going to be able to do?
John Cerney: No, not at all. Didn’t even play with it. I think me and a Buddy, a couple of buddies, we were, you know, 1516 year old. We were, we were into sports and, we had our favorite football teams. So we would take a helmet and paint our favorite teams on the helmet. You know, graphic stuff. I remember enjoying stuff like that. Being a professionalist about it.
Steve Cuden: When you were doing that on the helmets, did you have a sense that you were actually somewhat decent at it?
John Cerney: Yeah, I started to think if I slow down, take my time, that I can make that line look pretty good. And that s for the 49 ers, the s and f looked like a pretty good s and f. No, I was. I was, proud of my work back then, yeah.
Steve Cuden: Oh, so you did have some, some sense of it, but you just didn’t think it was going to be your thing?
John Cerney: No. And then later on, because I actually worked in the produce industry, in the lettuce business for about, eight or nine years before I went to college. And I would get assigned to do things at this loading dock, like paint numbers on the dock, paint on the door, employees only, stuff like that. They would ask me to do it because I guess I was good at fine detail things, even back then. So that’s. But that’s all I did. And then when I was still working in the produce industry, down in El Centro in southern California, when we travel around wherever the lettuce was growing, I remember going to an art supply store, buying a, canvas and oil paint, not knowing anything about how to do it. No instruction. But going back to the trailer I was renting, and painting a still Life of my suitcase on a chair.
Steve Cuden: Wow.
John Cerney: And I was still, three or four years away from starting college. But that was the things I was doing.
Steve Cuden: Was this in oil or, ah, watercolor oils.
John Cerney: Oil. I mean, really tough thing to start with. And I was doing. I would have. I had a van that I painted the side of it. I copied a steely Dan album cover, can’t buy a thrill painted on the side of the van just for fun, and got the greatest reaction. And that was really the precursor to public art, to having people see your work drive by you. Thumbs up. Okay, that’s kind of cool. It’s a massage of the ego. So that was of early signs of, public art for me.
Steve Cuden: Well, you’re completing that full cycle that Aristotle talks about in terms of art, that you have to have a message, a messenger and a receiver. So if you have a message, it’s a story If you have a messenger, it’s the writer, it’s the artist, it’s whoever. And the receiver is the audience. And you had an audience built in that you weren’t even thinking about?
John Cerney: No, no. You were getting applause, you know. Wow.
Steve Cuden: So then when you went to school, what did they teach you there that has held you in good stead ever since?
John Cerney: You know, I had an instructor at a junior college in San Francisco, Bay area. he believed in me, and he actually steered me toward thinking of becoming an illustrator, which was a logical career for an artist. Magazine covers, album covers, things like that. He saw something in me. And, you know, here I was, a 26, 28 year old college student among kids, 19 and 20 year old kids. But if I had an assignment to do over the weekend, I was spending 60 hours on my drawing assignment over the weekend, you know, so I’d come in on Monday and the other students didn’t care for me because I was blowing them out of the water. But that’s how serious I was and passionate about what I was doing. It was three in the morning and I was still drawing. I. Wow. I better get to bed.
Steve Cuden: How interesting. So you, this was a, natural for you. You’re a natural at this.
John Cerney: I was pretty good, and I got pretty good fairly quickly, I think.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, you had innate talent. It wasn’t something that you had to dwell on for a long time. You just did it.
John Cerney: Yeah. And I guess I just, my motor skills are fine enough and my hands pretty steady, and I just got better and better and, But, you know, it was a metamorphosis. I really look back at my early stuff and I wasn’t that good, but it’s good that, you know, you can fool yourself into thinking you’re where you should be. But I wasn’t yet. But it took a while.
Steve Cuden: Exactly. Well, it takes most artists a while to get to a point where they’re professional worthy. I guess it would be. But you started out not even thinking you were poor at it. You just started out doing it.
John Cerney: Yeah, I was just passionate about it. if a friend say, you want to play golf on Saturday? No, I got to do this thing, finish this. I was really zoned into it.
Steve Cuden: Okay, so then where in the world did the notion of doing these first murals, huge wall sized murals, and then ultimately what you did with the cut out plywood. But where did this concept of huge come from?
John Cerney: Well, huge in that if you’re going to do public art, it had to be big enough. And my things, since I work on long highways, it had to be big for you to see it from a distance and take it in. And you need that 2.5 seconds to really see it all as you’re driving by a 65. That really became the, blueprint for how I thought about what I would throw out to the world to see. My early ones were Life size, which turned out to be a, bad decision, but I was learning as I was going along, life size things a little too tough to see as you’re driving by. And it took one commission from a farmer who stopped me one day when I was painting one of my normal barn murals, said, you know, I want to do, I want to raise and elevate the field worker, my employees. People drive by and see him picking lettuce, but don’t give them a second thought. And, you know, they’re busting their butt. I want to raise them on a pedestal. What do you think we can do? That was the first one I thought, well, okay, giant field workers in a field. I could legally do it. It was his property. No problem. I might as well make it big. How big? I didn’t know. I would talk to, carpenter friends of mine to see what I could get away with. Do I? 20 foot post, 16 foot post. So I was guessing. So my first two figures, were 16 foot and twelve foot. And that was my early. That’s what I gauged everything from there on. And that led to those first two was a farmer and an irrigator. Then he hired me to do eight more. So I did a series of ten giant field workers in different sections of his field. So the people driving by, you couldn’t miss them. They’re there and they’re still there today.
Steve Cuden: So they were not on the side of a barn. They were actually the first of your cutouts?
John Cerney: They were the first of my cutouts that were separate from any building. I had done the cutouts in front of buildings, complementing the painting behind them. This is the first time I took them away from there. Who needs a building? Stick it in the middle of a field, let the landscape behind it be a part of the scene. The light would change every day. it would look different every day. That was the first time I did that.
Steve Cuden: Interesting. So when you first did that, you must have had to think your way through. How does this going to stay up and in place and not get blown over by the wind or the elements in some way? And you’re saying it’s still there. What did you do to make it archival like that?
John Cerney: Well, it is still there, but I’ve done two versions of it since then. because the paint, as Good, as Good as my paint is, it’s going to last that 1012 years. And, this is, I’m going back to 1995. So that’s 29 years now. There have been three versions of those first ones there. So, yes, I was a novice and figuring out when and all that, and, I thought I over engineered them, but I really hadn’t had. Now I’m really. I use thicker post, six by six instead of four by six. I might go deeper in the ground than I normally did, and I would support them in the back with an angled board to another post to keep it from whipping back and forth. These are all things that I didn’t do right off the bat. But I figured out, did you have.
Steve Cuden: Some stuff fall down in order to figure it out?
John Cerney: Not early. I did. I’ve lost two in all my years of doing. Probably done four or 500 of these things. There was a hurricane in Louisiana, over 100 miles per hour winds. Those weren’t going to make it. And they did. They fell down. And I had one in a windstorm in my hometown of Salinas. 75 miles per hour winds that took down a bunch of trees right near my painting. So it wasn’t going to make it. so I learned. But, you know, I can’t handle 80 miles or 100 miles per hour winds. They just are.
Steve Cuden: Well, a lot of buildings can’t handle that, let alone something standing free for them out in a field.
John Cerney: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I’m having a battle right now with the city, of Palm Springs. I want to do something in the resort town of Palm Springs, California. But they are wanting to know wind shear factors, all kinds of stuff that I’m not normally doing, working with because I don’t have a contractor’s license. I’ve learned what I do just on my own, but I couldn’t legally make sign them off and say, yeah, these won’t fall in the,
Steve Cuden: So you do the installations yourself? You don’t hire someone to help you install these things?
John Cerney: No. I either have friends or I hire someone at the site to help me or the client will find someone to help me.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s fascinating. I mean, and you don’t have an engineering degree, I assume?
John Cerney: No, no. I think most people look at my things. Wow, that’s pretty, they’re pretty sturdy. It’s just plywood. On horizontal boards. On vertical posts. but all braced on the backside. They’re, they’re pretty strong.
Steve Cuden: How are you attaching the plywood to the whatever frame you’re using?
John Cerney: Well, if I have two six by six posts, those are, four foot deep in the ground with concrete. I’m putting horizontal boards on those two posts every 2ft. And then I’m, attaching the plywood artwork to the horizontal boards.
Steve Cuden: With what? Screws.
John Cerney: Oh, screws and, carriage bolts.
Steve Cuden: Combination screws and carriage bolts. You’re essentially making scenery. I mean, that’s my background.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: You’re making scenery, like from the theater, only your plunking it into the ground out in a field?
John Cerney: Yes, exactly. Yeah. You do lighting as well?
Steve Cuden: I think I do do lighting as well. And I’ve spent a lot of time in the theater, so I have an appreciation for the fact that when something you try to get to stand up, you need to make sure it stands up. It doesn’t flop down or get knocked over easily or any of those kinds of things. When you get an idea, whether it’s a commission or your own personal, idea, what is the first thing that you do? Do you do sketches or how do you start?
John Cerney: Well, it depends. I’m feeling out the client, they’re calling me, and, quite often they don’t know what they want. Some of them are straightforward. we want to honor our uncle George, who was a tomato farmer in Fresno. He passed away and all we have are pictures of him at family functions. They would say, send me the best pictures you got. I would find a good picture of him, but he’s just standing there. There’s no point in doing a figure, a cut out of figure, just standing there. He needs to have some interest. He’s a tomato farmer. Okay, I’ll get a body double holding his hand out with four tomatoes in his hand. That’s all you need. Then it makes sense. There’s George. Hey, there’s George, the tomato farmer. okay. They like the idea. They go with it, and that’s what I do. So there’s different kinds of jobs. I do the commissions that are straightforward like that. There’s not much creativity I can do with it other than things like that. unless they have no idea and I can have a little fun with it and add some humor to it. I’ll try that whenever I can. Rather than being, a stiff portrait of someone.
Steve Cuden: Do you actually draw sketches before you start?
John Cerney: No, I often don’t. Unless it’s a complex scene with multiple pieces that needs to be sketched or, Actually what I do is I make little mock ups, little four inch tall, little masonite mock ups I cut out and I can put on my desk and move around to see the best placement of them.
Steve Cuden: Can you put some kind of a background behind that so you can get a sense of what the background will be in reality?
John Cerney: It doesn’t need to be. I can just set them on my desk. Just assume and just place the, Skye and the mountains behind it, no problem.
Steve Cuden: And I have done a little bit of painting in my life. Not a lot. I’m certainly not a professional quality or anything, but I enjoy it every once in a while. And I can understand when you have something that’s maybe 4ft by 4ft or 5ft by 5ft, how you can then sort of step back and see it. How are you able to judge this large piece because they’re huge. How are you able to judge where to put the paint and where the image goes and all the rest of it? How do you figure that out?
John Cerney: Well, if I know what the size, the height of them is, and that’s really the deciding factor, how big do you want to make it? And that’s determined by the level of traffic and the speed of the traffic. If it’s on a country road, on a small farm, town, maybe it only needs to be twelve foot tall. You don’t have a lot of high speed traffic there. But if it’s next to a freeway going 65, that has to be set back behind a frontage road, let’s say, well, they need to be as tall as they can be, my giant ones. And I won’t go, I won’t go much taller than 18 to 20 foot tall because that means you’ve got to put 24, get 24 foot six by six posts, which are massive. And I don’t want to manhandle those, unless I have a tractor out there, it can do with chains and all that. So I’m fine. So that tells you that. And one of the ones I know, if it’s 18 foot tall, I’m taking, I’m using the grid system. I’m taking my giant photograph, making a little, you know, grid on it, and transferring those small, grids into six inch, maybe a quarter inch square into a six inch square. So I know then I need four and a half sheets of plywood tall. And it all, it all makes sense then.
Steve Cuden: I was gonna say there’s a certain amount of math to it.
John Cerney: Yeah, but basic math.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, well, I understand basic math, but you’re still figuring out it’s four by four inches turns into four by four whatever or six by whatever. so you’re making that calculation. So you’re actually then painting within grids based on what you’re seeing in a smaller sketch of those grids.
John Cerney: Yeah, but I’m not really. The grids are gone from my head. They’re still on the plywood. I will have sketched it out using the grids with just a pencil line, cut it out with a jigsaw. And then when I’m painting it, although the squares are still there, I’m, then only painting. I’m sketching out finer on the, plywood, what I need a hand and the fingers and all that. And I’m forgetting about the squares at that point. Once I get that all drawn out, and then I’m just putting a base coat down and then a top coat to finish it off.
Steve Cuden: Base coat. So yours, let’s call it your substrate, which I guess is the plywood. Then you’re doing, what kind of a base coat are you putting on it?
John Cerney: It’s my acrylic paint that I’m using. it might have a little bit more water mixed in so I can work with it faster. It’s. I’m experimenting with colors at that point. Seeing what a fun painting a blue jacket. What color blue am I seeing right here? So experiment with that on my base coat. And then, because it’s water based acrylic, you have to have at least two coats. Some colors, you have to have three. So, then on my second coat, the finished coat, I’m really then honing in on the detail. I’m, blending more, the shading of all the fabric and all that.
Steve Cuden: Okay, so I need to go back because I still don’t quite understand. When you’re doing the grids, are you using a projector of some kind, or are you just using, what, some kind of a huge ruler of some sort? What are you doing?
John Cerney: I’m using a ruler. I’m using a ruler, but I’m only doing sections at a time. If it’s, 18 foot tall, which is four and a half sheets apply, I’m starting at the head, or, excuse you. I start at the base. I’m sketching it out, and then I can stack two on top of one another. I sketch out what as far as I can reach. Then I take down. I’m finished with the bottom section. Get that bottom section out of the way, rotate, get another section. Then I’ve got the. I keep going until I’ve got the top of the last sheet of plywood. At that point, all my lines are connecting where the seams were. They make sure that the lines connect. Finally, you know where they’re going to be. So I’m going to make my cuts. I don’t, I’m not off by more than an 8th of an inch, so I’m just doing four foot sections at a time.
Steve Cuden: All right. And are you painting on them upright, or is it on the floor? Are you in a paint frame?
John Cerney: I have a giant easel.
Steve Cuden: A giant easel?
John Cerney: Yeah. It’s, 20 foot wide by ten, foot tall.
Steve Cuden: Wow, that’s a big easel.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Does it go up and down? Do you go up and down, or do you work on a ladder?
John Cerney: The key is to be able to sit whenever possible. That’s what I shoot for. But when you’re painting in between two sheets of plywood that have a seam, they’re four and a half foot tall on the easel. So I have to then stand at that point. Once I can get done with that seam area, then I can sit back down and move the one sheet of plywood up certain heights with boards I’ve got that can get me very comfortable as long as I can sit there, be comfortably right in one spot.
Steve Cuden: And do you cut the plywood yourself?
John Cerney: Yeah, with a jigsaw?
Steve Cuden: Yeah, with a jigsaw.
John Cerney: I go through a lot of blades.
Steve Cuden: Are you using some kind of super thick plywood? What’s this? What’s the dimension on the plywood?
John Cerney: Three quarter inches is, the Perfect thickness.
Steve Cuden: Is it pre sealed in some way?
John Cerney: It is. it’s extra. It’s, exterior plywood. It’s called MDO. It’s what the sign industry uses. If you see signs in most towns, they’re using MDO plywood, more than likely. I, sealed the edges, myself with putty, two coats of primer, two coats of black and. But it’s still only going to last, I’m going to say eight to 15 years. You know, it could be a big difference if you’re painting, if you’re pointing it south. I might get things that only last seven years. If it’s pointing south.
Steve Cuden: If it’s pointing south. Because it’s getting all the sun year round.
John Cerney: Yes. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: It’s getting beaten up by that great old bunch of light in the Skye.
John Cerney: You bet. I have one in Iowa that I put up in 19, 99. And it’s still standing, but it’s falling apart.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, but it’s falling apart.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Is that something that you think about going out and redoing or repairing or something?
John Cerney: I have a couple of times, if I’m in a general area, this is in Iowa. If I happen to be going to, let’s say, to Illinois, I might stop in Iowa and check it out. And my friends there see my friend. But otherwise I can get on the farm and look at it close.
Steve Cuden: Well, that’s kind of, that’s kind of fun.
John Cerney: As I do more and more of these, even though I’ve been in, like, 23 or 24 states, maybe, there’s only twelve states that still have them up because some of them have either been removed for some reason, someone sold their property, weather’s, taken it down, or for various reasons, they’re no longer there.
Steve Cuden: Well, we’re having this conversation about your work, which really needs to be seen to understand it. And certainly anyone listening to this should absolutely go to johnsernymurals.com and check out what these look like, because there are lots of wonderful pictures on that site. I’m wondering, do you also seal the, the back of them that people don’t.
John Cerney: See a, primer and two coats of top quality house paint? What I do. But I will also, where the boards are, I will use silicone around the edges of the, two by sixes. So that’s where the death of it happens. On the backside. Water gets in the crack of the plywood and the two by six and it starts to deteriorate slowly from the inside out.
Steve Cuden: Well, do you try to buffer that through or seal it up? And how do you, what do you do?
John Cerney: I use silicone.
Steve Cuden: silicone.
John Cerney: Silicone caulking? Yeah.
Steve Cuden: It’s just like you go to the hardware store and you’re good to go.
John Cerney: Yeah. In fact, you know, a lot of this is kind of was new for me at the time. I didn’t silicone them for ten or twelve years and they were falling apart quicker. And I realized I got to be more serious about what I do here. I, when I started off, I thought of this more temporary, I guess, in general. But, people, the ones, people are spending a lot of money for these, they like to think that they can get ten or twelve years out of it.
Steve Cuden: I would think they would. Some people probably think they can get their lifetime out of it.
John Cerney: Yeah. Although I warn everybody when I start, but I’m at the stage now because I’m 70, you know, everything I do now will probably outlive me. You know, that’s okay.
Steve Cuden: Does anybody ever take what’s out there and bring it inside somehow?
John Cerney: and I’ve done a lot of work that’s inside work too, so it’s not always, but 95% of my stuff is outside.
Steve Cuden: Well, the inside stuff’s going to last a lot longer, obviously.
John Cerney: Yeah. There is a, there’s a farmer in Iowa who bought one of my old corvette cutouts he found in a high end gallery. Spent a lot of money for it. I remember at the time when I was converting this old corvette cutout into another mural. I put a sign on the Corvette next to the barn where I was painting dollar 50, or best offer. Some guy came by and bought it for $50. Ultimately, this farmer in Iowa spent like $10,000 for it. It was hung on a wall, well lit, looked beautiful. An old Corvette. It was kind of beat up looking, but it made it look a, certain patina and look kind of cool.
Steve Cuden: Well, the beaten up look probably made it even more special.
John Cerney: Yeah, I became friends with that guy. I found out who the guy was, and I did a mural for him years later.
Steve Cuden: All right, so one of the things that I note when I look at your work, which I’m fascinated by, there’s emotion in it. It’s not just. You’re not just painting a portrait, and it has no emotion in it or even a picture of a car or something else. It has a feeling of movement, or it has a feeling of intensity to it, some kind of emotion. What do you do to put that in there? Is it something you’re conscious of?
John Cerney: Well, if you’re saying, like, a car, and I’ve done giant cars for racetracks and things, I don’t think any emotion in that. But, if I’m creating a scene and there’s a car, to me, a car is just kind of a static thing. They’re pretty, but they aren’t that interesting. They don’t tell a story. So if I can add a person to the scene, and when you say emotion, tell a little story, what’s happening? What’s this person doing? Usually it’s in my mind. I need three things. I need three items to create a scene that’s worthy of spending the devoting the time to make and make it interesting for the person driving by. I want someone, and I don’t mind that they look at them and think, what’s that about? I kind of like that. Think about it. You know? I don’t know. They’re used to seeing advertisements. My things don’t stream out advertising. There’s just something different about it.
Steve Cuden: They elicit some kind of a feeling in the viewer. It’s not dull or uninteresting to look at. It’s not just some. It’s not a rock. It’s not just sitting there. You know, it has some kind of feeling to it. I use the word emotion because that’s what it feels like when I look at it. It has a. There’s something about these characters that you’ve created or found in the real world that they give you something back, whether it’s joy or whether it’s seriousness or whether it’s pride. You can sense it when you’re looking at it. It, is that intentional?
John Cerney: No, I mean, it’s intentional that I want to. I have a kind of a quirky sense of humor sometimes. And there’s a still. And then there’s the Norman Rockwell part of me. I do want to leave a memorable image in. In the viewer’s mind of something. And then, you know, they aren’t real deep or anything, but the ones that I do for free, that are fun, that I just want to do and kind of mess with people a little bit. Those I’ll spend more time and I’ll. I’ll give them a lot of thought because it may sound like a good idea at the time. I need to sleep on them for a couple nights and think, you know, you know, eh, that could throw people off. That has double meaning. I don’t. I don’t quite get. I don’t want to get to the second meeting with people might take out of that. So I’ll clean them up before I even dive into them.
Steve Cuden: What does that mean? Are you saying perhaps maybe it has a sexual connotation or something like that?
John Cerney: That could be one of them. That could be one of them. I have to be careful with that, and I don’t dive into that. I got in trouble by, a lot of people when I did it in my series of field workers. People thought that field workers get taken advantage of. They don’t probably get paid what. They don’t get paid what they’re worth. They thought that the farmer was cleaning things up a little bit by elevating them, making them godlike. But at the same time, he’s probably not paying them more than $10 an hour. So they were getting a negative reaction like that. I remember that at the time when in my mind, he was doing, really uplifting them. And, they should appreciate that, but that didn’t come through.
Steve Cuden: So we talked about light in your work, which I think is part of what I’m talking about. I think the light helps. You have two kinds of light going on. You’ve got the sunlight and how it reacts to the painting or how it makes the painting look through the day. And you also have whatever lighting you have put in the painting through paint, through where the angle of the light is in the painting. How important is light in terms of the way that you conceive your work?
John Cerney: I, try and be kind of theatrical, you know, as you know, I will fake the light so that it looks more dramatic. Even though the real light of going through the day may have totally and opposite, effect on, how I actually painted it. But I don’t know if people see that, because they’re seeing it throughout the day. I never consciously think that people break apart, break down my lighting or anything. I’m just making it look as good as I can on my painting.
Steve Cuden: Are you considering where the light is in the installation, where the sunlight will be, generally speaking, do you take that into consideration as you’re creating it?
John Cerney: No, no. I often don’t know. I can be putting one up in Illinois and they’ve told me where we’ll be on the highway and I can get a sense, okay, it’s going to get a lot of southwest light or something like that, but it has nothing to do with how I painted George Harrison and the Beatles. I took a stock photo of him, maybe played with the light a little bit, maybe lit him up a little bit more in his face, but I wasn’t considering where we’ll look on a highway. No.
Steve Cuden: So you don’t know until you get it in place what it’s actually going to look like?
John Cerney: No, and I never even know. I don’t even see the finished pieces ever together altogether until I get there.
Steve Cuden: Is that right? You never assemble them in your studio?
John Cerney: No, no, there’s really no, it’s an extra step that’s waste of energy to be because it’s too late. I’ve done it. If I did it correctly and painted between the seams, and stayed consistent with a jacket that might be twelve foot tall but kept the same basic shade color throughout the jacket, I’m conscious of that, but I don’t know how it’ll look until I get up, get to the site. Those are the most fun days for me to finally see the finished piece. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Do you ever find yourself truly surprised by it?
John Cerney: No, they’re generally all, I think I’m such a detail oriented person and so conscious of how I applied the paint that I know it’ll work, but I don’t know how it’ll work with this background. That’s the thing for me. Oh, wow. There’s trees, everywhere. It’s. It’s a total dark background. It really makes it shine brighter or it’s a, cow pasture and it’s more, more interesting, maybe, but yeah.
Steve Cuden: And it’s going to look different whether the sun is up and bright or whether there’s clouds in the Skye or whether it’s raining or snow. It’s all going to change the way it looks, isn’t it?
John Cerney: Yeah. Yeah. I get a kick out of, a client will send me a picture in the back of the midwest of every season, and they’ll see the snow on the edge, on the top edges of all the cutout.
Steve Cuden: So you probably don’t see it too often in the wintertime because you live in California. No.
John Cerney: Yeah. Some of these I’ve never seen again after I installed them, maybe ten years ago. They’re still lovely.
Steve Cuden: really? Really. And, of course, many people viewing your work are maybe only seeing it once for a few seconds as they ride by in the freeway.
John Cerney: Yeah, yeah. And because of social media, I get a kick out of the comments. I think it might be the same guy did the one in Phoenix, Arizona. You know, that’s pretty cool. Eight states apart, but they kind of connected me.
Steve Cuden: So clearly you have some kind of a reputation. People know of your stuff.
John Cerney: Yeah, I think I do now. Starting to, at least in the midwest. I don’t get back east much.
Steve Cuden: well, that’s, you know, that’s how it sometimes is for an artist. It takes a lifetime before anybody recognizes. Oh, that’s so and so’s work.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: In this case, Jon Cerney’s work. That’s a Jon Cerney mural. That’s a Jon Cerney cutout. Then they know that it’s yours because they can recognize the style of it.
John Cerney: Yeah. And if I was a better, maybe businessman or marketer, they would have known about me sooner. But I’m not at all. You know, everything I do, I just figure, I’ll get another phone call next week. In a couple of weeks, I’ll get another job. That’s how it’s been. I keep getting the phone calls.
Steve Cuden: And the majority of your work is from some form of a photo or something real, correct?
John Cerney: Yeah. Unless it’s one of those, projects that are where I’m honoring somebody. I’m often creating using models as friends of mine, unless the client wants a particular person. I’m, creating the scene, getting their approval, and then painting it. Yeah. Depends.
Steve Cuden: So do you ever need to obtain permission from someone to paint them?
John Cerney: If I’m getting paid by a client that’s already covered, they’re painting somebody, either someone involved with their company or their family or. So I’m not worried about it. But where I do run into problems, I’m doing one right now in Palm Springs with five celebrities. Dean martin, Frank sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, librati, and sammy Davis, junior. I’m doing it for free because it’s them, by the way. All up by their mailboxes, getting their mail, all doing something different with the mail that they just received. So I won’t get in trouble? I can’t legally, I heard dean martin’s daughter still lives in palm Springs. She might see it, get upset. No matter how I painted him. There’s a guy who probably made m money painting my father. That’s not right. She could come at me, so I’m doing it for free. So that if she tried to come at me. What am m I I paid to do this?
Steve Cuden: well, sure. Where are these pieces in palm Springs going?
John Cerney: They’re going in a vacant lot near, downtown palm springs. and on a vacant lot that I had a mural, three years ago called popsicles. With a bunch of popsicles. So the landowner is going to develop the land, but it won’t be for a couple of years. So he approached The Local public arts commission. Hey, do you guys have any artwork that I, could put on my property for a couple years before I developed my land? So they contacted me, knowing I had this project in my mind, they say, hey, are you interested in this lot? That’s how that started.
Steve Cuden: I see. And I think that when you’re painting a famous celebrity, there’s a tendency for them to be in somewhat the public domain. I could be wrong. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not giving legal advice, but there’s. If it’s a famous person, there’s a certain amount of, public domain to their likeness. Unless, like you say, you’re exploiting it for money.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: That’s where people run into trouble, right?
John Cerney: I’ve done a bunch of things with James Dean. When I did a project, oh, I’m going to say about 20 years ago, I had an attorney who was working on this. It was a project. I was involved with him. He said, let’s. We better contact the James Dean foundation, see what they think about this. Because we’re thinking about making postcards of this and all this. Well, James Dean foundation didn’t like it at all. You’ll have. You can do it. But you’re going to pay us $5,000 upfront for postcards and potential sales and all that, and. Never mind, never mind. We just won’t do it. So, estates are out there. I did one of, neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. They were very conscious of how I portrayed him. And again, with postcard sales. So everybody’s different. so the Dean Martin foundation or estate, I’m sure he’s got one. Might have a say in what I do if I’m making money. So I’m avoiding that and just doing it for free.
Steve Cuden: Well, have you ever been approached by someone like that and said, please do one of these, and we’ll pay you to do it.
John Cerney: not quite like you’re describing it. Let’s say someone who doesn’t, has no connection with, like, Frank Sinatra. Hey, do a joey prank. Sinatra.
Steve Cuden: No, I’m thinking if it’s the Sinatra estate or the dean Martin estate, have anyone like that ever approached you and said, we’d like you to do one of our famous father or mother, whoever it is.
John Cerney: wow. The closest I come are things like the George Harrison in, the town of Benton, Illinois, only because he was the first Beatle to come to America, and he was, like, their favorite son. But they had no connection to George Harrison’s estate. They just add, you know, that was. That’s how that worked. No, I haven’t done anything quite like that. I’ve had people. Oprah Winfrey’s producers wanted me to do a painting of Oprah Winfrey for the Oprah Winfrey show. But they want me to do it for free because all the publicity it’ll get you and be good for you. I said, well, that’s a month out of my Life for free. And Oprah Winfrey makes $150 million a year. I know I can’t do it for free. I’ll be happy to give you a good price. So those things happen occasionally.
Steve Cuden: I’m sure they do. What, in Hollywood? They’re trying to get you down on price.
John Cerney: Come on.
Steve Cuden: What I find truly interesting about your work is that I’m also a big fan of Christo. And you mentioned Christo in your bio. And one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life was the biggest art installation I’ve ever seen in my Life, which was the gates in central park that Christo did back in 2005. That was astonishing. And you couldn’t see it all, no matter how much you looked at it, because you could never get to all the angles on it, even if you were able to get all the way around Central park. There were over 7500 of those things in the park. and it was just. I just spent several days there just with a big grin on my face. It was like the craziest, fun thing I’ve ever seen. So one of Christo’s, I guess, the way that he created his art, one of the things that was an element was the getting of permission to do things. And he would spend years and years and years getting permission to do things to then finally obtain the permission. He never used any advertising. He raised all the money himself and so. And this was part of his art. Is that similar for you? Where part of the game for you is to obtain permissions to put up something on a piece of land? Or is it. Most of the time, it’s easy for you get that permission?
John Cerney: No, not always easy. I get the feeling that Christo kind of relished that part of the process.
Steve Cuden: I think he did. I, think he did.
John Cerney: No, I would really be happier just saying, yeah, go ahead and put it there. Fine, then leave me alone. but I still do. I talk to council members. I talk to city hall. I have to give a speech sometimes to sell myself, and these are projects that I’m often giving to a community. I’m asking one thing. Pay my expenses for gas and hotel coming back and forth from California. It might be $2,000, but I’m giving you a $25,000 mural of Amelia Earhart. She was born here. Do you want this? And just pay me $2,000.
Steve Cuden: Why is it that you do it that way? Why do you do it for free like that? What, inspires you to do it that way?
John Cerney: In the case of that one, let’s say Amelia Earhart. It starts with the idea. The idea was the important part. I wanted to do something with an old vintage airplane. That’s how the first idea started. But it needed a story, you know, but what’s the point of painting a, b 52 on the side of the highway? Looks cool. Why is it there? I wanted a story. So Amelia hard popped in my mind, so, you know, the popularity of the way that she disappeared and all that, but in my. In my version of what happened, she didn’t go into the ocean. She landed in her hometown. She ran out of gas. She’s with her navigator. There’s a bunch of gas tanks, right? Gas cans right there. They’re going into town to get gas to continue, and she’s holding a map of Kansas, just realizing she made it home. So I. That was my story. And with the airplane behind her, the original airplane, so, I mean, my painting of it. So they. How could they not like that? The city, you know, Amelia, they just needed to get past the. You know, maybe. Maybe $2,000 was a lot of money out of their budget this. This year. I don’t know, but they paid well.
Steve Cuden: For most governments, unless they’re really tiny towns, $2,000 is not a huge expenditure. But you’re giving it to them for free. Basically, yeah.
John Cerney: It’s really. Steve, I’ve got. I get the idea, and I have to get the idea out of my system. I see someone who, an artist who paints on a canvas. That’s easy. Buy a canvas at The Local art supply store. Get your vision. There you go. No big deal. For me, it costs money. It might cost me two, or $3,000 in materials and my time. The thing is, I make my money on my commissions. I do quite well on my commissions for large companies or whatever reason. And the rest of the year, I might spend 50% of my time giving away my art two or three times a year, do that, and then four or five, six times, get commissions and make do good. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So I can hear not only in your. The tone of your voice, but in what you’re doing is that this is just a lot of fun for you.
John Cerney: Yeah. If I could do nothing but my fun free murals, that’s all I would do. But I got to make a living, so. And I don’t mind if I’m doing a giant race car for a local racetrack. I’ve done about seven or eight of them. You know, I’m getting into it. I want to make this porsche as shiny and nice as I can make it. It look cool in the hillside. They’ll pay me whatever number I throw out at them. There’s no argument. They just. I give them a number. Okay. When can you start? So, that fuels the rest of me. In the meantime, when I’m painting that, I’m thinking about my next fun one that I can do. And how can I get that one going?
Steve Cuden: You need to find an American Medici who will be your patron.
John Cerney: Yes. And I got one in Texas. I got a guy in Texas who’s been paying me to do stuff.
Steve Cuden: But, you need a bunch of those. You need to be able to. So you can just do whatever you want to do. I am curious. You alluded to how you decide color in these pictures. I’m very curious what it is. Your work is colorful as heck. It’s very colorful. It’s not dull and gray. It’s very colorful and eye catching. That’s got to be part of who you are and what you’re looking for.
John Cerney: Is that, pop, they are colorful. And I think the reason is because I’m kind of a naive, artist when it comes to color. I don’t quite understand color. That’s the last thing I’ve getting little, you know, a little bit more confident in, so if it’s blue, where in reality it’s blue mixed with a little black, a little brown, little red. I’m not maybe using so much of that. My blues are bluer than most people’s blues. They just. They just are. And I figured, well, I’m painting alongside the highway. I need to catch their attention. It’s got to be really vivid. And I do that and they do. Yeah, I think so. And, I’m slowly getting more subtle with my colors as time goes on.
Steve Cuden: Are you pretty good at mixing new colors? If it’s another day and you have to match a color from one panel.
John Cerney: To the next, that is a tough one. A flesh tone. I might be painting an arm, a forearm, one day. The next day I’m painting the hand. Well, I’ll paint the hand. It’ll make a separate painting. oh, that one’s kind of red. I need to. So I will go back and blend in red into the upper part of the arm to make it more match. so I have to be careful about that because a lot of times an arm and a hand could be twelve foot tall. Just that instead of, you know, a foot and a half. So.
Steve Cuden: And this is mostly house paint of some kind?
John Cerney: No, it’s mural paint. That is a standard in the mural painting industry that what I use.
Steve Cuden: It’s mural paint. I don’t. This first time I’ve ever heard it said that way.
John Cerney: Well, it’s acrylic paint, really thick and meant to, for the exposure to the sun. It’s good with that.
Steve Cuden: It’s got some kind of uv protection in it or something.
John Cerney: Yeah, anti varnish. There’s an exterior varnish you put on top of that to protect it even more.
Steve Cuden: All right, so when you have a piece, let’s say it’s one of your bigger pieces. How much time do you spend on it? One month or more. How long does it take?
John Cerney: A 16 foot tall figure, a field worker with a shovel? Might take me, twelve days. When I’m saying a month. That might be a project with multiple pieces. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Twelve days sounds like nothing to me.
John Cerney: Yeah, that goes pretty quick. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. I would think it would take you weeks and weeks and weeks, but no, it takes you twelve days.
John Cerney: I’m working with big brushes too, so I’m not working like a lot of artists. I will only occasionally get a real small brush. My things are so big that I can get away with an eye being a little bit looser than it would be. You had to be really careful in a portrait of. In a museum or something, do you.
Steve Cuden: Then step back from it somehow in your studio so you can get a perspective on it.
John Cerney: I can step back a little bit and I do that. But since I’m only able to put two sheets at one time, it doesn’t do me much good because I can’t see the whole thing. But if I’m working on 2 seconds at a time, that might be the whole head and top half of a shirt. I can get all that down pretty good. And then I get rid of the head, move the shirt up, and then there’s a shirt and a belt buckle. So slowly, you know, match the colors and, it’ll work out okay.
Steve Cuden: So for those who have no idea what it’s like to be a working artist, give us a sense of what a day in the studio is like for you. How long do you spend in the studio? What is your, what is the energy like, what do you do?
John Cerney: I get up at 745 every morning, have breakfast, get on the computer. I’m at work by nine, and I work till 10:00 at night every night.
Steve Cuden: Wow.
John Cerney: But I’m not working straight through. I’m breaking it up. I’m going to the library. I mean, I’m going to the post office. I’m hiking, with a friend three days a week, two other nights, maybe go to the gym for five nights. Five days a week. I’m doing some workout thing. And, weekends are just like weekdays for me. It’s seven days a week.
Steve Cuden: Seven days a week.
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: You’re a little obsessive.
John Cerney: I am, but I still wake up. I went to sleep thinking about how am I going to finish, that Frank Snatcher’s hat. The band was a little bit, it wasn’t quite convincing as the roundness of it. I’m thinking about how to correct it before I go to sleep, and then I’m looking forward to correcting it in the morning. Get it right.
Steve Cuden: Do you wake up in the morning with solutions to problems?
John Cerney: Yeah. Yeah. I can kind of mentally fix some things in my head before I go to bed. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. Obviously, you must really, really get into it if you’re doing it six or seven or seven days a week and it’s just a thing, you’re just completely, compelled to do it.
John Cerney: Yeah, I’m, just in the last two or three years when I install these things. That’s the most physical part of it, is the installation, because I’ll have a tractor digging, digging the holes. But I’m putting the potion in the ground, mixing the concrete in the ground, mixing it with water. And it could be, 95 degrees and 90% humidity, as it was in Kansas last month. That wore me down. I’m starting to wear down and not wanting to do the installing anymore.
Steve Cuden: Well, you can probably pay people to do that if you have the money.
John Cerney: It’s hard to give that up, but I would do it. Yeah. To keep going.
Steve Cuden: That’s part of the fun for you, is the installation.
John Cerney: Yeah. And the driving. I love the driving because I’m excited about finish finishing the project. And then on the way home, I’m thinking about another one. I might have an idea in Wyoming, a, germ of an idea. And maybe three states later, I’m doing nothing but thinking about that idea. No, that won’t work. And then maybe I figured out by Nevada, you know, what kind of a.
Steve Cuden: Vehicle do you have to drive?
John Cerney: It’s a pickup truck, because I’m pulling a trailer. So it has to be a heavy duty truck. So, that’s it. I’ve had a truck for a year.
Steve Cuden: And you’re pulling what kind of a trailer?
John Cerney: I have an enclosed trailer. I could stack all, store all my artwork, scaffolding, all that equipment. And when I’m going to a site, I will have pre, ordered the lumber and have a lumber yard deliver to the site. So all, everything’s ready when I get there.
Steve Cuden: Oh, because you’re painting it in place?
John Cerney: No, no, no. The painting’s all done. It’s all in pieces.
Steve Cuden: What’s the plywood then?
John Cerney: The stuff I’m ordering is, are the post and the concrete.
Steve Cuden: Oh, okay. I was not following. All right, so it’s the post and the concrete that you’re ordering that has to be there. You’re not carting that with you?
John Cerney: No, there’s no point in doing that. Yeah, right.
Steve Cuden: That’s stuff you can get locally quite easily in most places. I’m curious. You started out doing portraiture in Los Angeles, I guess it was. Or southern California. Do you still do that sort of work?
John Cerney: No, no. I see myself doing it more as I get older and don’t want to, physically climb scaffolds and do all this stuff anymore. They will come because I miss drawing. I enjoy drawing, but I realized when I was doing that in Los Angeles, I was doing okay, but I could make more money as a muralist because I could just fill more space. I considered a drawing table back in the day, and it would take me all day to maybe draw a hand. You know, it was taking me longer to do a drawing no Bigger Than twelve by 16 than it is to paint a giant figure.
Steve Cuden: That’s amazing.
John Cerney: Yeah, it’s just pencil drawing is such a fine, you know, minute thing, but the brush, it’s, looser and.
Steve Cuden: I get more done and it’s probably a lot more physically fulfilling to do. You’re not all cramped over one little thing.
John Cerney: Yeah, it is actually easier on my body, drawing. You get really stiff and you’re just, oh, my hand. But you feel the pressure. I still have to get up occasionally and walk around because, I can still.
Steve Cuden: Would you say that the physical thing is the biggest challenge that you have or what are the bigger challenges you have?
John Cerney: Yeah, it’s probably the physical thing now as I get older and fighting city hall.
Steve Cuden: Right now and fighting city hall.
John Cerney: Yeah. It’s like, I’m a little offended in that I have a body of work yet. An engineer for the city of Palm Springs is not looking at that at all. They’re looking at their code book to see that if you put in something in the ground that’s twelve foot tall, it needs to withstand 115 miles per hour winds. Can you prove that you can do that and I can’t?
Steve Cuden: And so they won’t let you until you can prove it? Is that the idea?
John Cerney: Well, the administrators, they realize, here, I’ve given this to the city. It’s to their benefit to let it happen. Say, we’ll make this happen, we’ll figure it out. So it makes it legal in our books, but we’ll get, you know, we’re pretty sure it’ll happen.
Steve Cuden: All right, so you say that you work seven days a week. How do you then refresh your. Well, is it through walking? Is it through the gym? Is it through some form of food? How do you refresh.
John Cerney: That’s it. Hiking. Hiking. hiking and going to the gym and just doing the basic weight stuff so I can kind of stay toned. And they do a lot of physical stuff. but hiking is the best. I always feel good.
Steve Cuden: I won’t ask you how you stay disciplined. You’re already disciplined. You just do it.
John Cerney: Yeah, no, I feel guilty. I will. What I will do sometimes is go to a movie at night because I need to get away from my shop so that I can’t be working. I could. I don’t want to, watch, Netflix in my office because I’m too close to my work right outside the door. So I need to go to a movie and get away from it all. I live in my shop has an apartment in it, so that’s one of the reasons why. Just all consuming.
Steve Cuden: You’re always at home.
John Cerney: Yes.
Steve Cuden: Do you play music during the day? Do you watch, do you have tv going on somewhere?
John Cerney: No, I don’t. I haven’t. I turned off cable tv in 2006. I haven’t had a tv since 2006.
Steve Cuden: Oh my goodness.
John Cerney: I’ll watch something. I watch clips of things on the computer. I get a kick out of that. You know, I never saw sopranos, but I watched clips of the sopranos, you know, or curvy enthusiasm with, Larry David. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Do you play music in the shop?
John Cerney: Yeah, all the time.
Steve Cuden: Everything all the time?
John Cerney: Yeah.
Steve Cuden: So that’s your background noise, so to speak, is music.
John Cerney: Yeah. When I was painting Frank Sinatra, I listen to Frank Sinatra all day.
Steve Cuden: Frank Sinatra. well, that would be relatively easy to understand. Well, I’ve been having just so much fun talking to Jon Cerney for almost an hour now, and we’re going to wind the show down a little bit. And I’m just wondering, in all of these experiences you had over all these years, are you able to share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny?
John Cerney: Well, a, funny one is one of the third or fourth ones I ever did. It was for that farmer who commissioned me to do these giant field workers. He hired me to do his field man who was a guy who would tell you when the crops were ready to harvest. And it was a guy who had an older guy, been with the company for 50 years. He took a head of lettuce and he didn’t know what I was doing. I was a guy, I was just a photographer doing something. my client didn’t tell him what I was there for. He took a head of lettuce, cut it in half with his lettuce knife, and he held it down by his crotch, and he had a look on his face of pride, like, look what I got down here. Well, it became a thing in the community, and to this day it still is. people pose in front of it, people take plywood or cardboard penises, attach it to the screwdriver in between the two his balls and completes the picture. I’ll get a call from a, hey, someone put another penis on your guy. Won’t you come and take it down? You know, that kind of happens. And I give him credit for creativity, but, that’s one thing.
Steve Cuden: That’s quite a thing to have a reputation for.
John Cerney: Yeah, it was in the m. magazine, Maxim magazine, as he, someone said in a picture standing next to the guy and was called the unintentional pornographic shot of the weekend.
Steve Cuden: Wow, that’s saying something. Well, that’s a. I love that story.
John Cerney: I got another one. That’s great. It’s really kind of. It kind of told me that I was on the right track when I started doing these. I wanted to expand to the midwest. I wanted to have more people see my work. I, didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know how much. But I had a guy I used to work with the lettuce business whose dad had a farm in Iowa along a semi busy highway. A small town in Iowa. Will your dad let me put a giant painting on the edge of his field? His cornfield. Just for a year. Just one year. He talked his dad into it. His dad was, you know, ambivalent about it. Sure, he loved. But he liked me. Yeah, go ahead and let the kid. Let the kid do it. It was a scene of a husband and wife, a Norman Rockwell scene. The husband is hanging a picture frame and in the painting is a field of corn in Iowa. And his wife is in the back off, 20ft. She’s got her arm out, positioning. He’s got a hammer in one hand, huh? Where to hang it, what angle to put it on. And the family dog is right there just looking at the scene. He has a look of anger on his face because. Come on. Come on, honey. I want to get this over with. That was the scene. Three pieces on the edge of a cornfield in Iowa. It sat there for a year. And when the year came up, I said, His name is Jerry. Jerry. Okay, I’m going to come back and take it down. Thank you. Appreciate you. Let me have it up for a year. What I found out was, from the sun was that he would go out on weekends. He was retired farmer. He would go out on weekends, park his pickup truck near the painting and watch people stop their cars and take pictures of it. He got the biggest kick out of that. And he was cleaning the thing every few weeks, getting a liner and cleaning it up. Wow.
John Cerney: He fell in love with the thing. So when I said, jerry, okay, I’m going to come and take it away. Really. You can leave it here a little longer. But I sold the piece to a frame shop in my hometown because it made sense. A guy holding a picture frame. They bought. They wanted to buy it. I sold it to him. Well, Jerry, I got to take it. I sold it. Oh, so you’re sad. So I painted another one, it kept the dog, got rid of the two people because that’s all they cared about. And I thought, what can I do with the family dog? And to make him happy and just leave something. So, it was a painting. I did a painting of a little girl, five year old girl. She’s crying, and she’s holding up her teddy bear, which has been ripped to shreds by the family dog. She’s holding it out in front of the dog, like, look what you did to my teddy bear. And she’s crying. 15 foot tall. That was all the dog and the little girl crying makes no sense at all. but that is still the one that’s still up to this day. His arm has fallen off at one side. another piece is missing. And I told my Buddy, he said, you know, you can knock that thing down, if it’s in your way, because, you know, it’s obviously near the end of his Life. But, it means something to the city, apparently. And then to finish off the story, last week, a guy who grew up in that town, as a kid, he knew that painting as a beacon. He was almost home. It was 3 miles outside of town. Can I give him permission to paint a tattoo of the little girl and the dog on his arm? He wanted my permission, which is strange enough to ask permission. Just do it, you know? Really? He says, sure, go ahead. Yeah. Send me a picture of it when you’re done. I want to see it.
Steve Cuden: Has he done it yet?
John Cerney: He was going to do it, in a couple of weeks.
Steve Cuden: Yeah, well, that’ll be something. You should have framed that picture and put it on your wall.
John Cerney: Oh, yeah, I saw the sketch of it. It looks pretty good. He’s going to be pretty realistic.
Steve Cuden: That’s so much fun.
John Cerney: That whole story told me that I was on the right track. These things, as much as they may not make sense just to me or the people who see them, at first, it becomes part of the fabric of their community, whether they understand it or not. There’s a little girl, you know. How cool is that? Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Well, it’s completely memorable. And it’s unusual, and it sticks out because it’s not like anything else around. It’s very memorable.
John Cerney: Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool.
Steve Cuden: That says, it’s something that becomes important to them as a touchstone, a landmark, whatever you want to call it.
John Cerney: That makes me feel pretty good. Yeah.
Steve Cuden: Cool. So, last question for you today, Jon you’ve already said lots of things that if people are interested in doing your kind of work. You’ve said lots of things today that are great advice, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice that you like to give to people. If they ask you, how do you do this, or how do I get into it? Or maybe they’re doing it a little bit and asking you how to they get to the next level of it.
John Cerney: Well, you know, I can only talk about myself in that. I never thought about art as a career or the money part of it. I just became so passionate about it that I just had to do it. And I thought a practical thing would be to give it away. A, giveaway might work so that people could see it, if people are forced to see it, and if you’re decent, it’s going to make an impact and it’ll help you in some way. Of course, you know, I’m talking about public art. Not everybody is going to go that route. But, really, the biggest thing that ever made this possible for me is that I never got married. I don’t have any kids, don’t have a mortgage, and I have a landlord who loved me, and I paid a ridiculously low fee for a shop and a home for 30 years. I’ve been in this place for 30 years. I can only do what I do because I have such low overhead, and I can give away my work and feed my passion for my fun projects. I don’t think I would have made it as a typical gallery type artist because I never felt I had anything to say. I mean, as far as advice, you know, I just. If you’re passionate about something, you don’t care about those ancillary things. It should happen for you. You know, again, I had a lot of benefits. I. Financially, I. No one’s beholden to me, and I could make crazy decisions and no one get upset with me. Why are you doing that? You know, again, you do another one. Giving it away again. Yeah, I can afford to do it. And, I said, keep doing it.
Steve Cuden: Well, I think for a man who says he has nothing to say, I think you’ve said a whole lot, and I think that your work speaks for itself, and you don’t need to say any more than that, and that’s why you put it out there.
John Cerney: Thank you, Steve.
Steve Cuden: Jon Cerney, this has been a lot of fun for me, this great hour on story today, learning all about you and how you make this amazing art of yours. And I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom for being on the show with me today.
John Cerney: Thank you. I appreciate it. It was fun talking to you.
Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat If you liked this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. story is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Tunein, and many others. Until next time, Im Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.
What great stories I never knew about my cousin John’s work. Good interview. Loved listening. We think John is amazing. See you soon John for taco tuesday
Thanks for the excellent thoughts, Matt! John is a lot of fun to talk to.