Edge Forum

For most of us it's a familiar feeling; you're trying to pay attention to an ever-so-slightly boring lesson, you feel your hands twitching and then, before you know it ... doodles, all over your work. What the hell? So much for revision notes.  

But if you're really into your art why stop there? Jim Cereal certainly didn't, following his interests to take a specialist art course at uni. After that things really picked up, as Jim and a few like-minded mates came up with One Trick Pony, their very own street art collective. With the first One Trick Pony solo show in London pencilled in for December, Jim's living proof that you can carve out success from your passions.  So for budding Banksys everywhere, hear this: 'if you have ideas and you think it can't be done-it can be done'.

What do you do?

 I’m a street artist and predominantly a stencil artist, I am part of a collective called One Trick Pony.

 What was your journey to get to where you are?

I was born in York in Tang Hall. I went to Burnholme School then college. Then I went to Huddersfield University, I did a course called ‘Surface Pattern’, which is about patterns on surfaces. That’s about as vague as it was on the course! When I was in my final year I started to get into stencil and street art just by chance really, it was just a way of putting images on paper and repeating them. I was doing a lot of work in my own time trying to pass my year but I ended up having to repeat my final year.   Whilst I was repeating I met a guy called Andy who is also from York. We were both really into Stencil art at that time and when I finished uni we started to explore it a lot more by taking trips to London.   We had a few exhibitions in York then started up a market stall selling street art and magazines.   There was a group of four of us and we came up with the name One Trick Pony. Once the stall had gone me and Andy carried on the name and pulled in other street artists from around Yorkshire, there are six of us in total now.

We’ve got our first One Trick Pony solo show in London in December so I’m now working up some new stencils for that. The show is more of a preview of our work, there will be a real mixture, street art, graffiti art, web design, sculpture and illustratiom. Its all going to be a bit alternative like a One Trick Pony bed-sit, not just pictures on the wall. I’m going to create my own breakfast bar with a big Cereal box and we are having furniture made featuring our work also a toy figure by Tek-13.

 What was your education like?

I really liked school to be honest. Art was always one of my favourite subjects, it was something I really pushed myself to do.  With things like maths you just kind of turn up to lessons and forget about it the moment you walk out the door but with art and drama you got to express youself.

 What does success mean to you?

Doing something you feel passionate about and being happy with your self daily and not worrying about what other people think.

 What challenges have you faced?

Probably living in York is the biggest one. I’m moving to London in a weeks time though! If you are passionate about something you just do it don’t you! Just dive in and deal with the consequences later!

 Did you have any support?

My parents have been pretty supportive to be honest. I’m 28 and haven’t got a proper job yet!   My brother is 5 years younger than me and doing really well in a building company. All my family are builders and stuff like that, so I’m the black sheep, but they are all cool with it. They always support me as well as my friends, they always support me too.

 What drives you?

Sometimes there are times when you feel like you can’t produce anything that looks good. I guess that drives you, trying to find something that looks good. You sometimes get bogged down with so many ideas, but when it does click and it does work that drives me. When you put something up in the street and get good feedback, that drives me!

The fact is that for me I do a piece of art and then its done, I move on. I’m not one for doing the same stencil over and over again, once its done and up I’ll tear it up and throw it away. Even if it took 8 hours to do! The challenge for me is always what that next piece is going to be. Its different with other arts but with street art you can see it everywhere and people are always putting stuff up on top of yours and you're always judging what looks good and what looks bad. That’s what drives me, trying to out do each other, in a nice way (…or not!) Its always being updated, its always fresh. Sometimes your work only lasts for a week, a day, even an hour before it gets painted over .

Where do you get your feedback from?

I google myself everyday…!  Ha ha. Joking! There is a website called Flickr that people upload pictures of your work and people comment on it. People who don’t know you saying your stuff is good. That’s what drives me!

 Who is your role model?

This is tricky. Anybody who has gone and done what they want to do, whether an artist or something else. Not people who feel like they have to go and work in an office and make money but people who are doing what they want to do and being creative.

 What advice would you give to young people?

If you really want to do something, if you have ideas and you think it can’t be done, it can be done- you just have to push yourself. Look for alternative ways to get there because it’s never straight forward. Don’t be afraid of knock-backs, it happens all the time! People say you are doing the wrong thing but if you want to do it, it's there for you to do.

 What do you think education should be like?

Education should be more supportive for what you want to do. Just having an hour a week of art or an hour a week of geography or whatever subject you are into isn’t enough. You should make your own timetables so you have certain days where you choose what you want to do. You should definitely have more time to push things that you’re really into.

 What was your first piece of work?

I hate to say this because I’m a Leeds Utd fan but I think it was a stencil of an old Man Utd player from an old 1970’s soccer album. Or it would have been an old advert or something, I get my inspiration by looking back in time rather than looking to the future.

How important is originality in your work?

Originality is massively important. With street art at the moment you can see the same thing going on in different artists.  You can see Banksy and then you’ll see someone totally do ‘a Banksy’ but worse. Banksy isn’t amazingly technically good but he’s so intelligent with what he does. A lot of people lack the intelligence but try to recreate his work but it just looks bad. So originality is really important. With me, there are people I aspire to be like or I really like their art, like FAILE. With my stuff I think it's quite original because with a lot of street art they try to be political and put a message across but I just put something up that looks cool. I just like to make the place look nice! Brains over beauty? No its beauty over brains!

Where do you see yourself in ten months time?

I’m moving to London so hopefully I’ll have stronger links. I want to be able to do my art work and travel the world and I should be happy and be free to do what I want to do!  

I think I should feel a bit more proud of what I do. You kind of forget what you do sometimes then you look back and think wow, I’ve done all this stuff.  I learn that more and more as I get older, to be proud of what I’m doing and not make excuses for it.

I used to say ‘I’m just doing this or I’m just doing that’ Don’t say just. Say ‘This is what I’m doing, this is who I am.  That’s my new message, there is no just about it!

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Jim+Cereal&z=m