Jay Gard, the color collector

There’s a lot to discover at Jay Gard’s studio, and every corner of the room looks different. One corner is equipped like a well-run hardware store - with countless screws, nails, special saws, screw clamps, pliers and a material store with wood, boards, paints and sundries. Jay needs all of this for his work.
But then there’s this funny round lamp that hovers over a basketball hoop and will never fall through the hoop because it’s attached just above it. And paintings or a guitar on the wall, heavy miniature sculptures on the shelf, and more.

In his studio recently sometimes paintings, but mainly sculptures. Often they are so large and heavy that Jay can only plan them in reduced size at first. Or he has to assemble them from a large number of individual parts – in the place where the sculpture is to remain. This could be in front of a bank branch, for example ... or on the roof of a house. (This is called art in construction, we learned.) Jay often builds larger and smaller circles of color from brightly painted strips of wood. They look a bit like the iris in the eye - only very colorful and with a hole in the middle instead of the pupil. The color circles are called “Farbkreis Gabriele (Gabriele Münter, Herbstliches Blumenstillleben),” for example, because the colors from Münter’s painting “Herbstliches Blumenstillleben” inspired Jay to create the color circle. So he collects colors from others and puts them together to create something of his own.

Inspiration is very important for Jay, because he always gets new (and good) ideas when he sees and hears different things. This can be anything, but especially works by other artists fascinate him. Television, on the other hand, he finds quite distracting. And even though he likes pets – and especially dogs – he is quite happy that he doesn't have to take responsibility for another living creature. At least for now. When Jay is looking for inspiration, he likes to go to museums or galleries, but quite often he just looks at (art) books. So it’s a good thing that his studio has room for a comfortable couch and a well-stocked bookshelf. Right next to it is the large desk with many sketchbooks in which he records his ideas.

And we were also allowed to immortalize ourselves with small drawings in one of them. Will he be inspired to create a new work? Who knows ...