 So this is the question we ask everybody. So I'm going to ask you, because I'm not sure they have asked us, why herning bots? And what they mean is, why is this relatively young artist from a city that isn't always thought of as the first city that you think of where I was coming from? What isn't about the work that's really sort of engaged people? I mean, entirely the work that people are engaged with. What do you think people are seeing and responding to the work? I don't know. It's always been a mystery to me, too, to degree. I think I've been lucky enough where I make work that I respond to, and I think with any artist just makes what they like. They want other people to respond to it similarly. And for me it's an indulgence, I think with any artist an indulgence to make work that they would want to go to a museum and see in a hundred years, too. I still scratch my head that people still look at my work, especially being like the herning from Miami that I still think I am to some degree. This is ridiculous to me. Not in a bad way, but like, come on. Thank you. Do you think the audience at all when you're making work? I mean, are people going to understand this or how they're going to respond to this movement? Definitely I think about the audience because I might have obscure references, but while I study obscure objects and references and things like that, I want the work to have a sort of pop bounce to it, where if I'm looking at Victorian morning rites from the 18th century, I want to make it look like something Warhol might be able to get away with, too, where an easy understanding of something that comes from a place that doesn't have to be super schooled in it. And by that I mean you don't have to read the Encyclopedia Britannica to sort of grasp like my obscure references. Decadence is obviously a personal attitude. It's the Oxford Dictionary puzzle of luxurious self-indulgence. But it also implies the kind of economic prosperity, doesn't it? I mean, I think you kind of have to be rich to be decadent. You might go into a poor area, a very mirror saying, you know, in fact there's the crumbling palace that is sort of decadent. But I think you still have to be prosperous to appreciate that. So we're doing an economic period now that's pretty intense. Do you think that might affect the work somehow? I don't think so. I think there's different levels of decadence and different levels of what can be appreciated as decadent. I just bought a house in Detroit recently and we're driving down the neighborhood and on the lawn there's this giant sort of plaster black panther on the lawn and like that is just so motherfucking decadent, you know what I mean? And like it's gorgeous and like that to me is no different than like JK Hewisman's like tortoise, you know? You might be this, you know, Don Trotten sort of mentality and you know, might not have the same finances that a 19th century dandy would but you make these same statements and I think at this point in time you're able to still be eccentric and decadent without having those finances anymore. And I think that's something that's changed in the course of history and you know if you go to friends' apartments in like the Lower East Side like they can decorate these places as if it's Louis XVI's castle but it's made out of paper mache, you know? So you can be decadent and not sort of have to have it covered in jewels like the tortoise upstairs, like those are all fake jewels. We know that you look at major famous artists and make lots of references to our history. Do you also look at illustrators? I was a comic book kid growing up and I don't really talk about that too much but I think it did have a bigger influence on me than I kind of think I can even admit to myself in a way but you know I can be like Todd McFarlane, you know, did like X Factor and all these books like I did have a whole sort of background of illustration in my head originally but for me it's more about conveying a concept if it happens to be through illustration that's the avenue like conceptually that I will pursue and it's weird that people sort of think of contemporary work like someone like me or Laura Owens for example as being based off of illustration because when I walk through like the Met it's like illustration, illustration, illustration, illustration you know it's you know it's the lives of saints too you know it's I don't see the difference maybe it's a new conversation with contemporary art that I'm part of but I don't know and I have certain illustrators but there is in the art critical world a distinction that's made I think oftentimes between illustration and fine art is that a distinction that makes any sense to you? Where do you, how do you bring it over the line? I think it's that to an extent it's not even up to me whether that goes over the line I think it's up to the audience whether they think what I'm trying to convey surpasses because for me illustration in the classical sense of children's books and things like that it's usually it's not their own ideas being conveyed and you know I look at a great children's book and it's rare that the author is also the illustrator and in those instances like for me it's I'm the idea guy and you know the illustrator and I think that makes a big difference sometimes So how much of a role does your family play in your life and work today? Are you close to your family? I'm closest to my siblings I mean I'm one of six I have four brothers and the oldest is a girl, my sister and for me I was a third-born and my older brother and my older sister sort of were the big influence on my life for the most part like my sister read the Anne Rice novels and I would watch soap operas with her and my older brother is like a bartender in New Orleans and this guy mega-goss you know so I kind of didn't have much of a chance like I would watch Days of Our Lives with my sister and then listen to like Iron Maiden with my brother it's like this weird mix Were you a child when you realized that you were going to be an artist? It's weird like I never really remember having any other instinct to do anything else like with the one exception of like being in seventh grade and being a Florian seventh grade child and wanting to be a marine biologist because that's what you do you snorkel you know but other than that like yeah my father has recordings of me when I was four years old like I paint you know like yeah it's weird So you're a Bowie's man right? Yeah Does it matter to have a gay audience? I would just say yes Kathy Griffith If the book was in a library you wouldn't want it to fall only into a gay study center Yeah because I don't like I don't think even the best scholar of feminism or any other sort of marginalized group would want that you know I want it to be read by everybody and I don't think that anyone can say otherwise like you want your story to be universal even if it's you know maybe not everyone's story everyone should read it it might have been in you know I mean I certainly feel that way throughout the work but would you say that the more recent work is whether consciously or unconsciously becoming more generalized more universal and it's in the audience of like progress? I think it's always going to be per se queer you know because my interests most people will consider queer to begin with you know like right now I'm looking at like futureist dance from Russia from like the turn of the century it's like yeah like what straight artist is looking at that right now you know so you know there's going to be that sensibility no matter what but I just don't want I just don't think it's necessary to write an art history that says the gay chapter you know the feminist chapter the lesbo chapter like come on it's just art you know it just should be just the art history not gay art history you know