I was on Instagram or something, and I checked my tagged photos, and I realized that suddenly they were all LGBT artwork. I was like, 'Oh, my God!' I had no idea. It was the first time I realized I was a figure for that community.
You have to have patience and confidence that your things will let you know where they need to go. Particularly artwork. Paintings will tell you where they want to be.
It's wonderful to see art in a museum, but it is institutionalised. I don't like the idea of the artwork as something that requires special conditions. I would like it to be universal.
My artwork gets stolen all the time; it's ridiculous.
If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.
It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
I want everything to build and create a massive artwork composed of different songs, colors, physical art and visuals.
I guess if you take yourself seriously as an artist there starts either the problem or the beauty of doing good artwork.
Jazz is very much a part of my life. I work with the Thelonious Monk Institute and do the artwork for their program every year.
I love art, but I've never bought an artwork or even considered it.
