Brightest Young Things

Jesse LeDoux is a former art director with Sub Pop Records (you own his work - you just don't know it. Grammy-nominated Shins packaging anyone?)

and is a current partner in Patent Pending Design and the man behind the colorful facade that is LeDouxville. His charm is abundant in person as well as in everything he produces. As a showcase within the "Sweet" exhibition at the University of Maryland, LeDoux was brought in to create an art installation. The end result was amazing - it just wasn't what he had planned. Read on as we finalize our "Sweet" coverage.

It was great having you here in DC. How did you enjoy your stay in lovely College Park?

College Park was great! I think the town is named quite accurately. There was a college, and a park, and not much else!

How did you end up with the gig doing the installation in conjunction with the exhibit?

John Shipman, the curator, saw my booth at a Flatstock poster convention in Austin last year. He thought I might be a good candidate for an installation for the show. When he asked me if I'd be interested in doing the installation, I was still living in Providence, RI, so he thought the trip to Maryland would be an easy one. After accepting his invitation to do the installation is when I told him I'd be moving to Tokyo in the next two months. Ha!

How long did it take you to complete the installation?

It took a solid two weeks. However, that included all the speed bumps I encountered along the way. If I were to do the same thing again, knowing what I know now, I would easily end up with a handful of days to go see all of D.C.'s great museums (which I regrettably didn't get!). However it's always good to push yourself to try new things, and the speed bumps and setbacks are an unfortunate side effect to the process of experimentation.

What sort of planning was involved incorporating the room and how did your plans change once you were actually laying paint on the walls?

I had everything planned out pretty thoroughly. I had a picture in my head of how it should look, and feel the end result is pretty similar to how I'd imagined it should be (with the exception of the fateful cotton candy trees). It was mostly smaller logistical issues that tripped me up a bit: projectors not projecting as big as I'd hoped, paint not being opaque enough to cover my charcoal sketches, cotton candy, cotton candy, cotton candy...

Now when I saw you a few days before the opening you let the deliciously coated cat out of the bag that you were wrapping the trees in cotton candy. When I asked "not real cotton candy?" You gave me that look like "what kind of operation do you think I am running here? Of course it's real cotton candy." When I arrived though - no cotton candy - w'happen?

My only experiences with cotton candy have been momentary--that bit of time after I give the carnival vendor my money, to just long enough for me to inhale the clump of fluffy sugar--roughly 2 minutes, I'm guessing. I had obviously overestimated it's shelf-life when deciding to use it for a 2 month installation. Everything started out well. Two days before the opening, my assistant and I worked a loooooong day (until 2:30 am) spinning cotton candy and building really awesome pink fluffy trees. However, when I got back to the gallery at 8:30 am the next morning (the day before the show was scheduled to open), the awesome pink fluffy trees had melted/shrunk/disintegrated into a hard disgusting mass of pinkish-red ugliness. The slight humidity in the gallery had turned the cotton candy into hard clumps of sugar that shrunk around the paper cones, before falling off the trees, exposing the structure underneath I had created to support the cotton candy.

So, with 24 hours before the show's opening, I freaked out and started going to every fabric store within a 30 mile radius to find some sort of furry fabric that I could use to make the magical forest that I had imagined. After multiple dead ends (both literal and figurative), the I happened upon the idea of throwing a paper bag over them all. Since the trees had become so ugly so quickly, I thought it would be funny to ugly-bag them. After a quick trip to pick up a huge roll of kraft paper, some glue, and some pinking shears (otherwise known as "those sewing scissors that make those zig-zag cuts"), I headed back to the gallery, rounded up a ton of incredible helpers, and got to work making huge paper bags. By 2 am, the bags were finished, the last assistant had gone home, and I spent the next hour and a half, turning the bags and the remnant frames of the trees into dueling armies of paper bag puppets. Although the end result is WAY different than the forest I had initially planned, I'm quite happy with how it all turned out--and maybe even better than I'd planned!

Did you really make John Shipman, the kind man bringing you in for this event, dumpster dive to get old Christmas trees for your artistic needs?

No, no, no! That is completely fictitious. I totally gave John the option of dumpster diving for the trees, or having them imported from Japan on the gallery's dime. It was entirely his decision to dumpster dive.

How was the remainder of your East Coast swing?

It was great! While I was still in Maryland, I taught a max-capacity workshop at Pyramid Atlantic on screen printed posters, which everybody seemed to enjoy (including myself!). Then, a few days after the installation opened, I headed up to Boston to give a talk at the Art Institute, where both the faculty and I were a little freaked out (in a good way) at how many people came out for the talk. People were even lining the walls and sitting on the floor! Just to hear me ramble away? Really? Boston is OBVIOUSLY full of weirdos. All in all, a great trip!

How are you enjoying living in Japan for a year?

What can I say that hasn't been said before? It's a lot of fun. Obviously, everything is so different here. Everything is an adventure. Even a trip to 7-Eleven is a fun experience. It would be nice if my apartment were 4 times the size, and I do flinch when somebody tries talking to me, but other than that, I certainly can't complain.

Settle a dispute - would you describe your mustache as a "70's Porn Star" stache or a "Great Train Robber" stache?

While both descriptions are flattering in their own right, I'd like to think of it as an "intelligent and sophisticated upper lip with a sense of humor." In any case, the mustache was shaved off upon my return to Japan. Mustaches are only fun in small doses. You've got to switch it up frequently--keep people on their toes. If people aren't thinking, "What does Jesse's upper lip look like right now?" I'm not doing my job properly.

If you had won - would you feel that the packaging category award at the Grammy's should be on the broadcast portion?

MOST CERTAINLY NOT! Nobody wants to see that stuff! I think they only give out about 5 awards on the televised portion--the rest is all musical performances. And they've set it up that way on purpose. Nobody wants to see the actual awards. They want to see James Brown out-dance Justin Timberlake and Willie Nelson sing a duet with Beyoncé. The world most CERTAINLY doesn't want to see a bumbling, mumbling nerd accept an award for album artwork.

What can we expect from Patent Pending and LeDouxville in the future?

A little (more) hair loss, some sleepless nights, and hopefully some work that is better than what came before.

image:"courtesy of The University of Maryland Gallery"

Sweet: The Graphic Beauty of the Contemporary Rock Poster features twenty-nine of the leading artists/groups of silk-screened contemporary rock posters, on view Wednesday, February 6 through Saturday, March 29, 2008 at the University of Maryland Art Gallery.