Q & A with artist Jarvis Rockwell		Print This Page Email This Page

Questions & Answers about Maya II with Jarvis Rockwell

Talk about what you did in Massachusetts when you began purchasing toys, and why you did that.
JR: In 1979, in August I went to Kmart, but before that I went to a place called Wathens Corner in Stockridge, MA and they had one of those little German metal things, it was round and colored the way the Japanese do it. It was just about an inch and a quarter, and that’s the first thing I bought. Then it was quiet for a while, and then I heard the rumbling… Then I went to Kmart and bought some Battlestar Galactica® figures, and I like the size, and I was really kind of filled with wonder at the idea that somebody had done it, that you could buy it, and that in a very nonspecific way you could work with it. I had no idea.

Did anything connect to the idea that these things were coming off of a television show or popular movie, etc?
JR: I was aware of all that. That’s part of the life of a toy, I guess. It’s part of the mix that makes the toys. One thing I’m disturbed at, some people say that we have them because people sell them. But why do people buy them? I’m almost suspicious if someone says that people produce it for a market. Because, that’s all you see? The first time someone said it to me, it really stopped me cold. They couldn’t understand there being any reason except that it was a thing on the market. Somebody sold it, somebody made money on it. That sounds like a very disappointed person.

What is the difference between Maya and Maya II? How do you feel about it being born a second time?
JR: The stories in Maya II are much more complicated and I think it’s more interesting.

Is it important to you that viewers think about the form of the pyramid when they look at Maya?
JR: That’s up to the viewer. The viewer thinks about whatever the viewer thinks about. I don’t like to cage the viewer or that the viewer wants to be caged. The viewer approaches it, and I approach it, and that’s the way it is.

Though you let the volunteers install the toys in their own way. Sometimes when tried to get them to stop placing toys—they became like children. . .
JR: It’s very similar to being obsessive-compulsive. They are here, now—suddenly at the age of fifty-six—standing in front of a box of toys. They can unwrap at their own leisure and their mother and father are not visible, and not even a dog or cat, or a fireplace. They are just playing. They don’t want to stop. I’d say: “We’ve done enough for awhile.” They’d say “uh-huh” and then go right on. Even I did. It was time for lunch—it was well past time for lunch—and we just kept going on. Then I felt I had to stop it. Because it just gets to be like gaga. It’s like gaga, they just are going on and on and on.

You shy away from the term: “collector”. Why?
JR: Collecting is such a general word. That’s like saying toy. It doesn’t really mean anything.

Have you bought rare toys? Ones you don’t open?
JR: It’s only recently that I consider everything to be grist for the mill. There were things that I thought, because at the time in the culture there was a feeling was that these things were precious and I sort of went with that. That’s not important to me anymore.

When I’m with my son in the toy aisle you see grown men who are more interested in the toys than the kids are. But of course they are never going to open them, or touch them. They want them as collectibles.
JR: But what are collectibles? That’s a cover term. That’s a way you can get it out of the store and get it by your wife, or whatever.

Do you know how many toys you have?
JR: I have no idea. I don’t count them. I don’t think of it in that way.

Do you have any favorites?
JR: I don’t really understand “favorite.” I’ve managed to keep them disconnected from all those qualitative and quantitative terms because that’s the only way that they can operate for me. God, I’m more intellectual than I thought. I understand it better than I thought I did. That’s why I like to be interviewed because I learn what I’m thinking.

Do you see any relationship between the drawings and the toys?
JR: They are done by the same person. I have structure in my drawings. Without structure you ultimately end up with a void. Being in a three-dimensional existence you have to have structure. Otherwise you don’t have a ladder to stand on when you climb. Most of us can’t climb without a ladder.

They seem to be a combination of architecture and anime. It’s that cartoon quality that is much freer and looser. So simple and clean.
JR: I don’t really know why I started using toys. I know that I was sick of drawing the structures. I then started a project in the woods in the back of the house my father owned. One day, I just walked into the woods. I got these big spools of industrial thread, orange. I tied it to bush and then I walked into the woods. In other words—that was my line. I was taking an orange line, which is divine in a pine woods, you know, the color. The light coming through the pine woods is remarkable.

I would be working there and I would see a spider working next to me, doing the same thing. I just filled these woods with all these lines. Making these shapes. It was all very three dimensional. That was one of the best things I have ever done. I did the first one in a studio owned by a friend of mine. But I was taking an orange line and running it through reality. That’s an idea. Because reality is all of this around it and you’re running it through it, you’re saying this. And then you’re saying this and this.

Talk about how you would like to leave this in the world. You’ll never be finished with this process, but . . .
JR: I have no idea. That’s limiting again, you see. In my will, my wife Nova gets them, because she’s next. I’m storing them all at Mass MoCA. I hope that can continue. All that kind of thought makes me become some kind of preservationist. I just have to deal with it as a live moving thing.

Was your father an obsessive worker? Did you spend a lot of time with him?
JR: Oh yeah. Because he was creating his own reality he had to work all the time, otherwise his reality would not exist. He was creating his own reality like everybody does. There’s no one that does not. On the other hand doing it obsessively is a dangerous thing.


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