Sean: We need a Bjorn Johnston portrait.
Jack: Leave it with me.
[Approx: 1 month later]
Sean: Deadline is brewing; you had any ideas for that Bjorn portrait?
Jack: Yeah, I knocked up a little something…
What inspired you to take Bjorn in to the Viking realm?
The idea stemmed from the fact he has Norwegian blood, and everyone jokes about him having Viking heritage. I looked at a bunch of Norse art and watched some documentaries on Vikings before I started this. When confronted with a landmass, the Vikings would tow their boat overland – the boat was sacred to them so it went where they went. They would make a path with a series of logs, grease them with fish guts and haul the thing over what ever was in the way.
How many hours do you estimate went in to this?
I just looked at the date of my photos and I finished this pretty much 7 years ago to the day, so my memory is a bit foggy. I’d say about 80 hours by the time I made things that didn’t work and ended up in the bin. I think I made 3 heads in total.
The structure stands at about 3 feet tall. How did you make it stable?
It was a long time ago but I seem to remember that it has gussets and braces like a bridge, crisscrossing the inside of it to give it rigidity. The whole thing is made from the same bookbinding cardboard that I made the Shakespeare Hotel model out of for the cover of issue #30. I made everything on my coffee table with a few basic tools so I pretty much only used material that could be cut by hand with a knife. I’m not a huge fan of architecture, some I like and some I don’t care about, but I do have an interest in structure, regardless of whether it is in a race car or aeroplane, a sculpture or a building, so this interest always finds its way in forming what I do in some way.
Is the lettering original or was that taken from/inspired by something Nordic?
It’s taken from some Nordic styles, but from memory they didn’t have an alphabet in the way we think of it so I just made it up. Just like they do at HBO. [Laughs]
Cardboard isn’t exactly a go to when creating a 3-D model; was this a typical Tarlo ‘challenge yourself to the point of insanity’?
I had this idea of making a sculpture out of sharp lines, then painting it in textures that wrap around it to make the lines less harsh. A lot of the paint on it comes from various Aboriginal art I’d been looking at. The Viking ship itself is an old board, cut down with a ship made around it and finished in gold leaf – I’ve always liked using gold leaf.
Can you explain ‘gold leaf’ to anyone unfamiliar with it?
It is a simple process of pounding gold billets (blocks or nuggets) out into progressively thinner and thinner sheets until it measures in the microns. There are different grades of it, some are used in decorating food, and then there are different types of imitation leaf as well. Gold is incredibly soft, you can leave fingerprints in it and it can be a very difficult process to do well. Sometimes you have a good day with it and other times you just want to cry and go to the pub. There are different methods of gilding for different purposes. There are some useful resources on the net about what to get and how to use it, then on top of that I have some good books with more technical information. Unfortunately the books I have are out of print so there’s not much point in recommending them…
“The Vikings would tow their boat overland – the boat was sacred to them so it went where they went. They would make a path with a series of logs, grease them with fish guts and haul the thing over what ever was in the way.”
Ole mate Pete Daly used to shoot most of your creations meticulously in his studio. Was this the case with this one?
Yep, Pete shot it. I think this one was shot in his old studio in Redfern and it was actually a pretty quick shoot. No mood lighting or anything fancy – I had already sketched the layout and knew I wanted a white background like a sculpture in an art book. Fortunately for Pete this meant I didn’t have to torture him. We just bounced some light of the facets until it looked right. It’s such a funny ungainly looking thing, but I thought that made it look cool and it thanked us by making the shoot a speedy one.
What the hell are those trucks?
I have no idea… Some company that I had never heard of. They came in a package full of the worst shit, I think from Kwala back when we were at ASM (Australian Skateboarding Magazine), and I hung onto them because they were like the old stubby 80s freestyle trucks and I thought they might look cool on a model of some sort in the future.
Where does the sculpture live now?
Bjorn was kind enough to pick it up from my place and allow me to make some room. It was intended to be shipped back to his parents place in New Zealand but I can’t confirm that it ever made it!
There’s been talk of an interview with your childhood friend Dustin Dollin for many years now. If this was to finally come to fruition, is there a certain type of timber you’d choose to capture his boof-head?
If Dusty ever gets his act together I’d probably use a non-timber product. Maybe synthetic clay like Sculpy. It would be far easy to form all of those lines under the glass eyes I’d use! [Laughs]
Working a full time job to basically keep the magazine and more so yourself alive, do you miss the luxury of having time to sink your teeth in to more of these projects?
I do miss it, but I have a substitute side obsession that is taking up almost the same amount of time. I’m fully invested in exploring the endlessly fascinating world of woodworking at the moment, making some very complex chairs and looking into the science of wood growth, selecting timber and how it affects what you can do with it. This stuff takes a lifetime to learn – I’m still learning to walk as it were, just at a highly accelerated pace.
