A SINCERE HANDSHAKE: ART DIRECTOR CHRIS DRUKKER on Balance, Connection, Spontaneity.
The graphic design maestro of 3,000 jazz albums talks about breaking down barriers and staying present. And breaking through fear.
We’re being spontaneous--which Chris loves—and start with the following words:
who, what, where, when, why and how. We complete them as the spirit moves, in the true spirit of improvisation.
1. Who has inspired you most to take the artistic journey you are on?
CD: There’s a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Just randomly – I would say first, Miles Davis because he analyzes things very carefully. He’s spontaneous, he’s intuitive, he knows how to figure things out and work with people and get something out of it that’s purposeful. He’ll work through other people.
Let’s take Wayne Shorter, the composer in that band. Wayne was very mechanical minded; Miles was intuitive to get things out of people [which is] a skill that’s hard to balance to be collaborative and [ensure] not to impose your will too strongly. In that way, Miles has been inspiring.
Next person I would say was a manager of mine who made me think in my 30’s how to design, how to make sense of a line and how it was constructed. And concept – a hard thing for an artist to come up with.
Photography-wise, definitely Pete Turner was an inffluence to me – his bold colors and simplicity. I loved that he took everyday objects and made something new of them. I love simplicity. There are many people – I’d be here all afternoon but those are people off the top of my head.
2. What matters to you – in this world, in your art. Unless they’re the same thing.
Again. I’m going to bring up the word Integrity – your purpose. People in your life are just as important. They help you navigate your difficult times, but they inspire you, just like one’s work. People give you ideas. People make you think differently. They flesh out things in your life. When you have a good friend you have a chance to bump things off them – am I doing this right? To keep things fresh, keep up with things, things are changing so rapidly. It’s hard to stay after that. Current events, arts. All those things are intertwined. People think technology is a be-all, end all. It’s not. It’s to be used, not strait-jacketed. It’s easy to get caught up in the past. It’s hard to reinvent yourself, trying to get to the root of something. The older you get, the more you try to really get to the root of things.
Bill Murray said something about getting older. I really wanna be in the moment, to really be there at that time. It’s so easy to get distraacted that you really want to be present all the time. It’s hard when you’re [working] 8-10 hours straight, it’s hard to be on your game. Longevity, it’s hard to be constantly focused. It’s probably what Bill Murray was saying, that you want to really be present. The creative process is incredible – the agony and the ecstasy. Michelangelo. There is a wonderful presence in the engagement of artistic creativity, and it’s a very nuanced thing. It’s something that if you’re conscious of it, it goes away. It’s like hypnotizing yourself, almost. If you don’t think you’re on a tightrope, you get across it to Point B, not the act of doing it. If you’re conscious of the technical, you lose your balance, lose the emotion. So I balance those things constantly.
All it is, is problem-solving. Little micro-adjustments. Collectively or individually. You have to interpret it correctly. I have to get closer to that nirvana both in myself and in the work so that I can give the best. When people micromanage you, you can’t think. I think the judgmental and planning should be done in the front end, not during the creating. Accidents – some of the best things come out of accidents. If I plan something too much it never comes out right. It looks contrived and doesn’t have that fluidity that I’m looking for, the beauty, the aesthetic.What is that beauty? You don’t know. And then it starts to talk to you and come together.
A classic example, I was photographing at Trumpets [legendary jazz club in Montclair, NJ]. I was with Dave Stryker. Every time I looked in the viewfinder, I couldn’t shoot. Everything I was seeing was contrived, like what I’ve done a million times before. I’m completely looking at this in the incorrect manner. The problem was me – I learned a valuable lesson. I need to be present. If I’m focused on the problem, I’m not going to get anywhere. I took a breath, I knew what to do – stop, wait, be paitient and alert. Spontaneity. It’s like a game of tennis. The enregy comes to you, and you throw it back. It’s physically demanding. Dealing with people, the more you’re open to people, the more [energy] comes back to you. It takes one 200th of a second to get [a great shot]. With design you have time to arrange it, like a music arranger – Gil Evans, Gary McFarlane.
What am I doing , why, composition, color, harmony, balance, positive-negative space, all those requirements for an artists to achieve. Visual arts and music are identical. I’m kind of like a transistor taking that information and putting it into another sense [art]. How much contrast, weight color. All those things. That’s the beauty of it.
RSM: You mentioned arrangers…
CD: Oliver Nelson, Gary McFarlane, Klaus Oberman. All those arrangers. I really didn’t even know it either. It’s just something you take from another sense and it comes out through another sensory process – it’s the visual world.
RSM: That’s what sets your work apart. Your design is a visual of the music.
CD: Good music is like a sincere handshake. That’s how I look at the world. If something’s a threat to me, I can be myself. Everyone wants to be part of something that they’re not comfortable, even if it hurts them and their values. I learned that in first grade, stay with your own principles, but you have to believe in yourslef and be stubborn about it. Not to the point where you’re being overly demanding – there is a flexibility – but you have to be comfortable in your own skinl. The more you know your limitations, the more you can excel as a person. Not that you need to dwell on that, but you know you can work on this a certain way.
Miles knew he wasn’t the best player in the world but he knew how to use space and play off that.
Another great quote I always love, speaking of lifestyle, Art Blakey:
“If you take care of jazz, it’ll take care of you.”
I believe that. If you take care of that, if you trust it. Life is throwing challenges and if the road is straight it’s boring, and we learn our most from adversity if we allow it. That’s the hardest, to learn from adversity and capitalize on it.
3. How have you experienced adversity and allowed it to strengthen you?
It’s your frame of mind isn’t it? I go back to what I said during the dave stryker performance. I got in the way of myself. I had the problem that I can’t shoot bedause I can’t see it. Adversity can always be things that are non-related to art. You can lose things, a loved one, your house. Changes your perspective that everything is temporary. Even our existence. I want to construct things that are going to be a legacy. If it’s going to be a legacy, it’s going to be a legacy. But if it’s not
Doing great work, you’ll get to good work. But if you set your sights at great work, it allows you to keep that pressure on yourself to do things that are beyond you seomtimes, and keep a level of God willing, something that holds up in time. But more than that. It’s more of just trying to keep things on a high level. I don’t know a better way to put that. I think we’re all trying to maintain a level of work that really is -- telling an interesting story.
That’s what art is to me. It’s storytelling and it’s emotion. I think that’s what most people connect with. I don’t care what the medium is. Sculpture, drama, music. I think telling an interesting story and the emotion that’s connected with that, how do you express emotion? The same laws apply in music as it does in visual art. I’m always having to dumb down my work because people are seeing it that way. There’s a problem with that – it gets in the way of my way of communicating an idea. I have to streamline myself, it’s a compromise. But it also takes you into an area you don’t expect.
We get so focused on the problem, but the solution is in our grasp if we allow it. If you’re an openminded person it will hopefully come a little easier.
RSM: What is it?
CD: Whatever is behind God, whatever allows us to do what we do, that makes something clear of mind and clear of purpose. When you hear a great orator, the words are just as important as the tone. The orator knows how to paint a picture in your mind clearly and that comes back to you, to stay in the moment. That’s what I think I’m trying to achieve in my work, all my work, photogrpahywise. In photography, things happen, if you do it so long, you know something’s gonna happen, you make yourself ready for that ball, like the tennis analogy.
RSM: So you’re saying that sometimes you capture something in photography that you weren’t aware was captured?
CD: A lot of times. There’s something that’s deeper. You’re so involved in the moment. Again, it goes back to thinking. Knowing the people that I’m photographing, and all I have to do is keep the camera ready and sometimes the accidents happen – purposeful accidents. And you know you’re in the right place to capture it. You only have that fraction of a second to capture that moment. I try to get to the candid, to the real part of the person. And that’s what I do with my graphic design, that very thing that they like to hide.
People don’t want to look at pictures of themselves. I want to break down that barrier. To me, the camera’s a wall. As soon as you bring a camera, the wall goes up. I like to shoot in the shadows. Some people are more sensitive than others. The people that are not bothered by it, it’s great. I can shoot with impunity. But you have to be respectful of people, you have to walk a line, being intrusive and to document something. What’s behind that person, in the image itself, getting the emotion, and not getting in their way. You have to be sensitive to people. And it keeps the story interesting….[more on Focusing on Eyes and hands.]
It’s a trust thing. You’ve got this intrument [camera], they’re self-conscious and you want to get that human flame inside them, let them get relaxed and be themselves. I know when I’m shooting in the correctly when people tell me they didn’t do anything!
You have to slipstream to get the interesting parts of their personality, their life force. Everyone has something to say, there’s always a story there. We can relate to a bully, someone we love, somebody that is a relative, any number of things that we see in our world good or bad. There’s the word integrity pops up again. You wanna be an honest purveyor of what that is in that person. I don’t wanna see myself on them, and the more I push myself on them the more it looks like more. I have to back off and let them be themselves. It challenges you to think out of your comfort zone.
A different kind of stamina to deal with both of those things. You have to be with them at all times. As soon as you relax a little bit and you’re not paying attention, the good shot goes by. Like a full game of tennis. You only have a second to capture that moment. If you do it long enough, those increase. I’d say out of a 1000 images, 20% ok. 3 sessions are great.
Something bigger than us. Like that limp handshake.
When you’re working, truly, it’s about them. To get the work to where it needs to be. I often say that we’re chosen people, as artists, we have a high level of sensitivity as creative human beings. The beauty and the terror. With that sensitivity, Van Gogh would be a good example of that. We feel the bumps of life a lot more than most people. I’m not trying to say that no one doesn’t feel pain other than artists, but I think we’re more susceptible to that.A lot of great artists suffer from nanic depression,. My mom did and my daughter does, but I can remember from age 4 I was highly sensitive to my perceptive of things. I was enamored with light, I loved sound. Those things manifested as an adult and I still love things as I did then. I had flashcards, the color, the fruit. I loved bluejays, I loved the way the way light would shine through trees. I really was moved by those things. Deeply. I still am. My greatest memories of childhood are what I heard on the radio, birds, animals. There’s a vast palette of things for people to absorb that don’t have to mean anytning, but they do. It’s like watching the sun rise, that act of a new day coming through, that sun burst through. From the ground up, and watching that, it’s incredible. And it has nothing to do with nature although it does. Something almost indesdcribible, being sensitive to perceptive of things. There are no words for those things. Just as there are no words for art, with all the stars aligned. What makes a great work? It goes back to emotion and storytelling. Everyone can relate to those things.
I think music to me is the closest thing to humanity, especially improvised music. It’s just like our lives. Things happen – flat tire on the highway, so we learn how to fix that problem. You call a tow truck or fix it yourslef. Improvised music is the closest thing to humanity that there is. The act of creation – live improvised music – you’re captureing people in the room.
One time with Betty Carter when this whole room was revolving around her. A room that had a ‘show me what you got’ mentality, and the whole room was fixated on this short little woman – Boom, all this energy came out of it. As an artist that’s what you try to achieve – human expression. The meaning of life – maybe that’s it. Get to the next step and move on. I wouldn’t say leave our mark but I would say hopefully we gain something out of this experience, that we don’t just sit on the sidelines and say life sucks. We sometimes need the pity part, but when we’re at our best, we transcend that. I think we transcend outselves. That’s being open to things. The more we think the more trouble we get into.
Not that I don’t think within myself.
Stay Present – not distracted.
4. Why did the room revolve around Betty Carter? And why does it still move you?
Betty understood everything I just talked about. She did an album called “The Audience”. She was a very tough person.
She had to fight [in the music business] being a woman and a person of color. Those things I didn’t have a chance to talk with her about, but you can hear that in her work. She had a great sense of pride in herself and she demanded of that of other musicians. All those principles went to the audience. The audience knows when they hear something honest. Forget subjective taste – I don’t care for that at all. In Betty’s case, she typified how that transistor should be, that vessel of a person as a prism letting all the colors shoot out in all directions. People love honesty. I try to be as honest as I can about things. That’s tough to live by, tough to say: that’s a piece of crap. But you have to be honest. And it’s not a subjective thing. Everybody knows when people are insincere.
Kids know it, they can pick it up fast. We grow up and can lose that sensitivity, we’re supposed to act in a certain way. I think this world would be a lot better if people can get past our ego. But it’s a delicate balance of life: ego gives confidence, and can also be a hindrance. The more you psychoanalyze something, you miss the bigger picture. When you’re feeling an aura around people, you can feel danger or welcome.
5. Where [did you develop the concepts you use today]?
I learned a lot about human cliques [while attending middle school]. [Points to window across the room from which the Montclair Middle School can be seen clearly, across the street. Chris attended this middle school, 1973-1977]. I was an introvert and had close friends outside of school I never got along with the general population. I learned in grammar school that people want to be part of a group that all agree on one thing. I went to Bradford School – most of the students 20 in a class, white Anglo-Saxon, blonde hair, 1968-69. Height of the civil rights. I saw a lot of racial indifference. As I do now, I understand why these things are motivated. I don’t look at race or gender, I just look for that aura. Those are things that don’t include people = I felt like an outsider. It was a blessing and curse rolled into one that allowed me to see the world not through an angry prism but I was able to pick out those personality types. How I would understand them and deal with them. We have to deal with people who are not like us, offensive, kind, knowing how to navigate in thise world, what you need to do in your work. The people you hang around with. I cannot tell you how important friends are. Many rings around us. They provide opportunities, guidance, support, without those things people go crazy. I cannot believe in my mind no matter who they are, everyone needs connection. That’s through storytelling.
Human beings are going to fear what you don’t know. You don’t know when your time is up, when maid service knocks on the door and says ‘time to go’. When you’re in your 20s you think you’re going to live forever, but you try to do things you enjoy, make some [connections with] people you enjoy. Connections that are, again, meaningful.
6. When do you feel the most satisfaction in your work?
I think when I hit that target that I set for myself, when I hit my object. [it boils down to] being true to yourself. I think when people see that, [they can sense it]. A lot of it is in myself because like I said, I’m trying to get to that place that is how do you put it in words, you want to make the most beauty. I just want to make something beautiful.
More than beauty, I’m trying to capture the essence of something and that takes a lot of concentration, a lot of yourself, and sometimes it’s very physically demanding, it takes a lot out of you.
7. How do you know you’ve captured the essence?
We have our own concept of what we think will work. When all those things line up, will it be received as such? 30% of the time it is, the rest, people don’t see.
Miles Davis said he would draw something and look at it in the morning, you know you either had it or you didn’t.
The more you probe it, you gotta be open, it’s a weird thing the artistic creative process. I some of the thigns I said earlier, not being in the way of myself, trying to hopefully ask the right qutions swhen I’m working on seomthing, being open to what’s happening in the moment. I’m so grateful to bea photographer and illustractor, an designer. When I’m doing illustration, it takes time to build it up. Photo, it takes a second, it takes me out of that safe space. I don’t mind the company of myself but I also like being around people.
Now. But when I was across the street, when I was a kid, I didn’t hardly talk to anybody. [but ] I had my friends outside of school.
I had parents that were very supportive of [my art]. He knew I was on a mission. And my mother was always there pushing for me, morally supportive. She would move mountains for me, more than my two older brothers. I was very close to both my parents, particularly mom. I could talk to her about anything. And she worked with fears. I had a fear of everything. The greatest lesson she ever gave me, when I was 8 years old, and I couldn’t jump in 3 feet of water in the pool. My mother was there 45 minutes coaxing me, patiently. “You can do this!” And when I jumped in the water she said, “You see, it wasn’t that bad!”I always think about that, when I’m dealing with fear. After that it changed my life a lot. It broke down a lot of fear I had tons of it as a kid. When a kid threw a nickel at me in high school, I didn’t throw it back. He shoved me but I just stood my ground. I didn’t have to fight.
RSM: Yes, in your art, you definitely stand your ground!
CD: I think it’s a mixture of things. You’re a creative person. You have to stand by what you believe in but you have to stay open to other people. That’s where the magic is. We have to see beyond that.
I think you’re in that euphoric state. You’re flaoting, that can be photography too. But in the graphic desing you just feel like you’re in the air. You feel graviyt has gone away. Everything you know has gone almost to white an dyou’re in that moment, time stops, everything they talk about. You just feel like wow, it’s like going down one of those slides, that feling you get in your stomach, Woosh – the greatest feeling in the world. You’re in that zone. Sometimes, let’s speak for graphic design or illustration, a lot of it is again, making icnremental decision, but somteimes when it’s really happening you’re in that euphoric state. There’s no words for it. An incredible feeling.
When I’m finished with something. I don’t even feel like doing my old stuff over again. So what it was that time, that place, where I was mentally, wherever. I think it’s just the beauty of doing something, if it’s a carpenter, feeling your hands on the wood, giving it bone and life, it’s a tactical thing. It’s something that is so spiritual that wow, you feel it, and I think that’s in a way what all artists try to feel. Even if they’re not a craftsman. You’re in that moment, you’re having that --- I think that’s why we do it. The agony and the ecstasy. That typifies what an artist goes through. It’s the most beautiful thing anyone can do. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If the person is honest and sincere, that’s enough. As long as they’re true in what they believe in. Or trying to be somebody they’re not.
Wayne Shorter said this. He said: “It’s 80% living your life, and 20% creativity.” Everything helps you with your storyline. Those are reference points that help you tell your story. He also said, “The long way is the short way.” And that’s where God hides too. There are no shortcuts. And that relates to satisfaction in one’s work. You do all that work and there’s the payoff at the end.
It’s the last mile that’s the hardest, and you keep pressing and pressing and press more, and that’s when you get rewarded.