Clowns really freak me out. They’re scary fuckers. Ronald McDonald is the king of scary, forget about letting the right one in, a horror film should just be running together fifty adverts for Big Macs. Someone who shares my opinion is Ron English, an American artist pictured here with his version of the freaky jump-suited jester.
Ron is famous for ‘liberating’ billboards, i.e. putting up his own subversive posters in the middle of the night. During the recent election he did some pretty hilarious ones.
He also reincarnated President Obama as Abraham Lincoln
Even better than that he is a big KISS fan and has collaborated with Daniel Johnston and The Dandy Warhols, which makes him one of the seminal figures in the ‘˜culture jamming movement’. I asked him some questions about University, Art, life and all that pigflu.
How was growing up for you?
I grew up in a small town, Decatur Illinois, the soybean capital of the world. It was mostly a factory town surrounded by cornfields. There wasn’t a lot to do there. I learned to make my own fun.
What were you like at School? Did you draw on your textbooks?
I drew obsessively in grade school and my drawing skills saved me when I went to junior high school, As part of the integration program we were bussed to the black part of town where the white kids were subjected to daily beatings from the black kids, who often used bricks, knives and victim ratios of twenty two attackers to one. I usually hung out alone drawing pictures that I gave to anyone who would sit and watch me. The black kids were the most intrigued by my efforts and my drawings became like my protection money.
What were the other students like at North Texas University? What made you start hijacking billboards?
I loved the other art students at North Texas. I felt like I’d found the people I had been looking for all my life. I loved my friends in Illinois too, but it just seemed like there wasn’t much of a place for art or artists there. As far as painting billboards was concerned, it was the most natural thing for me. I painted on everything else – cars, houses, people, so why not billboards?
You painted a mural on the Berlin wall, must have been dangerous’¦
It took about a week even though even though there was only about two days worth of painting. There was a lot of talking to tourists. I finally finished it in the rain when there were no crowds. The East German police made multiple attempts to catch me but a group of escaped East Germans who were camping in protest on the west side watched my back and shouted warnings when the police tried to sneak up on me.
How much do you love KISS?
We tried to have our high school junior pictures taken with KISS make up on. The principal had our faces scrubbed just before the shoot, that’s why a few of the guys in the yearbook appear to be wearing mascara. Another time we wanted to show up at a football game in kiss make up. We tried to apply the make up in a friend’s basement before the game but his dad chased us out with a baseball bat so we opted for the school bathroom. In the school bathroom we were discovered making ourselves up by some of the more thuggish students. We worried they would probably want to kick our asses but instead they wanted me to make them up. To demonstrate their good faith they ripped all the mirrors off the walls and held them up for me to finish my make up on myself. I liked KISS. They seemed like living art.
Tell me something weird
I spent my first night and my last night in Decatur Illinois in the same building. They converted the hospital I was born in into a jailhouse. I always thought that was kind of funny.
Ron English aged 8 months. If you look closely you can see the mascara. HERO.
INTERVIEW: ELIZABETH SANKEY
