Wayno appears, at first, as self-portrait. The Pittsburgh artist and illustrator’s sharpened features seem born of the same era as the iconic characters he draws: His “mild-mannered reporter’s” slicked-back hair, and diabolical Jack Nicholson eyebrows. It raises questions of nature and nurture, chickens and eggs – is it possible that
Wayno (one name only, please) was predestined at birth to draw and paint these characters? That, rather than a twisting double-helix, his DNA is a 2-D animation cell?
But, despite an apparent single-mindedness, at 51, Mt. Lebanon resident Wayno has managed to live more than his allotted hep-cat’s nine artistic lives. From homemade zines and “mini-comics” in the early 1980s, the Pittsburgh artist found success both in underground comic books and as an illustrator whose client list ranges from pop-music reissue giants Rhino Records to the illustrator’s deb ball – the New Yorker.
But his most recent artistic move has been both the longest and, possibly, smoothest: The Warholian leap from contented commercial artist to immersed participant in the “fine” arts world of the gallery and the commission sale.
The 1980s were bountiful days in American arts and culture.
Yeah, that does sound absurd. “Greed is Good” is not a mantra for artistic expression. But just beneath the surface, while mainstream America was “she-bopping” the decade away, a tiny revolution was circulating in the mail.
“At the time, there was this insane postal network of people who published what we called Mini-Comics,” says Wayno. “You’d get an
8.5x11 sheet of paper, cut it in half, staple it, and you’d have a little eight-page book. And I connected to this network of people [trading their comics in the mail]. It was really an explosion – the way stand-up comedy or grunge music was at that time. These little underground scenes were so active.”
A Cooler ComicAs you may have guessed, Wayno’s comics weren’t of the Archie and Jughead variety – these were, after all, the comics that no one expected someone else to pay money for. Rather, Dadaist cut-ups of old comic strips and the tell-all confessions of Baby Godzilla were the order of the day.
But it was through this underground network that Wayno met like-minded artists such as Mark Martin, author of Gnatrat (you know – about the rat that dresses as a gnat to fight crime? What’d you expect, a bat?), and San Diegan artist Mary Fleener, both of whom he maintains close relationships with today. Through this network, Wayno began contributing artwork to the plethora of anthology publications that arose from the independent comics boom, and soon, Fleener had him winging his way to San Diego for the infamous Comi-Con conventions.
Those heady days of indie-comic-dom were soon to get headier still. At the tail end of the 1980s, the creations of another member of the Mini-Comic tribe, Kevin Eastman, were to be seen not just in the post and the indie anthologies, but on TV screens and PEZ dispensers worldwide.
“In about 1991, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guys became bazillionaires,” says Wayno. “[Co-creator] Kevin Eastman loves comics,
and he started a publishing house – Tundra Comics – and brought in my friend, Mark Martin, to be an editor for him. Mark asked if I wanted to do my own comic.”
Beer Nutz ran for three issues, and established Wayno as a big name in the admittedly small circle of weird-comic fandom. Fortunately, that readership counted among its number a handful of influential art directors and musicians. Wayno points out that his career moves have largely come as “glides” rather than epiphanies – none, perhaps, more so than a call in the early 1990s from England’s famed daily broadsheet, the Guardian. A few illustration jobs in, and he was hooked.
Making it Big “Drawing and writing a complete comic is a lot of work,” he says. “It takes a long time, and it’s a big gamble [not just]as to whether you’ll get any return financially, but whether or not anyone will ever even see it! With illustration work, you get a call on Monday, turn it in on Wednesday, and it’s published on Saturday. I liked that a lot.”
Since then, his client list has grown to include a broad spectrum of publications. Wayno has done illustration work for independent and small-press magazines such as a long-standing relationship with Cool & Strange Music, as well as big guns from National Geographic to Random House Books and the New York Times.
Back in Pittsburgh, however, it wasn’t the illustrious Guardian, or even local work for the alternative newsweeklies that made Wayno a
household hipster name, but a relationship with another underground ‘Burgh hero. In the early 1990s, Pittsburgh’s independent music scene was college-rock heaven, with no one more preeminent than twisted pop songster Karl Hendricks. With records such as Some Girls Like Cigarettes and Misery and Women, Hendricks established himself as underground America’s favorite broken heart – with each new record featuring a now-iconic Wayno cover.
“The Karl Hendricks [artwork] is really a touchstone with a lot of people locally,” says Wayno. “I’m always surprised by how many people recognize my work from those.
“At the time, Karl was building this base of fans that saw him as this tragic figure, because the lyrics were always depressing. But there’s this unique sense of humor to his writing – the cartoon covers worked because they undercut that a little bit, kept it from becoming maudlin.”
The Karl Hendricks Trio albums, many on nationally renowned indie label Merge Records, established Wayno for what has always been his principal style: Images and characters that suggest iconic America – from the coiffed hair and surreal jawlines of golden-age Las Vegas entertainment, to R. Crumb’s fantasies and the pointed bodies of
Wayno’s declared hero, cartoonist Virgil Partch – while always alluding to a less-than-idyllic national character; something outside of Norman Rockwell’s purchase.
It’s this dichotomy of iconography that Wayno now brings to Animalia Astrologica, a series of 12 works illustrating the Chinese zodiac, showing at the South Side’s Gypsy Café restaurant. It’s only Wayno’s second one-man art show, but looking at the work, it’s obvious that this artistic practice is also 25 years in the making.
When gallery owner Michael “Zombo” Devine opened Zombo Gallery in Lawrenceville last year, he knew immediately that he wanted Wayno to do a single-artist show. Squaresville became the artist’s dive into the fine-art pool, with Wayno appropriating imagery from himself by taking drawings done for digital illustration, and remaking them as 12” by 12” acrylic paintings on masonite board. Astrologica comprises the same medium, already becoming a Wayno signature look, suggesting album-cover art in both its shape and pop formalism.
Structure, in fact, is perhaps the most important aspect to Wayno’s artistic life – and part of his success. Starting out in fine art comes with a burden of possibilities brought be the freedom from the demands that confine – and help to structure – commercial work.
"[As an artist] you’re like a writer with the blank page,” says Wayno. “But I kind of cheated. I took this approach, appropriating from myself. And I was comforted by having an assignment, and by having a deadline – for Zombo’s show last July; it made me start mulling these things over immediately. Once I got into that process I realized I can make assignments for myself, but I have to define some limitations, that’s the only way I can do this.”
Justin Hopper is a Pittsburgh-based writer who writes about art and music for Pop City.
Captions:
Wayno...
...at work...
...in his work
"Trouble"
Exhibition poster
All photographs copyright Brian Cohen