Desert Nostalgia

Michael Robert Pollard

Interview by L. Valena

So let's start from the top- I want to hear the whole thing. Can you please tell me what you responded to?

I responded to a piece of writing, it was about a young man of color, and it was the first time he had gotten paid for work he had done- I think it was for mowing lawns. And then feeling how proud he was to go to the local corner store. To ride your bike to the store in the heat, and persevering, and being really proud to spend that money on soda or candy. To sit under a tree and just enjoy that. Youth, and the coming of age sort of stuff that we all deal with in one way or another.

What was your first reaction to that?

Well, it was definitely remembering those days on my own. Was life ever really that simple? Remembering how I had to mow lawns a lot when I was a kid about my son's age. In Arizona, getting paid 3 or 4 dollars- whatever it was in 1982. My grandfather was a bit of a tyrant- I loved him for many reasons, but as an adult you kind of look at it all with a grain of salt.

Here I was, a little skinny kid who was trying to pull the motor cord on the lawnmower. I had hay fever, and nobody cared. It's not like today, where people are like "Johnny has allergies, he can't mow the lawn." No, it was like, "you have to go out and mow the lawn."

At first I pulled a bunch of symbols from the story, but then I found myself, as I usually do in my work, going internal, creating a visual language for things and putting them together. That's what happened in this case. Riding the bike, the journey. Mowing the lawn, and having that little bit of money.

My brother and I used to have to mow my grandfather's lawn once a week, and then we would go to the local movie theater afterwards. My grandfather found out that we were going to go see a movie for the second time and went on a tirade. I didn't know that my grandfather grew up during the Great Depression- I was just a kid. It just really struck me. At the time I was like, "Okay, he doesn't want me to see E.T. again."

One of the best movies ever!

Right. Especially back then, as a kid, when you were hopeful. I had gone before with my mom, and she always worked, so it was a really special thing. I wanted to go again. It's funny, because when I think about some of the other movies we would go to with his money, he probably would have been even more mad. That's kind of where things go, so I went with that. I like doing this challenge, because like you said in the statement, you can't spend too long on this, you have to just get it done. And that's another thing from my youth that I probably got from my grandfather- getting it done. I finally have a week off for the first time in a while, so I really got to spend some good time really hashing this out.

I think it's really interesting how the prompt had this idea that you mow the lawn, and then you have this cash and you can spend it however you want. And from that, you pulled from this memory of mowing the lawn, getting the money, but somehow not being able to spend it the way you wanted to.

Right. And remembering that youth wasn't all nice and sweet- there were challenges. My childhood really wasn't that bad compared to other people, but the pull from the first story definitely led to where I ended up.

I want to ask you about some of this iconography. Do I see a pair of broken glasses?

The glasses are just crooked- it's an icon I use pretty regularly, but the eyes themselves are beer cans or root beer cans, I can't decide. My first memory of my grandfather was getting yelled at for being on his chair. Most of my memories of him are of him sitting in this chair (which I think should go into the Smithsonian because it means that much to me) either drinking root beer or Miller Lite. That snarl- that's kinda him. There's a couple of those here, I put a lot of faces in stuff, sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it just kinda happens.

How about this shape in the upper left?

That's a thermometer. 100+, just because that's one thing I remember from the prompt, as well as from my memories. I got the impression that this person lives somewhere where there's a lot of humidity. For me, they always said it was a dry heat. Now that I live in the Midwest, I understand humidity and truly hate it. Also, the explosion part to it. Over on the right there's the cactus that gets all purple- that's not tie dye. It's a mushroom cloud. As a kid in Arizona, you don't understand why there's all these fenced off airforce areas. It turns out all the Titan missile siloes are all around Tuscon.

That's wild. It's wild to think about the fact that it's so hot, and there are these super explosive devices right there. You've also just spoken to having these explosive moments with your grandfather. That fear when you're a kid, when there's someone around and you don't really know when they're going to go off- it feels connected to that.

That's it. That's a huge thing- I believe my grandfather was Bipolar, because my father was as well, and that was something that I dealt with a lot as a kid, and even into my mid-twenties with my father. My father got cancer, got sick and passed away, but through that process we were able to work through a lot. He broke that chain of dysfunctional nuclear family: “everything's okay, but there's this pit that can just blow up at any time”... it's also very Catholic. I think that, not only did I live a lot of my childhood in fear, but a good part of my adult life, until I really started dealing with my anxiety and things like that. Now, as a parent, I see it in my kids sometimes. Not as much the explosive stuff, but the fear. That's the goal- to keep them from being scared of all things at all the time. But it's so difficult- I think it's more difficult now. I hate saying this, but kids are sheltered, and everything is a lot more accessible. I remember when the Challenger blew up, but it was mostly because I was a newspaper boy and I folded the newspapers every day. A normal kid probably watched it on TV once or twice and went on with stuff. There's always been political unrest in America, but now it's on TV every five minutes. What does that do to a kid? That's why that prompt was so amazing, because it brought all this stuff up, even though the author was going somewhere completely different. But you could also tell in that prompt, that they were trying to escape from something as well. There's references to the color of the main character's skin, and how empowered they felt for the first time, and not caring about what other people thought.

I think that's one reason why art is such an important part of this major reckoning we're having as a culture right now. Because it helps us to really truly look beyond these constructs to find the places where we are the same, and to feel that on a visceral level.

For me to respond to a piece of writing is really great. I'm an old school Bay Area kid, I really like Beat poetry, and the history of artists responding to literature and things like that. To have that opportunity was really great.

Call Number: C36PP | C39VA.poDe

My work explores the intersections of my past and present creating a visual language reflecting
my journey in today’s world. I am Influenced by my surroundings as well as Americana, modern
art, loud music, and comic books. My materials range from paint, found and discarded
objects, canvas, and recurring marks.

Michael Robert Pollard was born in Queens NY in 1970, raised in NYC, Tucson,
Arizona and the San Francisco Bay Area. Pollard attended the San Francisco Art
Institute graduated in 1997 with a BFA in Painting and Drawing.
Since 2004 Pollard has resided in Chicago, IL. A good art and baseball town.