Here’s an interview I did with ArtLarking before they edited through my answers.

Rae: So, let’s start. Tell me about more about yourself?

Jason: I’m just a small town girl living in a lonely world.

Rae: So at what age was when you decided you were going to start being serious about art?

Jason: When Biggie and Tupac died. I think everything got real serious after that.

Rae: Tell me about your zines, “Sprinkles Sparkles and Kankles.” How did you get that name?

Jason: I had just moved to New York, this was 5 or 6 years ago. I didn’t know anyone or anything and was broke beyond shit. I was working at an archive of a well-known photographer at the time, dealing with numerous museums and estates, including the Dali Fundacio, the TATE Modern, the MoMA, etc. 

Every day I would ride the train a little more than an hour north to the Upper West Side of Manhattan and be transported to this strange bubble of wealth and magic while, in the evenings, without money or company I would walk down Manhattan, taking pictures and notes of the city while trying to find food and take in as much as I could, sort of like a sponge. When I got back to my apartment near Coney Island I would write and work off of everything, regurgitating everything I had previously seen and absorbed. 

That was in 2007. That same year I had befriended a woman who lived in the Dakota building on 72nd Street through a mail-art project I had started involving sending letters I was writing to random addresses. A woman I had met at my work, Donna Ferrato, had a show opening on the east side. A few nights later I invited the woman from the Dakota to go. We walked up and down Fifth Avenue on one of those magical nights where the ebb and flow of the city seems to work concurrently with one’s own feelings. 

It was getting late. We walked back across the park, towards the west side. I remember it had started to rain. And, beginning to hold her hand, I commented in my head just as she audibly said the same thing I was thinking- how everything in the rain, at the right moment with the right light can cause things to sparkle. 

Rewind two decades and I’m a child. My mom, an immigrant, implants in my head the word “sprinkles” in association with rainfall. 

2007: I’m walking in the park again with the woman. Rainfall (sprinkles), and the sparkles that go along with it and, upon later arriving at her house, the enormous quantity of kankles from both the men and women who were her friends there. 

That night I walked back to my apartment near Coney Island as the sun rose. I sat down and jotted three words quickly: Sprinkles. Sparkles. Kankles. They sort of fell into each other and seemed to describe a moment in time to me personally while also being humorous, something I much rather liked. The name sort of stuck from there and I’ve been making zines and other things with that imprint ever since.

Rae: Describe the process within yourself when you are in the mode of creating a new piece? And how do you decide the medium, since you do all kinds of art?

Jason: I’ve always had problems sleeping, either sleeping too much or not enough. When I’m alone, hungry and at my most tired is when I work the best, usually right before the sun comes up until 1 or 2pm. Sort of from about 2am to 2pm. A nice 12 hours. My friend Rhode calls it the vampire schedule. Process wise, I kind of just put everything I’m working with in front of me and sort of overwork till there’s too much and then deconstruct everything from there. Sort of like constructing the tallest building in the world and realizing you just wanted a small house and building down from there while reusing and re-appropriating all the previous materials into something else, like compressing a large wad of coal into a small miniature diamond.

As for whatever medium I’m using, they each kind of dictate to me when to work with them. I don’t steal anymore, I used to when I was younger, but I’ve stopped completely since then. Since I don’t have much I work with whatever is around me and whatever new tools I can acquire, so it’s usually the means and what’s around me that is the deciding factor to my working and interacting with them.

Rae: I really love your process of documentation! You are so very meticulous in it, and I mean that in a good way. What inspires you most about it?

Jason: I’ve always thought I was gonna die young. I don’t want to forget anyone or anything that I’ve been or have come in contact with, no matter how much I run away from something or someone. And just as a photograph can contain within its image the details of a moment, I’m just trying to catch as much as I can with as much as I can. 

Rae: Do you feel that you challenge society’s thinking with your works?

Jason: There’s this Jackie Chan movie called Who Am I. The whole movie is pretty amazing, I haven’t seen it since I was a little kid though, so by now it might be awful, but throughout the whole movie there’s all of this amazing stuff going on, I think at one point he slides down a building and fights some guys in wooden shoes or something and the only bad part of the movie, from what I remember is when he gets up on a ledge and screams, to the world it seems, the title of the movie: “Whooooooo ammmmmm I?!”

That’s a sort of unrelated exposition to my answer of I don’t really ever try to question what I’m doing or who it’s for. I don’t really think of society. Either as a challenge or an entity. The same way a flower or plant doesn’t really think of people. The two just sort of coexist and somehow indirectly inform the other. It’s not that I’m ignorant, it’s more that I’m arrogant enough to think that I can ignore it / them without having to conform to whatever norm is floating around right now.

Rae: Do you predetermine meaning or does it arrive later in your work?

Jason: I feel like anyone can make anything mean something, from a can of soup to an empty frame to a blank black canvas shared between three friends. If anything I make means something to some stranger than it will. I can only inject myself and my own meaning into something so that it speaks to me and if it ends up speaking to someone else then that is all the more reason to continue. For me, sometimes the end will come before the beginning of something I’m working on so I’ll work my way towards that end, although it more often than not changes. I used to see everything I did as a sort of exercise in exorcism of whatever ailed me at the moment. A sort of therapy. But I don’t really think about it that much anymore. I just know that everything I do and attach my name to I do because it means something to me, because only I could have done it as good or as bad as it is no matter what it is. People always judge everything and everyone around them, sort of the sad way that we associate things with one another. But I know no one judges myself and what I do more than I do. So it’s sort of like this interview- do I choose to be serious and pose a question or do I answer with whatever comes into my head or do I pretend to be happy when I’m sad or whatever it is. All the meaning of something is derived from its core. And whether it’s a piece of plastic or a novel, everything has a core. Some just burn brighter than others. 

Rae: Do you leave the conversation open ended in your art work or is your work more of a controlled study of conversation? For example, when starting a work, do you feel you are designing an experimental study that leads to a hypothesis or do you leave it open to move in any direction?

Jason: I think my real answer to this question would be much too long a response and kind of incoherent. The short of it is that I just don’t really care. Not in a “fuck you” type of way, it’s just that my thoughts never really collide with those questions while I’m working. I just need to do what I do and I’m doing it. It’s as simple as that. I love lamp.

Rae: Looks like you’ve been very productive in working on projects, how many hours a day do you create usually?

Jason: Sometimes I’ll work 48 hours straight, sometimes I’ll work 48 minutes. It usually depends on my mood and the amount of absorption I’ve taken in. It’s impossible to describe without sounding like a douche, but I create when I can, not meaning that when the time is available to me, but when I am mentally able to. Sort of like harnessing whatever is around me. With that said, however, Mr. Miller once wrote “whenever you can’t create, you can always work,” and so I always do. Each object, whether tangible or not, each creation comes from work, you can’t really get away from it. So, I can have thoughts and ideas and dreams, but if they aren’t actuated and acted upon they just sort of stay as those things. It takes work to do something, so, more than creating, it is a process of working. I would love to just lay in bed all day and think of all the amazing things I could and should do, but there comes a point when you have to get out of the covers and go outside and turn all the notes and ideas in whatever pad or notebook into actualities otherwise they’re just dreams and ideas that never came to be. Sort of like masturbating. And, while that might be ok sometimes, there’s no substitute for the real thing.

Rae: What do you consistently draw inspiration from?

Jason: Cities and their structure and how that structure integrates a place and its people. The repetition of images alongside one another. Jenny. Friends and strangers. I’m kind of just typing down everything that’s coming to my head. Burritos are inspirational at certain moments. A hug. Views from an airplane window. A high five from Rhode.

Rae: Any books that you’ve been reading at the moment that has taken your breath away, that has inspired you on any projects?

Jason: Ever since I got it a few years ago, there’s no book I go back to reread and look over more than Memories of a Dog.

Rae: When you’ve got a creative block, how do you get yourself out of it?

Jason: Work.

Rae: Heard you’ve lived in many different cities? Which cities inspired you most and why?

Jason: The past few years have afforded me the ability to have a sort of irregular square formation of living in this country, being homeless and going from Los Angeles to San Francisco to New York to Miami with little spurts of scenery in Canada, Japan, Taiwan and Mexico. Out of all of those places, I feel most at home in New York but each one gives its own inspiration in some way. San Francisco will always remind me of my sister and the sometimes frustrating but always incredible and inspirational relationship I’m grateful and glad to have with her, Miami is a sort of bounce house for me, having some of the most talented and good-spirited friends I know of, Los Angeles is like an unorganized playground of a place where the rides don’t too often work but when they do it’s worth it, and New York, always my home even if I don’t have a home there, has everything I could hate and hope for all in one place.

Rae: Any upcoming new projects in progress that we can look forward to seeing soon? Any shows or traveling in your calendar this year?

Jason: I’m planning a show with my friend Sasha Grey in the near future and I’m organizing and exhibiting a photo project and documentary I created while going out to Japan a week after the earthquake last year and I’m working on a series of books which should hopefully start to trickle out at the end of this year along with a few other goodies.

Rae: You’ve done some collaborations with other artists in the past, but what motivates you to connect and build relationships through the art making process?

Jason: Some things require more than one person to get done and any moment or opportunity to be able to work with one of my friends is a welcome one.

Rae: Any artists that you would be happy to collaborate within the near future?

Jason: More friends or talented strangers.

Rae: What do you like most about the art surrounding you in San Francisco/bay area?

Jason: Lulu and Nae Nae, Tranny Karaoke night at Aunt Charlies, the homeless guy that pulled out his tooth and gave it to my sister, Evan, Amanda, Chelsea’s flannel, Matt, Nisan, Raymond Brown, Keiko, Ray, Austin, Pardee, Monica and Harrison, Green Apple, Kayo, Los Coyotes’ buy one get one free Wednesday burrito special, the guy who screams “you got a quarter” to people on the street and everyone and everything that hates and hugs me there.

Rae: What type of music or bands are you listening to right now if any?

Jason: I’m responding to these questions at this moment while listening to a group of songs I heard while falling in love with my friend at a goth party. I don’t know if that’s embarrassing, honest or both. 

Rae: Finally, what has been your most exciting moment as an artist?

Jason: Buying my parents dinner and paying more than “just the tip”.

Rae: This wraps up the interview. Thank you, Jason! Looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Jason: Thanks.

Here’s a link to the edited / truncated version: here.