Looking at the characters Howell draws—in a self-described “loose, weird style” he developed back when he was going to punk shows in the Bay Area in the 1980s and 1990s and got into the zine culture—the viewer feels a rough, joyous, sharp, mischievous essence pervading throughout characters, even as they sometimes express the sadness, frustration, or boredom we all experience. When asked if he’s always pursued an overarching theme of depicting the human condition, Howell joked: “It’s all about me. Seriously, though, if you don’t put yourself into the work entirely, then it’s not about you, so I try to put as much of myself into it as possible. I don’t like to do political art or anything like that. I’m mad, like you are: I just don’t want to draw about it all day long. I’m mad enough, and art is something that brings me joy, so I like to separate it.”
Drawing people and animals—particularly dogs, for which Howell clearly has always a soft spot (“I just love the love they have to give you, you know? I always have. It’s pure.”)—this helps bring Howell that joy. But he attributes his successes to that DIY punk ethos that Howell inhabits and lives to this day.
Take the original story of his involvement in Bob’s Burgers: “I was working in a coffee shop in the Mission (in San Francisco), and this friend of mine introduced me to this guy, Loren (Bouchard, the creator of Bob’s Burgers), who came in for coffee every morning, and said: ‘This is the dude who produced Dr. Katz and did Home Movies,’ and I thought, ‘Oh man, I love those shows, so I just started rapping with him, and eventually handed him my zines over the counter, and we just developed a relationship. Loren was just into this loose, weird art at the time, and that was my thing too.”
From there, Howell worked on the You Tube shorts Forest City Rockers, about a motorcycle gang with one motorcycle, which caught the attention of Audrey Diehl, then at Nickelodeon, and led to a successful pitch for the animated series Sanjay and Craig, running for three seasons. In between, Howell always kept moving, kept drawing, kept traveling.
“I GO AROUND THE COUNTRY DOING PORTRAITS AT FESTIVALS FOR FREE, AND I MAKE ZINES AND HAND THEM OUT FOR FREE (OR LIKE, FIVE BUCKS), BECAUSE I STILL HAVE THE FUGAZI BLOOD IN ME.”
These days, Howell is talking to people at Bento Box Productions about some new television ideas, but as he did in his coffee shop–zine days, he persists in pitching his work to as many people as he can, just to see what sticks, and that includes randomly calling companies himself, even if they’re out of his wheelhouse. “I just got done doing a thing for Chipotle, and I love working for companies like Vans or like anything that naturally fits my style, like skating or surfing kind of vibe. But, I mean, I’ll call up companies that you wouldn’t think would necessarily naturally fit, just because. I’ll call Hermes, or Chanel. Why not? You gotta try because you don’t know what’ll stick.”
For Howell, putting the work out there concurrently means keeping it accessible to everyone: “It’s my DIY punk ethic. And I always try to keep my work affordable, like, I could sell something for like, thirty-thousand dollars, but I’ll never do that, and I go around the country doing portraits at festivals for free, and I make zines and hand them out for free (or like, five bucks) because I still have the Fugazi blood in me.
“I don’t want to sell a thirty-thousand-dollar drawing. I’d rather make a thirty-thousand-dollar mural that serves the community. I hate stuff like Burning Man, where you spend all year making this piece of expensive art that only rich people who can afford expensive tickets to go the desert and be part of a scene can see—that’s not my style at all.” I’d rather have something solid in the community that everyone can enjoy forever.”*
Jay Howell’s next solo show will open in January at San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery. Look for previews from them here.
This article was originally published in Hi-Fructose Issue 74. Get a copy of the full issue in print here.
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