JAVA June 2019

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8 JAVA MAGAZINE By Morgan Moore
Esao Andrews’ mid-career retrospective at Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, Petrichor, evokes a lot of feelings and questions about the artist’s process and connections developed throughout his life. Viewers can easily find themselves trapped in one of the paintings, such as “Mortal Coil,” for ages – finding new characters and meanings missed at first glance. Shifting over to a wall full of skateboard decks will have viewers looking for different things. Detailed paintings are rendered equal alongside cartoony pinups and printed photos with minimal graphic design elements, and viewers may spend less time absorbing a piece’s complexity and more time connecting each pro skater with the presented deck designs. A miniature swimming pool skull mural, journalistic sketchbook pages, and painted skateboard wheels – there is a lot to take in within Petrichor. Though this show is considered a mid-career retrospective, there is also a lot of Andrews’ work you won’t find in the show, like his many comic book covers or web-animated pieces. For this show, he focuses on his oil paintings and skateboard deck designs, two of his stronger ties to home. Hints of Andrews’ childhood in Arizona run through the gallery. Growing up in east Mesa on a county island, Andrews had to walk down dirt roads with his skateboard to reach some pavement. His dad, who had been in the Air Force, moved his family near the now-closed Williams Air Force Base and became a first grade teacher for the Gila River Indian Community. Andrews spent his youngest years combing through his family’s backyard shed full of craft supplies and a room full of kids’ activity and learning books, all left over from his father’s classes. From that point on, he has spent next to no time thinking about a future without art. His pathway to becoming an accomplished art professional was not a smooth one – it was more reminiscent of the bumpy dirt roads of his childhood. “It was very raw desert,” Andrews recalls. Though worse now in spots than it had been, the rough environment seemed normal to him. “Growing up, it was just your typical desert. Practically every adult is riding a bicycle because they got a DUI.” He compares his mother’s neighborhood, even today, to scenes in “Breaking Bad,” with frightening similarities. “The house across the street has car hoods for the roof, and shopping carts tied together to keep the dogs in. It was like a meth lab – and it exploded. On the front of my mom’s house, all the windows broke. My mom couldn’t have a porch light because they would steal the lightbulb.” Andrews’ mother, an immigrant from Okinawa, Japan, worked odd jobs, as many migrants do, and shielded Andrews and his siblings from their heritage. For all intents and purposes, Andrews grew up white. He found his place within the Valley’s white-dominated skater community. He felt little to no permission to make art about the side of his identity that he “lost.” “Being half was a very weird identity thing growing up. There weren’t any, like, real Asians out there. So my identity, the way I looked [stood out] until I moved to New York,” Andrews says. “My mom’s Japanese, so that’s my makeup, but I feel pretty foreign to it. It does [bother me]. That’s probably why I don’t do any kind of thing that seems like it’s Japanese-based. I think I’d be a fraud or something. But at the same time, I’m doing the same thing: I’m still pulling from all sorts of different cultures. I feel ambiguous.” Andrews read JAVA as a teenager, “when it was bigger – I mean bigger in size,” and enjoyed learning about the artist community in and around Tempe and Phoenix. He reminisces about looking through the photos of people attending events and shows in the back pages, exploring the subcultures between the pages, and, in the late’90s, reading an issue whose cover featured his friend Bevin McNamara. Andrews spent his days away from painting connecting with friends spider-webbed throughout the metro Phoenix area, converging at Fiesta Mall. Later, at the coffee-art-house Java Road in Tempe, they would skate in the parking lot or drive to a different spot. Andrews favored the Wedge the most, well before it became the Wedge it is today. His friends in that community also connected him to some of his first jobs in the arts sector. He designed JAVA 9 MAGAZINE
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Page 3 and 4: NOVALIMA Fri., June 28 | 7:30 p.m.
Page 5: FIRST FRIDAY AT THE HEARD KEEP CALM
Page 10 and 11: his first skateboard deck in high s
Page 12 and 13: 12 JAVA MAGAZINE Photo by Kayla Cla
Page 14 and 15: Her pieces almost always feature cl
Page 16 and 17: ARTS KENAIM AL-SHATTI Motion Fantas
Page 18 and 19: WITNESS ME! Justen Siyuan Waterhous
Page 21 and 22: Anhelo in Heritage Square Anhelo is
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Page 29 and 30: Photographer: Orlando Pelagio Jewel
Page 31: goals, Magaña was only missing one
Page 34 and 35: Photos: Maria Ramirez Echavarria 34
Page 36 and 37: and it tackles controversial life i
Page 38 and 39: GIRL ON FARMER Bathroom Envy BY CEL
Page 40 and 41: NIGHT GALLERY Photos By Robert Sent
Page 42 and 43: Register for Summer/Fall enroll-mar
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Page 46: Enjoy the smooth sounds of the SATU

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