Conversations with the Inspiring J.T. Burke

Today we’d like to introduce you to J.T. Burke.

J.T., can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am very fortunate to be a true, American success story. I grew up in Hollywood with my mom and sister. We had very little during most of my childhood, but my mom was extremely supportive and encouraging. She taught me to be proud and strong, politically involved and sensitive to the needs of others. I credit her for much of my success in the world.

I was always drawn to an art career, but when it came time to choose a major at UCLA,I opted for Design rather than Painting/Sculpture/Graphic arts; after a childhood of relative deprivation, I wanted to make a good living and fine art certainly didn’t seem like a practical choice.

I met my best friend and future wife, Lorraine, during my last year at UCLA. We became immediately inseparable and began a simple photography business together right after school. We eked out a living for a few years doing frat parties, headshots, dance performances and anything that paid money. We spent our honeymoon in Milan doing fashion test shoots and showing the portfolio, but it was pretty disheartening.

Eventually, it occurred to both of us that we should join our skill sets; I knew about photography and my wife, who was a trained chef, knew about food. Food photography! It took us three years to figure that out that simple concept, but as soon as we did our business took off. Over the next 15 years, we established a very successful food photography studio. We did national ads, cookbooks, a dozen covers of Bon Appetit Magazine, hundreds of Pizza Hut ads, and even the menu boards for In-N-Out burgers which are still in use today, 20 years after we shot them.

Our studio became pretty big and well-known with a large staff and impressive client roster. Eventually, we began doing live action TV commercials. We made good money when we were working, but we worked all the time. With a young family and a long commute to work (we live in South Pasadena but our studio was in the Helm’s Bakery in Culver city – not a pretty drive most days), we began searching for a way to make money that didn’t involve us being personally on set every day. That’s when we discovered stock photography.

Our stock photo business started as a small sideline in 1994 but grew extremely quickly. At the end of 1999, I quit shooting to run the stock part of the business full time. I went back to UCLA in 2001, this time at the Anderson school of management to learn about the business stuff they don’t teach you in the art department. In 2005 we got an unsolicited offer from a public company to buy our business. It was a lot of money – more than we had ever expected to have in our lives. We took the offer.

The next year, we reinvented ourselves by starting over. We re-opened our photo studio just the way we had started it twenty years earlier, just me and Lorraine, but this time, only doing the personal work that inspired us. It’s a very fortunate situation that I am thankful for, and I work hard at my art practice.

For a number of years since then, I have also spent much of my time volunteering; I served as the Chair of the Board at Brooks Institute, I co-founded and chaired an international trade association for image licensing, I was the marketing director for our town’s annual music festival and have served on the board of my city’s Chamber of Commerce and Finance Commission. Living in the Trump era, I believe that, now more than ever, public volunteerism and local involvement is an honorable and important calling.

Has it been a smooth road?
Starting out is always the hardest part. In the beginning, we got the crappiest clients with terrible budgets and not a lot of respect, but over time things got better. We stayed focused, determined and believed in ourselves. We also tried a lot of different, related business ventures, many of which didn’t pan out, but at least this taught us how to try new things, how to be nimble.

I am a firm believer in life-long learning and have taken lots of personal enrichment classes and tech seminars. I taught myself database programming many years ago and even ran our company for a long time with that application. I learned about digital imaging and color management in its infancy, which was a difficult chore. Last year I learned how to build websites using WordPress. There is a lot in the world to learn.

Mostly, though, I have discovered a strong work ethic inside me that emerged after I was out of school. I have always felt the need to get up every day, put on my pants and go to work. The difference between being self-employed and unemployed is how much you worked this month.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into your business story. Tell us more about the business.
I am a digital collagist (and recovering Catholic) who illustrates abstract scenes of utopian beauty and a mythical Paradise. My art follows a very specific and unique process that uses the skills that I have honed during the past 30 years. It begins with collecting vintage costume jewelry and brass figurines at local swap meets. Back in my studio, I carefully photograph each of the pieces in very high resolution on a white background and add them to a digital catalog. I have about 5,000 images in there.

When I begin a new composition, I mask various, selected jewelry images and add them into the Photoshop composite, stretching, twisting, coloring, layering and repeating them as my inspiration demands. I like to think that I am good at a lot of things, but Photoshop is undoubtedly my strongest technical skill. It’s a very unique process, and the work is definitely my own and identifiable, though it continues to evolve.

I look at a lot of art at art shows and in magazines, books and online. I try to find inspiration from Pop Surrealists and Old Masters alike, mixing that with 12 years of Catholic school education and my own views of the world and thoughts about our place in the cosmos.

I have mostly created flat wall art, but over the past few years, I have also done murals, car wraps, and installations. In 2015 I installed “The Paradise Circus” at the LA Art Show at the LA Convention Center. It was a large physical structure that was part cathedral steeple, part circus tent, and part confessional booth. The next year I installed “Fabulosus Fabularus”, a 16’ tall “monument to inventive mythology” at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair. These projects were a reach for me but have helped to broaden my view of the different kinds of things that I can do and projects to dream of.

I am currently working on a long-term project that involves ongoing mural creation and installation in the public areas of an office building here in South Pasadena. I just installed the 7th and 8th sections this past week. I’m actively seeking out new public art projects.

Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
I learned a lot about the world, how to be a man and many of my values from my mother. She was pretty awesome in a lot of ways.

My wife, Lorraine and I have worked together closely and influenced each other immensely during our working lives together. We are very different people in many ways and appreciate different aspects of the world and people, but our differences are mostly very complimentary. She is completely non-technical and uses her hands much more than I. She appreciates the moment where I am very focused.

We work really well together, and although we keep our art practices separate, we ask for each other’s advice constantly. We have recently developed an oddly similar aesthetic; my digital works and her hand-wrought assemblages share commonalities of composition and texture, though they’re created independently. It’s almost uncanny. After 38 years together, I think that we might be starting to look alike too. 🙂

Contact Info:

• Website: jtburke.com
• Phone: 626.799.1405
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @jtburkeart
• Facebook: @jtburkeart

Image Credit:
j.t. Burke, Marlene Picard

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