Ari Saperstein on making art in Los Feliz and the importance of local community

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ari Saperstein.

Ari, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until 2016 that I started to pursue it professionally. It took me a while to realize the different ways that one can share art with a large audience and make money through art. For a long time, I thought that having artwork in a gallery was the only avenue to accomplish those two things.

In the summer of 2016, I walked into Stories in Echo Park and picked up a small publication called The Gremlin Quarterly. In it was a hilarious comic called “Yoga Bitches” by Travis Brown and Lenae Day. When I read it, I thought to myself “I want to make something like that.” So I went home, and that’s exactly what I did. I started @badjudgementgoodart and made a drawing every day for a month. Then I had the idea to make that collection into a “portfolio” and just started cold-emailing magazine editors… and I’ve been working as an editorial illustrator ever since. It was kind of wild how quickly the idea of being a professional artist went from something that seemed unrealistic and enigmatic to becoming super accessible and straightforward.

Instagram has been a great tool when it comes to making art because I can use the things that I kind of hate about social media – how it can be addictive and consuming – as motivation to create and share art. In the course of an hour or two, I can pick up a pen, make a drawing, finish it, post it and get responses and feedback. As I’m working on myriad creative projects that can take months or even years to complete, like films and audio pieces, it’s so satisfying to be able to just finish and share something so quickly.

Another big part of my creative path has been my desire for, and pursuit of, creative partnerships and communities. When I was 16, I went to a summer writing program at the University of Iowa. It was the first time I was really part of a creative community; I made friends there who are still in my life today. When I left Iowa, I had such a yearning for similar experiences, but in the years that followed – throughout the rest of high school and college – it was difficult to find similarly fulfilling groups. It didn’t quite come together for me until I realized that I had to be the one to initiate the kind of community I was looking for.

In 2017, I formed what you might call, I guess, an “art collective,” or maybe “art salon,” with my friends Mary Margaret Groves [a Montecito Heights-based painter] and Maddy Fendell [an animation executive at Netflix]. Sometimes we do projects together, but mostly our “collective” consists of getting together for dinner once a week and sharing our work. It’s been beyond awesome to have other artists to turn to for support, accountability, and feedback on a regular basis. The weekly meetings have been pretty life-changing for all three of us.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I just do whatever seems fun! I find it sort of impossible to get things done if they don’t bring me joy. I love making art in all kinds of forms — painting, film, music, animation…but illustration is where I put most of my time and energy. I make editorial illustrations for different publications; however, over the past year I’ve mostly been working for The Sex Ed, a sex education startup headed by Liz Goldwyn.

I’m always looking for ways to engage with locals through art. I make paper goods like postcards, greeting cards, and stickers that I sell at a number of LA shops and at art festivals around SoCal. I also host art events from time to time, and that is always a blast — bringing people together and providing other artists with a platform to showcase their work is so much fun.

During the week, I work at a documentary company and a public radio station. For me, it’s a really ideal way to balance out the freelance artwork I do because video and audio production allows me to be creative while utilizing different skills and different parts of my brain.

What’s the message or inspiration? What do you hope people take away from it? What should we know about your artwork?
Though there are many artists I love and admire, my biggest sources of inspiration are storytellers. Whether it’s comedians like Kate Berlant and Jenny Slate, or podcasts like Heavyweight and Mystery Show, all the people and projects I most admire explore personal experiences with truth and specificity… and, somehow, they take private and idiosyncratic things and make them universal and accessible. That’s what I aspire to do with everything I make.

When I listen to all the aforementioned folks and programs, I often find myself thinking “Wow, they just talked about something I’ve always thought about, but could never figure out how to articulate” or “They just talked about something so personal that I relate to – and I had no idea that anyone else experienced the same thing!”

In an ideal world, I hope that’s how people react to my work.

We often hear from artists that being an artist can be lonely. Any advice for those looking to connect with other artists?
I have a few different groups and one-on-one collaborators I meet with regularly, but creating those get-togethers was not easy! I tried to start so many meetups over the years that never quite took off… but in the process, I found a system that works really well for me: to have the only goal from the outset be a one-time meeting with one person — and then taking it from there.

For whatever reason, I’ve found it hard to set the bar high from the outset; taking it step-by-step, setting the bar low and building off the inertia of small achievements is what works for me — for art and in life.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I post all my work on Instagram, @badjudgementgoodart, and on my site, arisaperstein.com. You can find some of my work in stores around the eastside, including Skylight Books, LA County Store, and Mindfulness. You can also check out my zines from the Edendale branch of the LA Public Library.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arisaperstein.com
• Email: badjudgementgoodart@gmail.com
• Instagram: @badjudgementgoodart

Image Credit:
Portraits: Madeline Keyes-Levine
Artwork: Ari Saperstein

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