Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Wangner.
Hi Jake, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
2010 was my first payday. I took photos and made a video of a graduation at an alternative high school. I sold DVDs to the parents and made enough money to believe that visual arts could be my career at the age of 14. Since then, I’ve traveled a few different paths and had many amazing opportunities to work on creatively fulfilling and award-winning projects. Today I’m focused on creating books that are inspired by my interactions with people and nature. I am also working on commissions for album artwork and other fun projects. Most of my client work is through licensing images from my archive of personal work.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It took me many years to break away from feeling like a tool for a client’s vision and begin creating work that I actually wanted to be doing. I had to learn to listen to my own voice and be my own client. Once I was finally able to do that, people started coming to me for my vision instead of using me to bring theirs to life. The first instance of me doing this was when I reached out to Sudie Abernathy about a song, she had that I had a vision for. I funded the music video myself and didn’t ask her for any money, and I felt the creative freedom to make my own vision come to life for the first time. That was in 2017 when I moved to the Cedars neighborhood in Dallas. My time living there shaped me as an artist in many ways.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My second book – alone, together was the project that got me quite a bit of attention. I showed my first book/collection at the Cedars Open Studios tour in 2018, and I was widely ignored by everyone who walked by. That book was full of black and white technically-sound images, so I took this as a sign to go the other way. I wanted to create something so bright and vivid that people wouldn’t be able to ignore it if they tried. That was how I went about creating the images you’d see in alone, together, which utilized a long exposure technique in camera to blur the faces of my subjects and create a feeling of motion and energy. I also used vivid colored lighting and shot the images on film to really highlight that color in a way that my digital sensor was failing to do. These are the images that people often associate with me and my art. My latest project, Horizons, is a book that is about curiosity and illusions. It explores the parallels between humans and nature. It still uses vivid color, but it is fairly different from my last book in the concept and execution. I also write poetry, which was featured in the second book along with the images. My next book will be heavily focused on the poetry with images that relate to the poems more deeply. Also, if you’re wondering, I did show the second book at the same open studios tour in 2019, and I’m glad to be able to say my plan worked. I wasn’t ignored, and even sold many of the handmade books and prints that I showed on that day.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
The best way to support me would be to purchase my latest book at jakewangner.com/shop/horizons
In terms of collaboration, I’m always looking for local models to work with for my books and to photograph for practice/testing. Reaching out through Instagram @jakewangner is good for that. My email is on that page as well for work inquiries.
Contact Info:
- Website: jakewangner.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/jakewangner
