Ryan Reineck Interviews Joe Heaps Nelson

When a friend of mine received a nearly life-sized painting of five pom-pom-toting cheerleaders as a housewarming present, I was intrigued. Later, at Gawker Artists, a showcase of up-and-coming local talent, I discovered that my friend was in possession of an original work by the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest cheerleader painter,” Joe Heaps Nelson. A Brooklyn-based artist, Heaps works mainly in series. Aside from cheerleaders, his subjects include tugboats, bulldogs, and mammoths. His work was recently shown at the third incarnation of the Guild of the Black Eagle, a salon exhibition held semi-annually at Hochbaum Studio on Second Avenue. It can also be seen at Jack the Pelican Presents in Williamsburg.

How would you describe your painting style?
It’s really informed by pop sensibility. But I like the texture of the paint, too. If I think about painters who have had an influence on me, Manet would be a big one. So, I might have a pop subject matter, but I like to keep my brush strokes a little bit sexy.

You’re from Iowa, right? Do you think that has had an influence on your work?
Well, whenever you’re in a place, you’re always thinking about a different place. And being from Iowa is one of the things that makes me different from my peers. My hometown is Des Moines, Iowa. That midwestern perspective makes me unique.

When did you realize that you wanted to focus on cheerleaders?
When I started doing cheerleaders I thought it was fun because it’s a sort of grassroots-level show-biz. So you know, I get a kick out of that—pageantry, the big show. But then I realized I was onto something when I started getting into trouble for photographing cheerleaders.

Uh-oh. What kind of trouble?
The principal and the cops threw me out of a high school football game. And I realized I was onto something pretty good.

It seems like a lot of your work is inspired by where you come from—but almost in jest of your past.
Well, I mostly paint stuff that I get a kick out of. Stuff that amuses me. But I hope that others will appreciate it too. I think about what my work is going to look like in context. Context is everything, especially if you’re working in a pop mindset. I think my work may point out something about pop culture and our society in a very didactic way. The underlying context is always prosperity.

It’s always prosperity?
Yeah. We have a very rich country that provides us leisure time for baroque pursuits, like cheerleading. So that’s always present in my work.

I think that’s especially the case in your painting Hooray for Agriculture (image top right).
Yeah, yeah. That painting is a signature piece. That one was a great breakthrough for me because it was a chance for me to take the cheerleader thing to a new level and it’s a spoof on marketing without using any brand names. Although they are agricultural commodities like milk, corn, beef. But it’s also a sincere tribute to the farmers that produce our food. We need them!

How have your cheerleaders changed since you started the series?
Oh, they’ve gone through lots of different phases. I started in 1999, right after I had done a painting of stewardesses, and I thought I’d do cheerleaders. When I first began I was enamored with my subject matter. I thought it was a really fun idea and I didn’t want to leave anything out. I almost took a journalistic approach. I thought, “People in New York City wouldn’t even believe how funny this is.”

So you had a definite interest in documenting cheerleading?
Oh yeah, I almost felt like I was from National Geographic or something, bringing back this exotic culture. I became a little less literal just a couple years after that and I began focusing more on figure and motion. It became more of a formal practice of painting. And then I became more imaginative and started incorporating other sorts of comments, for example in Hooray for Agriculture. I use the cheerleaders as a way to say something else.

Was it also a way of preserving your hometown once you’d moved away?
Well, it was more a sense of sharing. To tell you the truth, when I was growing up, cheerleaders weren’t even that big of a deal. I’m from a pretty big town. So it was more the idea that I’d stumbled onto something pretty good. I couldn’t believe that Warhol or Rosenquist or that first generation of pop artists hadn’t seized upon it. Cheerleading is about the most pop subject in the world. It’s something that you’re supposed to look at. It’s supposed to be visually entertaining. And it’s just like making yourself into a human cartoon really, with all the smiling and flying around.

How do you choose what subject matter you’re going to paint in series? How did you get from cheerleaders to tugboats?
It depends on what I’m interested in at the time. And I can go off on these tangents where I do a lot of research and develop a body of work on a number of things at the same time. So depending on what I get interested in, that’s what I’m likely to develop into subject matter.

Any ideas for future series?
Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out. I often wonder what the next thing is going to be and its sort of a natural outgrowth of what I’m interested in. I always go back to truckin’ and tugboats and hot rods, and all that good stuff. So we’ll see. We shall see.