Interview with Noah Lyon

SG: Please tell us about yourself?

NL: Let me answer that question by answering the next 14 questions.

SG: Where do you currently live and work?

NL: New York City

SG: What mediums do you work with?

NL: I’ll take a medium and take it to the extreme. So it would be way more than medium, more like maximum. Maximum rock’n’roll. Maximum markers. I use paper too. But maximum doesn’t always mean the biggest it also could be, like, the smallest. So I’ll take a 1”x 1” piece of paper and make the most incredible drawing ever, nowhere near medium, if it were a pepper it would be the most hot and if it were Bob Marley it would be the most high. One-inch drawings turn into one-inch buttons & I’ll make the most of that too. Like make the maximum amount of buttons. I think 50,000 might be the max. Anyways that’s where I’m at right now. Way beyond medium. Push it to the limit, walk along the razor’s edge. I’ll make a painting with no paint. Is that medium or minimum? I try to work as little as possible. Minimum work, maximum results, any medium, bring it on.

SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.

NL: Like I said no work is the best work so usually I’ll take something old and try to pass it off as new. I do work about 10 years in advance just so I can sit around doing nothing all day. That’s conceptual art.

SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?

NL: I pull my boxers up to my nipples and walk around the house. You’d be surprised. A lot of really old men do that with their pants. They wear the waist of their pants around the middle of their chest. That’s where I get a lot of my ideas from, the elderly. So I’ll strip down to underwear & yank them up really high. That’s pretty much the equivalent of me putting on my thinking cap. Who the cap fit, let them wear it, that’s what I always say. For my birthday (September 11th - gifts and honorariums are always welcome) my wife is going to buy me a rasta hat with big dreadlocks attached to it. I think that should help with the creative process. I also like prune juice. I make my own corn syrup free Dr. Pepper. The secret ingredient is prune juice. That’s one reason people call me Doctor Ninja.

….. read the entire interview here on the Spraygraphic Blog