London-bred high-speed fashion illustrator and front-row fixture Blue
Logan (whose uncle is eccentric artist Andrew Logan and whose mother
was an esteemed milliner for Ossie Clark) has officially landed in New
York – "scruffy sketchbook" and all. With his his iconic
movement-driven mien and uncanny ability to perfectly capture the tenor
of any milieu, Blue has been supremely busy painting the brouhaha at
this summer's most scene-y soirées, eccentric late night cafés, rock n'
roll gigs, backstage moments, and outlandish parties. Having spent his
formative years with The Alternative Miss World and Kinky Gerlinky as second-nature and amongst such strikingly influential artistic
heavyweights as David Hockney, Brian Eno and Zandra Rhodes – it's no
wonder Blue's sparkling wit, killer talent, and easygoing demeanor have
all of Gotham a' flutter.
What originally attracted you to illustrating the world of fashion?
I have always enjoyed drawing but for many years I merely enjoyed doing it as a little holiday project. I love to travel; rather than taking along a camera, I would often take my scruffy sketch book and draw buildings and views of the places that I fell in love with. One day I got the urge to draw people and wanted to sketch them on the move – for a challenge. I guess I could have just sat on a park bench, but by chance this thought coincided with having a drink during London Fashion Week with my dear friend Gianluca Longo, fashion editor for The Evening Standard magazine. He said 'Darrliiiiing, come with me to a show later' – so I did! I took along my sketchbook and a biro...
How has growing up in the zany world of your uncle Andrew Logan – and your entire enchanting family, for that matter – inspired your art?
Well, my father is a sculptor and I grew up in Smithfield, London in an amazing loft full of mobiles that he had made, vast canvases, paper, pens, brushes, tools, and the like. My mother was a wonderfully successful and talented hat designer in the Seventies so we had needles and pins everywhere as well and we were always creating stuff. My uncle Richard was an inventor and I would often go to his place in Camden Town and build a submarine that actually worked, or a speed boat, or a plane... all from crazy bits of this and that: nothing expensive. Then, of course, there is Andrew– who lived in a glasshouse in the sky with flying horses and a sparkling universe of color. I would go to his studio (which has always been close to where I have lived) and make incredible things with him. He still lives in a glasshouse – although this one is custom built – and it is still the wildest house on earth. Andrew is famous for his parties; there really is nothing like them and you never know who is going to be there. I mean, I've been there with J.R. from Dallas, Simon Le Bon (topless), Andrey Bartenev in a pink gimp suit running around with loo roll and my grandmother. All at once. And that's just the queue for the bathroom. I'm so lucky to come from a family that embraces fun and can, in fact, create it from nothing at all.
You're renowned for superbly capturing the spirit of "the moment"... how do you so aptly accomplish this?
Well,
thank you! When you draw thirty sketches in the span of a ten-minute
show you simply don't have time to think: you can hardly look at the
paper, it's dark, and the girls are strutting really fast. At the risk
of sounding like I'm full of sh*t, I think it's in the speed and the
chaos that you find the spirit of all things. Letting go of a natural
urge to control what you see and instead believing in it is a
constant learning exercise for me. Sometimes I'm very aware that my mind
is filling in the blanks on paper when I have not even looked at the
object... I catch myself doing that a lot! The more that I try to just draw what is in front of me, the better that I feel about
my work. On a less 'zany' note – I love people-watching, and I enjoy
looking about and pondering what people are doing in their lives or
give them words in my head. Being at a fashion show or drawing at a
party is always a spectacle: it's the friendships and the falsities of
everyday life but 'turned right up loud'. Observation, a bit of humor,
and being just as involved and silly in said 'spectacle' as everyone
else is how I capture 'the moment'...
What sparked your love of film? Can you tell us about your upcoming projects?
I love film, but for me it is 'a slow boat to China'. In other words, I'm not going to be the guy that sells his soul to make a feature next year. I consider making films to be simultaneously a great art and a huge headache. I'm learning the ropes... but in my own trial-and-error kind of way. I like things to be ambitious: so my last film, a western, involved horses and guns and a life-size saloon that I built myself. The film cost next to nothing but a lot of hard work went into creating it. The next one, whenever that happens, will probably cost a little bit more and be a even more enterprising – but not too much. I learned so much doing the last one and I'm sure that I'll learn a whole lot more the next time around. When a project gets too big I simply stop learning anything practical and generally stress out: the only lesson being that 'I bit too bigger a' bite'. I fancy doing a bank robbery that is all about men fighting over cooking food, one woman, and London... I'd like to try and play with a side of London that isn't all about tough dogs and dirty alleys.
http://www.bluelogan.co.uk/
Related:
- Eat Your Chiffon featuring a dinner party with Zandra Rhodes [YouTube]
- Spring Cleaning with... Timo. designer Timo Weiland [PAPERMAG]
- It Girl: Becka Diamond piece illustrated by Blue Logan [Vogue.com]
- Hamish Bowles in Drag... Kinky Gerlinky! [BryanBoy]
- Julia Frakes in Peter Jensen F/W '08 signature horse bag [Facehunter]
PS: Here's a bit of a sneak-peak preview of some of my absolute best-loved, most cherished trinkets and trappings that I collaborated with Blue (okay, he admittedly did all the handiwork) to devise for an upcoming Vogue Girl Korea project... enjoy!
