Mondo Jud

Born in 1942 and raised in Denver, Colorado, Mondo Jud Hart graduated with a BA in painting from the University of Denver, Moving in 1965 to New York City, he was soon drafted and served a reluctant two-year stint at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky with the United State Army. Bouncing to San Francisco and eventually, returning to live in Denver, Hart shifted for one year to Tucson, Arizona, while parenting his daughter through her senior year in high school. His marriage having dissolved and daughter launched, the West Coast beckoned and Hart responded, arriving in California in 1987. Originally landing in Los Angeles in an ornately painted 1969 Chevrolet half-ton pickup truck with a camper shell, the itinerant artist lived for two years on urban streets in his mobile home. In 1989, Hart headed north to establish his current home in San Francisco.

In Hart’s metaphoric “suitcases,” he brought a vast assortment of eclectic life experiences, relationships, and stories. Considered from a bird’s eye perspective, the mix of childhood and young-to-mid adult activities and adventures blend into a fascinating storyline. Hart’s personal, family, and ancestral histories stream like a river of influence or an improvised jazz score through the drawing, assemblage, collage, screen prints, hand-crafted books and art installations he creates. Among a handful of primary trajectories that continue to hold sway in his art practice at age 83 are the over 400 floats he designed and built between 1983 and 2003 in collaboration with float-master Kip Farris. Powerful parallels—not secondary forces—to the work partnership with Farris, who died in 2005, are the two avatars he created in 1975 and a fascination with real and imagined elements that are integral to his body of work.

In conversation, Hart speaks about the relationship between his fine art and the float projects undertaken with Farris and the role and representational significance of his male and female avatars. His comments on broader topics such as contemporary and historic political and cultural movements and how they variously support or set out to destroy artists and artistic expression lend crucial insight. Sporadically touching on family history and specific works in his portfolio, the anecdotes and memories shared float like the colorful confetti that showers people’s heads and shoulders and falls upon city streets during a parade. The discussion reveals Hart’s humanity. And, much like his artwork, he is variably spectacular, soulful, funny, fierce, and infinitely earnest.

Let’s begin with your float-building projects designed and built with Farris. What are your thoughts about how that large-scale format influenced your artist’s eye?

They were huge projects that were inspiration for making me do my own artwork, which is very different, of course. Float building was inspiring and it was where I made money; even with it’s very, very small profit margin.

Conceptually, the floats didn’t influence my art that much. Sometimes, for a parade I would create a float that came from my art. Taking my avatar, a character named Jabbo, I made him into a float. Jabbo started in the 1970s and became my male avatar. I have two: Jabbo is male, and Sapphire is my female avatar. They both appeared around 1975 when I stilled lived in Denver.

Why did you develop avatars and, in addition to integrating them into a float, what became of them in your personal artwork?

I’m 83 and I’m Black. I grew up reading comic books and (when I was young), there were lots of comic books and comics in newspapers, but there were no Black characters at all. If you did appear in cartoons, you were kind of racist. The idea came to me for a Black character in the 1950s, but I didn’t draw anything until the early 70s. It finally was clarified for me when I drew Jabbo in 1975.

I used an avatar for my art projects. For instance, once there was an exhibit at the Denver Art Museum in the late 70s. I drew my character Jabbo and had copies made at a print shop. I went to the museum and when the guards weren’t looking, I just put Jabbo on top of a few of the artworks. I just laid them on; I didn’t cause any damage. It ended up in the newspaper that I’d “invaded” the Denver Art Museum with Jabbo. I was just being disruptive in my own way.

Two years later, I saw they had an event at the museum, “Ultra Urban Aborigine Week.” Aborigine means “in the beginning; at the source.” (The museum presented multimedia art, performances, music, parties, the Jabbo Awards, and more.) This all spins off my attempt with Jabbo to interrupt the normal narrative flow. I trace that back to (when I was growing up). I could always draw well, so at the school I went to in Denver, a junior high school, they wanted me to create a character for the school’s yearbook. I came up with two characters: one was Black and one was white. They were both cartoons with exaggerated characters, so the white character had no lips and the Jabbo-esque character had zero lips. It strikes me that even then, the teachers only freaked out about the Black character, not the white character. People were used to seeing white cartons, but they were not used to seeing Black characters.

There is an untitled piece on your website with two attribution dates (1976 and 1998) and a figure in a red robe reaching out an exaggeratedly long arm to hold what looks like a wasp’s nest. Is the figure your female avatar?

Yes, the original drawing was of my avatar, Sapphire. It was a drawing of a woman reaching out that I started in 1975. In a freak accident, a person in my studio spilled Pepsi that splashed onto my drawing. Years later, I had the drawing and decided to repaint it like you saw it on the website, because I could never get rid of those splash marks. I colored it in where you see the red. I no longer have it; it’s in Vermont now. It was a drawing originally done with dots. This piece, I painted in 1998. I painted it on top of what was there because I really liked the drawing. Even though it was damaged by the Pepsi, I kept it, thinking I would do something someday with it. Twenty years later, I did. In the hand is a certain kind of hornet’s nest. It added to the intensity.

The drawing and what it has become in the second version: is there one story it tells that you might share. Does it tell more than one?

Part of the story is that nobody would know of it (having been) damaged by looking at it. The drawing is a cosmic origin story; there’s the universe, the black area like a night sky, and there are female principles. My intentions originally were straightforward: a woman with a wasp’s nest in her hand. When I rescued and tried to save it, it became something else. Interpretations are up to the viewer. I don’t want to foul up people’s judgement too much. When I talk about that piece, it’s like improvising in music. Jazz starts with a simple premise and then you start improvising.

You said cosmology and astronomy were early interests, along with making art. Will you talk about Sun Spots and Big Bang Theory, the two screen prints included in the Floating Museum’s “Rising Tides” exhibition?

Every color in Sun Spots is a separate screen. I used to do a lot of silkscreen, but I don’t do it anymore because It’s a toxic process. The title that came to me, it’s not like I was thinking about sun spots. It’s just the title I applied to it because if you look into the sun, it changes your vision. You start seeing things, or you can’t see things. I tried to make it difficult to focus on. You might start to see something and you’re not sure what you’re seeing. Of course, I made it, so I can point to something and say, this is a woman, this is a sapphire, there’s a man walking with his penis hanging down. But it’s not an illustration of sun spots in a literal sense.

An occupation other than art I had considered was astronomy. That was because of influence from my parents. I wanted to draw and was a good artist, but I had a good mind and they tried to direct me to astronomy, especially when I started college. I was already showing interest in it. A degree in astrophysics was more practical than getting an art degree. My mother graduated at 16 from the University of Kansas. She died 10 years ago. My father didn’t graduate from college until later, but he went to the University of Kansas also, so being highly educated was valued.

Big Bang Theory is also astronomical. It’s an explosion of colors with an explosion of ideas meshed up into a screen print. There’s the singularity of the massively dense ball that explodes and for billions of years expands outward and (in the print) you never see the same thing twice. I was recreating that with an exploding piece. The story of the Big Bang is easier to recreate verbally than visually. You can describe a process of starting with something infinitely small that was exploded billions of years ago and everything we have now is the result of that. It’s a theory. There’s no 100 percent proof of the Big Bang. Showing theory in art is harder than using words.

Two other works—Keith Joseph Anti-Drone Drone (2004) and Hart Family Fetish (2022)—are examples of the varied materials, dimensionality, and art-making processes in your work. What springs to mind when you consider these pieces?

The anti-drone drone is hanging over my head right now. It was originally used in an installation involving the Nez Perce Indians up in Oregon, a group I’m involved with. The eagle is made of cardboard—I also did a coyote—and painted to look like a drone made out of metal. It was based on a fantastical theme where there’s war and you have anti-drone drones. It’s painted gold, with a starry background. The rivets I put in so it would look metallic, along with the shiny paint surface. I kept the eagle and a coyote from the installation. The rest is all gone. This is where float-building comes in hand. I just draw a quick idea and once I’ve done that, I’m pretty much done. I made the 3-D based on the drawing. Sometimes you have to change or add a detail to provide more structural support as you’re building, but the idea is completed in drawing.

The other work has a Joan Miró-like frame. I created this frame, which is something I’ve been doing for years; making frames of artists who’ve influence me over time, like Miró and Paul Klee and so on. In this case, it’s an artist who influenced me, but also one who was influenced by the art of Africa, like Picasso and Klee. The drawing (within the frame) is of an artifact I had that I bought at a thrift store. The (invented) story behind it is it’s actually a family fetish brought over by our slave ancestors and kept secret. It was taken from West Africa in the early 19th century. It’s a story I’m making up that the artifact has been in our family since slavery, through emancipation, and so on. It’s not true, but it’s part of the modern myth that the old cultural traditions from centuries ago were interrupted or erased and miraculously, they were recreated by Black culture in America from ground zero, from nothing.

You’ve brought our conversation into the modern era, which prompts the question: During a time when art and artists are questioned and under threat, is this just another cycle of oppression and judgement you’ve witnessed multiple times, or does it seem particularly precarious right now?

This time around, they have specific targets. Years ago, 30, 40, 50 years and beyond, galleries and museums didn’t know how to handle what would be called Black Art. It was a reflection of how larger society didn’t even know how to address Black people. Was it negro? Colored? What was it?

Now, those things are history, but some of the problems still remain. The solutions to problems are under attack, whether it has to do with critical race theory or life being gay. I’m jumping around, but years ago I did a walking float for the Gay Parade in San Francisco, when it was still called the Gay Parade. I did J. Edgar Hoover in drag, and took it down Market Street. To answer your question and mention (racist) intention, I think of racist cartoons in the 40s, when there wasn’t a lot of protest. People now are upset about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Back then, I was just upset about Black people’s absence in movies. There’s always some tension and it’s just a matter of who’s getting upset and who’s the target.

What happened in the 1960s, when civil rights gains were made but Jim Crowe mentality often seemed to continue?

What was difficult in the 60s was to sell art with a Black conscience, unless it was very abstract. People weren’t used to having a complex Black figure on their wall—staring at you 24 hours a day. Black imagery was not something people wanted, which is why I started working with my avatars. At that time, I was ahead of the curve, I guess.

Can we please close with your thoughts about the lived experiences that reverberate in your art—and maybe speak to the one thing you believe is and always will be true about the work you make?

When I was 6 or 7, a man died in our church. I’m not a religious person now, but a man died in our church. I asked my father why this guy died. My dad said, “He worried to death.” I took from that, well, I’m not going to worry. That was profound, at the time. I don’t even think my father was even trying to be profound, he was just expressing his opinion.

Another time, something that’s more personal, when I was older, in the late 50s and I considered myself out, I remember the singer Marian Anderson. She was invited to sing at an opera house in the late 1930s. (Howard University in 1939 invited Anderson to perform in Washington, D.C., at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall. The DAR denied her access.) They didn’t want a Black woman doing it, so she ended up singing on the steps of Lincoln Memorial. When I read about it in the late 50s, I was thinking, so here is this highly accomplished woman, and yet, they didn’t want her to perform because she was Black. The way it informed me was that I was not going to do art to appease people or please people. If she didn’t do it, I decided, I’m not gonna do it.

Some of work of my work, I don’t want to make it too beautiful. It’s like, some jazz musicians will hear a songs like “Some Day My Prince Will Come” and do their own take on it. Making it a little more soulful. I have pieces, like the one we spoke of before with my avatar, that’s a spin on Judeo-Christian history. In my imagination, there’s always a before and an after to everything. There’s a before and after of the universe, christianity, judaism, and so on. I’m always tinkering with those ideas of before and after. Nothing is forever, nothing. So there’s always going to be a certain tension between the real and the imagined. I might take a real object, philosophy, or equation and surround it with my imagined response. My art will always be things real and things imagined.