WINONA LAKE - Upon seeing his art pieces, people often tell Jason Rowland that they didn't know there was an artist like him in the area.
Classified as a stencil artist/street artist, Rowland, 31, also does some mixed media - it all just depends on his project at the time.
Like Andy Warhol's Pop Art, Rowland's works can feature anything from a stencil of Mohandas Gandhi detailed in soup can bar codes that glow in the dark, to a collage of Fisher Price® Little People with Woody Allen's head hidden in the mix. There's images of the well-known to the obscure to just random people and the family dog.
During an interview Tuesday afternoon in his Winona Lake home, Rowland, a 1997 Warsaw Community High School graduate, said his art work is just a side project for now. He's been doing his art projects for several years because he didn't want to pay for art for the home he shares with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.
Space for his art work in the house is running out. Last July, Rowland began looking at how he can display and sell his art.
He called the Warsaw Community Public Library and they let him put up a display there. It was the first time his work was displayed out.
"Since then, the ball's been rolling," said Rowland.
In an art competition at the Robert Hudson Gallery in Winona Lake, Rowland won. He then took his work to Whitley County for an art show. Art & Soul in the Village at Winona gave him a one-man show. He's displayed in a show at the Creative Fish in Syracuse.
On Feb. 5, Rowland participated in the First Friday Show at Murphy Art Center in Indianapolis. He goes back to Indianapolis this weekend for the Indiana State Art Show at the Indiana State Museum of Art downtown.
Tuesday, Rowland found out two of his pieces will be in the Nine County Art Show in the Clark Gallery at the Honeywell Center in Wabash. One of his pieces received an Honorable Mention award.
Rowland said he usually paints on canvas or pieces of metal or wood he finds. He stencils and paint by hand in the traditional way, and doesn't use any of the available computer programs out there.
He does different styles and backgrounds, depending on what he feels he needs to be done to the art work.
Also, the time he puts into a project will depend on the project itself.
One piece Rowland has done is "The David Bowie". Rowland stenciled and painted an image of Bowie. Then he covered it with cut-outs of the word "the" from magazines. It took Rowland 12 hours to complete it.
Other projects may take only a couple of hours.
"I try to do an ended series of five paintings, 10 paintings. I could mass produce a painting," said Rowland. "... I'm new to this whole art thing."
In high school, Rowland took every art class he could so he didn't have to take the tougher courses. The art classes were the classes he always just liked, too.
He didn't know about stenciling until he read about it in a skateboard magazine three or four years ago, he said. Since July, Rowland estimates he's made more than 100 works of art.
"It's starting to clutter up the house," he said.
The largest work Rowland has done to date is in his living room. Taken from a 3-inch stencil and placed on a projector, there's a 12-foot by 12-foot stenciled elephant on the wall.
On canvas, his biggest art piece is 3 feet wide by 4 feet long. It's the painting of the Fisher Price® Little People. If anyone looks carefully, they'll find Woody Allen.
Rowland has taken images of 1960s political figures and put them on a series of skateboard decks, pieces of wood and on canvas.
"They're just images that popped out to me," said Rowland. "I added graffiti so I wouldn't take myself so seriously."When he started with the stenciling, Rowland used basic black and white. Along the way, his art morphed. He started with doing art of people he admired, but that morphed, too, so now he also does random people, animals and everyday objects.
Rowland also has done custom work from clients' photos, images or idea.
He sells his art on the Internet and has found Facebook gets him a lot of traffic. His work also can be found on other artist Web sites.
Rowland is running a contest his Facebook site. If a person becomes a fan of the rowland1964 page then request it to 10 friends and e-mail him, he'll put the person in the drawing to win a free painting. More details are on his page in his notes.
His goals for his art are simple. He wants to take his children to Disney World. Maybe he'll make enough to buy a pickup truck.
He'd like to expand his artistic reach to as far as it'll go. First, he wanted to expand beyond Kosciusko County. Then beyond Whitley County. Then to Indianapolis. He'd like to see his work go beyond Indiana to places like Chicago or New York.
"I don't really know why I'm doing it," he said modestly. "I guess I like the gratification of people liking my work. We've met a lot of cool made. We've made a lot of friends."
To contact Rowland, e-mail him at rowland1964@yahoo.com; check out his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/rowland1964; or visit online at www.rowland1964.etsy.com
