Jason Molina: Molina Artistic Company (by Randy Harward)
If you’ve ever heard the vivid, evocative and emotional songs of the Magnolia Electric Company, you’ve at least suspected that the artistry of Magnolia main man Jason Molina runs deeper than the tunes. You deduce correctly, Sherlock–Molina likes to paint. And draw, take pictures, make collages and give names and contexts to found objects.
“He’s as much a visual artist as an audio artist,” says friend and Secretly Canadian label boss Jonathan Cargill, to whom Molina has gifted several pieces. “[Only] no one has noticed until now.”
“My work is abstract,” Molina told the U.K. mag Reveal. “I don’t sit and try to capture any specific scene or idea. On the road I love to draw on the little scraps of paper I find on the street. Somehow they all remind me at least of where I have been.”
As with his stark lyrics and bold-yet-spare arrangements, Molina’s art is simple on the surface. There is no complicated imagery, no painstaking Joe Coleman detail. In fact, you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at–it’s all fuzzy lines and cold, abstract imagery. The images, as with Molina’s songs, are left open to interpretation. To hazard a guess, and this is to rely somewhat on Molina’s music as a clue, we’d say the images convey a sense of isolation and the notion that it’s the lines, not what’s between them, that define.
It’s good stuff, and as Cargill implied, people are noticing Molina’s work. In November, Molina’s 400 sundry visual expressions–titled “Ghost Songs”–were on display at the Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery along with works by the Silver Jews’ David Berman, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, Pall Jenkins of the Black Heart Procession and Archer Prewitt. (The gallery has also shown art created by Devendra Banhart, John Langford and Smog’s Bill Callahan). And at press time, another gallery show was in the works.