Majestic Hours: Parker and Tsambiras

Joe Tsambiras (left) and Sam Parker (right). Photos by Ben Grad.

For my first studio visit, I decided on something a little unorthodox. Enter the world of Sam Parker and Joe Tsambiras. These two local artists—through their shared love of illustration, Ukiyo-e, and underground comics—have been busy this summer working on a collaborative drawing project titled “Majestic Hours.”

As a matter of convenience (and atmosphere), the duo conduct their late-night drawing sessions at the The Majestic Diner on Ponce De Leon Ave. Majestic Hours (the book) will be published through Atopos Press, to be released simultaneously with their Beep Beep Gallery show next month.

Click the thumbnails below to browse through some samples. It’s like a slideshow; just click to the left and right after you zoom in:

Of the two words in the title, I’d actually have to stress “hours” over “majestic”—drawings had to be completed around full-time jobs, graduate school (for Parker), and teaching classes at the University of West Georgia (Tsambiras). Ben and I met them for drinks last week before heading over to “The Maj.”

There’s a trend in fine art of replacing drawing and painting with pure idea. In certain circles, it’s more valid to have this conceptual piece that maybe you didn’t even execute yourself. I’m into making something with your hands: the craftsmanship or mastery of it. In academia, it’s in some sense shunned. They don’t want to talk about mastery.
- Sam Parker

Most people consider drawing as just a predecessor to painting. Or it’s this lo-fi aesthetic. Drawing is always the most important to me. I’ll definitely use some spot color, but I have no desire to do a full “256-color” piece. It happens in painting too, though. Look at Van Gogh—it’s very obvious that he’s drawing with a brush.
- Joe Tsambiras

I love this damn thing! It goes 35 miles an hour down hill, with the wind whipping on your back. It’s only 4 bucks every two or three weeks. And I can go everywhere I wanna go. Take care y’all.
- Random Woman outside the Righteous Room, riding a red-and-chrome scooter.

Realism? What the fuck does that even mean? To me realism is actually being in scenarios. Other people might disagree when I use the word “vibrance” to describe a diner. But here there’s laughing—people are saying stupid things; people are saying amazing things.
- Joe

I’ve been in collaborations, say, in the early 90s writing graffiti. I had a mentor; other people were mentored either by that same person or someone else. Everybody has all these influences or maybe you’re living in the same house but working with different people. Sometimes you surpass your mentor. And then—boom—it goes the other way.
- Sam

Challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. Sam beat me. The monster…

There are times when it’s really beautiful, like the time I walked into the diner and that Star Wars walker skull thing started coming together. I didn’t contribute on that piece, but when I got here, there were like five people drawing together. There was this feeling of community: everyone wanting to create and, at the same time, just wanted to sip their coffee and talk to the person next to them.
- Joe

My feeling is that it has to occur naturally. When you make this contrived group, it wasn’t like an automatic kismet. You get shows where there’s just a bunch of individuals doing their own thing. People won’t dialog. It isn’t real. There are certain personalities that are better conduits. With Joe, there was never that expectation that, hey, we’re going to be a couple of ‘art world badasses.’ That doesn’t interest me.
- Sam

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that any collaboration is a good thing. You just don’t just jump into a love relationship with anyone, and you just don’t jump into a friendship with anybody. It doesn’t work until there’s this interplay that starts to happen naturally. Collaborating doesn’t have that fire that sexual activity brings, like in a love relationship. But is it a friendship? Yes. Love on a friendship level? Yes—100 percent.
- Joe

“Majestic Hours”—and the *newly pressed* book of the same name—debuts on Sat. Nov. 8 at Beep Beep Gallery. Bring machetes and blow torches. You’ll need them.

Tags: Beep Beep Gallery, collaborations, illustration, Realism?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 6:45 am and is filed under Studio Visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.