You’ve seen CJ Draden at Comic-Con before. That fella painting stunning art on supremely bright white glass that always attracts a crowd? That’s him. He’ll be at this week’s New York Comic-Con as well as the Vienna Comic-Con later this year. If you’re going to NYCC, look for CJ and say hello. If you’ll be in Austria, say hallo.
Early in our conversation, I ask CJ how his new book, The Wooden Heart is doing. A departure from his typical superhero art, The Wooden Heart is his stylish take on the classic Pinocchio. In so few words, it’s doing pretty well. “I’m pretty happy with the response,” he tells me. “I’ve been fortunate to have Stan Lee endorse the project. That was a big change in the interpretation of how I was going to go about, being an artist. It would change anyone’s perspective of themselves.” Stan “The Man” Lee telling you he likes you’re work is a heck of an endorsement.
Another project of his, Atlas, represents another departure from his typical work you see at Comic-Con. “I think that at any given point in time someone decides to do something with their life, start a project, change a career, do something different, I think it marks their current comprehension of their life, and their surroundings. I think that’s true when an artist creates something, because of the things that you’re interested in or learning about at the time.”
The Wooden Heart and Atlas, CJ tells me, are resonant of specific, super personal times in his life. “I was dealing with a lot of things, and I put a lot of personal things in it. It’s a very personal project. I learned a lot from that. I grew from that and I started taking my lessons and moving on to another point in my life.”
Ahead of his presence at the New York Comic-Con, I interviewed CJ to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be an artist still trying to figure out this crazy world we inhabit.
You said something interesting just know, that “Atlas” was kind of like a turning point for you. Did you always want to be an artist? Or did you stumble onto this career unexpectedly?
CJ: No, I can’t say that I always wanted to be an artist, I don’t really have that clicheé story where people are like “Oh I’ve always been drawing.” I have always been drawing since I was young, but it’s a good thing to bring up because I think that people have a calling, I think if you just make certain choices in life and you stick to what you feel is truthful about you, you’re going to encounter people and encounter certain situations that are going to change you, and lead you in a certain direction.
I did go to college for illustration but I dropped out, it was a struggle, I struggled with this a lot. It wasn’t something that just came naturally, which I was always concerned about. Art is used as a therapy and people enjoy it and it’s always fun to be around creative people. So I was just curious as to why it was so hard for me to do. I discovered myself in my own particular process with the way that I work, and it changed everything. So no it wasn’t something I always wanted to do, but I found a love for it, and I think that the people that follow what I do and support what I do in the past five years, it gave me a sense of purpose. Like okay this is what I’m meant to do, and I grew to love it.
Does it surprise you the amount of support you’ve gotten? You’ve said you’ve had Stan Lee and Michael Rooker praise your work, Whoopie Goldberg too. Does it surprise you that you’ve gained such a notoriety for something you didn’t expect you’d be doing?
CJ: Hell yeah. It’s shocking. Again because I think that in Western culture we have this status quo step by step process of what is gonna lead you to the light, what’s going to make you successful, and that’s through go to college, get a job, start a family, get the white picket fence, all that stuff, and it’s very rare that people promote an outside of the box thinking on how to follow your passions and create a life. So when this started happening I was going to dip out of this, I wasn’t even going to be an artist, but when Stan came around it really changed everything. I was about ready to just stop. I really knew how I was doing so I can legitimately say that I’m still an artist because of Stan Lee. It gave me the spirit to keep moving forward.
Because of all this stuff happening, like being on The View and doing work for Michael Rooker and Whoopie Goldberg and having some interviews with Stan, him endorsing the project, it’s miraculous in a way because I was continuously beat down for being an artist, that’s kind of the standard. Most creative people are like oh you know I was told this would never happen, all my art teachers in high school, my college instructors and peers thought I was a joke, so I left and I started going to the people and they said yeah this is cool stuff, and they kept supporting it, so I just followed what worked, and I just said , okay. I’m going to do what I feel is right.
There’s an interesting parallel between the way you said you lived your life and the way even your art is made. You make your art on glass and that’s a very unconventional way of making art, art. I was curious about how did you arrive at making glass art in the first place?
CJ: That is a very metaphysical and philosophical answer. I tend to over think things a lot, and I get very deep into my own head, and I guess you could say that it is a reflection of myself.
Really?
CJ: Yeah, absolutely. When people, especially some of the things that I’ve noticed when I was in part college, a lot of the things that people were struggling with were transcending information from their imagination to this reality this point of existence through sculptors or paintings or body of work, whatever it may be with a big block of getting that vision out, and I felt this whole heartedly.
So when I started discovering this process I felt that circuit just open up and things just started pouring out that I never thought I could do. So a lot of what I do is purely instinctual and I don’t even understand how I do a lot of it. I feel like I just let go of control in this world that I exist in just starts to pour out and the only way I can really describe it is a portal. When I start carving and scraping and molding and building these shapes into the glass and opening this door into a reality that only exists to me, and allowing people to see into that. I think that’s the best way I can describe it. I think you really have to connect with what you’re doing. You get what I’m saying? You really have to connect what you’re doing.
I’m curious as to know why you gravitate towards the fantasy genre comic book realm, and I can assume that you have some sort of connection there.
CJ: Well it’s a two sided coin in this situation because at the time I started doing this I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that I had discovered something that made me feel like the implicate me, it made me feel at peace. Because there was a lot of depression, there was a lot of different things I was going through in college, and when I discovered this it gave me a sense of peace and I wanted to stick with it. I think that when you find something that you’re passionate about, now you have to figure out what you want to do with it. Especially art, when you have no boundaries, putting yourself in a boundary and committing yourself to a goal, committing yourself can be very challenging, but you have parameters.
So I think the hardest thing was after I discovered something I started building my own process that communicated my vision to people. I needed to do something worth it. So I chose comic-cons because I just went with what worked and people liked the way I did these things that they had been reading about and seeing for years when they were kids, and it was painting a joker, painting a batman, this is pretty wicked, it’s pretty rad. I just kept doing that till I figured out myself inside of that.
At one end of the spectrum I had no idea what I was doing, but at the other end of the spectrum I knew I was going towards something I just didn’t know what it was, and I felt that it would present itself when it was ready, I wasn’t trying to force it. So I have done a lot of the comic work and I have grown up with that stuff, so there is a personal connection with that, but in the same light there does come a point in a persons life where you have to make a step for what you do, and put your own messages out there.
We all kind of grow up reading about Batman and Superman and these traditional archetype stories then you eventually have to get into a point where it’s like, this is what I do. So it’s a little bit of both. I think we all have connections to these archetypes but there has to be a point where you bring something to thee table. I think everyone felt my journey, it doesn’t matter what career path you’re on.
Do you hope to leave your own creations, your own creations to the table? Do you hope to create something that another “CJ” in the distant future will create works of?
CJ: I don’t think it’s viable for a creative person to think about themselves that way. I think what that does is stops you from moving forward. If I were to allow myself to believe that a character, a creature, a project that I worked on is going to be the next Sandman, then there’s no room for improvement. So I think that as long as you look at everything as a learning experience, and you commit to doing something and you finish it, you’re always going to find something that you need improvement on.
So even if I wanted to see myself as this type of hypothetical person that we’re talking about, I don’t want to think that my rational mind would believe it. You don’t learn anything from the things that you don’t finish, and you never move forward on to something else if you don’t learn anything. So there’s always something to learn, and I’m always putting myself in this retrospective self reflective process. So even if I wanted to see myself, I just wouldn’t like “I’m going to be the next so and so.” I don’t even think I would believe it.
What’s next after New York Comic-Con? What do you hope to do next?
CJ: I have a few other different shows that I’m booked for through out the year, like there’s a big horror convention down in Orlando that I used to do, I haven’t done it in four years. One of my friends, Tony Todd who was Candy Man in Final Destination, is going to be there, so I decided to pick up the show, and go see him, and kind of retouch with some people back in that side of the country. I actually got invited out to Vienna for a major launch of their convention. There’s a big demand over there for the Western art and super heroes and there is a big comic book scene, but not a convention scene. This is going to be like the huge launch of their San Diego Comic-Con. So I was invited out to do this show.
I’m pretty stoked about it because every year, and this actually ties in full circle to what we were talking about, was like where does Atlas come from, every Christmas and New Year’s I have this tradition where I travel abroad, I spend New Year’s in a different city around the world. This past new years I went through Greece and Atlas and this other project, The Zero Mirror comes from my love of philosophy and anthropology and ancient culture, because I love learning about what makes us tick as human beings. I use that as like a platform psychologically to build projects off of because there is so much in the implicate of human being that can serve as creative forces. Because motivation is the driving force to anything we do in life.
So I like learning about different anthropological aspects of cultures so going to be there for Comic-Con is going to be fascinating because it’s going to help allow me to go there for the summer I worked but also see a different part of the world I haven’t seen. There’s Vienna and there’s Prague over there, I’ve always wanted to go there. So I’m pretty stoked about it, it’s always fun to go to a place where your senses, the five senses are completely active.
It’s very rare that we ever get to experience that because we are so focused on responsibility past, present, and future, and where you can just shut off and you’re in survival mode. You don’t speak the language and geographically you have no idea where you are at, and I think it’s going to be just cool.