Transcript (Unedited)
Tom Heath
We are back for another installment of Meet the Artist inside of the Tucson Gallery at Proper Shops in downtown Tucson, 300 East Congress, right across from Hotel Congress. And every week we have a chance to talk with a different artist. Some have worked in our galleries, some on our online gallery, and others are just amazing people in our community. Today we have someone that fits all three categories. Welcome to the show, Mr. Joe Pagac. Rhymes with magic.
Joe Pagac
Hey, thanks for having me.
Tom Heath
Absolutely. I think a lot of people, when they see your name on the murals, they’re not exactly sure how to pronounce it, so we always tell them it’s Joe Pagic. Like magic.
Joe Pagac
Yeah, that’s the way to do it here in America. Actually, I just got back from finding some of my old relatives in slovakia, and they pronounce it Pagache. It’s a pastry over there.
Tom Heath
Well, there’s nothing that rhymes with that.
Joe Pagac
We’ll go with Pagac.
Tom Heath
Pagac and magic. And I think that it’s appropriate because people see your work and they’re like, man, there’s some kind of magic going on there. You’ve been a tucson muralist for how long?
Joe Pagac
I started when I was 24, so it’s 18 years. I’ve been doing this full time.
Tom Heath
Wow. What were you doing before that?
Joe Pagac
I was a loan officer for a little while.
Tom Heath
I did not know that.
Joe Pagac
An assistant manager at einstein’s bagels. I worked busting tables at tgi fridays.
Tom Heath
Were you doing art during this time too, or no, you’re just like, you know what? I’m tired of this bagel. I’m going to go climb on a scaffolding and paint something on the wall. And how do you get from bagels to nols?
Joe Pagac
So I was in college, didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. And my sophomore year, I took a drawing one on one class just to kind of fill the space. I needed a full load of credits, and the teacher took me out in the hallway, and she was like, wow, you’re so good at this. Are you an art major? I was like, no. And she was like, you should do it. You should do it for a living. I was like, Nobody makes a living as an artist, right? You know, it’s like the joke is, you know, what is the what does the artist say to the engineer or whatever? Do you want fries with that? So I you know, I was like, really? You think I could make a living at this? And she was like, yeah. So I ended up just switching majors, became an art major. And then when I graduated, I didn’t really know what to do with that. So I put an ad in the paper, artist for Hire. And I think because murals are their own billboards, it’s just I started getting more and more mural calls because I was doing everything at first.
Tom Heath
What was your first mural, do you remember?
Joe Pagac
I think the first mural I did that was for just a total stranger. It was a fence between a guy’s yard and his neighbor’s yard. He had me paint an underwater scene, and he had me include naked mermaids on it. And he had me paint the neighbor’s side too, while she was out of town. And she came home and was like, furious and then actually built a wall right against his fence. But it was a cool mural, and then it was just like just little jobs. And the more murals that did is.
Tom Heath
A mural still there? Can you still kind of see it if you haven’t been driven by there?
Joe Pagac
It’s in the neighborhood over by where Magic Carpet golf used to be.
Tom Heath
Yeah, we don’t want to be too specific with all your fans. We’ll start out a frenzy over there tearing up the neighborhood.
Joe Pagac
I don’t know. I bet if that guy is still in that house, that mural is still there.
Tom Heath
18 years.
Joe Pagac
18 years.
Tom Heath
So you do one and then someone sees that and like, man, this is pretty cool. Can you do one for me?
Joe Pagac
So it was word of mouth. And then I ended up getting hired by an interior designer, and she would actually we were doing a whole bunch of murals up in, like, fancy houses in the foothills, and so it was a lot of tuscan scenes and stuff like that. But I did that for a number of years for her. And the condition was she got to sign my work, but I could use it in my portfolio because she already had a big name going. Okay, so right off the bat, in my mid twenty s, I was already getting these big commissions to paint these Italian murals, and I was getting to paint for three weeks and then go to Italy for two weeks and then paint for three weeks and then go to Mexico. And so it kind of started this lifestyle that I still keep going where as soon as I’ve got money in the bank to leave town, I go travel or hike for five months or whatever.
Tom Heath
In the brief time that I’ve actually known you, you’ve been hiking across the United States, you’ve flown to Hawaii to see a volcano. You flew somewhere to get involved with the avalanche. You’d make snow angels. You just got back from Europe, and somewhere in there you decided you’re going to walk across tucson to raise money for the food bank dressed as a hot dog.
Tom Heath
And I haven’t known you that long, right?
Joe Pagac
This was all in the last year, I think. Everything. You just last six months, right?
Joe Pagac
So, yeah, that’s just how I’ve always kind of lived my life, since being an adult is like, as soon as there’s money in the bank, I hit the road. You and I have different adaptations of being an adult.
Tom Heath
I’m just saying. That’s awesome. And it’s fantastic. And then the way you generate your money, I think brings you enjoyment too, right?
Joe Pagac
Yeah, for the most part. There’s some jobs that I love more than others. I think a lot of the bigger scale stuff gets into more feeling like you’re doing a construction job. And sometimes I’m like hanging off a nine story building on a window washer scaffold and 100 degree heat, and it’s humid and I’m miserable and afraid for my life, and I’m doing that for weeks. So you get there’s some trade offs, right?
Tom Heath
Can go to Hawaii. That seems fair.
Joe Pagac
I think it’s not as glamorous once you start getting into the really large scale murals. The one I’m working on this week is over at FC tucson, which is a soccer club. And it’s indoors, it’s ground level. It’s like a nice flat wall. It’s air conditioned. It’s so nice. And I just put on like, podcasts and audiobooks while I’m working or call friends I haven’t talked to in a while and just chat while I paint. So those are the dream jobs.
Tom Heath
There you go. So if you’re a muralist, the advice is to find the indoor, ground level, air conditioned jobs.
Joe Pagac
Exactly. The only problem is those who don’t advertise for themselves. It’s the scary outdoor ones that keep getting your business.
Tom Heath
Let’s be clear. You’ve done murals all over the United States. You’ve done Washington, DC. Where is Joe padrick art right now?
Joe Pagac
So I have a whole bunch in Washington, DC. I’ve done them in Miami, Las Vegas, La. Tons of them in Phoenix. I have a whole bunch in pecos, Texas. weirdly, because it’s one of those things where once I did one, they kept bringing me back, so I’ve gotten around quite a bit.
Tom Heath
Does your style remain like when you look at a Joe Pagac in tucson, especially with the more recent last ten years, there is some element that people would recognize as being Joe Pagac. Does that sort of carry through? Do you have jacobs riding bicycles in Vegas?
Joe Pagac
Yeah, the one in Vegas, the big one I did was for Buffalo Exchange, and so there’s like buffalo floating on balloons and helping each other up to grab clothes out of trees and stuff like that. So some of that carries over. The ones in DC. I don’t think you would recognize his mind at all. They’re much more realistic. They’re historical people and events and stuff like that.
Tom Heath
I do remember, I don’t know how many years ago, but you did that mural of the postal worker, the jazz musician.
Tom Heath
And that got like national attention because I remember reading about that in a lot of different newspapers.
Joe Pagac
Yeah, so that one has gotten a ton of attention. Some of the murals I do, the one here in tucson, actually, with the people and animals riding bicycles that I did in 2017, I see that everywhere. When I’m traveling, people use it as just if they’re talking about tucson in a magazine or a news article. That one shows up a lot, which is really cool to see.
Tom Heath
So then they don’t get your permission to do that, right? Because it’s a public art.
Joe Pagac
Right?
Joe Pagac
As long as you’re showing the surrounding area, too. If it’s just a street shot, it’s a fair game. And they’re not advertising anything besides tucson for me. I’m not super litigious or anything anyway. I just love having that art go around the world and knowing that people are excited about it and want to use it to represent the city.
Tom Heath
Do you ever reach back out to the drawing teacher that encouraged you?
Joe Pagac
Yeah, you know what I did? I went back and found her years later and I was so excited to tell her that I had made a living at it and she had no idea who I was.
Joe Pagac
She had a lot of students, I’m sure.
Tom Heath
What are you, that pastry guy? pajak.
Joe Pagac
What is that? Although I did recently, like two years ago, I was on a road trip and I looked up my high school art teacher because I took some art classes before and I looked her up. She was in idaho and she was super excited. We went and got dinner together and it was really cool to see her and catch up. Nice.
Joe Pagac
And she still follows me. I think a lot of my art teachers and just regular teachers from earlier life still follow me. I’m friends with them on Facebook and stuff.
Tom Heath
Is there a retirement plan from your list? Is there a transition? Do you start doing more traditional canvas art or are you just always going to be hanging off the roofs?
Joe Pagac
I already am working on I’d really like to get more involved with the national parks and stuff like that because one of my big loves is just being outdoors and hiking and camping. So in the background, in my evenings, I’m home working on a whole bunch of designs and stuff like that for the national park system, and I’m hoping to start getting that going more. One of my dreams would be to just travel from national park to national park in a van or something and just well in there, work on merchandise and artwork for them and then travel to the next one. We’ll see.
Tom Heath
Everything just gets combined into one thing. That’s perfect.
Joe Pagac
Totally. So we’ll see. That’s kind of one of the things I’m pushing for right now. I have a number of kids books that I’ve written and illustrated, but they’re just not quite where I want them to be yet.
Tom Heath
Oh, wow.
Joe Pagac
So I even have printed out hard copies of them, but they’re not quite where I want to put them out in the public.
Tom Heath
So that’s another you said you’re writing them, so you’re doing the story as well?
Joe Pagac
The story illustrations, yeah. And then on top of everything else I’m doing. I have now like four properties that I’ve bought and fixed up over the years and made all fun and quirky and artsy. Just anything I can do where I’m creating something with my hands makes me happy. So construction falls into that really well, actually.
Tom Heath
I remember when we were talking originally about the gallery, and one of the goals here was to help up and coming artists get a little bit more knowledge, exposure, and a chance to meet some of the more experienced and seasoned artists. And I was like, what advice would you give to a muralist that’s starting out? And you said, don’t do it.
Joe Pagac
Right.
Joe Pagac
I think it’s a great if you’ve got what it takes to come out. And you have to be good at art, but you’ve also got to be good at marketing yourself and doing business and doing all the paperwork and stuff like that. On a good year, I would say I do painting a third of the time, and the rest of it is like going to meetings and doing mock ups and doing all the tax work and all that stuff. So it’s not just painting every day. Unless you have an agent, the tax.
Tom Heath
Stuff gets you every time.
Joe Pagac
Tax stuff, yeah.
Tom Heath
When you’re doing these mock ups, I’m assuming there’s a combination, but how often does someone come to you and say, just create us something? Or do they come and say, hey, we want pigs on balloons, or it’s the full range.
Joe Pagac
I honestly I prefer when people have something they want. If someone just says, Create me something awesome, I want it awesome. I want it different than anything else you’ve ever done, but I want it just like your style. That’s really hard.
Tom Heath
That’s where the magic comes in, right? There you go.
Joe Pagac
And sometimes I just get those. Like, I’ll be laying in bed at night, at 11:00 at night. It’s like, I’ve got it and I got to wake up and put it down. But sometimes those are hard. And if somebody comes in, they say, I want a buffalo floating on balloons. I can put that together quick.
Tom Heath
So you’re some of your ones here in tucson, like the whales, was that you or was that a so the whales.
Joe Pagac
The whales was me. It was actually they made me tone it down. Originally, the whales had little sorrow scenes on their backs. They were like little floating islands with birds circling them. And there were scuba divers on bicycles riding on a beach below them and then floating and swimming up to swim with the whales. And they made me tone it down.
Tom Heath
Wow.
Joe Pagac
They were like, that’s a little much.
Joe Pagac
Some of that stuff gets pulled in when you’ve got corporate sponsorship.
Tom Heath
What’s the process then? Do you create something on paper? Is it digital? That exists somewhere? The scuba diving, bicycle riding?
Joe Pagac
So now I do everything on the ipad I switched over a few years ago, just procreate, which is, I think, what every single artist out there uses now. But before it was like pencil drawings, and then I’d scan them into the computer and try to manipulate them in photoshop a little bit and then go from there. But yeah, I mean, I have so many mural designs and just art designs in general that because a lot of times it’s like three or four designs will go to a client and they shoot down three of them. They’re all just sitting there unused and.
Tom Heath
Unseen and then scaling it to a large building. Is it math?
Joe Pagac
It’s just a grid. Like geometry was actually a really useful class.
Tom Heath
Geometry? Geometry.
Joe Pagac
Not just the art for all of this stuff, for sculpture and art. And I do a lot of building stuff for hotel congress for years, building the Taco hand holes and the taco and the hands and all that. It’s all geometry and construction stuff. But yeah, it’s just a grid. I put a little grid on the drawing and then a huge grid on the wall. And I just fill in square by square, kind of where stuff is going to go roughly. And then from there, once I kind of know where stuff is going, I just learned the hard way. It’s like you’re up there on the wall and you’re like, there’s no way a nose is this big. And then so you make it smaller and then you get down after a couple of hours of painting and realize you made it way too small. So I just trust the grid. It gets things to look right in the end.
Tom Heath
Some of your projects. Is it there’s a sculpture coming, I think, or is it out?
Joe Pagac
The sculpture is done. We’re just waiting for the install. But it’s going right up on the river path between it’s like St. philip’s Plaza and the retail racetrack. So it’s a Havalina riding a tandem bicycle. It’s riding on the front and you can sit on the back and take photos with it and stuff like that, but it’s life size and it’s going to be super cool. It’s my first bronze sculpture. I’ve got a sculpture down in the airport already between the ticket counters that I did, that I did all by hand. But this one’s had the help of a foundry.
Tom Heath
Do you have any idea of the release date for that tandem bike?
Joe Pagac
I don’t know. We’re hoping to get it in the next week. We actually almost installed it this week, but there’s crazy weather going on and we didn’t want to install it while it was snowing. So I think it’s going to go in this coming week, but I think we have to let it set up with the concrete and stuff like that. So I think next month will be the unveiling and I’ll definitely let everyone know about it.
Tom Heath
A couple of last questions here. These are just for my benefit. But do you work on multiple projects at the same time? Or are you one and then move on to the next?
Joe Pagac
No, I always have like ten or 15 projects in the pipeline that I’m in different stages.
Tom Heath
That’s why I can never get a hold of you.
Joe Pagac
Right, yeah. So there’s always like the one or two that I’m currently painting and then the ones that I’m working on mock ups for, and then ones I’m going to initial meetings for calls. So it’s a constant thing.
Tom Heath
And then all these cities where you’re putting up murals. Is tucson really as special as I think it is with the amount of murals we have here? Or is this really something we have across the country? And it’s just I see it because I’m in tucson.
Joe Pagac
No, I think tucson has got a couple of great things. One that I noticed is we have a huge painting season. Like you go anywhere else and it’s rainy or it’s snowing or it’s just not good for painting. So it’s really good to paint here because you can paint almost year round. The other thing is, tucson is just super supportive of the arts in general. People like to put their money into it. They like to put the press on it. They go and take photos with it and support it with their own pocketbooks if they can. It’s a really supportive city. And in general, we also have less vandalism of murals here. I mean, occasionally stuff gets tagged, but compared to a lot of cities, there’s plenty of cities out there that you just can’t keep a mural up. People tag over it within days and it’s just destroyed. tucson is a great place for murals, and I think there’s very few cities like that in the country that really are as supportive and have that many muralists. But I think one of the things is that tucson
Joe Pagac
is drawing them in and the ones that are coming up are like, really getting supported well and can make a living at it, so it makes it easier to I was.
Tom Heath
Thinking of just from the talent standpoint, but without the community support, without the respect, I guess. Yeah. It doesn’t matter how talented you are if you can’t paint because someone’s not going to pay you or they’re going to tag it or it’s going to be snowing.
Joe Pagac
Right?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Joe Pagac
And I think that’s what keeps a lot of the talented people here. It’s supportive, actually. When I graduated college, I was talking to all my classmates and was like, yeah, what are you guys doing when you graduate? And every single person was going to Los Angeles or New York, and I was like, Well, I’m going to stay here. nobody’s staying here. I’m going to see what I can do here if there’s no artists here.
Tom Heath
Were you born in tucson as well?
Joe Pagac
I was born in tucson, but for a number of years, I was one of the only muralists here working. So slowly, slowly, more murals have come up, and now there’s a huge community. But for a long time, I was like the only guy out there that was getting the calls I think made it.
Tom Heath
Do you have influences? Do you follow people on Instagram that you look at their stuff or you just don’t?
Joe Pagac
I’m not super into social media, and so I go on and post stuff on there, but I’m not really into it.
Tom Heath
I know you have time. You don’t have to have time, right?
Joe Pagac
And if I do waste time on there, it’s on reddit. I don’t know. And I’m not following any art stuff on reddit either. It’s like just all garbage. So I try to delete it when I can occasionally reinstall it.
Tom Heath
Where can people find what you’re posting? What’s your instagram? Facebook.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Joe Pagac
So my Instagram, I have Joe padg, which is my art stuff, and then Joe padget the person, is all my other stuff. I’m up to my hiking and traveling and stuff like that. The hot dog hike that I’m putting together to raise money for charity.
Tom Heath
Let’s talk about that.
Joe Pagac
Oh, sure.
Tom Heath
First of all, what is this and when is it happening?
Joe Pagac
So when I was hiking the Pacific crest Trail, I was doing a lot of wearing costumes while we were hiking. And I jokingly was talking to some of the people I was hiking with about getting hot dog costumes next, and nobody was into it, but I thought when I got home, I would do it. And then I thought, well, if I’m doing that, I should do it for charity and make a spectacle out of it. And then I mentioned to a number of people, and they were all really into it and wanted to join. So I decided just turned it into a big thing. So we’ve got 30 people dressed up as hot dogs hiking from March 15 and 19th. We’re going through the rincons and the catalinas. It’s going to be about 20 miles a day. So it’s going to be brutal. It’s going to be a hard hike. And then the hope is to just make a spectacle and steer people toward donating to the food bank. So you can go to Hotdoghike.com.
Tom Heath
I’m surprised that you’re all wasn’t taken already.
Joe Pagac
I know
Joe Pagac
it was a little more expensive than Net, but I paid the extra for it.
Tom Heath
Hotdoghike.com.
Joe Pagac
Hotdoghike.com. So that has all the information about it, and you can donate there. And then my other ones, it’s just Joe Pagac or Joe Pagac the person.
Joe Pagac
And then if you go on Google and type like Joe Muralist tucson, that will pull me up, and you can find me from there.
Tom Heath
Yeah, you can go on Google and find yourself with that easy to search. You’re doing something well, right?
Joe Pagac
Yeah.
Tom Heath
I appreciate it. I appreciate you being a part of the tucson Gallery. You’ve been kind of an anchor to help get this started as well. Your reputation people, when they see your name, they know it’s something of value and something that’s good for the art community. So we appreciate you being a part of that and look forward to kind of what the next projects are going to come out and can’t wait to ride a tandem bike with a Havalina.
Joe Pagac
Yeah, cool.
Tom Heath
That’s one of those things that when I was in Ohio, I never thought I would say.
Joe Pagac
Right, cool. Well, thanks for having me.
Tom Heath
Absolutely. And if you want to hear any of our other artist interviews, it’s called Meet the Artist. It’s on our website, the Tucsongallery.com. We have a new feature each week and then it’s followed up by meet and greet here so you can come live and hang out with the artist for a couple of hours, get a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, chat about process. It’s pretty casual and laid back. And then all of these are archived on our website. They’ll be on spotify and other places soon. It’s all called Meet the Artist. It’s a production of the tucson Gallery here inside of the proper shops, 300 East Congress. And tune in next week to find out some more exciting news from the art world.
Joe Pagac
All right, cool.
Tom Heath
Thanks, Joe.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Thank you for listening to Meet the Artist. This is a weekly production by the tucson Gallery located inside of the proper shops at 300 East conga Street in tucson, Arizona. The mission of the tucson Gallery is to support local artists by providing a space to show their art, a forum to engage with their audience, a virtual presence to connect with global patrons, an outlet to earn a fair price and an opportunity to hone their business skills. Head over to the Tucsongallery.com for more information about our live event. Listen to other Meet the Artist podcasts and check out the wide selection of art gifts and other items created by tucson’s modern, thought provoking and forward thinking artists.