Jack Malotte lives in Duckwater, Nevada, over four hours by car from Vegas, almost five hours from Reno. Maybe that gives you an idea of how great is the Great Basin that inspires much of his work. It doesn't begin to encompass the volume of his work, which can be glimpsed in a very lovely YouTube documentary. He and I shared a comfortable conversation on Skype, but even that didn't adequately prepare me for the humor, satire, and variety of the work that fills the Robert Z. Hawkins gallery at of the Nevada Museum of Art through October 20, 2019. Malotte possesses extra color perception, but can also distill emotion to the starkest black and white. He draws with passion and acceptance. You'll enjoy meeting him in this conversation, and it just might convince you to visit Reno, where there's still snow on the mountain tops, a river running right through town, and a beautiful museum with an open rooftop that looks out almost to Duckwater.

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Florence and Eunice, 1986. Collection of Tena Malotte. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Gwynned Vitello: I really enjoyed looking at the catalog of your work and reading about your upbringing. It seems like you grew up in an extended family and learned a lot from your uncle and stepfather, and not in a formal way. Maybe that gave you the ability to be observant and to entertain yourself. Tell me more about those memories that shaped your interests and outlook.
Jack Malotte: I grew up on a reservation in Reno, Nevada; though at that time, it was sort of on the outskirts of the city. As kids, we used to spend a lot of time down at the river, swimming and fishing – and being unsupervised. A lot of my friends did artwork here and there, but it wasn't really serious. Nobody went for serious; we just did little crafts and stuff.

When my uncle came back to Reno after getting a divorce, he stayed at my grandma's house where I was living. I would watch him draw in his sketchbook, and he was really good. I guess he was probably the first person I'd met who could really draw the way he did, and it was so easy for him. That got me to thinking that I was already kind of doing that too, but that I should up my level of thinking, I guess.

So watching him really motivated you. What did he draw?
Mainly, he would sit at the kitchen table and draw who was sitting there. You could call them caricatures, but they were very realistic, like he really knew them, knew their personalities. They were well-rendered pencil drawings, not just like stick-figure, cartoon stuff. He ended up working at the power company as a draftsman, so that was what I wanted to do when I was in high school. He definitely influenced me getting into drafting.

Your stepfather was a different kind of artistic influence.
Right, by the time he married my mom, he had learned from his mom how to do beading and tan hides. He worked in a hospital, and a lot of the doctors liked his work, so they were always commissioning him to make stuff for them. And everything he did sold! I got to see a lot of that art process, from being produced to being finished, so I got to see everything he did, really. What I liked about his work is that he had his own vision, so his craft seemed just a little bit different, like he had put more thought into it.

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The Cowboy Guy, 1981. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

You were surrounded by makers, and it looks like the Shoshone and Washoe tribes imbue much of your work. Are there identifiable differences between the artworks of the tribes?
There wasn't that much difference, though you could say there was a little in the design, like the crane birds in the images on the baskets. The Shoshones used lots of flowers, dragonflies and butterflies, more organic visuals. The Washoe tribes were more geometric and the trees were more based on triangles, so there are two definite styles there. I didn't know too much about my Washoe side until later on, as I got older and started meeting Washoe people – who turned out to all be my cousins!

Ah, the triangles! There are so many in your work, and I'm very curious about how you use them. In the painting Forest Spirit, they look like good spirits, but then there's Shot in the Heart and Sewage Pipelines where they look like weapons.
Well, like I said, I wanted to be a draftsman and I'd done a lot of drafting, so triangles are a big part of the work. You're working with triangles, T-squares and geometry, so when you make art, just imagine what comes out of that. I use the triangles in designs that come, like I said, from the Washoe side. I like that look, it's sort of like math. You know it's all counting, the designs are all counted - triangles are everywhere. When you look at a road in perspective coming at you, it's one big triangle.

When I do perspective, there's a lot of triangles, just from trying to figure out the depth. It just seems to pop up a lot when you use math and geometry. I like it because it fits perfectly with the designs I like to do.

You can make them into different designs. Like, I can make flowers that are just triangles. You can take those kinds of abstract pieces but make them all triangles in different sizes and colors. So I'll do little sketches like that every once in a while. But the triangle seems to be a base. If I have nothing to do, and I'm sitting there bored and can't think of anything, I'll grab my sketchbook and draw a triangle. Then I'll start and fill in that triangle, and make another triangle. It just kind of goes on from there; and I'll add other lines, even though sometimes it just functions as my base.

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Screaming Eagle Blues, 1989. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Having studied drafting and being comfortable with math concepts, as well as learning about basketry and beading, adds up to someone with a lot of interests. But it still seems like a leap to move from Reno to San Francisco to study at the College of Arts and Crafts.
Ha, I wanted to stay in Reno and hang out with my friends and, you know, party it up for a while. But then my mom, counselor and art teacher got together and plotted against me. Next thing I know, they got the funding and got me into the school. All I had to do was make my portfolio – and I was in!

So that's where you were going!
And I was only 17 at the time. When I graduated from high school I was 17, so that's why I didn't want to go. And actually, that first year of college was a waste.

I didn't realize you were so young. I knew you played football, so at that age, hanging out with your buddies would seem a lot better.
There was a guy named Ben from my reservation, and he was going to school there. He was a senior, so he was in on it, you know. They knew he had done well, so I was sort of like next in line.

The thinking being that if Jack could pull it off, so could you. Still, moving to San Francisco from there must have been a huge transition.
Yeah, it such a big culture shock. After graduation, I went to University of Reno for summer courses, then straight into art school right from there. I was actually in Oakland, but as you know, that's lot different from Reno. I wasn't even used to buses. And the people. I thought I was a good artist until I got there – and then realized I wasn't very good at all.

The people there who were freshmen, they were so good that it discouraged me at first. So I just decided I would push the part I was good at, and that was design. I went off on that and started doing design and illustration, as well as calligraphy, architectural rendering and lettering, all the stuff that makes good design. I did that for the first year, but then I saw that the folks in Fine Arts were having a better time, you know what I mean? I switched over to painting and silk screening and doing those kinds of things.

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Hummingbird Basket, 2015. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Coming from where you had so much freedom, I guess design seemed too constricting?
Yeah, everything had to be clean - everything, you know, done in a certain way. When I got into doing paintings and things, I still kept some of that tightness with me, but I was having more fun doing what I wanted, doing it in a more artsy way.

It ended up being a good academic experience, but you are so adept at lettering and designing logos, and must still have a fondness for that.
That's how I got my first job. I was doing artwork with the Reno newspaper and they had me pasting layouts of these little ads, the kind you see in small newspapers, car ads, those kinds of things. After that, they asked me to do logos, and I liked doing that. The other artists were doing them too, and everyone had their own style.

There is so much variety in your work, but you must have always enjoyed doing that as evidenced by your great posters, for example. There's one I especially like, The Cowboy Guy. It looks like it would be a great album cover.
I loved album covers. Record stores were the only place I got to see any artwork that wasn't in somebody's house. You know what I mean? I bought them because I liked the illustrations, even if I didn't particularly like the music.

I loved going to Tower Records to look at the album covers over and over. There were some beauties. What were your particular favorites?
Definitely, Santana. I like those covers, and I liked the spacey stuff. The Grateful Dead had some cool ones too. I'd only buy one record, but I'd go through and look at every record in the store.

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Free Pyramid Lake, 1982. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Before the newspaper, you spent time in Arizona, and wasn't that your first experience working with a gallery? It was Scottsdale, right?
That was one of my first exposures to the gallery scene and dealing with gallery people.

Hmm, at least at that point, not your favorite thing?
Well, it's different. You know, I was used to doing what I wanted, and painting what I wanted and what I liked. Then, when I got involved and started talking with those people, they started telling me what sells and what doesn't, and pricing and all of that. I know that it was all constructive criticism and stuff, but, like, I'd show them about ten different things, they'd like two of them, then tell me, “Do ten like this, and ten like that.” I couldn't produce that way.

I know you're very prolific, but it doesn't seem like it would be your style. How did you end up there?
After I got out of college, I was with this woman who was a ceramics major. We got married in Arizona, and my first job was with the forest service, with the wilderness patrol. I just started checking out galleries. I liked this one guy, who was a small dealer, and he was really honest with me, so we did a show together, though the rest of the galleries turned out to be just how he said they'd be. I did some small shows and kept working with the forest service, but when I got divorced, I moved back to Reno.

But you did get to experience the gorgeous Southwestern desert and skies.
I loved the area. Maxfield Parish was one of the first artists I really liked, and he drew a lot of his vision from the desert. When he moved to Arizona, he started doing the mountains and all those sunset colors. The way he did things really inspired me; he's one of my favorite artists.

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Untitled, 1983. Private Collection. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

So being back in Reno and working in the newspaper business, it looks like you got involved in different creative aspects of journalism, and I wasn't surprised to read that cartoonists were your particular favorites. You clearly have a natural ease and humor anyway, so you must have picked up some things from the cartoonists in terms of language and how images are rendered.
Well, what I really liked about what they did is that, in just a few lines, they make people look like themselves and do it with a sense of humor. There were some people at the newspapers who were just amazing who could make something fun with just a few strokes. I had a friend who went to art school in Phoenix. He studied cartoons and made great caricatures with just those few lines. I've tried, and just can't do that; it's just too hard.

Well, I think you draw very expressive faces that show a lot of character. Do you sketch them out first or draw from photographs?
They're all different. Sometimes you sketch them out like you said. Sometimes I'll just do it right on the paper and work out the problems there. I approach things differently at different times.

So, when you were with the various newspapers you never tried comics yourself?
No, I tried a little bit, but they had other artists who, I think, were better.

Well, maybe you don't feel you excelled in comics, but those logos you came up with, like Heathen Nation, show a clever way with words.
I love those things that I learn from friends. You know, we'll be sitting around talking and somebody will say something crazy like that and I'll go, “That's neat!” and write it down. Then, a couple years later, I might go through my sketchbook and see a phrase and want to whip out a quick logo. Just a quickie, and that's how it happens.

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Untitled [Hot Shot, Arizona], 1976. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

So, in this line of work, you had the opportunity to get involved with social causes, right?
That started with my aunt. She was involved with politics, with water rights and fights around the casinos, all that kind of stuff. She was one of a kind. She came to me one day when she was working with the Shoshones as an organizer and asked me to do a banner for their newsletter. I started getting involved, meeting with the older Shoshone people, learning about their concerns. They were actually like my older cousins, they knew my mom and dad. So it was easy for me to kind of just move in, to get involved with all the Shoshone issues. Before that, I was just doing my own thing, working but not being involved.

In the documentary, when discussing Heathen Nation, you advise the viewer to look up the word “heathen”, and the etymology indicates it's “from the heath”, or, at the very least not a believer in organized religion. You are a spiritual person, though.
I don't do the organized stuff.

I don't know how you could live in such a quiet, beautiful place without being spiritual in some way.
Yeah, it's different, and, you know, I'm by myself a lot, ever since I worked for the Forest Service. I was a wilderness patrolman. I would be with another guy, who was my helper. We worked together, but he never talked either. We'd work for ten days, and both of us would be quiet for ten days. Then, when I'd come home to my wife, it was like I forgot how to talk!

Ha, I guess I can see how that would happen .... because you were out of practice! But to me, you seem almost gregarious, at least, very comfortable and easy to laugh. I would say you seem very at peace.
It took me a long time to be happy with myself.

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Great Basin Marsh, 2003 Collection of the Nevada State Museum. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Really?? You seem so social, and you had this big family where you were used to being around lots of people. Though you also seemed to enjoy your quiet time.
When I lived in Reno, I had a house where my friends would come over all the time, and they knew I was home all the time drawing. I didn't have a TV then, so they would just come over and read, just hang out, mess around, listen to music, you know, just hang out. So it didn't bother me to have people hanging out, talking to me. Then when I moved to Duckwater, I'm the only one there and I have no one that comes by. I really don't see anyone unless I need to, and well, I got to the point where I really don't like people around, watching me, you know? Ha, I guess it kinda bothers me.

I can understand that. I really like alone time after work.
Well, most of the jobs I've had, I've worked by myself.

Forest service is definitely a good example. I love the painting you made from the lookout. To be surveying all that gorgeous land was pretty ideal.
That's a drawing I made of a friend who lived there. He'd come back from grocery shopping and walk up and down the steps of the fire lookout tower, like, back and forth about six times to unpack his groceries. But yeah, it's a beautiful place.

I'm sure you had lots of encounters with animals and birds, and I love the way you draw them, especially the eagles. The eyes make such intense contact!
I like doing that. I've seen them up real close; wild ones, real close. And when you see eagles like that, they really lodge in your memory. And the eyes are the first things that stick in your mind. When I was younger, I used to walk around the mountains, climbing the cliffs. One time, this eagle comes soaring about three feet above me. He didn't see me, and I didn't see him until he was right above me. And he was hovering because of the wind. He looked at me, and just kind of flew off. But the way he looked at me, you know, I'll always remember those eyes.

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Three Eagle Tribes, 2008 Collection of Dr. Sharon Malotte. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

So do you draw or paint from a memory like that?
Like I said, those eyes just stick with you. When I draw the eagles, I draw the eyes first, and same with the mountain lions. I've seen a lot of mountain lions close up, and the first thing you spot is their yellow eyes. Wolves are like that too.

Speaking of color, you make stunning use of it in your rendering of atomic bombs. I'm used to seeing black and white photographs but yours are entirely something else!
I use color in most things because I like to catch people's attention, and the first thing that does that is color. The first reaction to seeing those is “how pretty” because I use nice, pretty bright colors. Even people I've known a long time will see them and have the same take until they look and see what's underlying, what it really is. I explain to them that the radiation coming off is those colors I put in, since that's what the radiation seems like in my mind. I like to use color first to catch their attention, and draw their interest into what is actually going on in the image.

That said, the black sagebrush in Ghost Images is really dramatic. How do you decide when to use black and white, or more of a monochromatic palate?
My first love has always been black and white because I had a Rapidograph in college. It's a mechanical pen, and really nice for drawing, so that was my first love – black and white. I wasn't that comfortable yet with color, and I did a little bit by adding it on. I had to use color my own way because even in college, I just didn't have the color part wired.

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Used and Abused, 1982. Courtesy of the artist. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

Like you didn't have color confidence?
Yeah, it came about 15 years later, after I got out of art school. I always liked black and white and still do. I like the way it looks graphically. Black just looks cool.

When you watched your uncle drawing, it was black and white, right?
Yeah, just straight pencil. No color. Plus, when I was a kid, my Mom had these encyclopedias, and I liked the artist Aubrey Beardsley. I copied his stuff line for line. That was actually my first experience with any kind of artist and it got me going.

I wonder about your thoughts on color in printmaking, as well as how you feel about monoprinting.
Well, monoprinting is fun because you only have to clean up once, and everything will stay wet. All your inks will stay wet for three or four days if you have it right. When you start out, you have only a few colors, and then as you progress, maybe the second day, you add more colors, and after a while, you have a big palette of all these different colors, and they're all wet so you're still able to keep adding and printing with these. And then you only clean up once, and that's what I like! When I do silk-screening, it's mainly black and white, but sometimes I use color and sometimes I silk-screen on top of mono, kind of put the two together.

Printing is how I started because I didn't want to paint, like, twenty different things that all kind of look similar; so I was able to print and just do one good drawing, have that all in one good shot. Then I'm able to sell those things to people who couldn't afford an original. I could make them cheaper, sometimes just give them away if I'd print on cheap paper. I'd just give those away to get my art out there; it's just really easy to do.

More people have seen my work on t-shirts than in galleries or museums. I've had people say they couldn't afford my work, so that's why I do t-shirts. I've had people take my shirts, put them on a stretcher bar and have them mounted.

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Pyramid Lake, 1992. Private Collection. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art

There's a scene in the documentary where you're driving around in your truck in Duckwater and you talk about inspiration. Expand on that a little.
I had been to Duckwater before moving there, but I'd never driven around the area. I moved from Pyramid Lake, where you have this lake that dominates the landscape. The shape is different, there's more vegetation, and I was inspired by it and how it looked. Then when I moved to Duckwater, I realized - they don't have a lake! It's just big mountains and dry lakebeds. So I'd drive around to get a feel for the area and memorize certain places I liked. When I got home, I'd start sketching and making things up. Images would pop in, and I'd develop them even more. Once when I went up to Montana, I visited Glacier National Park. We were up there for a week, and when I got back, all I could do is drawings that looked like Glacier.

Other than getting ready for the show, what's keeping you busy now at Duckwater?
I'm always working on stuff and I've got a bunch of projects at home. Some are drawings I did when I was at Pyramid Lake, and later on, at Duckwater. I took those same designs, and a lot were on screens already. When I see something I like, I'll just take that and improve it. I've done things for the tribe, historical things, graphics. But all my work now is things that are out of my head, things I've been thinking about for a long time. Some of my old prints are still on screens, so I can still print them but I use them in a different way. I'll use them in a circular pattern, double images, change colors. Play around mainly, a lot of playing around.

I know you have so many prints in your studio, rows and rows of them, that there's no shortage of inspiration. Maybe you just wake up and see them in a different way.
I'll go through my stuff and pull out some prints that I never really liked or that needed more work. I might just add watercolor or something to the top. But I'm always kind of taking those old pieces and adding on them because, to me, they seem weak; some are not that great, you know? I have so many prints I can do that. I can pull out 10, 12 of them, play around and see how things work. I don't have to worry about ruining anything because I can print more if I want.

That's a big thing too. I don't like ruining stuff. If I do it bothers me, so I'll either just paint over it one color, start all over or try and resuscitate it. If it doesn't work, I'll paint over it, start over.

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Untitled, 1985. Private Collection. Image courtesy Nevada Museum of Art [blue lake with yellow clouds panorama]

So you really never give up on any of them?
No. Then I'll pull out things I see and wonder why I quit. I'll look and wonder why I quit this thing, that it must be something, and I'll try and figure it out. Sometimes I wonder why I put it away in the first place. I do that a lot. I'll sort of paint myself into a corner and then can't figure out what to do, so I'll put stuff away and it sits around for a year or two, whatever, until I remember it and try and figure out what went wrong the first time. When Ann Wolfe was looking through my work, she pulled out things I thought weren't finished; but to her they were, so I just signed them and let them go!

Well, then, maybe you never really did paint yourself into a corner. It's terrific that it's always a new discovery for you.
There's always something you can do. A lot of my paintings have come around because of that. When I kept making what I thought were mistakes, I'd do other things and they come out good.

So no artistic temper tantrums that result in you tearing up a piece of work.
I've never done that. I've gotten mad, but I've never done that!

"The Art of Jack Malotte" is on display at the Nevada Museum of Art through October 20, 2019.