“Have a process you can apply to any situation, space or time”: what we learned from Converse’s Lovejoy Art Benefit

The Converse Lovejoy Art Benefit commissioned 49 original artworks that are on auction now via Paddle8 to raise funds for Artists For Humanity. It’s Nice That has teamed up with Converse to introduce some of the amazing artists contributing to the benefit, and to take a look behind the scenes of the great work that they do.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve featured four artists who have each provided an artwork for the Converse Lovejoy Art Benefit. We’ve gained an insight into their practice and the journey they’ve each been on. Here, in a final article, we consider the lessons we’ve learnt along the way.

Stefan Marx: to make great work, find your “island-time”

Hamburg-based illustrator and artist Stefan Marx creates hand-written typographic prints and line drawings that ooze personality and the drawing that he donated to the charity auction is a black and white painting of a landscape in the Philippines executed using black acrylic paint on a fine canvas structure, which is reflective of the materials he uses in his practice as a whole.

Stefan says the piece fits in very well with his wider practice, “as the original drawings were also published in a zine I did with Benjamin Somerhalder of Nieves Books”. The piece plays with negative space and takes Stefan back to a specific moment in time. “[It’s] inspired by my travels and being on a certain ‘island-time’ mode, which I don’t have so much time for back home,” he explains, proving that holidays can be great for coming up with creative ideas (just tell that to your boss).

The idea stemmed from a drawing Stefan made while island-hopping in the Philippines. Compared to the original drawing, which was conceived spontaneously, the iteration Stefan made for the Lovejoy Art auction is more considered with Stefan’s studio as his backdrop and his memories to inspire him. Painted with a brush, it “has a difference surface and gesture” to the original yet maintains a palpable energy, with seemingly dancing palm trees and jiggling rocks. Stefan spent a handful of days on the artwork and while he had to be mindful of the size of the final piece, the process was enjoyable. “There weren’t many challenges, it was more fun to realise this project and the work I had in mind for it,” he says.

Dominique Petrin: it’s important to return to old work

For Montreal-based artist Dominique Petrin the freedom of the brief from Converse allowed the artist to return to a series of three silkscreen prints that she now sees as a “major turning point in [her] practice”. “I’m actually pretty attached to the series… They made me transition from object to installation and gave me my entrance ticket into the art world,” she says.

The three prints, Ara Hyacinthe, Ara Vert, and Concure, all portray different parrots and use pattern and the colourful plumage of the animal to create a garish yet considered series, a combination that has since become her signature. “When I was making these prints I absolutely didn’t want to communicate anything,” says Dominique. Converse’s open brief provided the artist with the opportunity to look back at her work and re-conceptualise it. “Looking back at them, I can see a satire of the obsession from contemporary living in disguising our anxieties into home staging,” she says.

Brendon Monroe: make art for the sake of art

Like Dominique, artist Brendon Monroe enjoyed the trust and independence the brief offered him to do his own thing. “Converse has always been super supportive of art making for the sake of the creative process,” says Brendon, a lesson anyone making creative work could do well to adopt as their motto.

Based in Los Angeles, the piece Brendan has donated to the auction is called Roll, a painting created using acrylic and latex, and is inspired by the “idea of moving fluid passing by”. “It’s an idea that’s been brewing through a lot of the work I’ve been doing,” says Brendon. “I feel like now it’s almost a marker as a piece. I like the place it was made in time, and with the other work I was doing.”

The painting took about three weeks to create and adopts a monochrome palette. It’s an immediate work and feels like an optical illusion, with a hypnotic rippling effect flowing through an abstract mass. This illusion has been achieved through precise composition and experimenting, involving Brendon sketching out the painting in a specific pattern texture to create these notions of “flow, motion, geometry, proportion and waves”.

Ben Jones: don’t take things too seriously

Precision also forms a key part of Ben Jones’ work for the Lovejoy Art Benefit. Los Angeles-based Ben’s piece titled LJ Painting One, uses Acryla gouache on canvas “because it imitates the paint bucket tool in Mac Paint the best”, with its uniformity providing a clean finish.

The painting is a two-panel work that contains the artist’s signature ladder forms and evolving figuration. Using a strict visual language of specific colours, block shapes and lines, Ben creates a carefully composed world that’s loaded with symbols that allude to a post-internet age. “Balancing colour with line” was the main challenge for Ben, but he manages to create something that feels playful, structured and little bit psychedelic.

Ben hopes to convey themes of process, change, language, culture and technology in his work and often references pop culture, though he’s unsure where his style actually derives from: “I can’t really explain directly how these ideas happen… I think with art you should barely understand what you are doing, in the hope that you can gain some new insight with the making or viewing of it,” he says.

With this open approach in mind, Ben’s process is left open and adaptable to allow him to constantly be open to new ideas. It is here that Ben shared his largest gem of wisdom. “It’s more important to have an approach or process that you can apply to any situation, space or time,” he says. “I like to have some general guidelines when doing a project… and I like to make sure a space is full of things with a really good sense of humour. Nothing should take itself too seriously, be it tool or a person.”

All 49 original artworks created for the Lovejoy Art Benefit have been showcased at the Converse World Headquarters in Boston for the past year. Now they’re available to buy via online auction house Paddle8. All profits raised from the auction will be donated to Artists for Humanity, a Boston-based not-for-profit company whose mission is “to bridge economic, racial, and social divisions by providing under-resourced urban youth with the keys to self-sufficiency through paid employment in art and design.”

Visit the auction page here to see the full selection of artworks being auctioned for Artists for Humanity