Yo. What it be. What it is. What it do. Nate fucking Bibaud.
NEON SNOOZE SAT DOWN WITH ARTIST NATE BIBAUD TO TALK DIY PUNK ETHICS, THE INTERNAL STRUGGLE OF MONETIZING YOUR PASSIONS, AND ART AS THERAPY
“PARIS, TEXAS” by Nate Bibaud
When I first interviewed Nate in February of 2020, we were both in different places in our lives. Nate was (and still is) tired of painting commissions. They pay the bills, kind of, but truly strip so much of how and why he creates. I was at a less-than-perfect internship where they took my story of Nate, ripped it apart, and drained me and the story of any bit of creative freedom. Two years later, we found ourselves back in Nate’s art studio, this time as friends. Just two dudes kicking it. I don’t feel the pressure to tell Nate’s story anymore either (although he does have a pretty amazing one). Rather, I want to showcase what I love most about him and his art. Throw Chief Jagoda in the mix, and this is what three-ish hours of kicking it with Nate brought about. Cheers, Chad.
On the dilemma of expressing oneself creatively while trying to remain marketable…
The thing is, my job is the same as my recreational activity. Like if I just draw for fun in my sketchbook, I’m not going to make something that’s going to be sold on my website, I don’t have to post this on Instagram or anything. I’m just going to scribble in my sketchbook this afternoon with colored pencils, and I sit down and I make whatever the fuck I want. And it feels great. I’m like, “Oh, this is like a blast. I can’t sell it. It doesn’t even matter.”
I have to allow myself, because I feel like the rest of the time I have to think through this lens of, “Am I drawing something that I can sell?” You know what I mean? And I don’t always afford myself the time to just be like, well, if I make something that’s just for me, what am I going to do with it? And that’s such a stupid question to ask.
On punk/hip-hop influences…
I remember when I was a kid in high school being in the punk scene, even before high school being obsessed with skateboarding, obsessed with skateboarding magazines. Cutting the stuff out of the magazines, I had all that shit just stuck up all over my walls.
And then I got into the punk scene. I was in ninth grade. That was when I discovered zines. So I kind of grew up already on the idea of the DIY thing. A friend, Frankie, who’s now my tattoo artist, brought me to my first punk show, and seeing a merch table and realizing you can just photocopy stuff and staple it together and put literally whatever the fuck you want in it. And I’d flip through it and there’d be articles on zippers and jeans and fucking skateboards and different bands. No one’s ‘Professional.’ No one works for a magazine. And it’s made with cut-and-paste and masking tape, you know? And Sharpie markers.
My whole bedroom wall was flyers for [punk] shows. And it was all the handmade, cut-up-with-scissors, stuck-on-with-tape. And I still love the way that looks.
Skateboarding and punk very quickly lined up with each other. But what I liked about skateboarding is you just have this thing—the skateboard. You leave the house on a summer day, at 9 a.m. on your skateboard, and you just leave all day. So the skateboard was the day, you know what I mean? It was your freedom. This is the thing I do myself. You don’t have to have a team. You don’t have to have a coach. You don’t have to practice, no games. I work on the tricks that I want to work on, you get as good as you feel like being. So when I got into punk and it was the same thing, it’s completely do-it-yourself. There’s no league. There’s no setup. There’s no “record labels.” It’s pretty independent, you know?
In the old days, if you watched a biopic on a real band, you had to get discovered by a record label. And if you didn’t, you failed, and your band broke up, because you never got a deal. In punk that doesn’t even exist. And then bands would be like, “We want to have this on our album cover, but the record label didn’t approve our artwork,” or, “This song got cut from the tracklist,” or, “The producer decided to change our words.” None of that exists in punk. You just make your own album. You make your own album cover and you release it. This is what you do. You make it on cassette and you sell it, or you make it on CD—whatever you want. And then you make your own coverage. The idea of going through an institution to get it published or to get it made doesn’t exist.
I discovered hip-hop a few years later in high school. But then it was the same thing. I’m talking about the kids in their apartment who are just making it themselves and releasing it on CD or cassette. And that’s where real underground punk and real underground hip-hop are the same.
We’re just gonna do this ourselves. We need no approval; we don’t need a place. And that same thing with skateboarding, especially back in the day, where there wasn’t a skate park in every town.
On the excitement of youth and creating from a pure place…
I was 16 years old, and I was fucking obsessed. And then I don’t know, you just get older and you have access to more shit. And you’d become less obsessed with what you like. Because you have to come up with a couple grand every month to pay your bills. There’s so many other things to do now. You want to have a girlfriend and all these other things. At 16 I could just sit in my room all night and obsess over anything.
It’s almost like you gotta get over the hump of making mediocre stuff because you’re trying to make money off it. You gotta get past the fear of, “Well, if it’s just goofy, no one’s gonna want it.” But if it’s you, and it’s real, then it’ll come through and it’ll be even sicker.
We can get a real return and you can see it, you know what I mean? When you’re done, you have a thing. Money is a number. It’s a digital number now. Most of the time we don’t even see it. The collection of it is a weird thing. It’s like, money equals security in a certain sense. You know what I mean? Well, as long as I have this much money, I can then pay my bills. So then there’s this idea, I think in people’s heads, they think, “If I have more money, not only can I cover my bills, but then I can cover my kids’ bills.” The umbrella can always keep growing.
Art by Nate Bibaud
For me, I just want to make just enough money to then do whatever the fuck I want for the rest of the time. I definitely know that you’re gonna die. I already almost have a couple times, and I’ve already found out what it’s like to have life be totally different after a certain point. It’s never ever, ever, ever going to be the way it was before. Whatever amount of time ago. You definitely don’t know if you’re going to be alive tomorrow. That’s the other fucked up part. You really don’t know. You’re probably, most likely, but you might not. So you have to do stuff. Otherwise, what? Are you collecting money in a bank account?
At the same time, if I had a whole bunch of money, that could build an addition off the back of my house. So I don’t have to eat dinner in the basement art studio every night.
What is that number? None of us can answer that question though. None of us actually know what that number of money – or thing – is. When are you ever gonna fucking chill? Never, dude, you’re never gonna chill, because you have this opportunity to live and explore all there is to life. So, if you have more money, you’re just gonna keep spending it on those experiences.
The other crazy thing is that you have to run around in circles, you know what I mean? You have to have a cell phone bill. In order to have a cell phone bill, you have to have an address. And then if you have an address, chances are you have to pay for that too. It’s a never ending cycle and you have to do so much of it. It sucks up all your brain space.
I think that’s why we’re all crazy, because the actual amount of brain space we have to just exist and enjoy ourselves is so slim. Because even when you’re face to face with people that you like, and you’re enjoying yourself in the backyard, the back of your mind is going, “I got to stop and pick up this at the store, and then tomorrow, I gotta get to this thing, and if I don’t pay my thing, and oh my god, fuck, I gotta get the thing!” You know, there’s something to be said of just finding fun and doing nothing.
On finding a path post-grad…
I probably would have benefited if someone sat me down and was like, “This is how you’re gonna do it. You’re gonna live in your parents’ house for the next few years, start to build up your own business or make your own whatever. You are going to work at this place.” I didn’t have any thought process toward what I wanted or what I was going to do or how I was going to do it.
What happens is, everyone was in school, and then they get out and they get shitty fucking office jobs, where you sit in front of a computer just clicking on nonsense all day. Or answering phones. There are three Zoom meetings. We had to go to college and get into debt so that we can work in a place and do that nonsense all day. Just nonsense.
“A lot of times, a good experience is the same when you’re 22 as it is when you’re 38. Like, chillin with your friends when it’s nice out and eating something that tastes wicked good after you just smoked a joint or something . . . Honestly, dude, it’s funny, because my favorite thing – my number one hobby, I guess, if you want to say – is making art.”
And the job environment is just, in general, toxic. You clock in with a bunch of weirdos that you don’t know, from a hole in the wall. And you’re like, “We all work at Salomon and Manford,” or whatever the fuck. “This is the Salomon and Manford team. This is my coworker, Jan. We work together here. Blah, blah, blah. We all hate it here. Do we all have something in common?” The only thing you have in common is that we all fucking hate this job.
Like, what do you want to do? We don’t know what we want to do. But we hate it here. And I will tell ya someday, “Well, we’ll get out of this position. We’re just building up to get the next pay grade,” or, “We’re doing this to get a commission check. And then if I get that commission check, maybe I’ll get a raise.” You’re getting caught on the hamster wheel of bullshit. Unless you love it and you love doing your job. Great. And sure, do it. That’s not me—literally designed to be constantly crunching numbers. Yeah, they can work those jobs. That’s cool. I don’t know, man. I can’t envision myself doing it. I feel like I would go crazy.
I struggle with this lately, where on one hand, there’s the Buddhist idea: We’re all one thing, the universe is one thing. And everything in it is like tentacles off that one thing, that’s what everything is, you know what I mean? We’re all just one big mush ball and everything divides us off into different sections, but it’s all just one thing, bouncing off each other. But then it’s human and these all blend into one. We’re all human. We’re all one consciousness or whatever. But then I open social media and I see some of the shit that’s going on. And I’m like, “You’re not a part of that one.” I see some horrific shit that happens in Ukraine or something, and I see what people do to each other, happily. And it’s like, “Okay, we’re not all one, because they can’t be a part of the pack.” So, yeah, social media makes me struggle with the balance of “We’re all one,” and then “There’s no fucking way we’re all one.”
“BEASTIE BOYS” by Nate Bibaud
On getting into art as a profession…
I mean, as a kid, it was just what I did anyway. Through middle school, I was still obsessed with skating and magazines and all that stuff. I knew I could draw, but I never really tried. Because, you know, you’re a 12-year-old boy: “I just want to play Sega and ride my skateboard. I don’t really care about crafting a skill right now.”
Art became doing punk stuff. I had my leather jacket, and now we’re drawing logos on it with paint markers. And I noticed that all the shit that I drew on my jacket came out way better than what my friends drew on their jackets. Then friends started giving me stuff to draw on their jackets. They’d buy me a few cheeseburgers from McDonald’s and a pack of cigarettes and I’d draw whatever they wanted on their new jacket.
But I started meticulously doing this stuff. And it was wicked fun—that was wicked fun. So I got into art by doing all that stuff. But I wasn’t even trying to do anything cool—it was just stuff I was making with my friends.
When I moved after I got out of school, I moved down to Saint Croix and started working at a print shop down there. My roommate worked at one and he was a graphic designer, and he got me the job there to run the printing machines. I started doing graphic design on some of the jobs, making flyers or doing leftover work that my friend couldn’t get to because he was too busy that day.
Then I guess, after my accident, I got into art because when I was in the hospital, they would have these recreational activities where a therapist would come talk to you. And you’d either play checkers or, you know, practice writing or something because your arm wasn’t as mobile as it was before. I couldn’t sit there and play checkers. I get it, because it’s helping you to move your arm again, but I was still a 27-year-old man. And I was like, “I can’t sit here and play checkers, I really can’t do it.” So I asked, “Can I draw or something?” I learned how to hold a pen with my brace and my therapist would stand next to me and hold my arm because my arm wasn’t strong enough. But then, once I got out of rehab and I moved home, I would draw. I was still very weak at the time.
I couldn’t draw and paint like I can now. I can paint all day; my shoulders will get tired or whatever, but it doesn’t matter. But back in the day, I could only do it for periods of time. I would draw for like 45 minutes, and I’d have to stop for a while because holding my arm up, my shoulder hurt. So I couldn’t do elaborate stuff. For a while I was intimidated by color, because it was an extra thing to have to do. But someone gifted me a set of watercolor paints, the old school ones that come in the tray. And once the brush is in your hand, and there’s water in the cup, and you have your little tray, then you can do it all. I don’t have to ask someone to switch the brush every time I want to switch colors. Watercolor was the introduction to using color. And then once I found oil, it was like, “Okay, this is cool. This is where it’s at.” Oils are just silky and smooth and nice and pretty and fun.
On making commissions vs. selling prints…
I can absolutely do a commission for you. It’s common; it’s going to be boring as fuck for me and you’re gonna feel great about it. You’re going to be able to hang it on your wall and you’ll be happy and you can give it as a gift—but it does nothing for me. Because in the three days it’s gonna take me to make that painting for you, I could make something way cooler. And then I can sell it on my website, too, so it ends up being more beneficial to not do commissions anyways, because then I end up with stuff that I can sell as my own product after. I can’t sell a picture of someone’s family.
I guess I have tons of ideas. I always want to do different things. I like getting invited to things and going to places and having cool experiences. I want to just do more stuff for sure; I want to exist, I want to eat food. I want to have enough money that I can build a little addition off the back of my house, and I want to meet people and make stuff that I like. So, essentially, I don’t have a super, super, super precise goal. You know, it’s so hard to break through and there’s only a certain few that do.
A lot of times, a good experience is the same when you’re 22 as it is when you’re 38. Like, chillin with your friends when it’s nice out and eating something that tastes wicked good after you just smoked a joint or something. It feels just as good now as it did when I was 21. It’s still sick. It’s still the same thing. Honestly, dude, it’s funny, because my favorite thing – my number one hobby, I guess, if you want to say – is making art.
“MARKET STREET” by Nate Bibaud
Nate Bibaud is an Amesbury, Massachusetts, artist who specializes in watercolor, acrylic, and oil painting. Find Nate’s art at natebibaud.com.