Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Age 40 and currently living in Los Angeles, California.

What made you want to decorate public utility boxes? I responded to a call for public art to the city of Culver City. They wanted to decorate boxes and I had this idea.

Where do you go to get the pictures printed to be glued on? Do the people working there think you’re crazy for blowing up random street pictures? I use a printer that usually does car wraps and billboards. I think they must think that it is a mistake.

How do you pick which box to decorate? People usually hire me to decorate specific boxes.

Have you ever seen a utility box you’ve decorated no longer decorated? I had one, a nice one, in Hollywood, which was painted out by a graffiti abatement team.  Ironically, I was working for another graffiti abatement team to put the images on the box. The two teams were having a graffiti abatement turf war.

Have you been questioned by the police while you were applying the photos onto the boxes? Surprisingly, I have never been questioned while installing these.  People just assume that you are doing something official.

Any interesting stories? On several occasions, friends who are visiting from out of town have run across my utility boxes and taken photos of them as a curiosity, only to be informed later that I made them.

Are you currently working on anything? I am doing a similar project in Bryant Park  in NYC which will be done soon. I also have some sculpture exhibitions coming up.

If you had a million dollars what would you do? I might look into getting health insurance.

If you could multi-task very well, what would you like to do all at once? Hmm…cook breakfast for the whole neighborhood on my hotplate.

Featured in the Gallery section of issue No.5.

www.joshuacallaghan.com

(Source: titlemagazine.net)

Posted 9 months ago with 18 notes
Tags: art  art interview  installation  joshua callaghan  title magazine