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Dennis McNett: Yeah, I've been making things since I can remember, since I was little. I remember sitting around with my grandparents, actually my great-grandparents. My great-grandfather was blind, and he used to pretend he could see what I was drawing. I'd draw something and he would say "Oh, wow! Draw some more!" I knew he was blind but I thought there must be something to this stuff if he could actually see it.
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Yeah, because he was so encouraging. I was probably like four or five. If you get that type of encouragement early on, then it kind of sticks with you, I think.That's nice. A lot of your work is sort of vicious--scary almost. There's a lot of predators from the animal kingdom. Why do you like making stuff like that?
I get that a lot, and I don't view my stuff as vicious. A snow leopard is a good example. I was watching Planet Earth videos and they have that one episode on snow leopards. I'm into narrative work and I'm into mythology, so when I saw that I was like, "Wow, this is like a real life mythical creature!" They've only been caught on film like once, they're damn near extinct--very hard to find. They're very illusive and all of their features are very exaggerated. Their paws are twice as big as normal leopards and their tails are nearly twice as long for balancing on those cliffs. Their terrain is at more than a 90-degree angle. They just sit and they watch all these goats jumping by, and when they see one they want they run down the side of the cliff. They grab the goat, kill it, and then they drag it right back up to their den. When I saw that I was just like "Fuck!" So I don't view any of these things as vicious. I used to have a timber wolf when I was younger.

She was three-quarters. Her mother was 100% wolf and her father was half husky, half wolf.
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No, she was amazing. She would just hang out right by my side all the time. When she was pissed she would look at you--not me though—and walk up to the person real fast, throw her front feet down, throw all the hair up from her back, and curl her lips up and expose all of her teeth. She wouldn't make a fucking sound though! That would sort of freak people out.Yeah, that's terrifying.
So I started using those types of animals as characters just because they're so alive, you know? Their expression--it's not vicious, it's just alive. It's got a lot of energy to it, and I think that is what people respond to. I'm not trying to do anything vicious.

Wolfbat came from a project I did here in New York. I think it was 2007 at that Deitch Art Parade. They were taking proposals and at the time I was reading some Nordic mythology. There was this character called Fenrir--it's this giant wolf that the gods were afraid of. All these gods decided that the wolf could be harmful to them. The wolf wasn't doing anything but being a big beautiful wolf in the world, but it was a giant, and they were afraid that one day it would kill them. So they bound the wolf, put him beneath the earth, and during Ragnarök, the battle of all battles between the gods and the giants, Fenrir breaks his bonds and hunts down Odin on the battlefield and kills him. Then Odin's son takes revenge and kills the wolf. And I didn't like that ending. I was like, "This is bullshit!" So I basically took that story and rewrote the ending. I had Fenrir's sister, her name is Hel, ran the underworld. She was one of the only characters in Nordic mythology that had the power of resurrection. So I had her, during Ragnarök, hide away in her realm, and when she thought the time was right she'd look for her brother. This is all shit I made up by the way. So she found her brother's carcass and the only thing that was left of him was the head, so she crossed it with a bat so he could fly the earth, hunt down the other gods, and destroy them. So a wolfbat was born. That was my project for the Deitch Art Parade. I made a big, giant wolfbat that was the size of a van.
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When I did that project something happened. I had taken what I was making with printmaking and some sculpture, and took it to a whole other realm. Really animated the sculpture and put it into performance, and it was alive. Like for real, almost.And you took it through the streets, right?
Yeah, what a wolfbat does is it flies around--it's from another dimension--and it sees sleeping spirits, people who work nine to five jobs, texting, no eye contact, no visual communication. He wakes them up, shakes them up a little bit. And hopefully that's what will happen with the Ship Project. Just shake people up a little bit like "Hey! You're alive. Look, here's a big fucking ship in the middle of the street. Come on let's go pull this thing!"Can anyone just jump into the parade?
Anybody who wants to participate can participate. That's something else I think that art should do. From time to time, people should be able to participate in what you're doing. It's richer than just hanging something on the wall.But what about people who are just walking down the sidewalk and have no idea what's going on? Can they just jump into the boat party?
It's happened. I haven't done a ton of these, but the one I just did in Philadelphia, I was only expecting about 70 people, but about 400 showed up. I don't know how they heard about it or where they came from, but they were there. I know a lot more people here, so I don't know what's going to happen.
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Yeah, we got a ground floor space beneath the gallery where we assembled the ship. I think what will probably happen is I'll go to the opening from six to eight, and around eight or eight thirty, I'll just start gathering people up and take the ship down.

I'd have to say a wolf. But you know, snow leopards too. I'm kind of obsessed with them. Any type of bird of prey, they're so sick to watch. Especially if you actually see them out in nature or something, they're just so crazy.Can you explain to me how this wood block business works?
What do you want to know?Do you do everything by hand or do you have a machine?
Every fucking line on everything I do is with this tool right here [holds up some thingy about the size of a carrot peeler – ed.]. That's it.Do you chisel with it?
No, I just carve into it.Seems very time consuming.
Yeah, it can be. I've been doing this for 20 years now though, so I can move through these fairly quickly. But it took a long time just to be able to make three lines with consistent depth and width next to each other.Do you do paintings on canvas too?
When I was in art school I tried painting and drawing. With painting I just made a muddy mess, and with drawing I always broke the charcoal or whatever I was working with. So when I found this, it made sense. It felt right to draw with a chisel. And also, when you print a block, it mimicked everything I was into--punk rock show fliers, album covers, skate graphics, all that stuff. I liked the graphic quality of it, the hard line. People look at these and they see there's a little bit of energy to it, and that's because every fucking line you do you have to put energy into. It's carved into the surface. You can't mimic that any other way.
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I think it's consistent in the sense that there's always different aesthetics within different companies. I've just always been drawn to a more raw aesthetic. I think some of the funny ones are fun, but it's just not what I'm into drawing.
How does that work? When you do a board for, say, Gerwer on Anti-Hero, do you have total creative control of that, or does he have an idea of what he wants and you have to accommodate him?
We've done this a couple of different ways. I ask the guy I work with at Anti-Hero to tell me a little bit about each rider, and the first series I did I just went off of that. For example, Julian talks a lot about politics and has his own view on that type of thing, so I did sort of a political board for him. Trujillo is really into metal, so I did a metalhead graphic for him. They liked the wolves I did, so the next series was all about wolves and I did what I wanted on that. And then this last one each rider called me and we kind of just hashed out some ideas. Those guys want me to do stuff I'd be doing anyway, so it was great. Cardiel said, "I want a Jaguar," so I was like, "Alright. Sick, I can't fucking wait." Gerwer said, "Can you do something like the St. Valentines Day Massacre. Like some guy wasting dudes with a Tommy gun." Fuck yeah I can do that.
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That is the other end of the spectrum. It's interesting the way that sort of stuff comes around. I had a friend who was working in display over there and she put the work in front of the creative director, the big guy, and he liked it. He was like, "Yeah let's do a window." But when they came down here and I showed them all kinds of stuff they were like, "We want to take all of this. We'll just do all of the windows."For me, it's just putting the stuff in front of a difference audience, which I'm open to. I worked construction for 12 years. I don't want to do that shit anymore. If I can make a living, or put this stuff in front of an audience that will actually be able to afford a bigger piece—you know, I'm not buying a Cadillac Escalade, it doesn't matter how much money you give me, I'm going to do the same shit with it. I'm going to buy more paper, I'm going to buy more materials… maybe a bigger space to work in. If I can put it in front of an audience that's able to facilitate that, then damn right I'm going to do it.

Two of them.Are they made out of wood?
They're made out of wood but they're collaged in prints, so they're covered in a lot of patterns. I printed them in black and red, and the sails are all printed images. Nature, the metal band, will be playing on one of the ships. The other one I'll take a little crowd of people through Chelsea with, and then come back.
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I haven't.


Yeah. They're all friends who have passed away in the last few years. The most recent would be Andy Kessler. He was a really close friend of mine. I didn't know him as the New York City skate pioneer, he was just a close friend of mine. And then Richard Mock did politically charged linoleum cuts for the New York Times for about 18 years. If it wasn't for that guy I would have left New York pretty much the first year I was here. Then Tom little was someone I worked with for a little while. He did a lot of blue chip printing for a lot of artists like Chuck Close and Jenny Holzer. He taught me a lot about that process and the use of color. He was just a really good friend.JONATHAN SMITHhowlingprint.comReaping Waves and Vital Vessels The Passing of the Wolfbats
Joshua Liner Gallery
548 West 28th Street
3rd Floor
December 16
6pm - 9pm
