Jason Byron Nelson

AFTER A LONG CAREER BEHIND A DESK, NELSON HAS TAKEN OFF HIS CORPORATE HAT AND EMBRACED LIFE AS A FULL-TIME ARTIST. HIS NOTED WORK AS A DESIGNER, ILLUSTRATOR, PAINTER AND CREATIVE CONCEPTUALIZER IS WHY JASON BYRON NELSON IS THIS MONTH’S BAYOU ARTIST.

ARTICLE BY APRIL HONAKER AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRAD ARENDER

Jason Byron Nelson is an artist, designer, illustrator and, according to his business card, a provider of conceptual services. Although that last label is a bit nebulous, it is perhaps purposefully so. Granted, business cards are necessary for any conscientious business owner, and customers need to know what a person does. As a creative, Nelson prefers to stretch boundaries and defy labels.

When he started college at the University of Louisiana in Monroe, Nelson was interested in marketing, but he only made it through one day of classes before realizing that it wasn’t creative enough for him. With a little help from administrators, he was introduced to other options and soon found his way into a program that was a better fit. After completing the requirements, Nelson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design. Although he admits to being a late bloomer when it came to knowing what he wanted to do, Nelson was always drawn to activities that required creativity.

Like Picasso, Nelson believes every child is an artist. “When you’re little,” he said, “everyone draws. In elementary, girls were drawing bubble letters, and boys were drawing superheroes.” But also like Picasso, he believes it can be difficult to maintain a passion for art through adolescence and into adulthood. “At some point,” he said, “most kids stop, but I just never did.” As a young artist, he often doubted himself and said, “I thought if you couldn’t capture what was in your head, you were less than.” Many times along the way, the images he created failed to match the ones he’d envisioned, but he continued to practice and grow his skills. Eventually, he realized that creating art was more about catharsis and less about conceptual ability. He stopped trying so hard and just continued to create. Fortunately, because creating was something he enjoyed, it never really felt like work.

Instead, it became a constant in his life when everything else seemed to be changing. “When you move around a lot as a kid, you don’t really have a voice,” he said, “and you don’t realize you want one until you’re not noticed.” For Nelson, art was a means of communicating with others and expressing himself in a way that helped him stand out, especially when he was constantly the new kid. “It was a way to not blend in,” he said, “to have a thing that was special.”

Although Nelson was able to conform to others’ expectations enough to make it through college, he’s always been more comfortable challenging the status quo. While earning his degree and even in the professional world, Nelson witnessed a divide between graphic designers and fine artists that he’s never understood. “I didn’t get it,” he said. “I’ve always felt like the two worlds complemented each other, and I think if the line was blurrier, the work would benefit.” Over the years, Nelson has seen a lot of designers pigeonhole themselves. He’s not sure whether their choice to create only within the confines of their jobs is due to a lack of ability, a lack of desire or something else, but it’s a choice he doesn’t understand. “Limiting yourself through a career you chose for its creativity never made sense to me,” he said.

In his own work, Nelson has allowed the line between graphic design and fine art to blur, and for customers like Flying Tiger Brewery, he’s not only designed logos, brand labels, and print advertisements, but he’s also created paintings and had a hand in the overall aesthetic and branding of the business. According to Nelson, university professors, especially in graphic design, are teaching for the highest common denominator. The goal is to trim the fat and get the message across to an audience efficiently. Nelson understands this philosophy, but he also believes a formal education in graphic design comes with a lot of limitations and that some professors are teaching too rigidly. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know the creative sells,” he said.

By definition, creativity requires original ideas, and that’s difficult because inspiration is inevitable and infinitely available. “You have all these little pieces that influence who you are,” Nelson said. “To make an aesthetic out of them is tricky, but I like trying.” He’s interested in what makes other artists tick, but in all his endeavors, Nelson is also searching for the newest, freshest thing. “I don’t want to be trendy,” he said. “When something becomes trendy, it becomes white noise, and you can’t be white noise in this industry.” At the same time, Nelson keeps his ear to the ground. “It helps to think in a fluid way,” he said. Because fashion, music, writing, art and design all reflect our changing culture, he wants to anticipate those changes. He wants to understand what makes trendsetters trendsetters.

RATHER THAN BEING WELL TRAVELED, Nelson sees himself as “well arted,” which he believes can help with innovation, as well as understanding what will appeal to a broad audience. Like traveling, experiencing a variety of art can make a person more layered, more complicated and ultimately more original. It can also help a person refine his or her taste. Aesthetically, Nelson enjoys work that challenges people. “I feel like art needs something that engages you almost to the point of argument,” he said. As a result, he’s drawn to and strives to create visceral, memorable work that raises questions for the viewer. “My own sensibilities have always been very removed from the typical interests in the south,” he said. “More of the fringe art inspires me.” When it comes to a viewer’s reaction, Nelson believes any strong reaction could potentially be a positive one and would be better in every case than an indifferent one. After all, if a work generates a strong reaction, it’s more likely to be remembered.

Because generating strong reactions tends to involve pushing boundaries, Nelson finds that he sometimes pushes his clients to see beyond their own boundaries. He makes it a point to create something even better than what they imagined. “Most of my clients understand my approach,” he said, “and if the work is good, they’re gonna be happier.” Being self-employed, especially as a designer, has changed a lot about the way Nelson works. After more than 25 years of working at other agencies, he believed he’d been doing his best work. But he said, “You don’t realize how much more you’ll put in until you’re doing it for yourself. I try so much harder than I ever did before.” Working for himself has also allowed Nelson to discover what it’s like to work past some limitations and to discover his own philosophy.

According to Nelson, “Art’s not easy, but if you’re a true creative person, that creativity becomes a burden if you don’t get it out, and no one wants to be burdened.” For Nelson, creating is akin to being liberated on a daily basis. Although his work as a designer is a great outlet for the burden of creative energy he carries, sometimes it’s not enough, and the energy has to be invested elsewhere. “I have a creative spirit and a creative brain,” he said. “If God gifted me with them, to not embrace them feels like I’m giving them back.” As a result, Nelson regularly engages in personal projects in his spare time. These projects range from writing and illustrating children’s books to creating wall paintings. In fact, Nelson has published two children’s books, one called “Broken Dreams” and another called “Robert.” In addition, he’s working on a third called “The Bird and the Tire Swing.” The books have grown out of his own experiences and off-the-cuff stories he’s told to his children at bedtime.

Recently, Nelson has also been working on a collection of work for a solo exhibition that opens on November 8 at Flying Tiger Brewery. The exhibition, called CAMP, puts a fresh spin on the idea that Louisiana is Sportsman’s Paradise. When Nelson was younger, he noticed the art that seemed to sell well in the south consisted of large, realistic prints and paintings of native wildlife—ducks, deer and fish. After church, his family would often go to Ray’s PeGe in Monroe, and the décor came to represent what he believed at the time were the dominant art tastes in the area. These images, which had a definitive “deer camp vibe,” were never particularly appealing to Nelson, so he wanted to create a body of work that appealed to the same Sportsman’s Paradise mentality but in a way that reflected his unique perspective. “I think there’s got to be a piece of the artist in a piece, and I wanted this collection to be me,” he said, “but still something that appeals to people who buy art here.”

In keeping with this goal, the animals a viewer might expect to see at the camp are the same, but they come alive in fresh, thought-provoking ways, and there’s an earthy, organic richness in the palette. “There’s an atmosphere I want to capture in texture and image,” he said. “I’m trying to create something that feels truly home about it.” But at the same time, he said, “I’m trying to turn the whole southern landscape and hunting and all that on its head.”

Nelson is excited to take his commercial hat off for the show and to see how viewers react to the work. He said, “I want my work to have a reason, a meaning, and I want it to make people think. I want them to be intrigued or feel a certain way they like to feel.” Everyone will react differently, but Nelson said, “I hope my work is good enough to stand anywhere. The goal is to work without compromise. As an artist, you long for the day you’re appreciated because you did it—for the day you can just speak from the heart and be appreciated.”

As he’s gotten older, Nelson has focused more and more on making his work visible, so it can be appreciated. “I like the idea that people’s interests can meld together,” he said. “There’s this creative collective—this mentality flourishing around us all the time, and you can see it if you look for it.” Being part of that is a powerful thing. Nelson said he still sometimes sees people out wearing shirts with a design he created in 2003 called Flowers in the Attic. Occasionally he even sees versions of the design, which is sometimes falsely attributed to Bansky, tattooed on people’s bodies.

These moments are evidence of art’s lasting impact. For Nelson, art is a powerful way of connecting with people, adding value to the world, and tapping into that collective, creative mentality. Although every creative endeavor has this potential, work that is accessible to everyone magnifies that potential. For example, Nelson was recently asked to create a design for a local bus wrap. Now his larger-than-life alligator inspired by Black Bayou can be seen gliding all over Monroe, and soon residents and visitors of Monroe will be able to enjoy a mural designed by Nelson as well. He believes art of any type in any place has the ability to foster change. “There’s a ripple effect of positiveness,” he said, “and things grow out of that. It makes it seem like something is happening, and that makes something happen. I think that ripple effect can happen with any form of art.” Because art is a universal language, it often has an impact greater than we may realize and further than we can reach.