JLY's rhinestone bling
Feb. 27—PLATTSBURGH — Tony, Grammy and multi-platinum recording artist John Lloyd Young knows a thing or two about surviving in a fickle industry.
"The good thing is that when you're in the entertainment business, you know things are not stable and that things can be canceled or things can go off the rails," Young, star of "Jersey Boys" and a Plattsburgh High School alum, said.
"It's a big pill to swallow when you see everything being wiped off your schedule."
CURTAIN FALLS
When venues shuttered the first week of March 2020, Young had literally gotten off a plane in Washington, D.C. to play Wolf Trap in Virginia.
Canceled.
Young was announced for a Capitol Hill living-room concert for then-presidential hopeful for Joe Biden.
Canceled.
After spending a night at his hotel, Young flew back home to LA.
"Everything started to fall off," he said.
"Within a week or so, I had lost thousands of dollars of income going forward in the year.
"I just saw everything get wiped out off the schedule. And it's still happening. It's been happening all year."
Luckily for him, his live performances are not being canceled.
"They just keep being postponed," he said.
"I still have work on the books. I just have to wait and get to it."
Catch Young's next live streaming show at:
https://www.johnlloydyoung.com/events/vitellos/march19-2021.
PLAN ART
During last March's shutdown, the first thing Young did was turn inside.
"I have a visual art career, a sculpture career," he said.
"I went back into storage and got back into art because we all had an abundance of time and went back into the art studio. I started creating things and did them at lesser prices than I used to do because all galleries were also closed."
Young sells his rhinestone sculptures through his website: www.johnlloydyoung.com
"That was a lifeline for me right away," he said.
"I started just to create more art. I've been selling and making art since 2010. And over the years, it's been a great insurance for me because during lean periods of concert work or acting or whatever, I've just gone right back to the art studio. So, it's been a nice thing to have."
Young didn't start making art until right after he starred in the the original cast of "Jersey Boys."
"The August Wilson Theatre where 'Jersey Boys' played was only three blocks from the Museum of Modern Art," he said.
When Young rested his voice between shows on matinee days or arrived early before shows, he went to MOMA all the time to view the exhibitions.
"When I moved to LA in 2008, 2008 was another downturn in the economy," he said.
"And what was happening in my business in 2008, there was a big writers' strike in LA.
"I had an idea for something I wanted to do in art, and I just started making things and I built up a body of work."
In 2010, Young had a Hollywood gallery debut and got gallery representation in Florida and Los Angeles.
"I did gallery shows for awhile," he said.
"When the 'Jersey Boys' movie happened, I did one more big art show in Hollywood and got really busy with concerts around the country and put the art work on the back burner until this pandemic then went full force back into it because I had time to do it."
MOVEMENTS MASH-UP
Young's favorite period of art is right after abstract expressionism. He likes the '60s.
"I would say that my art work is a mixture of three different art movements — Warhol's Pop, then the movement called arte povera, which is an Italian movement from the '60s," he said.
"Literally that means poor art, so it's using low materials to turn them to other things."
His influences also include assemblage, an LA-based movement.
"One of the leaders was the artist Betye Saar," he said.
"My art pieces combine Pop, arte povera and assemblage. Essentially what I do is povera with rhinestones, groceries, and put them under museum glass exalting the superstars of the grocery world."
His works of ketchup, mustard and Scott tissue are very colorful and very Hollywood.
"Imagine Liberace's pantry," he said.
"I'm really interested in packing. It's almost a way of archiving or time capsuling things that we see in the grocery store.
"It's just that I archive them by covering them in rhinestones. Imagine like Judith Leiber purses in Swarovski but like a Ritz Cracker box."
Over the years, Young's pieces have evolved from his ubiquitous beginnings.
"I did a series of Campbell Soup can portraits of certain figures including Barack Obama, who has one and it will be in the collection of his library once it's built," he said.
"I've done Debbie Gibson. These are people I know, and I gift it to them. So these are are kind of like my society portraits like Andy Warhol used to do his silk screen society portraits.
"This is my play on the Warhol portraits. Instead of the flavor of soup, it's a person. It's a 'Barack Obama Souperstar.'"
SPAIN SOJOURN
Young studied theatre arts at Brown University, and he did a year abroad studying art history at the University of Salamanca.
"Actually, it wasn't until I was in Spain that I saw my first Warhol exhibit," he said.
"I happened to be half way across the world before I saw my first Warhol Brillo boxes and those things and that were really influential for me."
Young has always been someone who needs to work for a living.
"So during my down periods, I still needed something and artwork turned out to be fantastic insurance," he said.
"When you think about what happened this year, it was something I was still able to do in a pandemic. I was very grateful."
'SECONDARY CAREER'
At the time when Young was first making things, he was vexed after his big move to LA.
"There was a writers' strike, so there was nothing going," he said.
"What got borne out of a frustrating period ended up a very satisfying secondary career.
"Sometimes the hardest periods are the ones that we are able to fall back on later and realize that difficulty gave me a skill that's helping me survive now."
In Young's case, art has been a big fall back during the COVID pandemic.
"When you're a real artist, it just comes out of you," he said.
"You have to find somewhere to be creative. In many ways, you are your own worst enemy.
"Art is one of the most unstable professions in the world, but you just have to do it. It's part of you."
Email Robin Caudell:
Twitter:@RobinCaudell
