Press
Steven R. Jerman
334 E 100 S
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 213-5444
For immediate release
SEASONED DESIGNER ROUNDS UP HIS FINE ART.
Logan, Utah – From a young age, Steven R. Jerman (usually known as Steve) wanted to be involved in art. But where that desire would lead him, he could have never predicted. Now near the end of a traditional working life, he questions what art really is. Nevertheless, he is more excited than ever about what it could be, as he sets to document and sell his fine art of the past 50 years.
Steve grew up in the East Millcreek area of Salt Lake City, Utah. First exposed to art in elementary school, he went on to take all the art classes he could. Skyline High School had many, as well as a graphics program in which you could get a vocational certificate. In a commercial art class at Skyline, he was urged to attend Utah State University (USU) for its nationally known commercial art program. He was the first of five children to attend an out-of-town college.
Orientation at Utah State predicted an arc in his career that he wouldn't understand for years. He was urged to go into commercial art to make a living (though he questions if that were really the truth given the upcoming changes in the industry.) But even in the realm of commercial art, there were several emphases like in fine art. At USU, the two largest areas of study were illustration and advertising design. High school students proficient in drawing and painting might have already participated in one of USU's summer illustration workshops. But as an all-around artist/craftsman, with graphics training, he was ushered into the world of advertising design.
Illustration taught centuries-old techniques to make anyone a better drawer and painter. However, the field of advertising design was less than 30 years old at the time. It would change quickly and the skills you learned were much less specific. This was even if you did learn graphic design which was the third and least popular program at the time. Adverting design skills were much more conceptual.
Still in college, Steve used his years of cumulative knowledge to design T-shirts he would market on his own. Several were done as a fan of the rock group, The Grateful Dead. Jerman went coast to coast selling his merchandise to Deadheads and one of the members of the band wore his shirt on the stage. Still in college, he created a very significant design for a Salt Lake City community radio station that was offered as a premium for 30 years.
After leaving Utah State with his education, and portfolio of ads, he got a taste of Madison Avenue before returning to Salt Lake where he was soon offered an entry-level job with one of the leading creative advertising agencies of that time. The next year, due to the volatile nature of the business, he was laid off and found himself in a creative partnership with another USU graduate. Here he did the type of art direction he had studied and entrenched himself in the local creative scene of that time.
A bad client and a weak market for copywriting ended that partnership so he retreated to a home studio. By then he had decided that graphic design, not the advertising design he studied was most in demand. So he took an advanced graphic design class, at the University of Utah taught by local illustrator Julia La Pine. After, he made a list of six Salt Lake City graphic designers he would like to work with and ended up working with five of the six.
This included the legendary local designer Ted Nagata who would go on to call Steve "a true artist," - someone who expresses their unique vision and emotions through creative work with a deep level of passion, originality, and dedication, often pushing boundaries and challenging norms, not solely defined by external validation or commercial success, but by their intrinsic drive to create and communicate.
Alongside the work he was doing as a production artist, and junior designer, as well as that directly for various clients, he began to develop a brand for a line of surfwear. This was at a time when casual young men's clothes began to be known as streetwear. Producing a small line twice a year he was eventually able to travel to Tokyo for a trade show sponsored by the Japanese government.
He was ultimately able to have the line shown by the largest trading company in Japan - the one that brought Gorgio Armani to that country. It got the best response of any of the casual brands shown. But he soon found out that trusting in one company (or one person) no matter how impressive, was a mistake. Though he was able to take what he had learned developing the line to make merchandise for several local businesses.
Soldiering along now with a baby in the house he received an offer to art direct a new fine art and lifestyle magazine, based on the success he had designing coffee table books for a local publisher. This exposed him to the greatest artists working in Utah at that time with the studio visits needed to illustrate the features. He won two Society of Publication Designer awards for work done there. For the next five years, we would art direct and produce three different full-color monthly publications including a long-established Utah business magazine, and the nation's largest craft magazine which he re-designed for the paper crafting industry.
When the World Wide Web began to change the opportunities in freelance graphic design, Jerman looked elsewhere to use his skills. For almost 30 years now he has marketed reproductions and merchandise using the art of lost 1930s artist Everett Ruess, who traveled the West on foot for several years and then disappeared near Escalante, Utah at age 19.
In 2016, he produced a documentary called "The Cost of Being Different" about moving to Cache Valley, Utah. He conceived, shot, wrote, and edited the film singlehandedly. The film was well-received at the local film festival.
After accepting an internship at an artisan cheese farmstead he went on to found a local cheese awards show. The Utah Cheese Awards will have its ninth running in 2025 judging cheese and related local foods. Gibbs M. Smith, the eclectic publisher of several of the books Steve designed once told him "Whatever you are doing, I know it will be interesting."
However, an artist's point of view is the thread among everything he has done. This included creating work he calls "fine art" for the exact same reason he created as a child. His media includes water-based paint, collage, digital work, and combinations of all those.
Digitally he pioneered an illustration style in Photoshop, one of the many computer-based design programs that came out after he had already begun his career. Mergings™ use two or more images to create a third piece of art. In 2006 he published a limited edition book about this work. Blogger Steve Eliot wrote, "his erotic images are among the most complex and fascinating you’ll find anywhere."
After deciding to catalog all of his fine art he counted over 400 pieces of original art dating back to the early 1970s. In addition, he estimates over 300 digital works and 50,000 photographs and videos, but he has yet to sell more than one piece, in that he always made his meager living doing something else. "I've sold one piece. (It was a colored Everett Ruess print sold to the famed director, Jonathon Demme for a set in a medical TV series.) I've given it away to family, and close friends and, I traded some early pen and ink drawings done. Otherwise, I'm tied with Van Gogh." Jerman said.
"I know what I like, and I've curated paintings and commissioned illustrators and photographers. I know where my commercial projects stand, but with this fine art I don't know," he continues "Andy Warhol who used a technical college art degree to become the defining artist of the 20th century said 'Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Jerman says that the disadvantage he has had is that after taking Art Core at USU all of the development was broad and conceptual.
The advantage he sees in his body of work, besides it all being together, is that it was all done after the creative spark, the fleeting impulse that causes artists and musicians to create a certain peice. "The spark is elusive, but the brilliance is brings is undeniable," he said.
With little training as a draftsman or illustrator most of his work he considers decorative. "I think my stuff compares to Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, or Paul Klee. Whereas the digital stuff could be compared to Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, or Man Ray." Unrestrained use of color is common, and Jerman remembers that the Japanese fashion consultants had been impressed with his colors and color sense.
"Most of the work I would be comfortable selling for very little once it's been recorded for posterity. I'd like to get it out in the hands of the collectors to see if the value would grow. I'm looking for that person or persons who see the potential, despite all my knowledge. I'd position myself as an outsider artist because my style is self-taught, but I'm just not crazy enough" the jocular 62-year-old quipped.
Jerman continues. "The more I look at art, why art does or doesn't have value isn't clear. Aside from the very best, there is not a lot of rhyme or reason. On Instagram, you will see artists who cut holes in buckets and swing them, upside-down over a canvas for the paint to spill out. But how is that different, less right or wrong than what Jackson Pollock did?"
"I can look at a multi-million dollar Picasso and say it couldn't have taken him more than 15 minutes to paint that corner. Why is the urinal that Marcel Duchamp declared art now worth $100,000,000." Jerman who survived a near-death, life-changing experience in 1996 gets philosophical. "Not much in this life lasts long, but art can last. Anyone can enjoy it, and learn from it. All you need to do is look. It's what I always wanted to do, and what I hope to be remembered for."
Collectors, gallerists, curators, auction houses, museums and decorators interested in knowing more about the sale of Jerman's work should write him at stevenrjerman@gmail.com .
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