(Projector clicking)
(Music)
- I use doctrines of automatism.
It's also referred to as pure psychic drawing
or pure psychic painting.
("Do With Me")
I learned from this artist called André Breton,
who started the Dadaists and Sur
("Do With Me")
Automatism is pure psychic drawing and painting
where you don't think about what you're doing,
you just do it.
You try to clear out your mind and not think,
and you just let the hands go where they may,
and people who followed that, Jackson Pollock,
André Breton, and Max Ernst.
("Do With Me")
A lot of the surrealists.
It's almost like you're painting in the dark
or painting blindfolded.
("Do With Me")
Usually when I get off the eleva
my mantra in my head is to get stupid and get dumb,
not so overthought.
So I always tell myself, get dum
get stupid, get dumb, get stupid on this elevator.
("Do With Me")
Once you clear out the mind then it allows space
for the subconscious to come in
and then come out of your body p
It's just to allow for new ideas and new things to learn.
("Do With Me")
♪ I'm ready for you ♪
(Staticky music)
(gentle guitar music)
My name is Scooter LaForge,
and I'm from a town in New Mexico called Las Cruces,
and I was born and raised there.
My dad is Mexican and my mother'
They both are artists.
I grew up in a very jovial atmos
typical suburban neighborhood, where I played outside
and played with all my neighborhood friends.
(gentle guitar music)
My dad loved to paint.
He built his own house that he l
a straw bale adobe house.
And he's spent all of his life in the school system
as an administrator.
He was a principal and then a superintendent,
and they're both definite academ
My mother's very creative, too.
She's a performer and an actress and a singer.
- Some of my friends come over,
and we do art projects like deco
We always had books.
And of course there was music al
- When I remember him doing his
he was always by himself, in his back bedroom,
in his little casita.
And then I would always sneak in
and look through his art stuff.
We would dumpster dive at times,
and he would find things and create jewelry.
- A lot of crayon work, color books, mixing up stuff.
- [Scooter] Creativity was a big
of the way I was raised.
We had to sit down for an hour and read every day,
set schedules of stuff we had to
We had our play time.
We had our reading time.
We had our study time.
We had our discover something ne
My mom put me in dance and theater and art and singing.
They really promoted all that.
(lively guitar music)
I grew up watching TV and a lot of cartoons, too,
but it was regimented.
We had to do our reading, too.
There was a balance of both of t
♪ Sit up sit up sit up ♪
- [Scooter] Well, I love cartoon
I always have.
And I'm an 80s kid.
And we grew up with cartoons.
I grew up with cartoons.
They were my babysitter.
They were my anti-depression pil
They were my anti-anxiety pill.
They were everything.
♪ To make it home ♪
- [Scooter] And every day after
I would come home and watch cart
It was just part of being a kid when I grew up.
♪ Do you wanna play ♪
♪ Wanna play ♪
♪ We gonna play ♪
- [Scooter] I think that's why
I keep putting these in my paint
'cause they make me feel good.
♪ Gonna play ♪
♪ More, more and more and more a
- [Scooter] I even still have
Charlie Brown sheets on my bed,
stuffed animals around the house and stuff.
There was a severed hand
outside of my apartment building that they found,
and I painted a severed hand.
That doesn't have anything to do with cartoons,
but the cartoons are a comfort f
♪ That's one to be ♪
Notion of being a kid inside is very important,
because it leads to the imaginat
and it leads to being free.
(gentle guitar music)
(intense music)
- I think Scooter is an heir to the downtown legacy
that has been labeled neo-Expres
So artists like Keith Haring and
who also painted on clothes.
Scooter has a certain sort of ir
and satirical approach that beli
bigger, deeper, more fine art me
♪ Drunk on a dare ♪
♪ Be my honey ♪
- Scooter naturally just paints
He'll paint the plates.
He'll paint you if you get too c
I used to like to call him Littl
- My tools I already have.
I don't go out and buy specific
Anything I can get my hands on,
house paint, spray paint,
paint that I find on the street,
paint that I happen to have here
♪ Wanna take you with me ♪
♪ Take you on a ride ♪
- It's not so much how it makes
It's how it makes me think.
When I look at Scooter's work,
there's always something about it which is surprising.
Is it art?
What makes that work as a painti
There's something about it which is awkward,
uncomfortable, and deeply personal and beautiful.
It's almost like he's picking up
and throwing it at the canvas.
I don't see the content.
I see the paint.
It liberates the action.
♪ Take my hand ♪
- Scooter is the hardest working artist I know.
It's his life.
♪ Run the lights in your new spo
- People recognize his work, because he is original.
He's not a derivative of another
♪ Go for a drive ♪
- If I would describe Scooter,
Scooter is very positive, cooper
He is always bringing work in he
He respects us.
♪ Take you with me ♪
♪ Take you on a ride ♪
- And that's where the true creativity comes in
in being an artist is how are you gonna sustain yourself
as an artist?
How are you gonna look for oppor
to where you can make money
and still do something creative
and not have to work in the cafe
Show up for the people that give you these jobs
so they'll hire you again and again and again,
after the fact.
The universe provides.
Seeing those opportunities and taking advantage of them.
These people know what you do.
Step into those shoes and do it
and deliver it and do the best job you can.
Don't be afraid,
and if you fail, that's okay.
Failing, you can learn the most about yourself
and the most about your craft ev
If it turns out to be a piece of
that's probably one of the best
that could ever happen to anyone
Still learning.
I'm still in the beginning of how to go forward
because this is the road less tr
I mean, I don't take critiques personally anymore.
I like when people are quite honest with me.
♪ We are never gonna go ♪
- Scooter's work was everywhere.
I couldn't avoid it, and I really liked it.
It was sort of a combination
of depressing and optimistic at the same time.
I do think he has a bright visio
of the future of the world.
But he also is smart enough to p
on the detritus of society that gets in the way,
not just literally the trash on the streets,
but just the trash of our societ
- The way I like to think
is everything's already finished
Like when this was a blank canvas it was already done,
and there's solutions for everyt
It's just where I'm feeling at that moment.
I work very sporadically.
If I feel like copying something, I'll do it.
But that's a small part of my wo
- The first thing that struck me
is that I saw a sense of innocence, just from pure impuls
And he's surprised by what's coming out of it.
When you have a painting by Scoo
it really has a presence to chan
these subtle emotions into the p
And they become these objects that are charged,
and it's really like an act of m
("Bubblegum")
- If you go back to work that I
when I was very young, it was very detailed.
I was using tiny brushes.
And now I don't care as much about that stuff.
I just have a lot of freedom and I have fun.
And I think one of the artist's duty is to have fun,
because it shows in the works,
and people can tell if someone has a lot of fun painting.
("Bubblegum")
We're in a studio in Tribeca, it's expensive.
I try and come here and use it e
I would want to be a surgeon
if I didn't want to be a painter
because creativity in that field is paramount.
The reference between painting and surgery,
I've always been interested in the human body
and what goes on inside the human body and how it works.
Rembrandt has the anatomy lesson
("Bubblegum")
Done in 1632,
and I've redone that painting probably three or four times.
I'm really inspired by that and other medical paintings.
("Bubblegum")
- I kind of discouraged him.
I knew he was really smart,
so I said, "Oh, you got to major in accounting,"
or "You got to major in engineer
"You're so good in math.
"What in the heck are you going to do with fine arts?
"Even if you went into teaching,
"at least you're going to have a
- I'm going to be an artist.
Look at me.
I mean, I can't not do it.
- He made his own decisions
on taking an art degree out of t
Good for him.
("Bubblegum")
- He's managed to combine the punk rock attitude
with the opposite, comical,
with a lighthearted and sweet sense of humor.
(gentle music)
- Scooter's work is very decepti
because at first it presents sort of a comedy.
And I mean that in the use of cartoonish motifs
and imagery that he's taken from pop culture.
Throughout it all,
there's sort of a underlying sensitivity and maybe sadness.
I've described his sense of humor and his sense of art
as being like Charlie Chaplin in
where it's kind of this comic tr
We're inundated by these pop ima
that have no meaning that are ju
And I think you might look at a
and instead of getting a direct
it's a sense that there's someth
much more sophisticated and underlying his message.
- A lot of comments that people make to me are like,
wow, that's a beautiful painting, but it's sad, too.
And it takes you a while to look in there and find that.
But yeah, it's there.
I feel it's connected to dark parts of my life,
'cause I have been in very, very dark places in my life
since I can remember.
- When he was going into his sen
my husband and I made a decision
to move to Douglas, Arizona,
and he was devastated with that.
He didn't want to go.
We said, oh no, you're coming wi
So we moved there in his senior
He had the challenge of fitting into a new high school.
He had no friends.
He had his own way of dressing, which was very unique.
- It started in junior high,
openly flamboyant and openly gay
and dressed that way and presented myself that way.
And wasn't accepted.
It was in a really small town.
If you grew up in a bigger city,
you can find some other people that are like you
and maybe two or three other peo
but I didn't have anyone there.
So I was just this kid who was g
who was dressed crazy, dyed my hair, expressed myself.
- The culture we were living in
wasn't easy on the gay society.
I remember one time we were walking out of a restaurant
and these cowboys called him a f
I just was not okay with that.
I would become angry and yell ri
Scooter and I were brought up with good morals,
and we were taught not to be mea
and my brother just went into the restaurant.
He didn't want any part of it.
- In high school,
the depression came from coming out and being gay
and being really bullied.
My last name is LaForge.
They would write the word LaFag on my locker.
People would threaten to beat me up after school.
I would get pushed in the halls.
I would get made fun of constant
Tripping.
Once I got sucker punched.
(hand punching)
(body banging)
(somber music)
I didn't know what happened to m
It made me depressed and it made me shut down.
I wouldn't talk.
I was angry.
I was mad at my family.
I was mad at my parents.
It caused a lot of problems, and I was very unhappy.
At home, their reaction to it,
they wanted me to butch up, to get more masculine.
- I think it was a difficult env
to live in our home at that time
My mother was living with us, and she had extreme dementia.
The household was dysfunctional,
because I was mostly preoccupied with my mother and my work.
The kids coped in their own way,
using their inner resources.
- When you're that age, it's life or death to you.
(somber music)
- When I was younger,
I lived in a little house outside of my parents' house.
We had a little area that was my
(somber music)
I'd sleep with the gas on without the flames going,
so it was just pure gas emitting from this heater, and,
I was hoping that I would die.
(somber music)
And senior in high school, so it would've been 17.
(somber music)
When I woke up in the morning, I was happy to be alive,
but still depressed and confused
and a lot of emotions all mixed together in a blender.
(gentle intense music)
Painting on clothes, I was creat
I was making sculptures.
And it was just getting suppressed and suppressed.
I would explode and then I would paint the whole damn room.
Gives you freedom,
and on a positive note,
it treats every day like it's the last day of your life.
The mind can be altered.
Instead of going into negative t
goes into positive thoughts.
The mind will change and start to believe them after
being programmed that way.
Today, those dark sides have lif
I've done a lot of work on mysel
through therapy, and it's helped
(somber music)
I wouldn't be here today
if I didn't have those experiences in my life.
It actually makes one stronger,
because they have that experienc
and they know how to deal with i
Facet to the diamond of who you are as a person.
- If you look at this painting b
it's an autopsy, but there's Sha
I call it the Shakespeare painti
It depicts a certain timeline historically,
but the clown is there.
They're classic symbols all rolled into one.
(upbeat music)
- I moved to San Francisco
after I finished college in Tucson, Arizona,
lived in San Francisco for nine
I had it all in San Francisco.
I knew everyone there,
never had to pay to get into any
People knew me in restaurants.
I was connected to every little aspect of that city
and was known in that town in the art world.
(somber music)
I didn't even pick up alcohol until I was in my 20s,
and then I moved to San Francisc
and fell into this party crowd,
and I started to experiment with
(somber music)
I found my happy place, and I sniffed a lot of cocaine.
(somber music)
Makes everything interesting.
The most bullshit topics,
if you're high on coke, you can talk about it for hours.
If you're too drunk, if you do a line of coke,
then you're automatically awake
and you can keep partying and you can stay in the nightclub
and it's just very social.
It just makes you yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.
(somber music)
Also what happens is it can bring you to a very dark place
where your world gets smaller an
and smaller and smaller.
(gentle intense music)
Because you start to get paranoi
and then you find yourself doing coke by yourself at home.
And that's what happened to me.
(somber music)
Did a lot of shady stuff.
I hurt a lot of people.
I've thrown opportunities away,
'cause I was thinking,
well look at Jackson Pollock, a
Well they can be drunk, so I can do it, too.
(somber music)
I came like this far from throwing myself off the balcony
on a fifth floor walkup.
(somber music)
The last night that I did any drugs or alcohol,
I had come home from the club,
and a friend of mine was with me
and we did the last of the cocai
and we were smoking cigarettes
and I was in a tiny apartment in San Francisco.
And then he left and the sun started coming up.
Now I'm not going to be able to
I'm high.
I can't sleep, I'm depressed, I'
And there was this wine bottle,
and it had all our cigarette butts in there,
and I poured the wine bottle out
and drank that to force myself to fall asleep.
Last drink of that wine, I knew the party was over.
And then after that day I stoppe
And that was 19 years ago.
(somber music)
Well, I moved to San Francisco i
and I think that was not the pinnacle of AIDS,
but it was just coming down.
- A lot of his work is tied to t
gay act up aesthetic of the 80s.
When we were all fighting the early days of AIDS.
It was a horror show.
And we all took to the streets s
and he's maintained that element and brought it up to date.
- During my time in San Francisc
a lot of people died of AIDS.
Beautiful Hawaiian guy.
He was dating my roommate at the
maybe 25 or 26, and he became HIV positive.
And then maybe he got scared and depressed,
and he started using crystal met
He was one of these people that
a big beautiful man,
within three months turned into a human skeleton,
and exhibiting all these signs o
and having KS, Kaposi sarcoma.
KS is where you get these sores all over your body,
which was really common in the 90s and 80s.
You would see it all over.
(somber music)
He ended up moving back home and
This is over three years.
Yeah, I saw it from the beginning to the end,
people in the hospital beds
that are just like these skeleto
I lost a lot of friends,
and we lost a lot of people and a lot of creative people,
and it was a hard time.
It was really a just devastating
(gentle intense music)
At that age where that deep-seat fear was instilled in me
and the safe sex was instilled i
so I never was real risky sex-wi
because it was pounded into your
condom, safe sex, condom safe se
So I am from that generation.
So I come from that practice of
If I was born five years earlier or ten years earlier,
that was a free for all.
Everyone was doing whatever they wanted to do
whenever they wanted to do it,
in the bathhouses and was like sexual freedom
and liberation.
And I think it's human nature,
because we're all sexual beings,
and it's part of being an animal
- The topics he picks for his ar
I mean it could be about AIDS or the gay community,
sexuality, homophobia,
celebrating trans people that he knows and loves,
subversive things that he believ
or sometimes he's casting a kind of satirical eye on it.
(gentle intense music)
- One day I decided to sell all
and get on the airplane and just
before I died or before I got to
and start over again here.
(upbeat music)
My mom got me a subscription to Interview Magazine.
She bought me "The Andy Warhol D
when I was in elementary school.
And I read that book and became
with New York City's painters
and the visual artwork here.
And I started to follow it and s
and wanted to be a part of it.
There was always something in me
that knew I had to come here,
just because of what I read and what I saw.
And I always felt a magnet pulling me towards here.
♪ You wanna make it last ♪
- [Scooter] It was always my end goal to kind of come here,
and I did the steps to get here.
♪ You wanna make it last ♪
(somber music)
- [Scooter] I knew that I belong
I've built a really nice life for myself here,
and I've surrounded myself with a lot of creative people.
When I moved here in 2001
I worked for a company called Ea
It's in Soho.
And everything was closed due to
You could still smell the burn of the buildings.
(intense music)
So the city was at a stillness,
and it had a blanket of anxiety
(gentle intense music)
- A beautiful job. - It's beautiful.
- Thank you. - I love it.
- [Gazelle] That's incredible.
I love that heavy line that you
(gentle music)
- Well, this is a portrait.
We did that in his studio.
It was having really rough time
(heart beating)
There is so much information.
If you can see, I have a coral s
That's my heart bleeding.
(gentle music)
His art is not for everybody.
Art is just very personal.
So we are in the city where it's all about the money.
The Chelsea galleries have picked up on him.
(gentle music)
Some of these galleries might th
maybe his clientele would not like so much his work.
For your art to be more accepted you have to do this.
And I don't think that will play well with him.
You need to have balls in a city like New York to say,
"No, I won't do that."
But that's fine.
He'll get there somehow.
- When I first moved to New York
I was trying to send my images out to various galleries,
and I probably sent my images to
to hundreds of galleries,
and I never got responses or alw
So my experience with these more established
and blue chip galleries
is they have to come and seek yo
(gentle music)
- Downtown New York,
it's where the people more courageous and brave,
and the artists are free.
They're doing the art because th
They're not really thinking about the fame and the success.
(gentle music)
Probably all those Chelsea galle
at some point will just regret it for not having
given him the space.
It's not that he needs this person deserves
on those galleries, too.
That's how I feel.
- Coming from San Francisco,
where I was a well-known artist,
here you have to start over again and get humble.
Nobody knew me here.
You can't come to this town
and think you're going to take it over in the first year.
You don't.
It's very 80s not to be humble
and to be like me, me, me, me, me, I'm a star.
Don't you know who I am?
I mean, I'm a fucking star, come
It's not like that today.
And there's no discovering of pe
That's bullshit.
People don't get discovered.
People work on their craft for all these years,
who they've been studying it probably since they were six.
I have not met one person who got instant fame like that.
It's people that have been working their whole life
and showing up and being easy to work with.
♪ Very, very, very ♪
- 2015 was a big year for Scoote
because it was around that time where he and Patricia Field
really established their relatio
It was like an incredible valida
because Patricia Field is very w
in the fashion world.
She was the stylist of "Sex and
Before that, she was a champion for Keith Haring,
which was one of Scooter's main inspirations.
She gave Jean-Michele Basquiat
his first show at her bazaar.
So for him to be associated with
was a very defining moment for h
- I'm very grateful to her,
and I just love how much freedom
she gives all these artists who work with her.
She never tells people what direction to go in
or how to paint something or what to paint.
She just allows people to be who
And I think that's the key to he
- If I have an idea I always tell Scooter about it,
because he works with you.
He's so collaborative.
It makes the work so much more i
when you have that positive atti
♪ You can see the stars ♪
- Collaboration, I always want to meet the people
that I collaborate with and see if I vibe with them.
♪ There's something in the music
- My friend Helixx Armageddon is
She's a musician.
She's a performance artist.
She's a singer.
She's a dancer.
She memorizes everything.
♪ The rumors in your head ♪
- The thing that I absolutely love about Scooter's work,
there's the drama, the hope, the strangeness.
His paintings are a world unto t
♪ Will always take you through ♪
♪ The only one you need ♪
- Scooter and I, following the Queer March,
we were having a conversation
just around the state of the wor
and everything that has been hap
You walk down the Bowery,
you can see used needles on the
There's a lot of suffering happe
and a lot of people really strug
led to this idea of we should co
♪ Is God waitin' for me on the other side of pain ♪
♪ Does God know my name now ♪
The funnel of energy that led to
two different things happening,
me writing two poems,
one focused on what it feels like to have depression
and what it feels like to suffer
And the second, coming of age in this time,
what's happening right now in th
I sent those two poems over to S
Created the artwork that you saw
which was the centerpiece for the performance.
Got weary eyes, mind and body disconnected.
I actually like to try to embody the poem itself,
and the piece has so many elemen
And as I was looking at it,
I was imagining if I had to act the story out,
what would it look like?
What would it feel like?
I had a few rehearsals with Scoo
I'm secure,
even with depression, clamped on
- I learned new things.
For instance, with Helixx, I started writing poetry
after I collaborated with her.
(crowd cheering)
- Thank you, thank you.
Scooter, please, please.
(audience cheering)
Everything here is found.
This is a tape measure I found on the street,
and the handle from a broomstick
Fake flowers, a carnation.
This I found in the dumpster.
- Everything that I have from Scooter is custom made.
There was always a process,
that we go together and we get t
and we do fittings.
So by the time I get to wear it, it is comfortable.
- Gazelle's collaborations
usually start with an idea that Gazelle has.
'Cause Gazelle, to me, is a performance artist,
and Gazelle's ideas are very specific and very planned.
- It was made by someone who really understands
who I am as a visual artist.
If it's too tight, if it's too w
if it's just part of what it is
four hours or five hours wearing a Scooter LaForge piece,
just because it is his.
I have to wash it by hand very c
Some pieces are never washed,
but the thing is I only wear something maybe once or twice.
♪ Love love ♪
When he does a dress or a look f
after that I do the styling,
and then he no longer has contro
because it comes my style into h
One of the things that really makes me alive as an artist
is the reaction that I get from
Scooter also tries to experiment
because he knows I'm not afraid to go places
where people won't go.
It's a very masculine work, what
When I say masculine, it's very
So the styling that I do is just
a little more glamorous as Gazelle and more soft,
because my visual language is a little more feminine,
so I need to smooth it down.
I have to choose the perfect pai
and the perfect pair of earrings so it won't clash.
He trusts my judgment on what to
- We go back and forth about five or six times,
and then all of a sudden it's fi
♪ Legs and arms still feeling fi
♪ If nothing's left ♪
- Gazelle always has these wild, surrealistic ideas,
and she inspires me to think out of the box.
♪ Love ♪
(gentle guitar music)
How about that?
A drop of this wood glue, just for security.
Okay, there we go.
Ethan Minsker has become sort of a little brother to me
that I like to brutalize,
but at the same time, I'll do anything in the world for him.
He's a brilliant draftsman.
He is a filmmaker, a painter, animator, a sculptor.
♪ And when it's closed ♪
- What I find amazing about Scoo
is his ability to adapt to the change in environment.
The galleries are closed?
Move your artwork out onto the s
Canvases may not be selling so q
Put it on the clothes.
And that is what's going to make him successful
no matter what happens around hi
It's something that we can all l
♪ And they threw you in the camp
- I've been walking around the c
and I'm trying not to just keep my head down.
I want to look up.
♪ Say hello to ♪
- And that's where you find the water towers.
The water towers come in all shapes and sizes.
It's just like a reflection of t
who live in the city.
There's something that's hidden in the skylines
that symbolizes the uniqueness of New York City
and its strength to persist.
I make the water towers out of papier-mâché
and recycled material.
- Ethan came over with his water
They were white and they were pristine and brand new.
He just let me go free on those,
and his work is sculptural,
so it inspired me to make sculpt
♪ Justice ♪
- I think when you're collaborat
you always want to pick a stronger artist than yourself,
somebody who you admire.
Then your message is spreading through his message.
You're learning from his process
♪ Say hello to Kennedy ♪
♪ Say hello to Saran Saran ♪
♪ Say hello to David Koresh for
- I see different ways to work,
adds another dimension to my wor
helps me to work with different personalities.
♪ And say goodbye ♪
- Look at that.
This, I felt like the orange was too strong.
And if it doesn't work,
I'll paint it white again and start all over again,
or just go outside and throw this in the garbage can.
It's a little guy giving you flo
Look.
He's handing you a carnation.
Another thing I like to do is hold these in the mirror
from really far back to see what they look like,
because you get a really,
a perspective against the wall
that from far away in the mirror
You get to see how it looks really far away.
(Faire L'amour N'est Pas Loin")
Here's my collection of clothes.
It's pretty low right now.
(Faire L'amour N'est Pas Loin")
This is a jacket I'm working on
(Faire L'amour N'est Pas Loin")
- When he delivered a T-shirt is when we met
for the first time.
Looks like Allen Ginsberg, but it also looks like me.
He treats the clothing
with the same approach as the pa
They're moving canvases.
In some cases they're sculptures
Regardless of the surface, he'll make it work.
I mean, for example, if you see this vest I'm wearing,
it's practically a combine.
And it has elements that you can interact with,
like this face.
- [Scooter] These are found obje
I have this- - Is that a rubber head?
- This is rubber head, yeah.
It's like a puppet.
Make love to me, Ethan.
Some leather.
See, this could be his hair.
(Faire L'amour N'est Pas Loin")
- I first met Scooter LaForge
when I had my shop on the Bowery
and in the beginning I said to S
"Scooter, you can't use the Chan
"They are always watching me,
"and I've gotten threatened of l
"So just cut out the trademarked
"because we are not exactly anon
- This tote bag is a milestone in Scooter's clothing combine
because it references Chanel, as you can see in the logos.
I mean, it has all these wonderf
with little skeletons
and these delicate strips of fabric and beads.
Chanel copied this and made it into their collections.
The fake Chanel became the real Chanel in their iteration.
(Faire L'amour N'est Pas Loin")
- This is kind of funny,
but I think it's a little distra
♪ Here we go ♪
♪ Dressed to thrill ♪
- His details are so
cared for.
Here's a little sleeve sewn on.
He sews things on his garments as well as paints them.
And that just increases the originality of him.
♪ Get that fill ♪
♪ Gold, velvet, skinny men ♪
- So I sort of mimic the shape h
Do you see this?
Follow it with the scissors real
See, that actually is perfect th
There, and there's his hair.
♪ Every girl (voice muffling) ♪
♪ Every boy's in a band ♪
- The back has a little ruffle o
but the front is a t-shirt.
And today with cross genders,
it all works.
♪ Girls in velvet ♪
- So this dress
is a Frankenstein dress,
made from thermal underwear.
And I love the veil.
Scooter had found this
sign on the street.
(laughing) I just loved it,
'cause I thought it was so wonderful, raise plow.
So I said, well,
I think it would be really cool to wear it as a necklace.
Scooter signed it, see.
So this is like a Scooter ready
The clothes were really a place where Scooter
would try out new things.
Experiment, contributed to that
where he can then adding to your painting vocabulary.
("Workaholic")
- His art and his fashion are interconnected.
I mean, put this in a frame and it's like, oh, that's art.
I could stick one of his art pai
over my head and that's fashion.
And that's how it should be.
- I see Scooter's fashion as more like shamanistic robes.
Identities.
You become melded with the art.
("Workaholic")
- Company called JCRT, they were interested
in using some of my paintings in their plaid shirts,
'cause they focus on plaid.
And I've been fans of theirs for
and I hadn't really met them in
but I went to go meet these guys, and we instantly vibed.
If there's not a connection ther
if it's something that I don't l
it's not going to work for me.
("Workaholic")
- I'm the quiet one. - Pen and Teller.
He would give us a piece.
We would then play with it,
send it back to him,
and it became a sort of back and forth sharing,
taking his work out of the context of a painting
and putting it into a plaid,
not just a print all over me swe
but a new expression of his work
Feels as though they've been painted onto the fabric.
It feels as though they're three dimensional.
It feels as though you can kinda touch and feel the work.
That just comes from that sort o
back and forth layering that we've done together.
- It almost made them less provo
and maybe a little more playful.
So I think more people were will
embrace the collaboration.
- There's hidden shit everywhere
but that's what's so fucking amazing about Scooter's work.
There's just always some bunny doing something.
Yeah, so this is literally a picture of a Smurf jerking off,
and I think he is ejaculating the Medusa's head.
What's amazing is seeing the people who are wearing it
and not really realizing the ful
of what they're wearing.
That's what makes good fashion,
is when there is something a lit
and not everybody has to know everything that you're-
- Hidden gems.
- Yeah they're hidden little things in your clothing.
("Workaholic")
- These are just kind of added b
just to see people wearing them on the street
is a really big payoff.
(Walter speaking in foreign lang
- [Translator] For me, fashion is all about communication.
All the painting was done by Scooter LaForge.
He has done a really amazing job
and he worked very hard on it.
We started by doing all the pain
and afterwards they were all either woven or printed.
So it was a lengthy process.
- Walter and I have been working on this show together
for about three months.
We've never met before,
only through emails.
So this is the first time I'm really ever meeting him.
- He sent me ten words,
and he's like, "Just go for it,
He sent me the ten words that represented this collection,
and he's like, "Do whatever you
"I don't wanna have any rules.
"Paint however you want.
"Get your true feelings out on t
"Use big, bold brush strokes.
"Really go wild."
So I just let all my inhibitions
and I just let the paint come ou
And you saw the results.
("Workaholic")
- Here, this is a painted seashe
This could be a nose.
Here's an anchor.
This could be an earring.
But that I can use the machine.
("Workaholic")
- When I first got the jacket, I was speechless.
It makes me feel bigger than I a
I'm not a large person.
Everybody wants to know where it came from, who created it.
It does bring a lot of attention
("Workaholic")
I'm wearing something that only
(Ivy laughing)
("Workaholic")
- [Scooter] So I had all those retail jobs,
and then I started painting on T
and I started selling them in Patricia Field,
and said to myself, I'm gonna go down to part-time.
My T-shirts started to get more
and the paintings started to bec
a little bit more well known.
And then I was like, fuck it.
I'm gonna take the leap of faith and quit this job
and do this full-time.
("Workaholic")
- Ever since I did that
I've been surviving,
and intuitively I've felt like I was ready,
because I was clearheaded.
I wasn't a mess on drugs and alc
Being a successful artist,
you've got to be able to show up
and you've got to be able to del
and you have to be good at what
So if you don't have all those three things down,
the other person's going to get
("Workaholic")
(gentle music)
I've gotten more confident in pa
and I'm not afraid to paint in p
and I'm not afraid to paint, per
I mean, that's the one thing in life I'm not afraid of.
I deal with a lot of fear and an
and somebody asked me to paint something for them
and they know my style of artwor
I have no problem doing it.
And I don't have a problem doing
if people are watching me.
I'm thankful for that.
'Cause I know a lot of artists who can't do that
and paint with people around.
(gentle music)
I did the Beef Jerky Show.
It was a residency, and I went there to go paint nature
and forest animals and flowers.
And then I had this idea to come
with painting the fairytale Hansel and Gretel,
because that house reminded me of the old witch's house.
(gentle intense music)
The reason I called it Beef Jerk
the true fable of Hansel and Gre
they actually took the children'
Hansel, and they dried him and they made jerky
out of his organs and his muscles and stuff,
and that's what they ate during the great famine in Germany.
(gentle music)
("Harmony for Disarmament")
- Kind of withdrawn at times.
So you'll see him and it's like
he maybe doesn't even say hello.
- I get fearful in crowded rooms
Like there's kind of a social weird anxiety thing
that happens to me in crowded ro
I'm not afraid to kind of speak
but I get afraid of weird things
Sometimes I get dizzy and then..
I'm still afraid that people aren't going to like me
or accept me.
If somebody says something bad
or sometimes you get a lot of ha
it makes me afraid.
("Harmony for Disarmament")
It's weird when the fear kicks i
If I go to art openings by mysel
and I feel like I'm a fraud or I don't belong there.
("Harmony for Disarmament")
I'm glad I wore that mask and that bear costume,
'cause I wanted to have another layer of art in there
with these characters, 'cause I love animals.
And yes, it was really nice for
to kind of have a barrier,
because sometimes when you're talking to a lot of people
and you're listening to a lot of people's stories,
a lot of people telling me about their art and what they do,
and all this bombardment of info
in one night can be daunting and overwhelming.
♪ We're wired ♪
- I had envisioned that in my he
and wanted that to happen.
Add another layer of interest to
and have these weird stuffed animal plushy people
running around.
("Harmony for Disarmament")
So this last show at Howl!
I did five really large painting
They were seventeen feet,
which is bigger than this room,
by thirteen feet high.
And what I had done is I went into the gallery
and kind of measured them bespoke to the walls
all about Pompeii,
specifically the erotic murals i
which I've been obsessed with my whole life
because I saw them in National G
They became my first introductio to porn or eroticism.
I always have those in my head.
And the first time we look at st
that is titillating for us.
I'll never forget it.
So I've always been obsessed with these erotic frescoes
in Pompeii because they depict people having sex
and men with men, which really turned me on,
and a lot of phalluses and women
and they had all these brothels
all over the city of Pompeii.
All Italian cities were like tha
That just got preserved.
I painted Mount Vesuvius,
and I put a big black cloud up t
And I started thinking about dea
like that cloud could represent
and then I started associating sex with death.
And then I started thinking abou
me moving to San Francisco in the late 80s and early 90s
and see all of these people die,
(gentle intense music)
It just seemed like there was so much sex going on there,
and all of a sudden everyone died 'cause of the volcano.
So I kind of saw this parallelis
and then this black cloud
could also represent global warm
It could also represent the turm
that the United States is under
So it had a lot of metaphors,
and every time people go into th
they see different things in the
'cause it opens a door
for other people's viewpoints to see stuff.
And then they relay that stuff t
and I get inspired by that.
("Clockblock Remixed")
- The openings are the business
and then there's love affair wit
And that comes when you go on yo
♪ Hey mama, let me buy you a bee
♪ Hey baby, hey mama ♪
- Literally calls to me,
come to me, come to me.
And I go right up to the canvas.
I wanna fuck the canvas.
- So Scooter's work last night,
so seeing the paintings in real life as compared to online,
it's a very different thing to see the brush strokes,
an intimate relationship with th
And that you're not going to get
And you're not going to get at an art opening either.
You have to have the intention
to have the intimacy with the ar
and go during gallery hours
when you're not called upon to be socializing.
♪ You're looking for attention ♪
- Going out and going to museums
and going to galleries and looking at other's paintings,
it's a huge practice for me and a huge part of my routine.
♪ And you wanna feel cool ♪
- People have different reasons why they show the paintings.
Some people want to make money.
'Cause some people, it's really about money and sales,
and other people it's about the love of the artwork.
♪ Hey sexy, hey hot stuff, why don't ya come over here ♪
♪ Hey sexy, hey hot stuff, let me buy you a beer ♪
♪ Hey sexy, hey hot stuff, why don't ya come over here ♪
♪ Hey sexy, hey hot stuff, let me buy you a beer ♪
♪ Smile it can't ♪
- [Scooter] And the way I think about my audience is
what can I do on the painting
that's going to make it look spe
♪ Ass is sweet ♪
♪ Give me a bite to eat ♪
- I did look back on historical other painters,
going back to caveman drawings.
Cave paintings and hieroglyphics
are the essence of painting and
and I go back and look at that,
and everything in front of that.
♪ And you wanna feel cool ♪
- To simplify,
some of my works can be very complicated and maximalist.
As far as commercialism,
going into some of these art fai
feels like a shopping mall.
But I don't know if that's a place for an artist to hang out
because it's really soul sucking
♪ Don't come lookin' for me, boy
- But there's some art fairs
that are really, really super, s
like Spring Break.
(intense music)
Yes, Spring Break,
been collecting these old vessel
that were clay and bisque fire
that reminded me of pots that you would find in Pompeii.
And I collected about 25 of them
Why don't you call it Mount Vesuvius Fire Sale?
That's something that would be k
on a souvenir stand at Mount Ves
And then I painted these little phallic symbols,
and I painted these little statu
that were sent.
A satyr from Greece, and they were really popular.
So it kind of looked like a souvenir stand,
or an excavation site you would see in Pompeii.
♪ Go for a drive ♪
♪ Hold your hand ♪
♪ Drunk on a dare ♪
♪ Be my honey ♪
- I have a lot on my mind
and trying to figure it out exac
Thank you.
We're going to set up the table.
We're going to do this wall and then finish this wall.
It's like,
like an organism.
Who knows when it's going to eve
It's like an amoeba,
when the cells split over and ov
It's art for life.
It's movie extra life.
So, we could leave this white,
and it could be a break to the eye or it can go around it.
What if I put this painting underneath here?
And there's this, do this longer
♪ We all navigate or go for a dr
♪ Wanna take you with me ♪
♪ Take you on a ride ♪
(voice muffling)
- [Scooter] And I did want to ge
Either fake flowers or real flow
♪ We all navigate or go for a dr
♪ I'll take you with me ♪
♪ Take you for a ride ♪
- [Scooter] And it says "people are peculiar" in Hebrew.
(voices muffling)
So tapped out.
("Instafunk")
- Ted, how's this here?
And then we're going to be almos
("Instafunk")
Now it's all about fine tuning i
("Instafunk")
During the Spring Break Art Fair
our country started coming down with coronavirus.
I feel very lucky and fortunate,
because thousands and thousands
came through my Spring Break art
and I didn't get sick,
but the country did get sick,
and in particular, this city got
and all been quarantined for thr
and over the past three months,
the death toll is getting up to 20,000 people.
I think we're at close to 18,000, only in New York City.
(somber music)
During this quarantine time, which started March 1st,
we were all stuck inside our apa
I live in a tiny one-bedroom apa
I started to get really bored with myself and bored with TV,
and I noticed I had paintings underneath my kitchen sink
and some old paint brushes.
I thought to myself, I'm going to make this a cave.
Let's do a coronavirus cave pain
I don't need all of this outside stimulation to create work.
I don't need a lot of product, as far as paint and brushes.
I painted my whole apartment with four colors of paint.
I used my hands.
I used paper towels to rub in.
I learned a lot of new things, and it got me excited.
It got my adrenaline going,
so I kept going and going and go
and now I would say 98% of all t
in my apartment are covered in p
(crowd clapping and chanting)
- [Crowd] Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter.
(crowd yelling and glass smashin
(people banging on glass)
(glass shattering)
(people murmuring)
(gentle music)
A man by the name of George Floy
murdered by a police officer,
and this caused riots throughout the whole country.
For every action there's a react
So the action of the murder of George Floyd
caused this reaction.
It's a simple law of the univers
It's Newton's law.
All these windows on Bowery Street are all smashed down.
Within the next few days they get boarded up.
You walk down the street and it
we are in a ghost town.
♪ Outside the windows ♪
♪ There's papers rollin' ♪
- Over the last couple of weeks
a lot of the storefronts
here on the Bowery have been boa
There's all this canvas now for
to just go and do whatever they
I want to make a positive mural.
I support the Black Lives Matter
support the Pride movement,
and so I just want to make something that's about love,
and it's something positive to look at right now.
♪ It's crashes ♪
- I'm still continuing to try and go out there
and do the next right thing
and spread a positive loving message to everyone.
(lively guitar music)
Gay Pride is coming up.
So SpongeBob has recently come out as a gay.
James had this idea to a paint S
and then I started painting pink triangles.
So there's probably about seven
underneath that mural.
I was really happy with the way it came out.
(folky music)
- He's so humble and he is so co
and he's always down to do this kind of stuff.
I have a lot of artist friends
that are less well known than Sc
that I told about this.
"Nobody's paying for the paint,
"and the boards are coming down.
"I'm not gonna bother."
I told Scooter, he was very excited about it right away.
I was excited about it.
And then when Scooter was excited, I was even more excited
(folky music)
- And I think anything's better than these boards.
And a lot of reform that needs t
and systematic change.
There's a lot of horrible stuff.
I just hope we can fix this prob
(folky music)
- Being stuck at home,
not having a lot of outside sources of entertainment,
it has affected me a lot.
And what it's done, on the posit
forced me to go internally.
That has manifested as meditatio
a forced art residency,
got to really go inside
and figure a few things out in m
(folky music)
- We've gone through this whole
where we have the masters,
we have the best painters ever,
and now we're not,
it's not even about the best painters ever.
I think now it's about getting a message out.
(folky music)
- No, one's really buying paintings right now.
Since the coronavirus happened,
all of my jobs have been put to
I haven't been able to do
any of my side painting jobs I w
So my income has been absolute z
(folky music)
What I did do was I made a coronavirus T-shirt
and offered it for sale,
and the proceeds of the sales for that T-shirt
went to the Coalition for the Ho
and I sold about sixty shirts.
(folky music)
- [Scooter] Yeah, it's a small o
They're wipes.
They're body wipes.
Toothpaste and toothbrush, you w
- Yes. - This is
a red velvet cookie and chocolat
Yeah, you're welcome.
And feminine products.
(folky music)
That's men's underwear, there's light gray and dark gray.
That one in your hand.
I think that one is, look at it.
And this one.
It's new.
It's brand new.
(voice muffling)
This is men's underwear and women's underwear,
and that's toothpaste and toothb
I just thought that would be a good place for me
to start to help out some other
(folky music)
♪ Yeah I need it every day baby
("Sensualite'")
- With the recent United States Supreme court ruling,
says that we can't discriminate against LGBTQAI people,
and this was quite a landmark for everyone,
especially for me and my family,
because my sister, who was in the military,
and had already devoted twenty y
of her life to the Navy,
was kicked out of the Navy because she was lesbian.
♪ Reached out to ♪
- This devastated her life.
She served in the Gulf War.
She put her life at risk in the
She flew C21 helicopters.
Her roommate reported her as being lesbian,
and the Navy,
after this full career, kicked h
And in that day she was done.
♪ The dreams from the days passi
- And it's something
that she's had to deal with her whole life,
just because she was lesbian.
That's it.
♪ Through the smoke and fog ♪
- I'm grateful that people can't be fired anymore
just for being gay or just for acting effeminate.
I've seen people been fired for
♪ Then behind the sunshine ♪
- Now it's against the law for t
(gentle music)
You know, the paintings,
I don't even draw on this canvas
I do love to draw, and I draw a
And when I paint, I tend to draw with the paint,
and I don't correct lines.
I just don't work that way.
I tend to just be really free with the paint.
(lively guitar music)
- I imagine future generations looking back,
if they really want to get to kn
what's happening right now,
all you have to do is look at hi
and register all those different emotions that you feel.
And that will teleport you back to this moment right now.
It's all captured in his work.
(folky music)
- This probably has like seven layers in here.
That's where new discoveries are
There's definitely moments where concepts materialize.
This painting and this painting are all from Venice.
And they had a lot of religious paintings here,
so I came back and I decided to
a whole series of paintings on religious works.
So concepts do come from my personal experiences.
(folky music)
- As an artist, you're bullied b
History said it must be this.
It must be like this.
It must be like that.
And what I see in Scooter's work
he goes back and forth, back and forth into history.
He's redoing Picasso.
He's making you look at Cezanne
He's making you think about classical Renaissance painting.
He's sending you way out
to the mysterious clothing that
Unexpected artistic experience in today's painting.
That's really unusual.
- Sometimes I paint television s
and sometimes I paint shoes and bags and cardboard.
These are gonna be masks.
- I mean, from the second I saw
I said this guy's going to be bi
And I think it's going to keep exponentially growing
after he's gone.
If I outlive him,
that's gonna be my 401K.
- I try and explore and do new things and keep it fresh.
That's the beautiful thing about
It's endless.
Always can find something new to do with just
a tube and a canvas.
♪ He said, this one ♪
- It's not finite.
It's infinite.
(folky music)
- I believe that at this point in the 21st century,
the notion of what art is, is up for grabs.
What is relevant?
And I think the importance of Scooter's work,
because he has such an extensive vocabulary,
it's almost like he knows various languages.
(folky music)
I think that his art is a remix,
a reinvention of the traditions of the old masters.
(folky music)
♪ Oh yeah ♪
♪ Oh why ♪
♪ Buried in black ♪
(intense guitar music)
- [Scooter] In the history of ar
where is my work going to be pla
That's not for me to say,
because I'm not an art historian
♪ Was out there on the porch of
♪ Which said, shook my hand and said Hey Joe ♪
- [Scooter] All I know is I have these paintings.
This is plastic, basically.
So this is going to last a long time, 'cause I used acrylic.
♪ Lit it simultaneously ♪
♪ I'm a gifted guy ♪
♪ You know what I mean ♪
- [Scooter] I've seen artists wh
and who have created a big, beautiful body of work,
and then they die,
and then all of their stuff in a dumpster on the street.
Who knows what's gonna happen wi
It could be in a dumpster.
And it could be in a museum.
And the only reason that van Gogh's is where he is
is because of his brother Theo's wife, Johanna van Gogh.
And she kept all their letters,
and Johanna kept all of Vincent's paintings,
and if she didn't keep all that
I don't think he would be where he is today.
It takes that person who loves art and who loves archiving
and the history of art to place it in history.
And if I'm lucky enough to have that person in my life,
that would be great, but I don't know if that'll happen.
(camera popping)
(paper tearing)
"Alternative Dreamland"
- But anything else you want to
- [Ethan] No, you did wonderful.
"Alternative Dreamland"
♪ Bayside vanished to sunset ♪
♪ We waited all day long to be t
- I've been really frustrated,
I've been really beat down,
but I never gave up on painting.
I do a lot of stuff for free.
And it's keeping me going.
It's keeping the ball rolling.
Every now and then I do get a nice paying job
that pays my rents and it keeps me going for another month.
That's my theory on surviving in the art world.
("Alternative Dreamland")
- Tap tap tap tap tap (laughing)
- [Ethan] I'll be in the editing
being like ahh. (Helixx laughing)