jason jagel

Who are some of your favorite creatives and what do you admire about their work?

There’s too many to list. Let’s see, lately for music there’s Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and The Philip Cohran Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Dam Funk, Patrick Adams productions, the People’s Potential Unlimited label, Elvin Jones’ drumming, Pluggy Satchmo, James Pants, Supreme Team, The Jahari Massamba Unit and the whole Stones Throw Massive. For a class I’m teaching called Word / Text / Image, I’ve been reading writings by Kurt Schwitters, Josef Albers, Chris Ware (all these characters talk about the need for an unfettered state of mind and the strict discipline required to achieve it) and others, also a cool piece by Jonathan Lethem called, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” Vikram Chandra is a favorite writer lately. Haruki Murakmai, Chester Brown, Max Beckmann have all been huge to me at one point or another.