'Miss Car' (High Times, 1985).
Wayne White is an American multi-disciplinary artist, working as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, animator, set designer and comic artist. As a cartoonist, he worked for several magazines in the 1980s, with 'Miss Car' (1984-1985) being his regular feature in the East Village Eye and High Times magazine. He is possibly best-known as a set and puppet designer for the 1986-1990 TV show 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse'.
Early life
Wayne White was born in 1957 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Growing up in what he calls the "hillbilly south", White developed a rich imagination and an early drawing talent. Both the beauty of the Tennessee countryside and his mother's talent for decorating the house with humorous phrases and offbeat objects remained lasting influences on his later work. As art was not around much in his birth town, White used it to entertain himself. He was a rebellious and provocative teen, resulting in a defiant mentality in later years. Throughout his career as an artist, Wayne White has continued to spoof the southern mentality and mindset.
'Misscar'.
Cartooning career
After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University with a BFA in Painting in 1979, Wayne White initially headed for Nashville to pursue his artistic career as an "Abstract Expressionist", but with no luck. After discovering Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine, White decided to move to New York City and try cartooning instead. There, he found work as an illustrator and cartoonist, starting in 1982 at the cultural magazine East Village Eye and then also contributing to papers and magazines like the New York Times, Raw magazine, Bad News, High Times and the Village Voice. One of his regular features was the absurd and abstract 'Miss Car' strip, which first appeared in the East Village Eye and then also High Times magazine. In the meantime, he released his own xerox-printed mini-comics with minimalistic art, such as 'Geedar' (five issues, 1989) and 'Vaga'. In 1990, he contributed the five-page story 'Ronster the Monster' to the Fantagraphics one-shot comic book 'Kaktus Valley'.
'Geedar'.
Designer for the TV and music industry
In 1986, White became a designer of sets and puppets for the CBS children's television show 'Pee-wee's Playhouse' (1986-1990), and his work was awarded with three Emmys. Among the other designers working for that show were Gary Panter, Rob Zombie and Bill Janocha. After moving from New York City to Los Angeles with his wife, Mimi Pond, he continued to work in television. As a set designer, he was involved in shows like 'Shining Time Station' (1989-1993), 'Beakman's World' (1992-1997) and 'The Weird Al Show' (1997, with "Weird Al" Yankovic). White was also art director for the music videos of Peter Gabriel's 'Big Time' (1987) and The Smashing Pumpkins' 'Tonight, Tonight' (1996). In addition, he designed album covers for the band Lambchop, namely 'Thriller' (1997), 'Nixon' (2000), 'Aw Cmon' (2004) and 'No You Cmon' (2004).
'Geedar'.
Fine artist
As an artist, White has never limited himself to one discipline. As he stated in the 2012 documentary about his life: "I want to try everything I can. I want to take this painting idea and see if you can do a puppet version of it. I want to take the cartooning and turn it into a set. I wanna take the set and turn it back into a painting." Besides creating abstract and figurative pieces on paper, he enjoys collecting scraps and junk and turning them into pieces of art, for instance making stick characters from branches of trees. In the L.A. scene, he is known for his novelty "word paintings", in which he adds humorous and obscene dialogue as three-dimensional text to cheap landscape reproductions and lithographs. On this website, White wrote: "The message of the paintings is often thought-provoking and almost always humorous, with Wayne pointing a finger at vanity, ego, and his memories of the South." White's sculptures and installations are often grotesque deformations of celebrity faces, from country singer George Jones to US President Lyndon B. Johnson. With paintings and public works shown all over the world, White gained particular praise for a successful 2009 show at Rice University, where he built the world's largest George Jones puppet head for a piece called 'Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep'.
'Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep' (Rice University, 2009).
Background
White is married to fellow cartoonist and writer Mimi Pond. Their children, Woodrow White (1992) and Lulu White (1995), are both artists as well. In 2009, Wayne White's life and career was chronicled in the 400-page monograph 'Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get The Respect I So Richly Deserve', edited by Todd Oldham. The book features hundreds of images from his earliest work as an illustrator all the way to his more recent fine art sculptures. Following the book's release, White traveled the country with hour-long talks about his life and work, while entertaining the audience with his banjo and harmonica playing. Highly recommended is Neil Berkeley's documentary 'Beauty Is Embarrassing' (2012), featuring contributions of people like Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman), Kurt Wagner (Lambchop), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Charlotte Caffey (The Go-Go's) and Matt Groening.
Word painting, used on the cover of the 2009 monograph 'Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get The Respect I So Richly Deserve'.