Aaron Bagley is in a sweet and desperate position. He has absolute
freedom as an artist. Not tied down to any one version of himself, he
creates collages from magazines, paintings of clouds, abstract
paintings, comics featuring a character named Stereoman, miniature-art
shows in diorama form, early-morning noise-music performances, and an
ongoing massive exhibition consisting entirely of postcards sent
through the mail to people who have requested them using secret
passwords. This last project, the mail project, has a meta-component,
too, a black book he keeps updated with the names of everyone who has
ever requested a postcard, and lists of which ones they’ve received,
with any feedback they’ve given noted down in Bagley’s scrawl. When
people send in enough requests, they receive—free, all of this is
free—an entire 15-page sketchbook full of ink drawings.
The black correspondence book is a portrait of Bagley’s very
personal relationship to his self-generated audience. Under certain
names in the book all that’s listed is the first postcard Bagley sent
with only a stretch of white space underneath, meaning that the person
never responded—and meaning that if a response comes, Bagley is
poised to fulfill and record it.
“At least if I don’t get those gallery shows, or get into New
American Paintings“—a curated publication that Bagley’s
wife, Jessixa, was included in this year for the first
time—”people will still know that I existed,”
he said.
“Jessixa is at the emerging stage. I’m barely even there.”
Barely even there. That’s the catch to Bagley’s freedom.
You can do anything when nobody’s looking.
At the same time, Bagley has been appearing—in a quiet but
insistent way—all over the place. In the last two years, he has
had solo shows at Cornish College of the Arts, Fancy, Joe Bar, and
Faire Gallery/Cafe, and he’s been in group shows at Suite 100 Gallery
in Belltown and the former Capitol Hill
art space OlivoDoce.
His little dioramas of bite-size paintings and sculptures in
palm-size galleries, made in collaboration with Jessixa, are the most
elaborate objects for sale in the art vending machine at the Hideout.
Full disclosure: He’s also had art on the cover and been an occasional
illustrator for The Stranger. This
summer, his pensive
watercolor of a pregnant man accompanied a story I wrote.
Given that he’s everywhere, you’d think it would be possible to
synthesize his style, to describe in a few words what to expect from a
show of his. But Bagley, who graduated from Cornish in 2004, isn’t
narrowing down his interests and honing his style the way many
art-school grads feel they should in order to get galleries and
attention. He’s not shaping a career. He’s too busy shaping his
constant creative impulses into drawings, paintings, performances, and
projects.
“I’ve always kind of felt like he’s the real deal,” said Jessixa.
“He’s hungry for
making his artwork. If he’s not working with his
hands, he’s always thinking about something feverishly.”
In some ways, Bagley is a technician. He’s a trained oil
painter—one of his large portraits, of a cloud leaching color,
made an impression when it appeared on The Stranger‘s cover,
and recently he’s been working on layered abstractions that mix
controlled and unstructured gestures. He’s also a talented draftsman.
“We all thought that if there was a life-drawing major at Cornish, he
would succeed at it,” said Alexis Hilliard, an artist friend.
All the same, Bagley is a conceptualist at heart, too. For a
sculpture assignment once, he lined up a “piss spectrum.” He’d tailored
his diet to get every shade of yellow.
“I was a big fan,” said artist and Cornish professor Bob Campbell.
“He was just a very open, experimental guy.”
Bagley says he’s worried. He’s worried he won’t ever settle down
into a recognizable commodity. He’s worried that giving away his art
for free, even only in the form of printed postcards—one of my
favorites depicts Kate Moss with a watercolor ‘fro, rising out of an
upturned Rauschenberg-style stained couch—makes it seem
worthless. “I’m worried I’m not Tom Friedman–clever, Paul
McCarthy–shocking,” he says.
This mood does not, however, shut down the Bagley operation. The
to-do list that hangs over the desk in his apartment says, “Homeless
signs, More abstract paintings, More pants.” He is starting a project
that will include homeless signs. He plans to buy them from homeless
people. And do what with them?
“I only have a rough outline of what I want to do,” he says.
A week later, he’s bought his first sign, for four dollars, from a
woman who rides his bus. He’s considering what’s next. 
