Good Day Uncut: Jeff Schaller's Studio

Philadelphia, we are uncut. Everybody listen, I'm your old pal Hank. It's time for Uncut. Welcome aboard, guys. Going to take you all the way through noon. Out north of, actually out north of Downingtown, up in the hills. North of Downingtown, the mysterious hills. I'm telling you what a place. Anybody that's got a big, thick, worn-out book with a cut-out picture of Elvis on the front of it, it's one of my people. Let me introduce you to Jeff Shaler, guys. This is the guy that we're here to talk to today. Jeff, go ahead and click that on it. Thank you for having us. All right, guys. You're going to get the tour that I've gotten over the course of the last half hour. Jeff, I guess you'd call him a contemporary artist, a very successful artist, but an artist that has a certain amount of sway. He's a man that knows exactly who he is and what he likes, and that's part of what got me out here today because he likes a lot of the same stuff I do. Evel Knievel, come on, I've been obsessed with this cat ever since I was five years old. But then there's Scooby-Doo, a blow pop. Actually, a bubble yum. You got a Toucan Sam from Froot Loops, but then there's some Wonder Bread. This is the popular style, but this is very you. You This is very Jeff Shaler, but I don't know this until I meet you. Take us through a little bit of how you become who you are today, Jeff. We're about the same age, which means... know, He's taking a turn or two, maybe even hit a dead end now, and he had to back out and go the other way. We're Gen Xers, man. But your stuff is crazy. Yeah, I know, but that's the fun of it. Isn't it beautiful? uh... You got to get it. Yeah, yeah, and it'll click at some point. I just don't know how you get to where you are. Obviously, your brush is talented, your hand is good, but there's things in here. And first of all, these things are things. Honestly, am I supposed to be able to show these? Yeah, they don't know. They don't know what date they're going to go out. All right. So these will be released shortly. December 1st. See, guys, beating it to the punch. Boom. So this is the preview. So this is 25 days of mini. OK, it is a program that's run online. Sign up for it. And then every day an artist releases a painting. And it starts at midnight, and some people are buying things at 12.01. Some people stay up until midnight just to buy them. Well, there's a ton of fun. There's so much obvious in here. Calvin and Hobbes, Dino, Frank, and Sammy, who never gets old. Wonder Woman, obviously, never gets old. Animal on the Kit. But half of the fun is going through your stuff and catching your references. But it's also in layering the things that you're doing. Love type. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Bubble back there. Yep. So I did this year, I did stuff based on a room. So when I'm doing outdoor shows, people are like, where am I going to hang that? And I'm like, here, these are 25 paintings with designated rooms. With respect, I was going to say, with respect, the bathrooms are tiny. I love the bathroom because you're always in there at least four times a day. That's what I had to say with respect. We're not exiling the stuff to the bathroom. I knew a guy that hung a huge picture of Chuck D and Flavor Flav. So when you sat in the bathroom, that's what you looked at. And he even had a thing you could press a button in here, going to the bathroom music. Yes. That's awesome. It was insane. So then we got, like, you know, the office, maybe the guy's room. Sure. Stock market, and then we get... The bear and the bull. The bear and the bull. That is sick, actually. There's just something about that dollar sign over the both of them that straightens all of it out and makes it a lot cooler and a lot more serious somehow. And then we go to the bedroom. We got getting some Z's with Care Bear, ZZ Top, and then, you know, maybe somebody's an animal in the bedroom. Hey-o. Let's go. Hey-o. Let's go. Get him an animal. It's subtle. It's clean. It's all PG. Where are you from? Originally from Ellington, Connecticut. Okay. How did you find your way here? Up by UConn. Were you painting up there? Yeah. Up in stores, near stores? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I've always been painting. It's the only good thing I can do. Painters always say that. Well, I mean, but maybe your life is, you don't have to stand here and fit into them. Your life is proof positive of what you think you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like back in grade school, remember, everybody had the jean jackets. We're the same age, so everybody had the jean jackets. Now, did you paint on the jean jackets? Did you put the Iron Maiden one? Yes, sir. Iron Maiden, ZZ Top, Def Leppard. Guns N' Roses and kids were paying me for that. I'm like, I'm into this. So wait, I can get paid and make money. This is gesso. Are these acrylics? Are these oils? Yeah, these are acrylics. These are Nova Color. The same paint. Nova because they're out of California. Beautiful stuff. Same stuff that they use for the murals in Philadelphia. So this stuff will last forever. I used to do encaustic, which is wax with natural pigment. Is that, do you have to warm it up to work with it? Yes, that's why I had to. That sounds difficult. Why would you work with that? Because it was difficult. Because you liked it? You were into that? Was it beautiful, too, though? Yeah, there's some encaustic pigments. No, those two. Joe DiMaggio. The baseball player? Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio. And who's the lady up top? And that was from Eight and a Half, the movie by Fellini. But you've got an absolutely fabulous logo here. It's one of the funniest shows. Guys, if you've never seen Absolutely Fabulous, it's a drunk fashion designer and her best friend. They're British. They walk around drinking. It's the greatest. It's just terrible. Boo! But okay, here's this beautiful woman and it says drag strip. You have a ton of style. I think what I'm trying to do is get you to literally spell out things that should not be spelled out literally. Yeah. I think they're linear for me, but really people look at them and are like, what the hell are you thinking? Well, because you've got puns in these things. When you spell it out, there's a linear that I didn't see at all. You did it here with this one. Yeah. Dive bar. Right. Dive bar. I just think things should have like an aha moment. It does, it does. But it's a good piece that you can hang and still look at what you were talking about before, like these little drips and stuff like that. Yes, all of that I noticed last time I looked at it. Now what I'm seeing is what you did somehow with the sunshine through the prism of this glass. That's madness, dude. You're crazy. You're out of your mind. And this is beautiful. What am I killing? Okay, he's crushing his gumball machine. But I think that's... But there's something forever. That's why we love art, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you, it's. It's an aha moment. It's simple, but then you get pulled into it, like martini, cocktail time, glow in the dark. What made you do that glow in the dark? Because honestly, the kid in me wants to paint everything glow in the dark, but apparently we're not allowed to do that anymore because we have to control ourselves. Guy, if it's glow in the dark, what are you, a great big child? Well, yes, actually. How much do you want for that for glow in the dark paint? All right. Yeah, no, I just had to. It's like if the bomb goes off and, you know, there's nothing we can do, it's like, let's have a cocktail. Might as well tip one, yeah, because the wave will be here in a second. Might as well. We're over by the nuclear reactor in Phoenix, though. It's going to go quick. No getting around it. I'm telling you what, guys. Watch out for Jeff Shaler. He throws you in the studio. You might just get comfortable. You might wind up drinking your way through a half-hour television show. We can start. Not what I'm doing right now. But we are having a good time, guys. The work of Jeff Shaler. We're going to get into some of the stuff that he's doing now. And a little bit, even though it might turn him off, a little bit of the business side of things, because Jeff does okay. How can you do that with your work as well? And I know some of you painters are watching. Give me a couple minutes. We'll be right back with more uncut. All right, there she is, everybody, as if your eyes could ever get enough. Of Audrey Hepburn sipping champagne and doing breakfast at Tiffany's Giggle Water. Jeff, what is it about this particular time? We try to talk about it. I feel like I'm continuing to carve at you until I get the sculpture that I want. There's a romance there. I'm not going to say they were better than we were, but they absolutely did some things better. Design for one. We've talked about this. Yeah, it's a nostalgia. Yeah. Like everybody's childhood. Our childhood was awesome. It was 1970s, but then you look at it, like, we had the gas shortage, we had Carter and stuff like that. Yeah, but that was for the adults to deal with. I didn't hear about it. I saw the news stories, but I was in New York. Yeah, but we were having fun. We were drinking from the hose. And this is what I remember from it. It's like, this is 19... This is more 1930s and stuff, but then you remember, like, the 1930s and you hear about the speakeasies and, you know, making your own gin and bootleggers and stuff like that. Right, or making it wrong and killing a couple of people. Like, I want in on that, and I just want to capture that, and I think that's what... I say I think of happiness. No need to put my problems on your wall. But you do, and it's a common happiness with folks that see it and enjoy it. That's the relationship. That's a fine line. Some people don't get it. I think our genre gets it. I'm hitting that peak. I was a little early before when I was doing it because it was all the boomers, and they were like, I don't get this stuff. But now a lot of people. That's okay, because if you want to be Gen X's painter, it's Gen X finally getting to the point where we've got a little bit of money to spend on some of these things. Amen to that. Can we go down? Sure, go for it. I didn't even know there was a downstairs until he told you to lead the way. It's okay. Talk about things that you like on the way down. And there's the Bam Margera Kinect, that brown right there with the... Who is the Scandinavian singer who had that the band was so obsessed with for a long time that... Uh, uh, uh, him. He called himself him. He just went by him, which I always thought was a really strange name for a band. Because if I'm talking about him and people are asking me who I'm talking about, I'm like, well, I'm talking about him. And they're like, who? Him. Right. But who? We could do this all day. It's like, who's on first? Yeah, that was, uh, I did that project with Bam and this was a shopping list that he had on his refrigerator for Johnny O. To get the milk, get the coffee, get the heroin, get the cat food, cigarettes, and eggs. Wow. So I didn't know that the brown was the heroin, but now that you've spelled that out, I get that. Let's just put it up on the fridge. Just so the guy going into town won't forget it. That's a good segue to my kids. It's okay if I... I mean, these are your children through the years. This is wonderful. Every year I take a picture of the kids and put that on the back of my painting. And you're a grandfather now as well. And these are my two grandkids. Dude, what did that do? How was the grandparent step for you? Oh, it's awesome. Like, love my kids, but skip the kids, bring the grandparents. It's awesome. All right. This is my lovely wife. You got the Beatles back there, Abbey Road. That's what I'm trying to figure out. How do you paint her quite like that? You almost caught her like at 1 a.m. sleeping with the TV. No, she's looking at the iPhone. This was early. This was like 2000s when the iPhone would start coming out and you had that really cool blue light. You got that glow and you're painting her from above in a lot of ways. From sort of above her head, above and forward. This looks really good in the dark. I'm sure it does. Are you cracking me up, too, and I can never tell whether these are personal things? Candy, now Candy, they used to sponsor Toleman Formula One back when Ayrton Senna ran for them, his first F1 car. But what is Sunshine? You have these sort of things that you do. I went to Cuba. Well, what's interesting to me, especially now knowing that you've got a relationship with Bam and the skate world. Is this sort of arbitrary logo-izing of things that you can't quite tell? And Sunshine feels like that to me. I can see that on the bottom of a skateboard. I'm just saying, um, uh... Hello, Sunshine. Oh, what's Little Miss Sunshine? Remember that movie? Well, there was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That was that one too, but it was Little Miss Sunshine also. Okay. So this was in Cuba at the end of Hemingway's Pier, and I took the picture of this. I think it's like a... Yeah, that's the newest Chevy they have in Cuba. My wife again. She's a big subject of mine. Beautiful woman. Look at that. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, heck. You gotta paint up the people. Okay, here's another example, the round one thing. This is what I'm talking, like, you hit these themes, and as an artist, themes are not a bad thing either, because people like the themes, you knock out like 60 of them. I've done a new round of, I've got a half dozen round ones for sale on the website or whatever it is. By the way, Jeff Shaler, we're about to go to another break. If people are liking what they're seeing here, you've done a good job of making things available for the big art buyer who wants to spend five figures, and the art buyer who wants to spend a couple of hundred bucks Where are we online? How can we get a hold of you? JeffShaylor.com. Spell Shaylor. J-E-F-F-S-C-H-A-L-L-E-R. JeffShaylor.com, everybody. And he's busy with it. Again, like, not some dude's got a house up here in the hills north of Downingtown. He's got a grandchild. He's got a swimming pool. Two, three grandkids. He's done really, really well with art. What's your advice to the artist working now who's doing good work but trying to turn that corner into a living? You've got to get it out there. Get it out there. Different ways to do that. You can do outdoor art shows, outdoor shows, gallery shows. Online world is really... It's also blended, isn't it? It's so hyped up now and it's so hard to find. Early on, websites were fine. Etsy was great. But now it's just so... It's flooded with nonsense. It's flooded. The algorithms are way off. Well, everybody's AI-ing things to buy through that. And you don't even know who the sellers are anymore. So what would you do? Shows? Get out there. So I get out there and do shows. I go from Florida all the way up to Chicago. I used to have a bunch of galleries. Brought up my prices and then got into some museums and then... Good time. Doing it now. There you go. Take a lesson from a pro, everybody. Jeff Shaylor, he's here with us up in Downingtown. Guys, we're going to have more Uncut when we get back as I continue to try to delve into the style. That's whack. Okay, so this is what you were talking about. When we get back before, I'm actually going to get in a fist fight with Jeff because I may actually touch the whack. Guys, we'll be back with more Uncut out here to Downingtown. A lot of good talking to do. We'll be right back. All right. What, what? Coming back. All right, everybody, looking at, we're down in the basement at Jeff Shaler's, guys, in his studio, looking at some silk screens, and I'm guessing. That, especially one like this, Jeff, that particular, that silkscreen, that can't be one silkscreen. I feel like you're putting five or six silkscreens on one silkscreen. Because I'm cheap. A bunch of it. Well, we all are. This is white, so I'll silkscreen that white, and then this is the halftone, which I would silkscreen in black. So Ink would get through some of that. Yeah. It's the same woman, same diver. That's the diver we had upstairs, isn't it? Okay. Yep. And then a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. And then the Lifesavers logo. Hey, Jeff, how much money misses there? I mean, how many silkscreens do you have that they arrive? You paid a few bucks to get it in or whatever. Oh, you make them? Yeah, right back here. Will you show me? Sure. You make them? Yeah. This is the darkroom. The silkscreen-making machine in my jammer? Put it in there, turn the light on. Expose it and wash it. This is nuts. Guys, this is an art studio. This brother's top to bottom. Now, are you like stitching your canvases together with a loom? Boom. Yeah. Like stretching them with homemade gesso that you made from milk? I used to make rabbit skin gesso, seriously. Hopefully. You're insane, dude. I don't leave much. I stay here. Dude, you got a good look in your eye. You seem like a happy man. I'm happy. I like making stuff. Yeah, clearly. As you came in, you almost stepped over the walkway, which is a brick pathway, which I want to make, too. No, did you pour the concrete out for me? No, I didn't pour the concrete. I was going to. My wife was like, pay for it, would you? I'm like, no, I'll pay. I'll pour it myself. Well, if you do it wrong, I think concrete's a grizzly bear. This is actually maybe the best point it can make. How old are your grandchildren? You have three. Oh, man. Three. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I know. But they're little. Three. Two, three, one, and six months, April. So the three-year-old comes over to grandpa's house. Dude, if I'm three and I come over to your house, I'm bouncing off the walls because there's way too much fun here. It's color, it's beautiful. Yeah, not my grandparents. I can remember other people's grandparents, great auntie going there and there'd be a weird electric organ and maybe a couple of Conway Twitty records or something. Couch is covered with plastic because, God forbid, we don't want to mess up the couch. We don't have any problem. Couches get messed up out here all the time, right? We're not worried about that at Jeff Taylor's. No, I got a whole paint set from my grandson. He comes over. He's like, Grampy, paint's over there. Yep. What color do you want? He knows his colors. I pour him. Let me ask you this, Jeff. What do you see? Do you watch TV? Not much anymore. Go ahead. What do you do? What if you did? Like. We're even riding on the road. Advertise. Advertising, like, it's so pop-arty, but even that. I can take you 10 years ago, up and down 95, the billboards there, there would have been a lot of... A lot of watch ads, some jewelry and stuff. And now literally two-thirds of them are personal injury attorneys. And they advertise with us. It's a solid business. All of that. My best client is an injury lawyer. But where are you getting? I mean, clearly there's a part of you that lives 40 years back. Yeah, I think I stopped. You love the retro and stuff. I stopped. Aren't you getting any new food? Yeah, I just used the Tinder logo. I thought that was fun. What about that? Yeah. I couldn't even tell you what the Tinder logo was. It's the two fingers. It's a swipe. Oh, got it. Okay. I remember seeing the TikTok logo at Wildwood before I even knew what it was, like seven years ago. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll throw that in there. So I think I stopped using logos from like the 2000s, 1990s. Well, go back to your point about design. Maybe people don't make logos anymore. Yeah, they don't make logos as well. They make AI logos, which are always cartoony and garbage. Yeah, and no good taglines either. Oh, let's do it. I'll use that. Or just do it, rather. Well, you go back. That's why you've got all these old books upstairs. Yeah, yeah. Like, you dig back and cool advertising ideas from 30 years ago. Longer, longer, longer ago. And it just sparks that memory. I just showed my wife that fake cappuccino stuff. Remember that? And the Vienna fake cappuccino? And you would have, it came in a yellow and a white and an orange. Was it, it wasn't Gevalia, was it? Was that Gevalia? No, it was powdered, but it was like, that was cappuccino back in the 70s and stuff. And I'm like, looking at this, I'm like, this is great. Meanwhile, it's like weird coffee with like some sugar in it or something. Yeah, exactly. Not too cappy at all. It was one off of Nestle Quick with a bunch of sugar. With like some malted milk in it. Yep, yep. Stuff like that. Those are like, all of a sudden, those just spark memories of being at home or wherever you were. And that's the stuff that I like. Not really, it's about the painting, it's about the memory. Do you do research on these things? Like, what's the weirdest thing you've done in the name of art in like the last five years? How about that? Weird, yeah, weirdest, like... Well, by your definition of, well, like, I mean, I go to thrift stores all the time, and I might not buy anything, but I'm looking for something. Like a quick, like, I really love that animal piece up there. I just think that's hilarious for the bedroom. Oh, yeah, it's like... Let's go back upstairs anyway. All right. Like, he's talking about Animal from the Muppet Show on the drums. Yeah, which could go in the bedroom, but it's like, it's clean, so you can say, oh, I'm an animal in the bedroom. Right, but always it can go anywhere. I mean, you're not doing... The weirdest thing that I've painted... Now, are these flowers glow-in-the-dark here with this cow as well? No, those are Warhol's flowers. A rip-off of Warhol, and then you got the... No, those don't glow-in-the-dark. And the cow's staring at you like he's coming for your wallet. Let's call it. Cash cow. The first cocktail... That sounds like a good idea. I remember... One of the first times I went to Great Adventure, Jackson, New Jersey, there was a ski show out there. There was. Now there's like a weird lake. There'll be no ski show. Or a horse jumping into like a bucket of water. Nothing like that. And this is in my life. This is what you're saying. Our generation, generation like very weird. We were the last ones to see like the high diving horse, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the ski show at Great Adventure. Yeah. Now you're going to go watch a movie. Now you're going to go watch a movie. Like I heard the Netflix, not to not, but like that complex is like everything's just geared towards one imagery in one show. Okay. I got to get one more break. And then I'm going to add, again, this is the wax stuff and you can see what it is there, guys. He's too crazy. I'm not even going to get into it with him. We've got to take one more break, guys. We are out north of Downingtown with the great artist Jeff Shaler, jeffshaler.com. If you want to find out more, give us a couple minutes. We'll be right back to wrap up this episode of Uncut. We'll be right back. That's probably more than a secure eight and a half. Ah. All right, just a couple of paintings, guys, that will be up on Jeff Shaler's website. Before you know it, they'll be made available for Christmas. Not available yet. You get the early look here. On Uncut, but this is the polar opposites of men, isn't it? You got, I believe, Connery Bond with a martini glass looking at you like he's either going to have your wallet or your wife or something. Meanwhile, hello, this is my stapler from Office Space, one of the greatest movies. Please. Define your style. Try. Say, and your website does a good job of it, but it's out there and I could not. Pop, whimsy, and happiness. Every painting should put a smile on your face. That works, though, right? There's nothing corny about that. I mean, I could be the deep, dark dude. I could be Trent Reznor or somebody and buy paintings that scare me. Do I want that hanging in my living room? I don't know. I was messed up back in college. That's fine. Nobody wanted that stuff. It was like therapy for me. Right. So I got all that out without paying a dime. But the art that makes people feel good, it's no secret that it sells better. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah. I had a better gift. How are you going to give a gift? Here's a wonderful picture of a cat being slaughtered. Happy birthday. Where do you want me? What does this have to say about me? So Jeff Shaler dot com. What do you find there if you log on? Different things. I can buy from you today. Yeah, yeah. I'll take cash, credit card. Right. Well, of course. But I mean, I can buy originals. There's probably prints on there as well. Yeah, originals. I got prints. And then I do some silkscreening. So price point for everybody, every collector. Uh, and it just gives you a bunch of like a history of some of the corporate stuff that I've done and some of the fun stuff that I've done. I've got like a minute left. Do you want to shout anybody out? Any artists that are really turning you on these days or anything? Oh, my good buddy. Maybe you have, sorry, your good buddy who? Burton Morris. Okay. Burton or Bert? Burton. Okay. B-U-R-T-O-N, Burton Morris. Burton Morris. He got me on Friends. He was a good guy. He's a good cat. Oh yeah. He's out in LA. Uh. A couple of paintings on the last episode of Friends. Oh, yeah, and my claims of fame. Which is crazy. I mean, he'll sell those to you, too, but bring your wallet. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Three forms of identification. That's weird, too. I'm surprised you still have them. I'm surprised that half the television people in L.A. haven't done it. I'm surprised that hasn't just bit all the way through to, like, your beach house already. That would be awesome. All right, Jeff Shaler, listen, brother. Left hand, closest to the heart. It's a Boy Scout handshake. Guys, check him out at JeffShaler.com. Just to lose yourself in the artwork, You might want to write him a check and get yourself a little piece as well, guys. Jen Fred coming up with the noon show. She's going to tell you everything we haven't told you here and a whole lot more. Stick around for it. We'll see you tomorrow for another one. Be safe.