Canvas of choice? The phonebook

By Earl Horlyk Journal staff writer | Posted: Sunday, June 01, 2008

Former Le Mars, Iowa, resident Jonas Lynch works with acrylic over phone book pages, which serve as his canvas. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga)

Does Le Mars, Iowa, native Jonas Lynch have "da schizzle" to make it in the dog-eat-dog art world?

Well, if you ask rapper Snoop Dogg, that's something this young artist will "neva have 2 worry about."

Lynch, now based in Long Beach, Calif., paints portraits of musical stars using an unusual canvas: pages torn out of the phonebook.

"On behalf of the musical venue, I presented a giant portrait to Snoop Dogg," explained Lynch. "It was a reverse image of Snoop's face on a canvas that contained the pages of the Long Beach phonebook."

Informing the hip-hopper that all of the phone numbers in the painting were real, the artist added, "That means the people of Long Beach are behind you, Snoop!"

Lynch laughed for a moment.

"Snoop seemed really impressed by that," Lynch said with a smile. "He said, 'That's cold, man, that's hard!'"

Lynch, a 1998 Le Mars Community High School graduate, painted the portrait for a show Snoop Dogg did at The Vault 350, a concert hall where the artist works.

"Snoop Dogg accepted one portrait," Lynch said, "and he signed one for my collection."

Being on stage with the rapper, he said "was crazy-intense."

"It was positively surreal," Lynch continued. "There were paparazzi all over the place taking our picture. Plus, in the sea of cameras, was my girlfriend with her little digital camera."

"She figured, 'What the hell?'" he remembered with a chuckle. "'I might as well get in on the act.'"

But Lynch grew up far from the glare of cameras.

"I was an art class nerd," Lynch explained. "I drew and sketched everything I could get my hands on."

Initially, they were mostly NFL stars from Lynch's football card collection ("My favorite was Indianapolis Colt running back Marshall Faulk," he added) and Disney characters ("My mom loved it when I sketched 'Thumper' from Bambi").

But under the tutelage of LCHS art teacher Tom Smalley, the ambitious Lynch opened his eyes to different interpretations of art.

"A teacher's job is to help channel students in the right direction," Smalley said. "But Jonas was very easy to teach and he took every art class that was offered to him. He was incredibly creative and very motivated to learn."

"Instead of relying so heavily on sketches and realism," Lynch said, "(Smalley) introduced me to artists like Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch."

Exposure to such Abstract and Impressionistic artists allowed him "to take my brain out of my art work and concentrate on pure emotions."

Lynch soon began making murals for his mom's tanning salon and for a bar in Le Mars.

"That bar, the Swinging Door, which is no longer there, was actually my first commissioned piece of art," he said with a sigh. "In exchange for painting a cow's skull and crossbones, I got a used station wagon with wood paneling."

By the time Lynch graduated from high school, he knew it was "art or nothing for me."

Winning acceptance into Long Beach's Brooks College, Lynch decided to move to the West Coast to pursue his study of graphic design.

"I figured: graphic design, Southern California and the beach," he mentioned. "OK, I could live with that."

Lynch also found work at a Long Beach business that specialized in the design of baseball caps and other pieces of apparel.

"I was there for five years," the now-28-year-old said, "but knew I was getting burned out."

Through a friend, Lynch hooked up with a different apparel company. One that was located in the basement of a old bank building and shared space with a concert hall.

"I designed T-shirts for the company, but I also began designing flyers and posters for the acts that made their way to the Vault."

Lynch was looking for different ways to set his art apart and said his phonebook portraits came about by accident.

"It started with a portrait I was commissioned to paint of Charlie Chaplin," he remembered. "I used old newspapers to paint 'The Little Tramp' and thought it turned out great."

Lynch continued to use newsprint as a canvas but a holiday road trip put him in a bind.

"I was on the road, painting a band who was playing a New Year's Eve show, when I discovered I didn't have a newspaper," he said. "I grabbed what I could find."

What he found, instead, were old phonebooks.

"I just started tearing out random pages," Lynch said. "The formatting and typography and stuff really turned out to be pretty cool!"

Since then, he has painted 30 of the portraits, including R&B artist Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and rapper Kanye West.

Um ... did Kanye think Lynch's phonebook art was "off de hook?"

"No," he replied, "but I try to capture a more human side of the artist. Kanye's pretty well known and there are so many images of him on the Internet. I think he was appreciative that I tried to capture a side most people don't identify with him."

Lynch also presented a portrait to hip-hop group Cyprus Hill.

"(Cyprus Hill lead singer) B-Real seemed really interested in my art and we talked for more than 10 minutes," he said, smiling. "That was nice of him."

Lynch said, depending on the complexity of the image, a portrait could take as little as 2 to 3 hours to paint (as in Snoop Dogg) or as many as 12 to 14 hours (in the case of Parliament-Funkadelic frontman George Clinton).

"If you know how many colors are in (Clinton's) wig you'll know why it took so long."

Meeting with the principal architect of P-Funk was quite the experience for Lynch.

"(Clinton's) entourage was pretty strange," he noted. "You don't see too many 60-year-old men wearing diapers backstage at most shows. But at a George Clinton concert, it's a fairly common occurrence."

As for Clinton, Lynch said he was "low key and down to earth."

"George was a lotta fun," Lynch said. "When he autographed his portrait, in addition to signing his name, he drew a little dog wearing an itty-bitty tuxedo."

"That was awesome," he said in admiration.

In addition to phonebook portraits of musical acts, Lynch also hits the runway with a series of fashion icon portraits.

"I started this series while I was still in college," he said. "So far, I've painted Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Natalie Wood and Jackie Onassis."

"In fact," Lynch let slip out, "I just sold a painting of Katharine Hepburn the other day."

But Lynch said he is most excited about a new series of portraits involving rock greats like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and KISS.

"A buddy of mine began his career photographing artists for Rolling Stone and Circus Magazines back in the '70s," Lynch said. "That decade was like a real-life 'Almost Famous' for him. So he has thousands of photos of these groups back in their heyday that have never been seen before."

"I'd love to meet with these groups and paint their portraits," he added. "That could be a huge opportunity for us."

As he chart his next career move, Lynch said he's not yet ready to make the move to Los Angeles.

"Los Angeles is only 20 minutes away from where I live," he said, "but it's worlds apart from Long Beach. Long Beach may not be a mecca for the art world but it has such an awesome community atmosphere."

"People get to know you in Long Beach," Lynch continued, "and you get to know them as well."

Sort of like Le Mars?

"Sort of," Lynch said, nodding his head. "It's hard to take the Midwest out of me, I guess."