Comfy Pants by Jake Wagner at The SoFo Tap in Chicago IL

Jake Wagner is our New Featured Artist at The SoFo Tap starting in February. Like a lot of people, Jake spent the last year mostly wearing pajamas and feeling anxious. A lot of that anxiety came from fear of losing momentum as an Artist with a capital A. Losing his job and comedy community resulted in not wanting to make anything for months. One day, he had the idea to start something for himself called Garbage Art. Every weekend, he would spend a full day adding paint and lots of other stuff to a canvas. After it dried, he would take a photo and leave it by the dumpster. If there’s anything you take away from this, he hopes you try some Garbage Art for yourself. After weeks of dropping off his paintings for whoever, he started to see something he never ever ever thought would happen… he began forming my own style. This was important because he always loved painting but felt like everything he made looked immature or derivative. More importantly, he genuinely liked what he was making and how it FELT to make it. So here it is, his first finished collection of paintings. Comfy Pants. He’d also like to thank Heather for encouraging him to be creative every day and helping him believe in himself. (And of course, Jake says if she didn’t try to touch everything in art museums, his paintings would be seriously less interesting.) You can meet Jake in person at The SoFo Tap and check out his art on Friday, February 18th, from 5-7pm.