Dark Friends Series
Jerem Morrow
One special pleasure I’ve enjoyed since I decided to include the Artist Spotlight feature in this newsletter is realizing how many cool, exceptionally talented people I am fortunate to consider my friends. Jerem Morrow is definitely one of these.
Jerem and I share a love of horror and all things dark and spooky, which, of course, includes horror movies. Jerem’s knowledge of horror cinema is absolutely amazing. During the height of the recent pandemic one silver lining for me was being a part of a horror movie watch party that Jerem hosted. It was like being in an online college course with the coolest professor ever! Probably a course for geeks, but hey, if the cloak fits, wear it.
Jerem’s knowledge of dark music may go even deeper than his encyclopedic awareness of movies. When I needed a suggestion for where I might turn to get ambient music to set the tone for stories in Dark Corners, I turned to Jerem for help. He suggested I contact Mombi Yuleman, and you Dark Corners fans know how that turned out. I’ll be eternally grateful to Jerem for that.
Jerem’s fantastic dark art has been published in various horror and sci-fi graphic novels and comic books in the past, but those who follow him on Instagram undoubtedly have enjoyed his recent posts as a participant in the Inktober challenge this year. (Artists are challenged to draw a sketch fitting for the season as a result of a single word prompt like “leak” or “open.” Kind of like the Very Short Story challenge for writers.) These sketches may not be as finished or polished as some of the other art you’ll find below since Jerem created each one in a single sitting, more or less, but I imagine that like me, you’ll find them wickedly delightful. I’m sprinkling some of those throughout the interview. (You’re welcome.)
Oh, another unique bit about Jerem – he’s the father of another featured artist in this newsletter, artist and mask maker Draven Leeman. Click on the link to see my interview with Draven.
Enough background. Let’s move on to the interview and Jerem’s art!
Q: When were you first aware that you could draw well? Where did most of your art education come from?
I think the artistic fervor was present from the very beginning. Can’t recall it not being there. Often felt, and still do, like I’m channeling something from the ether.
It’s a kind of prototypical mania, mostly self-taught, but I had some wonderful teachers along the way, from the formative days of early schooling to a stint at the Art Instruction School of Minneapolis, concurrent with high school. I think artists of any stripe truly find themselves in the craft itself. Mastery through practice – all that.
Q: When did your interest in drawing dark subjects begin?
See above, haha. It’s been ever present.
Earliest memories are a miasma of fascination with the stuff. A darkened stage for a preschool play. Long shadows down library aisles, where spooky books nested.
I could draw you a map from Sesame Street monsters to the theatricality of Halloween to Poe to folklore to Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre and back again.
It all speaks to me.
Q: Could you briefly trace your development as a fan of horror? What got you started? How has your taste evolved?
A specific origin is elusive. It’s all bits and pieces along the way. I gravitated towards murkier subjects in general.
My great grandmother was a fan of ghost stories. Storytellers in primary school left an indelible mark. I read Wuthering Heights too young. I know I saw movies before this one, but it was the beacon that dually called me home and warned of rocks ahead.
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn – if I absolutely had to pinpoint my chrysalis into a horror fan proper, that’s it. It’s this luminous distillation of high and low art. A grueling masterpiece. I was 11 or 12. I discovered that and Fangoria Magazine on the very same night. Can’t overstate that impact.
I love it all, the stunning, but rudely dubbed “elevated” horror (A24, SpectreVision, etc.) to the sleazy garbage dump gruel (Troma Entertainment, DePalma at his most BlowOut, 80s slashers, etc). From Theodore Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa to Garbage Pail Kids, my taste contains multitudes.
Q: You’ve worked as an illustrator for several interesting projects. What are some of your favorites?
I’ve come so far as a craftsman, but the graphic novel companion to the film The Drive-In Horrorshow (WATCH IT) will always stand out. For the same folks, the design process for an unrealized redux of the shabbily made movie based on the Clive Barker yarn, Rawhead Rex, was utterly satisfying.
The work itself is where I’m happiest, whether or not it comes to fruition. All the better if it’s alongside people I respect. On that note, the S.P.A.C.E. award-winning book with Lackluster World’s Eric Adams, GOODBYE, WEATHER, is dear to me.
Most work has ongoing real estate in my heart, though. Even those bits I’ve forgotten are out there in some capacity, touching lives. For me, art is all about communication. It’s all one grand gesture. When it’s most effective, that’s what I hold onto.
Q: What artists have influenced you the most? [Image from GOODBYE, WEATHER]
Impossible query! Max Fleischer. Floria Sigismondi. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Mike Mignola. Dali. Giger. Zdzisław Beksiński. Bill Sienkiewicz. Brian Froud. Jack Davis. Countless, nameless horror film poster/VHS cover painters. So many more.
Q: Have horror movies affected your art at all? What are some of your favorite horror films? What did you like the most about them?
Immeasurably. Art is storytelling. Every movie I’ve seen, every show, every book read, every garish bit of marketing, it all seeps in. This question alone could account for pages and pages of answers.
Lemme just spit out ten titles which could and do change daily: XX. Demoni 2. The Lighthouse. Baskin. Ginger Snaps. Jacob’s Ladder. The Bride of Frankenstein. Masque of the Red Death. Borgman. Martyrs. Cemetery Man. This list should be hundreds long.
[Image from Drive-in Horror Show]
What I like most about the genre is we get to flirt with death and loss and pain, mostly without suffering the implicit ill effects. Often communally, often from perspectives we can’t comprehend. I forget who said this, but I agree, movies are empathy machines.
And the horror genre pushes at the edges of the human experience like no other. They can be humanitarian medicine. For myself, they’ve been an endless fount for dealing with PTSD. That said, I also adore just being creeped the fuck out, hahaha. Oppressive gloom, sheer terror, uber down endings – give me all of it.
Q: One question I ask all of the dark artists featured in this newsletter is about how Halloween has figured in their lives. What was Halloween like for you as a child? What is it like for you now?
I’ve always been in love with Halloween. As a kid, growing up in semi-rural, suffocatingly religious WNC, it was something I chiefly had to revel in from afar.
The few times I remember trick or treating, those are precious memories. I’d incorporate the theatricality and ritual of it into my daily play. Hide and seek took on an extra overlay of monsterly haze, that sort of thing. That Jungian balancing act I was denied by the church.
Now the High Holiday is never far from my mind. My house is essentially Halloween central, year round. I’ve been an ardent believer, atheist, and now something else. I don’t really discuss it, but the icons of Halloween are interwoven into my personal spiritual practices. It means a great deal.
Q: Some of my favorite pieces you’ve done have been caricatures of friends done with a dark twist. How did that get started? Would you accept commission work now to do more of these? [photo: caricature of David Allen Voyles and Ann Voyles as Mr. and Mrs. Dark, their Halloween alter-egos]
That started out of a need to pay rent during Covid lockdown when employment dried up! Everyone loves those online cartoon portrait apps. I just tapped into that.
Cartoonish art is predominately looked down upon by “serious” artists, which is laughable, arrogant posturing. Any time I’m working on something more realistic, I have that urge to have a foot in cartooning. There’s something more honest about the form. I always think of hieroglyphics, pictograms or modern comics. Caricatures tap on that base mental door.
I’m always down to take commissions, if I’ve time.
Q: What other media do you like to work with besides drawing and painting?
Sculpting and writing pique my interest at the moment. My DJ-ing hobby became a side hustle. Gothy stuff alongside darker electronic dance music. There’s that communication again, between DJ and dancers. The shared moment. It’s been very kind to me. Made music ages ago. Producing again is a thought haunting me.
Q: Do you have any art projects that you’d still like to pursue on a professional level?
I’ve two comic books on the horizon that I’d back-burnered pre-Covid. Dusting those off. One’s more romantic horror, the other kind of occulty sci-fi/fantasy.
I know canvas and paint are in my future. More film design work. Really anything that strikes me as fulfilling.
You and I have to do something together eventually!
Yes, we do! A collaboration with you is on my bucket list!
Q: If life granted you the freedom to do only the work you wanted to do, how would you most likely spend your days?
Designing, building, and operating a haunted house. Teaching art. Beyond that, just more of what I’m already doing.
If you’d like to contact Jerem Morrow to purchase one of his books or to commission an original caricature, you can email him at thejeremmorrow216@gmail.com