Art by Josh Alan

As a young artist trying to find a style of his own, Josh Alan encountered resistance early on from a high school teacher who disapproved of his destruction of books and photographs, which he manipulated to create collages.

Today, Alan (he was born Josh Alan Smith but scuttled the surname to avoid confusion with a New York artist with the same name) combines painting and photography and the use of found images for his work, much of which has a jittery tension thanks to a fractured quality that gives his images the look of shattered glass.

Buxton's Boy of Nine cover by Josh Alan

Cover of Buxton's Nothing Here Seems Strange by Josh Alan

Sometimes he contrasts sturdy objects — a monument or statue — with chaotic shards that give the pieces a sense of unease.
And that sense of tension is Alan’s goal for the pieces in a series called Zeitgeist. “I was definitely thinking about the wild world events of the past few years,” he says. “Not really trying to create atmosphere exactly but trying to find some other way to describe the zeitgeist that’s going on.”

The pieces have a grand scope, which Alan says was inspired by cinema. “I’m drawn to a lot of monuments, so I do find I use them a lot as source material,” he says. “I can’t say what got me into that, but it started me thinking about these narratives influenced by film. Thinking in terms of big, over-the-top film production style. Trying to capture big dramatic moments, Hollywood blockbuster style.”

Alan started working in collage while at Alvin High School. He toyed with the idea of studying film editing in college, but instead he got a BFA in Painting from Texas State University.

Art by Josh Alan

Some of his early work included fliers and album covers when he played in the instrumental rock band By the End of Tonight. (The cover of the 2005 album, A Tribute to Tigers, is his work.) More recently his art was featured on releases by Buxton and Limb. He did the cover for former’s new Nothing Here Seems Strange. The band will perform an album-release show at Cactus Music on Friday, which also marks the opening of Alan’s I’m Only Bleeding exhibit at the store, where it moves from the Xnihilo Gallery.

Alan suggests his affinity for collecting images — he’ll pour through hundreds for each collage — likely comes from being the son of two antique dealers. “Basically I was raised in antique stores,” he says. “As a kid sometimes you’d have to figure out a way to pass the time for yourself so I started collecting pictures.”

He admits his affinity for found objects can create storage problems. “If I say I like anything — at one point I was collecting old trophies — my mom will then show up with three boxes of trophies,” he says.

“But it’s OK ... I really do love old stuff, old equipment.”
Alan has the rare child who nods off willingly before 7 p.m. His wife, a teacher, turns in pretty early too. Which puts him in his studio for hours each night with paint and canvases and thousands and thousands of photographs that he assembles into a new whole to say something about our times.

“I’m really interested in creating a kind of indescribable tension,” he says. “Only I’m trying to use images instead of words to describe it.”

Event: Buxton listening party/Josh Alan art show
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth
Free
Details: Listening party begins at 7 p.m. with a Buxton performance at 8 p.m. The band and Josh Alan will be on-hand until 10 p.m. The first 75 people to buy Buxton's Nothing Here Seems Strange will get a free ticket to the band's album release show on Feb. 4 at Fitzgerald's.