An Artist's Profile: Joshua Westfall/Joshua's Drowning

By Josh Hornbeck

The following interview was first published on The Writer’s Block Blog in 2005.
I sit at my usual table, drinking my usual drink (caramel mocha) and spending the night writing (or trying to write) in my usual spot, Queen Anne’s Caffé Ladro. It’s only a couple of blocks away from my apartment and has a great atmosphere – friendly customers and employees, good music (typically chosen by said employees), and good art by local artists hanging on the walls. It’s a good place to hang out, and a great place to get work done.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been looking at the newest art exhibit on the café walls. It’s a photography series – both color and black-and-white – capturing buildings and structures and locations. The pictures are pieced together out of four to eight smaller pictures making up one whole piece linked together by metal framing.

The artist, Joshua Westfall, is at Caffé Ladro tonight, surrounded by friends, well-wishers and buyers for his first official art opening. He walks the admirers about the display, talking to them about the locations and his composition and framing. Also the architect behind the musical project “Joshua’s Drowning,” Westfall has feet planted firmly in both the musical and visual art worlds.

He came to Seattle in 1995 for college, and received his degree in Visual Arts from Seattle Pacific University, living in the area ever since. Musically, he’s been influenced by an eclectic variety of sources – everything from the standards (U2, Pink Floyd) to the less mainstream influences of trip-hop, electronica, and industrial rock (Mortal, Morcheeba). Westfall recently decided to record and release his first CD, “Sketches,” independently. In the midst of the flurry surrounding his first art showing, I got the chance to talk with Westfall and find more about this artist trying to span two worlds.

“Music is really a catharsis for me,” he says. “It’s a way for me to let everything out, to put myself out there [lyrically]. I can get really angry and negative and the music lets me get everything out there.”

That anger and frustration can easily be heard in the screaming and heartfelt cries throughout the vocals on “Sketches.” It all has an industrial, almost processed edge to it, constantly driving and moving the music forward.

“I see all the capacity man has to create beauty, and I just get so angry and frustrated by how destructive human nature can be. It’s hard for me to see that beauty, and photography really forces me to look hard to see the beautiful things that mankind can build.”

He admits that music is where he’d like to be focusing his attention right now (he loves to travel and music provides more opportunities to get paid for traveling than photography), but photography is still integral to his life. “It’s a process that relaxes me, lets me be a bit more contemplative than I am with my music.”

You’d think that with a record in stores and his first art showing that Westfall is content with the time and energy he’s putting into his work. “You know, I could always be doing more than I am. It may seem like I’m going full-steam ahead, but I see how much more I could be doing.”

His photography, even in the pictures of static buildings and objects (like “Central Park Bench”), all has a sense and feeling of movement. “I’m glad you got that!” he exclaims. “It’s so important that all of my work has a flow to it. Nothing in life is static. There’s always a flow and a movement to it.”

That seems to be the major connection between his music and his visual art. There is always a drive, always a movement, always a desire to be heading forward. The music off of “Sketches” is exciting and dynamic, his photography stirring and engaging.

If there’s anything else that unites his work, it would have to be his desire to look out and see hope, even in the darkest of situations. “I don’t want to wallow in my own self-pity. I always want there to be an uplifting message, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’m not trying to please anyone with my art. I’m trying to figure out my own shit, but I do try to look hard and see the beauty – the hope – around me.”

(Posted 11/4/2009)