The Chris McNally Interview (Issue 03)

I feel like Chris McNally’s name has been in the ether around me for the last twenty years or so. His name and watercolor illustrations are immediately recognizable and I associate him with brands and people that I’m a fan of. Everything from Ibis product catalogs to Rick Hunter's excellent haircut menu.

We got to hang out a bunch on a bike camping trip last year and just got on immediately. He’s a great dude and I love his work so it was a real treat to sit down and chat on his recent visit to Portland after having swept the Oregon Timber Trail hoof to snout.

HOKEM

When did you kind of know you were like an art kid? Like, were you always drawing growing up and stuff? I feel like there's always a  jumping off point in those teenage years of like, are you serious about this? Or were you just a little kid fucking around and drawing like all kids fuck around and draw?

CMcN

I always loved to draw. But I also loved comics. I had an uncle that would send me stuff because he was super into comics. He had sent me all of the comics that he was into, like, Freak Brothers and everything from that 60s time period like Crumb, Prince Valiant, and Conan….. weird classic shit. But he would also send me books on how to draw comics. It really, focused me down a certain path.

HOKEM

Was it at that point where you started to lock in on certain illustrators? 

CMcN

I didn't even know what illustration was. I just liked drawing stuff.

I think I really fell into like the black and white stuff back then like ink drawings. For some reason, I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I saw a bunch of Katt Williams stuff at the time they were going more towards alternative comics, getting like, painterly and like ink drawings that had bleed and grace, gray tone in them and all that stuff. Getting into that stuff kind of  pushed me a little bit out of comics & into the artsy side of illustration.

HOKEM

And what year is this?

CMcN

Like the late 80s into the early 90s. 

HOKEM

So what came next?

CMcN

I kind of stopped reading comics because they weren’t “cool”, had grown out of them or so I thought. I started hanging out with some stoner metal kids because I could make all of their stoner fantasies come to life.  I would draw little heavy metal posters for them and album covers and stuff.

HOKEM

That's presumably high school-ish.

CMcN

Yeah, junior high / high school. I had some really rad art teachers too. I didn't do well in school. The art teachers I clicked with kind of carried me and got me through.

HOKEM

That was my next question, were there people that just kind of supported you in a way to feel good about being an artist? 

CMcN

My parents never really pushed my sister and I at all. It’s kind of weird to think that they had both been pushed to excel in life and then completely burned out. I don't know if we (My sister and I) ever had conversations about what we wanted to be or do or like what work was. 

Our parents just kind of let us pursue whatever we were fired up on, the vibe was just do whatever you want so long as you're happy. I think both my parents made sacrifices to raise us so they wanted us to have the freedom to choose what we wanted to do rather than what we had to do. My dad has this letter he wrote to himself when he dropped out of drama school and went into law school. Because I think his dad was like, “What the fuck are you gonna do with drama?” So he wrote himself this letter, “Tomorrow, I take the bar exam and it's just the end of my life as I have known it.”  I think having kids kinda freaked him out. Different era too.

HOKEM

So you're in high school and you've kind of got the creative bug, by that time were you snowboarding? Were you riding bikes by that time as well? 

CMcN

Initially bikes were just a form of transportation. We lived in the mountains so it was a bit of a trek to go see my friends. I didn't get a BMX until later on. And then snowboarding kind of came around the same time. I became obsessed with snowboarding for a while.

My mom was the one who got me on bike riding because she was kind of obsessed with road racing. Just as a fan, she didn’t really ride. We would go to the park and watch the Coors Classic. And when we started getting it on TV, she would watch the Tour de France. I have these memories of waking up and she's already awake drinking coffee watching the race. And it kind of just set the program for my sister and I to be always in the outdoor pursuits. 

HOKEM

Were you athletic at all? Like you're sitting here joking around with me, but you also just rode 240 Fucking miles on the Oregon Timber Trail a couple days ago. I would not have lasted one day of that. Did you make a connection that your mental well being was connected to just getting outside at a young age?

CMcN

I think so. I think it was just part of everything. I just wanted to be outside, like charging. It was just kind of intuitive to me. Just felt right. It's weird. I've never even really thought of myself as like an athlete or anything, but I’ve always had energy. Most of my outside activities became my social environments as well. 

HOKEM

Okay. So you're just an outdoor mountain kid in Boulder, drawing monsters of stoner heavy metal posters, this is shaping a real vision of who you were. How do you get turned on to CCA (California College of the Arts) and start thinking about moving to Oakland, or San Francisco.

CMcN

I just picked San Francisco. I was going to do San Francisco on one trip and then LA on another trip to look at schools. I think I had some friends who had moved out to SF and I worked for that snowboard company Twist and they'd moved up there. So it was kind of just like a reference point. I don't think I'd ever even been to California. 

I found another friend who was coming out to look at art schools and we drove out together. He was going to look at CCA (CCAC at the time). I was wanting to look at the Art Institute because I didn't really think I wanted to do commercial art. When I showed up for my tour, the Art Institute had lost my application, didn't even know I was coming! They pulled some socially awkward student out of the hallway and they're like, “Can you show this person around?” It sucked. 

And then I went to CCA with my friend and they just had their shit together. At that time I think they were pretty hungry for new students. I was really impressed with the facility and yeah, just a good first impression.They had everything together and the campus was just beautiful. It seemed more professional / legit.  Just felt like a really exciting place to be. Going there was a great experience.

HOKEM

Did you stay in the Bay Area after you graduated?

CMcN

For about a year. I worked at the Upper Playground gallery.

I was managing the gallery with my friend. And yeah, we did that for one year. It was sucky time. It was right after September 11, and everything was kind of on pause. It was so hard to get a job in San Francisco, you couldn’t get a job doing anything. All the first wave .com stuff disappeared. 

I think a lot of people don't know that point in history, there was an initial.com boom and bust that happened. It was like the AOL era of startups that were looking to be acquired. That was their only goal. 

I was also doing all of these live screen printing events. I'd worked in a screen printing shop in high school so I was good at it. It was around that time when there were parties that had live graffiti and graffiti videos and live screen printing. And so I was like doing the live screen printing part. Such a weird time to be in San Francisco. 

HOKEM

So you suck that up for a year. And then you decide to move to New York. What was that catalyst was you were just like, fuck it. I need to get out of here?

CMcN

pretty much. It just seemed like a really good time to go do something different. And so yeah, I moved to New York. 

HOKEM

So you packed your little knapsack up of all your belongings, got on a plane and moved? 

CMcN

I did only have a single bag of stuff. Yeah. And one bike. It was an Eddy Merckx track bike.

HOKEM

Okay, and so you get there, and then you're just figuring shit out. Did you have any contacts when you moved out there? What’d you do for work?

CMcN

I got a job working in a comic book store and building bedding showrooms. Like doing custom wall finishes. Lots of faux finishes all done by hand. I had a couple of friends out there and they kind of helped me. That was how I got a job in the comic book store. I had a friend from Colorado and she was like, come work at the comic book store. 

It was hard to find work out there for a little bit. Like I remember looking through the classifieds for a job as a screen printer. I finally found something that looked good, called and got an interview. But when I got there, this woman had forgotten that I was coming to do the interview and bailed on me. And I was so broke and had been rejected so many times at that point. I just remember fucking practically weeping in the street. But I eventually got the gig and ended up working for her.

HOKEM

All right. So then you're in New York, you kind of get your feet. And then what? Do you start looking for commercial illustration work? Is that kind of the beginning of taking a full swing at?

CMcN

Yeah, I was gonna do fine art and commercial stuff. I had friends that were in the gallery world, but it was a weird scene. I did some illustrations for gallery openings. And I participated in little group shows, you know? 

I did a couple illustrations for gallery openings. And my friend said that people wanted to buy my illustration, but they wouldn’t sell my work because I wasn’t part of the exhibit. Kinda dismissed me because I was an “Illustrator” not an “Artist”. It just left me with a bad taste in my mouth. 

And because I knew how to screenprint pretty well. I just got into applying illustration to garments and posters and then just kind of took that commercial illustration path and never really went back.

HOKEM

should we talk for a minute about shows because you were there in a pretty important music moment for New York? Like we were talking about it's kind of post strokes breaking but they probably were still hot shit in 2002 when you got there Yeah?

CMcN

I had a friend who was working at music magazines and we just went to so many shows. Like so much music it was fucking amazing. And in the smallest little venues. I remember the wolf parade bands like since I rubbed down and was the other one that those shows were super good in Arad.

And Battles. I went to see a Battles show there that just blew my mind. My friend also had a bar called the Cake Shop in the Lower East Side. And they're fucking so many bands there that were just like, it was probably like the size of this room, you know? And it's just so sweaty and like low ceiling and oh my god, there is a band there ton of loves. Just Xaro fucking freak rock and that band High Tower I saw there. 

David Lee Roth lived across the street from that bar and would go in there every once in a while. Like not to see shows, but to get coffee and a muffin. They were a cafe during the day.

HOKEM

Is there a moment where you felt like Yeah, this is it. Like I'm gonna I'm in New York. I'm gonna be here. I can see your way forward or did you feel like you were always going in for like, almost making it almost like almost getting in the room almost getting through the door? That type of thing? No,

CMcN

I gave myself two years. I don't know why, like I had anything else to do. But I gave myself two years to be there. I felt like at the two year point, I was just starting to figure things out. And then I was just kind of like, limping along doing I mean, having a great time. But yeah, just doing whatever I could to make money. And then I got a job working for some big apparel companies, and you know, where I actually got paid real money. And that, that was kind of like the first professional gig job, I had full time jobs, you know, I kind of like, bounced around from different apparel company to apparel company. It was around that time that I left New York because working for these massive companies was just not really what I ultimately wanted to do. 

It was a totally amazing learning experience for me. But yeah, I woke up one day and I was like, I'm done with this place. I just drove out to Colorado with no plan except I knew that I was just done with New York. 

HOKEM

When were drawn to watercolor? Before you were screen printing? Or do you feel like that transparency / color overlay thing informed you moving towards watercolor?

CMcN

I think water color came afterwards. I had this teacher, Richard Gayton, who was probably in his 60s or 70s, I think. And he he was part of the California watercolor scene in the 50s and 60s, I think they're called like, the society, the California watercolor society or some shit.

He had this really traditional background of watercolor painting, and mixing his colors and painting on location and outside. And so we did all these intensive studies of like, Color Charts mixing, Burnt Umber and Ultramarine. And every little bit in between. It was super tedious.

But I. really got me into understanding color and mixing color. And also like looking at the world and seeing how light fell on things. That was kind of like when I got into watercolor. 

HOKEM

How did you end up back in the Bay Area?

CMcN

I knew that I was West Coast material. I wanted to go to LA or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle. And I just did a little tour between them all. And I think just because I had lived in San Francisco before I had a ton of friends there and yep, just went. It just felt right.

I was doing little freelance gigs for apparel companies. I got connected with this dude Carl Chara who had been at Levi’s and also opened a really great men’s boutique in SF called Union Made.

I was doing art for and printing apparel for them. I had a little screen printing shop at that time and so I was doing small print runs and then doing weird artsy things, screen printing artsy things. 

Around that time I went down to Santa Cruz to interview for a little contract job at Swobo. They'd had kind some big shake up right before I went in there and it was just bad. Bad vibe.

But when I was down there someone's like, yo, let's go say hi to my friend at Ibis. And when we got there they were like, we're looking for an illustrator. Everything just clicked and I started doing work for them. They were kind of my first consistent bike industry client. And, if I’m being honest, I was pretty awestruck, because I had been a fan of Ibis since way back in the day, and so It was kind of monumental in some ways. 

HOKEM

You really loved those “hand job” braze ons, that’s what really hooked you in on the brand. This is a good segue into your love of Front 242. You fucking weirdo. 

CMcN

I could never afford their bikes when I was younger, but I always really loved them. And I didn’t listen to Front 242 that much. We can call it a phase. You dick.

That Ibis gig made me think, Hmm, maybe this freelance shit will actually work. Like, I can make a living doing this. I can have a studio. Things started to stabilize a bit.

I was already making a living, doing freelance illustration. But I think at that point, I made a decision to try to move into working with more cycling brands. And that was around the time that a lot of brands went from being  piddly little things to actually having budgets to do graphics. Plus I got to do some editorial stories through illustration, which was great. Ibis, Blackburn and Giro, were all brands that gave me a lot of room to do that. And it was really nice.

HOKEM

What’s next for you? I know the bike industry is in a really great place right now and the work must be pouring in (hold for laughter). Are there other things you're excited about in the near future?

CMcN

During COVID when like all the work disappeared for a little bit, I started doing these really big watercolor paintings. My studio mate disappeared in the middle of it and I had all this space and these huge rolls of watercolor paper they had left behind. I started making these really big watercolors and it was just so fun and different. I really want to do more of that, but it takes a massive amount of time. 5

HOKEM

So more fine art stuff? Just for you to satisfy that itch?

CMcN

I have a hard time calling it like “fine art” versus commercial art. I love making commercial art a lot. It's just like all the same thing. I'm just trying to make stuff. That's kind of what I want to do is just make stuff. I just love making stuff. Yeah.