Some sightings stay with you. Joe Vaux is one of them. From directing the animated sitcom Family Guy to creating imaginative, creature-filled paintings from his California home studio, Joe’s work lives somewhere between the familiar and the fantastical. Equal parts keen observer and art-scientist, Joe has carved out a creative life where humor, heart and a reverence for the wild intertwine, inviting us to step inside and take a closer look. Spend a little time with him and it becomes clear that the line between imagination and reality was never meant to be all that solid. Monsters are misunderstood. Sharks are the heroes. UFOs drift through the night like curious insects. Even the darkest corners of his paintings seem to hold a strange kind of optimism, as if every beast is simply asking to be seen a little differently. This month his imagination continues to unfold with Signals From Elsewhere, a group show at Mortal Machine Gallery in New Orleans, followed by his upcoming solo exhibition, Bug Off, opening this September at Brassworks Gallery in Portland. We wandered through childhood, creativity, animation, his connection to nature, and the quiet discipline it takes to keep showing up for your imagination and the things that matter most. By the end of our conversation, it became clear that Joe isn't just creating new worlds. He’s reminding us to take a look at this one with a little more curiosity, compassion and of course, fun. Joe Vaux: What's up, you two? Just playing with some filters. You want to look glamorous too? Birdy: That's actually a really pretty look for you, Joe. Beautiful. Joe Vaux: I wish. These things always crack me up. We used them when we played Dungeons & Dragons all through COVID. Birdy: Were you the DM? Joe Vaux: No, no. I don't have those kind of skills. I just love playing. I've dabbled with it since I was a kid. Birdy: Definitely a lot of fond memories. Joe Vaux: It was just late nights and junk food and fights. Birdy: My dad was the DM. One game he killed me and my brothers and our friends all in the same attack. We'd been working on these characters for a couple of years. Joe Vaux: Damn. Birdy: But then we found a magic pool a little later, and we were okay. Good times. So speaking of childhood, you grew up on Long Island right? Joe Vaux: Broadly speaking, more specifically Lloyd Neck. It was actually a really awesome place to grow up. I couldn't have asked for a better childhood, barring some tick-related moments. Kind of out in the country, but close enough to the city that you got little bursts of it. My parents were both artists and professors. We were kind of fish out of water. Everybody else had lots of money and we were just floating by. But they made it work. Birdy: We had no idea your parents were artists. Did you always make art then? Joe Vaux: I was always creative and kind of a dreamer. Star Wars or any movie would just set me off into play mode, whether it was with action figures or pretending I was a character running around the yard. I was always busy that way, but I never considered myself an artist. I thought I was going to do something in the sciences. It honestly wasn't until my junior year of high school when all the counselors started saying, "You need to think about your future. What are your interests?" I was lying in bed looking around my room — I was one of those kids who had posters, art and comics everywhere. This bell just went off: Dude, you want to make movies. You want to make stuff. You want to be an artist. From that point on, I told my parents I wanted to go into the arts and they really leaned in. Them both being professors helped too. I basically took my mom's beginning college drawing class and my dad gave me assignments. Initially I thought special effects was going to be the path. They signed me up for figure drawing classes, painting classes, sculpting classes, anything I was interested in. They helped me groom my portfolio. It had a little bit of me, but also the kind of work a university would want to see — stuff I wasn't interested in, like drawing pots and pans, reflections, pastel studies. They were pivotal, always supportive of whatever I wanted to do. But we butted heads for a while because I was like, "I want to draw comics. I don't want to draw pots and reflections.” They'd say, "Just do it. It'll look good in your portfolio." Birdy: Like eating broccoli. Joe Vaux: Definitely. I was the typical teenager, throwing little tantrums. I'd stomp off and pout, I'm drawing all these stupid things. None of this is going to matter. It did matter. I got a nice little scholarship. Birdy: That's really cool you had such a positive entry into art. A lot of people don't have that safe space for creativity growing up.
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