1. Introduce yourself?

BOZ - My name is Boz and I'm some Irish asshole who spends way too many of his waking hours drawing / painting stupid shit for which people brandish me with tags like antichrist, faggot, nazi, weirdo - and are subsequently dissapointed to learn that I am none of these and less!!

2. Have you had any formal training - Did you go to art college? What do you think of the position of art within the education system - is it neglected and/or badly taught?

BOZ - I studied (or was supposed to be studying) industrial design for 3 years way back for which I have a next to useless national diploma - After that I did a course in screen printing which was infinitely more useful. When I left school at 16, I had aspirations to go to art college and maybe study graphics - luckily I didn't get in as I couldn't imagine myself laying out menus in the back of a fast print shop for little more than minimum wage. Why people were required to present a fine art portfolio for courses like this is beyond me. I know the position of art in the education system has changed since I was there so I'm not in a position to comment... I didn't do art in school... I don't know how the education system varies in England, but I was in a community school and they give you really good choices of what you can study. I went into the metalwork class with the school headbangers and sporadic dropouts. It seemed infinitely more interesting, and dangerous, when I made the choice as an 11 year old, which it was. Art was a class where most people did their homework. I think a third level fine art degree is a complete waste of time...... If you've got the drive to do this then you're gonna do it regardless of a state mandate which officially declares you an "Artist ".... And you can learn anything you need to know on a 6 month FAS course, whether it's welding / metal skills, print making etc. Applied skills are worth so much more to you in the real world than appreciation, theory and all the pretentious shit that has artists believe they can smear oil on a large canvas and proclaim themselves radical... I know so many people who were kicked out of art college because of personality differences with the lecturers. Your entire workload can mean nothing if you're not willing to kiss ass and listen to the opinion of a begrudging contrary failed artist.

3. Can you give us a rough idea of the sort of stuff you've done for other people EG - record/zine covers? Are there any favourites that stick in your mind? Is there anything you'd refuse to do??

BOZ - Jaysus... where do I start??? Some of the bands I've worked with over the years include Spithead, Striknien DC, Ex Cathedra, UK Subs, Blood Or Whiskey, The Steam Pig, Stomach, Rumble, Zero Tolerance, The Stage Bottles, Wat Tyler -Labels include Rejected, Rugger Bugger, Mad Butcher -there's loads more but these are the ones that spring to mind. In terms of zines, I used to contribute to others a lot more but most of the work nowadays goes into my own mag, NOSEBLEED which has been running for over 10 years. Some of the ones that stick in my mind include the SWEARING EP for Rugger Bugger, the new Blood or Whiskey album cover, and any of the colour work I've done for Mad Butcher - There's a series of compilations out on that label called DANCE TO THE REVOLUTION and I've done the first two - The third is in a queue of shit to get done at the moment! I did a single cover for Striknien DC in 1995 that everyone refused to put out, something with a priest and swastikas - It ended up as a T-Shirt and I think someone got beaten up on the back of a bus for wearing it. I've recently devised a strip cartoon called THE CHOSEN ONE, which appears in various publications - one of which is SICK PUPPY comix in Australia. I'm currently working on a kids picture book, a small press collection and I'm back working on large canvases after a 14 month hiatus - hopefully towards a solo exhibition. There's more , but believe me it's not that interesting to read about. I can't think of anything I'd refuse to do ethically - the situation hasn't arisen and I doubt it will. I backed down from doing a CD cover for a local pub blues band featuring Brian Downey from Thin Lizzy 'cos it was bland MOR shite that soils the Lizzy association. a real dissapointment for a lifelong fan. The only other thing I can think of is refusing to airbrush a fuel tank for a biker a few years back- I didn't want my skull broken for not being up to scratch - although I'd probably be confident enough to do it now!

4. Do you prefer to work to a specification or to be given a free rein to do what you want? Does your work evolve gradually or do you generally do stuff in one take? Where do you get your inspiration from?

BOZ - I get a bit of both which mixes nicely and keeps my own ideas condensed & fresh - it's always interesting to interpet other people's ideas. Total freedom to do what I want usually ends in disapproval because I'm a sick and evil fucker and I do believe my best work comes from this. I've upset quite a few people over the years, not because I go out of my way to do so, but offense has been caused nevertheless. I rarely develop ideas, everything is usually done in one take to give the piece in question a bit of urgency, life & energy - I think it's to clinical otherwise. I prefer if people accept what they're given or fuck off somewhere else. Where do I get my inspiration from?????? Don't know, don't care - as you can see I'm not into analysis - these things just happen - mine is to do, not to question..... some art critic asshole can do that.

5. Is your artwork known outside the punkscene? Can you make a living from it - Do you agree with making a living from art??

BOZ - Only half the work I do at the moment constitutes what you might call punk related - I pay the rent by working as a freelance cartoonist - The highest profile stuff is the soccer cartoons I do which accompany a column called SWEET FA for IRELAND.COM ( which is the IRISH TIMES on the web ). The column itself is written by a friend who I grew up with - he came up with the idea and got me in there - I also make occasional contributions to an Irish political satire magazine called THE PHOENIX. Apart from that I've done album covers for a couple of trad bands,CD layouts, corporate christmas cards, Drawings for the porn industry etc... basically whatever's interesting. And yes, I agree with making a living from it - Would you rather I worked in a convenience store just so I could claim to be suffering for my art..... fuck that - I've worked some really crap jobs printing t-shirts for illegally low wages and shit lungs - and I did a long time on the dole looking for a break, so anyone who argues that I'm wrong on this point still lives with their mum and knows nothing about life. I won't make an enemy of myself for anyone's principles except my own, and I enjoy the challenge of juggling commercial work with an underground reputation. I'd probably lose the commercial work if they saw some of the stuff I've done in the past!! - so it's smart to keep them reasonably distant from each other!!!!

6. Do you use any other form of media apart from the pen & ink we're familiar with?????

BOZ - The large paintings I'm working on at the moment (my get rich off nobby talentless wealthy fuckers scheme) are acrylic on canvas, any of the colour cartoons I do are a combination of acrylic & indian ink and there's also a large number of digital illustrations - mainly airbrushed in Photoshop - floating around on the web at the moment - check out the gallery on the Mad Butcher website for some recent samples of these (web address at end of interview).

7. Top 3 albums to draw to???

BOZ - A difficult one.... this is the sort of activity where you tend to consume vast quantities of music, and this has always been the case, going right back to my early teens. I've been listening to a lot of dub reggae recently - Agustus Pablo, Jammy, Tubby, Scientist, Bim Sherman - Another recent favourite is THE WUMME YEARS box set by German freaks FAUST. Wonderful music. TAGO MAGO by CAN is another persistent favourite.... anything really long that you can just goof off to is always good. I've got the first two CRUCIFUCKS albums on one CD and that get's regular spinning - any of THE EX albums, Sonny & Cher, The Byrds, Bad Religion, '64 - '69 Motown stuff, Curtis Mayfield, Nico, Laibach, Throbbing Gristle, Leatherface, lots of classic surf stuff.

8. If you saw someone with some of your artwork as a tattoo, would you find it flattering or slightly sinister??

BOZ - I actually design tattoos for a local tattooist who's a friend of mine so I have done on many occasions, and the tattoo work that I have on my body is my own stuff. It's far from uncommon that someone's picked one of my drawings out of a fanzine or off a record and got it tattooed. Alex from Ex Cathedra has the dancing man I did for them on his leg, and he told me that there's a guy who comes tot their gigs in Poland that has one too. That's strange!!! Of course it's flattering, I mean, I'm not exactly HR Giger - I have however seen one or two stinkers done by this sloppy artist, but that's not my problem because they're not on me!!!! I've thought of becoming a tattoo artist a number of times, but I'd rather just be drawing than wrist deep in someone's sweat & blood - but who knows... it's an avenue that's reasonably open to me which is nice to know!

9. What are your thoughts on copyright????

BOZ - Despite what millions of blinkered punk kids think, copyright is also there to protect you from blatant rip-offs. If someone I didn't particularly like appropriated or one of my images without permission for whatever reason, or if someone was blatantly assimilating my style, I'd either break their head off the pavement or take it to court. Depending on who it was. Any time a band has used an existing image, they've been given the go-ahead to do so - either because they're friends or they're interested enough in what I do to ask. It's a matter of courtesy rather than anything else. People who preach anti copyright generally never have anything worth ripping off anyway.

10. Have you/would you ever do a drawing for a mainstream publication i.e. to get across a political message/comment to a wider audience?

BOZ - Part of this is already answered in question 5. I don't care about getting messages across to anyone because most people are fucking shit and incapable of absorbing anything but the basest fragments of whatever information is convenient. Therefore the wider audience can fuck off. I do the mainstream stuff for my own reasons, and to support my other activities/output - That's not to say that this stuff is irrelevent or conveys no message - I just know that from experience, 98% of human frag are indifferent - it's like the old parable about throwing shit at a brick wall - maybe eventually something will stick.... we can only hope, but I do genuinely believe that 98% are beyond hope, and beyond caring!!!

11. Do you think too much emphasis is placed on art galleries? Surely art would truly mean something only where people could see it as part of their everyday lives, rather than it being isolated from the real world in sterile, bourgeois institutions like galleries???

BOZ - If art was in public in this country, people would go "Oh look, art, that's interesting, where did that come from, I wonder what it means", and then they'd break it, write shit on it and piss on it. The Steam Pig was in Germany recently and we were walking through the old town centre of Aachen where we came across this beautiful copper drinking fountain with these amazing cast marionette type figurines - Being from Ireland, I couldn't believe that they didn't take it in at night, and that some fucker hadn't wrecked it just because it was there. I don't really pay much attention to art galleries as they're generally full of uninspired and uninspiring bullshit, so the sterile and the bourgeois are welcome to it. I think that the publishing company TASCHEN do an excellent job in providing a consistent, cheap, interesting and offbeat stream of quality art publications for the masses. Cheap being the important word here.

12. I know that you're in a band called The Steam Pig, can you tell us a bit about it. How important is the artwork in relation to your lyrics?

BOZ - I'm not really sure that there is a relationship there. People have called our lyrics "Arty" on a number of occasions - which is just lazy - Our lyrics aren't arty, they're just not shit like most bands. Punk has again become stylised into a corner instead of being a creative outlet. To illustrate a point - Look at any popular streetpunk or hardcore band "We're working class, oi, skinhead running down the street, skinhead sitting on the bog, skinhead buying all the chocolate, we hate the pigs, we stick together, true, look at what a gang of repressed homosexuals in denial we are" - It's just fucking bullshit. Whatever reasons people have for being in punk or hardcore bands, maybe most of them shouldn't bother. I know it's supposed to be everyman music, but what about quality control??? Like everything else, there's a large element of people involved in punk who mindlessly follow fashion and have no original thoughts in their heads - I always thought punk was a rally against this - Ironic or what !!!!! In terms of the Steam Pig, I've enclosed a CD so you can maybe decipher for yourself the relationship between the artwork and the lyrics. I do believe in having an embracing concept that strings all the songs on an album together (probably comes from being a teenage Hawkwind fan) - too many punk bands communicate nothing with their artwork or lyrics except tired old images and words that speak a lot and say nothing. (www.thesteampig.com)

13. Is your zine NOSEBLEED still running? Obviously you are able to use it as a vehicle for your artwork but what sort of response does art get from punks? Do you feel the punk scene has become too obsessed with music instead of focusing on other areas of DIY as well?

BOZ - Nosebleed is still going - by the time this interview is in print, issue 21 will be out! If I wasn't involved in artwork, Nosebleed would be long defunct......... the artwork gets a great response and seems to be, critically the standout feature of the magazine.... it's also a direction I'm moving the magazine in. I doubt it will eventually lose the music element because I love music and I love writing about it, but after 10 years, I'm interested in pursuing a different direction than yer average punk rag. I don't think the punk scene is too obsessed with music... It's the music that got me interested in the first place and the music that keeps me interested, and lots of people who've never impacted punk are involved in various DIY activities. Even if I hated music, I'd be doing underground press regardless.

14. What are your opinions of these great luminaries of "20th century art" :
(a) Derek Riggs (Who designed the Iron Maiden Covers)
(b) Damien Hurst
(c) Andy Goldsworthy
And is there any justification for the large sums of money that change hands for shite like cows in formaldehyde??

BOZ - I think the Iron Maiden stuff is tacky but I guess it serves a purpose well. The other two, I don't know who they are and I don't really care either. If I thought I could get some asshole to buy my shit pickled for hundreds and thousands of pounds, I'd do it.... why not.... they're the fucking jerk-offs parting with the cash and I can think of a lot of good uses I could put that cash to.

15. Any final comments?

BOZ - Anyone interested in checking out any artwork can do so at various places on the net. The best of which, a large archive Web gallery is at www.praxisireland.com/boz and drop the Wop, the host, some abuse while you're there. Mad Butcher Records has a small gallery of recent colour stuff that you can download at www.madbutcher.de.