BACPAC, THE ARTIST MACHINE.
Art supplies are scattered throughout upon entering her home. A living room is assimilated into a studio with easels, clothing racks, and old canvas paintings while one of the bedrooms has been converted into a music studio and multi-computer office space. A stovetop is covered with aerosol cans. This defines home for Jeremie ‘Bacpac’ Franko.
“Being a 100% full-on creative is an act of sacrifice…everything else goes by the wayside in order to be constantly making art,” Bacpac said.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Bacpac, it’s that she cannot be put into a box. Through her works, the native New-Yorker is a spray paint muralist, airbrush artist, musician, podcaster, architect, poet, rockabilly radio show host, rockabilly event coordinator, graphic designer, and probably many other titles by way of her multifaceted nature. She is also a Harley Davidson aficionado, a dancer, a lover of machines and music, and a kind, badass woman, with tattoos permeating down the bridge of her nose, twirling down her arms, and across her knuckles.
But, creating isn’t just a hobby or full-time career for Bacpac.
Below is our conversation about her life as a creative.
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Q: So, what are you working on currently?
A: I host a jive dance night, swing dance you know? I make the flyers, and we teach jive which is an early rock-n-roll dance. Nobody else does it here in Arizona. It's early 1950s rock n roll, which I only started listening to very recently because of my Rockabilly radio show. It’s my ninth year doing it, it’s super popular, mostly in the United Kingdom and Australia, Sweden…Doing that exposed me to rockabilly and swing dance so I started swing dancing and it's been 11 or 12 years. The flier is something I do every month showcasing our DJs, and it's supposed to look kinda like 1950s-inspired poster prints. We want to do a lot of outreach for the west side, postering, drop-offs, all that.
Bacpac playing as a guitarist in British experimental post-punk band, The Raincoats, circa 1978. Photos by Justin Thomas.
Q: Do you use this space for your music as well?
A: Yeah, I’ve been playing music since I was four. I go in and out with being frustrated about not being a “good” guitar player. So, every New Year’s resolution is to play guitar and I never do it past the first week. This time, on June 1, I thought “okay half the year is gone, I’m going to try again” and this time I’m sticking with it. I have a teacher who is in one of my favorite bands, High Jivers, out of Nashville, that has a blues, rockabilly vibe. I have a lesson every Monday.
Q: That’s awesome, I mean, to be dedicated to learning it even if it's year after years of trying.
A: As a kid, I didn't really have any goals with music. Then when I was 8, 12, I started hearing bands and I already had 8 years of lessons, but the guy was a jazzer, so I would know a lot of things that as a kid you have no reference for, like when to use a mixolydian mode or a lydian mode. So I lost it. Now, I feel like I should be able to do this!
Q: I totally get it. My dad is killer on the guitar and it seems to come so naturally. I’m currently learning the drums and I feel like I’m still barely getting the hang of the rhythm, the movements.
A: Yeah, I do a podcast with my friend, and a couple of weeks ago we were talking about learning as an adult. It just feels like, can you even learn? I sometimes wonder like, why am I not getting this pattern down, but it just takes more time.
Q: And when did you start dancing?
A: I always did hip-hop dance since the moment it came out in New York, I was always down with it. Partner dancing wasn’t something I ever thought about. In the early days of breakdancing when people were in the streets with cardboard boxes, I was a little too clumsy to do that but there was a club that taught hip-hop dancing and so I danced at the club. I started swing dancing in 2013…Swing dancing is a 6 on an 8 and I’m a real musical but I found that impossible. I made sure I never had a job that was on Tuesday nights because that was swing nights at the Fat Cat ballroom because I just loved it. I like dancing more than any art that I do.
Q: I’m so interested in that. Tell me more about why it’s your favorite because it’s the only one that feels so intangible.
A: The rhythm. I did music before anything and I love it, the beat, the rhythm. I love techno too. Dance is my higher power. I don’t have a God, but I have dance. And when I can’t dance, I can play and I think that’s why the guitar is really coming forward in my life.
Q: So, you clearly work with various different vehicles for creation. How does your creative process differ between all of your different mediums?
A: Mural painting has become my full-time job. It’s not like the joy has been taken out of it because I love doing it, but it’s a grunt effort sometimes, like the heat. The process is different because I’m dealing with a client, whereas the bizarrchitecture is for me, the client is me. That will be my opus. All this leads up to that, it’s all connected, my models have music to them.
Nascar High Speed Blur, by Bacpac.
Q: Do you ever feel like you need to take on projects that are not your signature or your taste, and how do you feel about doing that as an artist?
A: I am so lucky that I am now at a point where I can pick and choose what I want to work on. If it’s going to be mountains and cactus, you can give it to somebody else. Sometimes, they’ll say, ‘no we really want you’ and I’ll reconsider. This current one that I’m working on I didn’t want to do, but it turned out that the clients weren’t how I was expecting. They love my art, they love what I did for them, and I had to just check my attitude at the door.
Q: Going back to what you said about architecture being your opus, tell me more about that. I know you went to architecture school in London, but why is it so impactful for you to get back to architecture?
A: I’ve always loved architecture, and I still had this calling. The school I went to in London was radical, so all of these architects were coming from all over the world to do critiques. My goal is to go back to doing the bizarrchitecture, which is fantasy architecture. Everything looks buildable, and the drawings I would do are architectural concepts, like my painting of an oil platform repurposed to be an off-shore quarantine hospital or the ‘Do-not Drive-ins.”
Repurposing Oil Platforms, by Bacpac.
Q: What is the goal behind your work in architecture?
A: I want to have a show where I’m using my 3D modeling that I’ve learned the last few years, to build these conceptual architectural pieces. It will be a gallery of something, monitors, paintings I don’t know yet. I want to have at least eight pieces of the designs that I’m going to showcase. All of these could be built, but it’s all about realizing that architecture is an art.
Q: What inspires your work? I mean, I’m sure every project and every medium is different, but what comes to mind when you consider your influences?
A: My whole thing is machines, I love machines. I don’t do nature really, I’m not a nature person. So it’s always been oil rigs, or like this piece is a bucket excavator painting, this was at the state capitol building for a year. I saw this on my way out of California in Blythe, it had done its job and was being dismantled, and it's like, I feel you, I feel them man. Right now, they’re building these highways by Tempe, an overpass, and I really feel the growth! It’s some sort of crossing over of the senses. I’ve done like six oil rig pieces.
Q: So one of the big questions that I wanted to talk about with you was this idea of the purpose of creation. Why create in the first place?
A: All of the stuff that I do, I just really want to get back to my roots of architecture, and to honor the school that I believed in so much. It also goes back to my love for mechanics, I can draw you a combustion engine, a motorcycle engine. I feel the machine. I just kind of feel like I am unfortunately stuck in a human body. I don’t belong in a body, I mostly feel music and guitar and machines. Always on the side of the road there's some sort of old car, old scraps, old building or warehouse that has such a story to it, and that inspires my writing. So it’s very much inspired by the physical world.
Q: Do you feel like you are making pieces for you or for the public’s perception?
A: I am a public artist at the end of the day. I don’t think it’s anything more than selfish, I don’t think it's about sharing. I just have to do it…To write music, those people have the biggest egos. Those people want you to hear everything, like their whole inner sole has to be expressed. I’m on walls, I’m on paper, it’s different. Trying to not do it is impossible. Every moment I have to be creating something, it can be a curse to be talented, because I have to touch everything. Fashion is a good example of doing it for myself, my hoodie line was a reaction to my own experience with style. I have to have some sort of interaction with the world.
Q: Finally, what are your thoughts on the current artists’ landscape in Arizona?
A: It’s definitely going to be me kicking it off or kicking ass to make architecture a part of the respected arts, I don’t see anyone else doing it.
Q: And what about with murals?
A: Murals have skyrocketed and this is a little dense but here’s what happens: There’s a call for artists. Every month they drop in because the budget happens, and they are totally underfunded because it’s art, and you should like what you do. It’s really insulting.
Who answers the calls for artists? Unknowns. Amateurs. So the level of quality goes down. What kind of experience do they have? And what happens is a year later, these murals are faded because these emerging artists don’t know how to prime it, they don’t know how to use a clear coat. They don’t know that red and purple are going to fade, it’s horrible. I want the Arizona Commission of the Arts, museums, Artlinq, to have a board of consultants of experienced artists that they will pay just like $200 to go out with that newer artist and show them what to do, guide them. This is a big beef of mine, I don’t want to see any more murals without a clear coat because it makes all of us look bad. I want to see more awareness. You want to pick an amateaur artist, all the murals are going to look like crap in a year, and then nobody will want a mural, it’ll become a fad. Right now, it’s a big fad, a joke in the art world, to have a condominium built, paint a bird and a cactus on it, and you can charge 150,000 more for it. I don’t want to see another cactus mountain mural, like it’s right here, open up your eyes.
Q: Is there anything else you want to see change?
A: Another big complaint I have is yeah, raise more money! 60% of the arts funding got cut, we got $2 million while biotech got $83 million. The arts is everything. Do I rely on a state budget? No, I have a solid client base. But, the arts in general relies on kids having art in school. They’re taking art classes away. It’s losing support all the time, it’s pathetic. And I’ll speak up on that anytime.
From playing guitar for The Raincoats in the 70s, to bizarrchitecture, to advocating for changing in the future of Phoenix’s art scene, Bacpac is truly a ‘what-the-fuck’ phenomenon in the best way possible.
