At the age of 5, like many other children of his era, Jordan Shapot was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, when his father drew one on some paper, the young Jordan flipped in amazement and at that very moment the course of his life would be set in a direction it has ceased to waiver even 30 years later.
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“I don’t even remember how good the drawing was,” Shapot says from his art studio/gallery on Northeast 8th Avenue, “but it just clicked… and he said all the cartoons are hand-drawn. I was instantly fascinated and just wanted to be an animator – that’s where my love of art started.”
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He’s long since abandoned drawing cartoon turtles, but that fire ignited nearly 30 years ago still rages inside Shapot, who has become one of Ocala’s mainstay stars in the art community. But a quick tour of his studio leaves one to ask, “how many different artists practice in this space?”
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The question asked by any reasonable person in attendance rises simply from the evidence at hand: multiple movements dance around this studio as though visited by any number of artists and craftsmen. On the wall is a curious, brightly colored piece that appears so abstract as one might find spray painted on a railroad boxcar. An easel props up a temporarily abandoned canvas showing a landscape crafted in some impressionistic style. Against that wall leans a sculpture, a 3-dimensional image closely resembling that abstract wall piece.
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Shapot isn’t renting out his space to anyone but himself, and all the concepts, genres and movements sprout from his own single imagination.
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“I describe my work as kind of a Frankenstein,” Shapot explains. “I feel like they’re different parts of the same monster – they are all me, but they are different parts of me.”
The animator part of Shapot seems to have no role in creating his Frankenstein’s monster anymore. In its place is what he refers to as “scrib-scrab” which is the perfect way to describe the art: the brush never seems to leave the canvas, sort of a contemporary abstract figurative graffiti. In laymen’s terms, one long squiggly line that reveals the image of a face.
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Shapot’s mind, though, is always out front, a carnival of ideas that seemingly lacks order yet finds a path toward a creative destination that was always there. In the case of scrib-scrab, there was the inspiration to turn the canvas image to a sculpture.
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“It’s been my goal lately to be more methodical about how to incorporate all my styles into a single style,” Shapot says with the confidence of a mad scientist certain his latest brew will change the world. “I’m trying to find a way to scratch all those itches into a single piece.”
Among those other itches is the plein-air work, a genre on the other side of the planet from scrib-scrab. With his scrib-scrab pieces, there are no reference images, no time constraints, and just the freedom to let whatever explodes from his head find its way to the canvas. The whole process is an experiment. With plein-air, Shapot faces infinitely more challenges.
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“It really becomes a study of light and color because you are racing the sun; you’re seeing the light shift in real time,” Shapot says. “It’s a lot of fun, but it is a challenge. One of the threads through all of my styles is just that I love challenging myself and if I’m not learning or experimenting in a piece, then I have no interest in it. It’s really about that: developing myself, my style, finding something new.
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“I hope to be evolving to the day I die.”
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Between his animating roots to scrib-scrab, to plein-air landscapes, to sculpture, to even photographic collages created from his collection of used palettes, Shapot cannot be pinned down. He won’t say what genre of art he fits into, because he fits into so many. Where one may be familiar with Shapot’s scrib-scrab, they may be astounded to see some of his landscapes and discover those are an equal part of his artistic journey.
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In worldly parlance, this may make Shapot a “jack of all trades” of which most consider a “master of none.” The very notion actually appeals to Shapot, who is quick to point out the true meaning of the aphorism.
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“The quote actually goes further, to mean the exact opposite of how most people use it,” Shapot says. “Yes, it says that a jack of all trades is a master of none, but it goes on to say, ‘but often times better than a master of one.’”
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The advantage for Shapot in this increasingly-competitive art world is that he can create art across the spectrum to appeal to multiple markets, something very few artists are capable of achieving or even attempting.
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In the market for realism, Shapot will reach into his inner Winslow Homer to produce a piece. Want an impressionist piece on the wall? Somewhere, there’s a Renoir trying to bust out of him. There’s even a Jackson Pollock somewhere hidden in Shapot, ready to reach into his abstract side. He’s the artist’s Sybil, rife with multiple personalities competing to make an appearance on his stage. The difference, though, is that Shapot is not trying to find the Homer, Renoir, or Pollock inside – he’s searching for the real Jordan Shapot and happy to rely on any number of muses to find him.
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“Each kind of style represents a little bit of me. I just love experimenting, trying new things and just seeing how I can incorporate things into what I already have going.”
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Shapot explains the free-flow methodology of his scrib-scrabs, then points at a unique piece resting innocently against his gallery wall, a piece not scrib-scrab, not landscape, not sculpture or plein-air. It’s called “Disney Princess” and it won second-place at the most recent “Battle of the Brushes” competition. The painting depicts a scene familiar locally, a mustachioed gentleman wearing camouflage and carrying a shotgun next to his pickup truck while taking a drag on a cigarette. Shapot has extended the painting beyond that image to include a pony tail from the back of his head being carried by a cartoon bluebird, obvious Disney imagery out of “Cinderella.”
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What appears to be simply amusing actually reveals some of Shapot’s depth. He grew up in Citrus county and among hunters, of which he was not. “I was a little anti-hunting, but I’ve come around,” Shapot explains his personal evolvement on that issue. “I felt like as I was creating this piece, it was giving me a bit of toxic masculinity, so I just wanted to change it up and give him a ponytail.
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“There are a lot of hunters here and Florida is also known for Disney, so it was kind of a mash up of cultures, in a way.”
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“Disney Princess” is a piece of art created in front of a live audience and triggers a range of emotion. One sees an image familiar in the culture that brings comfort to some and perhaps disgust to others all the while evoking a small chuckle with the cartoonish imagery that contrasts the rest of the piece. This painting alone is a microcosm of Shapot himself: not one thing to pin him down to, but an array of movement and character to always keep the public guessing as to what’s next.
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“I think it’s great to do all these different things,” Shapot says. “I have lots of interests and I have lots of things that I’m inspired by, and I don’t necessarily want to give any of that up.”