Giving Voice to the Voiceless: A Conversation with Bryan Ida

Bay Area painter, musician and artist Bryan Ida reflects on his beginnings, artistic style, and the power of using art and history to tell the stories of the oppressed

Bryan Ida is not your average painter. In fact, painting wasn’t even his initial form of artistic expression.

Growing up, Ida was most often found practicing music. Participating in his school’s band and playing in the youth symphony and orchestra gave Ida the creative outlet he needed to excel. 

Branching out of the classical field in high school, he began to seek out other forms of musical expression, including applying other progressive techniques like electronic music composition and sound design. Ida went so far as to build his own recording studio, but eventually abandoned the craft after realizing it wasn’t his natural form of expression.

As an artist who labels himself as “fiercely independent,” Ida has never been one to follow the crowd. While this reigned true through his experience practicing music, it held up for painting as well.

After moving to the Bay Area after college and getting his start acting as a studio assistant for prominent abstract expressionist Sam Francis in 1988, Ida soon began emulating Francis’s style. However, this method didn’t last long, as it wasn’t unique to Ida or his artistic voice.

“I just wanted to do my own thing,” Ida reflected in our recent interview. “I knew painting through Sam, that’s how I learned about the materials and techniques (understanding how the paint flows with water using acrylics, etc.) and because I was preparing his stuff and always watching him, I wanted to do it myself.”

While Ida initially began painting like Francis, he soon understood that he needed to carve his own image. 

“I needed to paint for myself,” Ida recalled. “I didn’t want to have this abstract, involved, emotional thing. I wanted it to be tighter. It took a long time, but I needed to do it at my own pace.”

Although Ida veered away from an abstract expressionist style, Ida describes Francis’s mentorship as, “instrumental in the change of my artistic expression from music to painting.” As he recalls in his personal artistic statement, “He helped me realize that the artistic language that was most natural for me was visual and I had the ability to put together visual thoughts and phrases much easier than with music...this is how I started my life long journey into visual arts.”

Ida’s most recent project is perhaps his most influential.

“Con.text” is a collection of prints and portraits that examine historical events and moments through the context of current events affecting minority groups and those who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. The project was created to provide an outlet for individuals to share their stories and histories.

“I started con.text after the 2016 Trump election cycle in reaction to the Muslim ban,” Ida recalled. “One of the response pieces was a portrait of my neighbor, on her way to her Mosque for worship.” 

The portrait itself is composed of a compilation of Trump’s tweets spanning from his inauguration day on January 20th, 2017 to September 25th, 2017—1550 entries in total. A massive and cumbersome endeavor for most artists. But again, Ida isn’t like other artists.

“Neighbor”

“The idea behind this portrait is to express the spirit of the times in a visual language that is not obvious and has some nuance,” Bryan wrote in his public statement to accompany the piece. The portrait is designed to embody the emotional and cultural impact these tweets have on the daily lives of many. As Ida recalls in his statement, “a simple act of freedom made more difficult by the words and actions of our government.”

In the past five years, Ida has created many pieces for his “con.text” project. One of the most meaningful includes a depiction of his Japanese grandfather composed entirely of out of text from President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. This legislation commissioned and justified the legal incarceration and relocation of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

Another piece depicts a homeless Los Angeles native named Marcus, outlined with the Bill of Rights text.

“Grandfather”

Close-up of “Grandfather”

In a statement addressing his influential work, Ida explains that he uses, “contemporary subjects with a connection to historic events to point out that man’s inhumanity toward man is universal and unending.” Ida’s goal is to promote emotion, rather than fear—to reflect “compassion, respect and a desire to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated on so many marginalized people in our society,” Ida confirms in his personal statement. 

Even from just a quick glance at one of Ida’s portraits, any viewer can pick up on the intricacy and nuances of these pieces. However, that level of dedication comes at a price; it’s incredibly labor intensive and time consuming.

“The first piece I did for con.text took, like, three solid months of straight work,” Ida recalls. “Since then, it’s gotten way faster. But at first, it took forever.”

Ida begins by researching and compiling government declarations, historical documents and other forms of what he calls “institutional communication,” to use its words in reference to the stories he’s telling. 

“Everyone walks around with a story– you have a story, I have one. There is some place in your story where you have either been the oppressor or been oppressed. It’s important to tell these stories and expose them to people that wouldn’t normally see them,” Ida commented.

“I also love it because I get to research stuff I would have never known.” Ida speaks frequently of his love for history and learning lessons from the past to avoid repeating injustice. These documents provide specific insights and windows into the past, giving viewers the opportunity to gain a point of entry into moments in history that could help shape today’s problems. 

“Stories that I didn’t know, I can now recite,” Idea said. “Only because I’ve literally written the historical text out 10,000 times.”

Once he settles on a document, Ida then begins the laborious process of transcribing it into his own unique art form. 

“When I have the document, I line it with charcoal and then I really lightly line it in so the charcoal marks can go away. Then I contour the whole thing and the text.” Ida described the process as exhausting, commenting, “my hand literally shakes from doing these portraits.” 

After shading with a pen, he goes over it repeatedly until the text has been transformed into the final image. Although it isn’t the most expeditious process, the end product is worth the effort.

Ida’s art captivates all viewers in different ways, but this, he says, is why he started this project in the first place. “Everyone’s gonna respond to a piece differently. But honestly that’s the goal...People go into my shows and start crying because they just see things that touch them in different ways. That’s one of the things I love about open galleries,” Ida said.

“Cont.text'' has even allowed Ida to bring back his old love of music and incorporate it into each new piece he creates. A narrative video accompanies each piece in the collection, along with self-composed musical scores to provide an audio element to the visual stories he tells.

Despite the pandemic making public accessibility to his work a bit of a challenge, other aspects of Ida’s artistic process haven’t changed. He can still be found working alone in his studio, spending significant hours of the day researching, transcribing and painting.

Ida prefers to work solo, a common characteristic of many well-established artists. For him, though, the preference doesn’t stem from a desire to be alone. 

“I’m not opposed to collaboration; I just have never come across an opportunity that has compelled me to do so,” he said. 

In regards to Ida’s next move, he’s hoping to continue his work on “con.text” and hopefully, as the pandemic allows, have the opportunity to share more of his work in local galleries like Santa Clara’s De Saisset Museum. 

Ida is also beginning another multi-panel piece surrounding current social and political issues within the United States, like mass incarceration. Exposing the Bay Area community to these issues, Ida believes, is the first step in initiating change. Having more students, adults, and community members exposed to the current struggles that afflict the oppressed enables an emotional connection—one that hopefully will spark a substantial response.

“I have always felt called to share others' stories,” Ida said. “I have found that the portraits convey a sense of commonality and community shared within the narratives of people's lives. They offer a unique passageway to learn from history and apply the lessons of the past to solve today’s problems,” he shares on his website.

You can currently view “con.text”at the San Jose Museum of Art, or by venturing to Ida’s website, where he provides in-depth reflections and information for all of his current projects.