Look up at the walls of Brown and Brew and you may see something familiar: yourself. Senior Jason Krugman, whose art now graces the walls of Tufts' favorite coffee house, often sketches quick gestural drawings of passersby and turns them into portraits like those on display.
"I try to incorporate my surroundings as much as possible and blend what I'm thinking with what I'm drawing to make it a cohesive piece," Krugman says of his work.
Combining a minor in studio art with a major in economics, Krugman has learned to integrate multiple approaches into his art as well as his studies. He originally focused on drawing, but recently has started to include different media in his work. One piece on the wall of his off-campus apartment features penny rolls, flattened and painted over. His journals, which he works on constantly, look more like creative scrapbooks, combining his own photography and drawings with careful clippings of brochures, tickets and visa forms. They look like something Matisse might have done during the cut-out years if he had collaborated with M. C. Escher, Andy Warhol and graffiti artist Futura 2000.
"It's a good exercise in making things fit into each other, seeing what textures go together," Krugman said.
In recent years, Krugman's art has turned from "intense, introspective faces" and "psychedelic things" to more commercial forms, but that's not just to make his art more economically lucrative. "It felt isolating to only make really personal works," he said, "because other people don't know what it is when they look at it, and I want other people to want to look at it."
Even his newer projects incorporate traces of Krugman's previous work, with abstract forms structured according to facial patterns even when a face is not the obvious subject. This new style characterizes the eight pieces shown in Brown and Brew, which Krugman says are the best pieces he thinks he has done over the past four years.
Krugman's art reflects the varied influences in his own life. Fascinated by art since Kindergarten, when he used to draw jet planes, guns and tanks, Krugman was also a three-varsity-sport athlete in high school and played squash for Tufts. He also enjoys fishing, snowboarding and playing guitar.
One of the most formative experiences in his artistic career was studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain last year. He spent most of his time there drawing and visiting museums and galleries and even had his own gallery show.
"Being in Barcelona was just like art paradise," Krugman said, "because it's probably the best contemporary art scene - or one of the best - in the world. Not only the galleries, but everything: the style, the graffiti, the way the city is, the way the people are. It's so much more open; the whole culture is artistic."
Back at Tufts, just a month from graduation, Krugman is completing his work in both of his majors. Though some see art and economics as polar opposites -"Everyone can't believe I do both things," Krugman said - he has found many ways in which they intersect. Krugman has learned how capitalism affects our society and, in turn, art. He cites advertising as one example where art and capitalism intersect, but insists that he won't apply his interests to a career in advertising after college, saying, "I don't want to be prostituted, pretty much."
Krugman said the hardest struggle for him lately has been deciding what he wants to pursue after Tufts. He thinks he has a good chance of being able to support himself through art, and he hopes to do so once he has solid financial footing.
Currently, he is looking for a job in investment banking or finance. "The last thing I ever want to do is feel sick of making art because I have to make money from it," he said. "I don't think I risk losing my desire to make art even if I'm doing banking. It's just who I am, I've been doing it for so long, and it's just what I love."
Krugman acknowledges that investment banking and finance require long hours, but that doesn't worry him. "If it comes down to not having enough time for art and it's driving me crazy," he said, "I'll quit my job."
For now, despite his many activities, art still takes up a significant portion of his time. His detailed line drawings take great concentration, and he often stays up late listening to house music and working intensely for hours by himself in his room. "It's pretty much a solitary endeavor," he said.
Krugman says it has taken a month to get his bigger works hung in Brown and Brew, having worked with many people on- and off-campus to deal with issues like fire code compliance. Now he will finally show the finished products to the rest of campus.
"I'm really excited," he said. "I'm actually not nervous, because I think all the pieces are really good."
