Interview

Mike Mills is a California-based artist, graphic designer, and filmmaker—a Renaissance Man if there ever were one, although he's less interested in mastering different fields than he is in putting them all to his various purposes. Graphic design is generally considered secondary to the material it packages, but for Mills, the album art he's done for Pulp, Battles, Sonic Youth or Blonde Redhead and his lookbook photographs for designer Susan Cianciolo stand alongside his feature-length films as part of an ongoing biographical project. His new book, Graphics Films, collects all formats in one place. It's published with Damiani and Alleged Press—naturally, as Mills is a longtime participant in Alleged Gallery, the legendary Downtown New York space run by Aaron Rose and Brendan Fowler from 1992-2002. Rose and Fowler still collaborate on ANPQuarterly, which has not infrequently featured Mills. Brendan is a jack of his own trades, as publisher, gallerist, performer, and an artist: He's coming to New York the New Museum's generational survey next month.

This isn't Mills and Fowler's first interview, but that doesn't make reflection any easier. Mills says of his earlier work, "You're always trying to wear the cool clothes and looking back you realize you didn't even have your clothes on. No wonder everyone was giving me weird looks!" Upon the publication of Mills' new book, Mills and Fowler are reunited by telephone. (LEFT: MIKE MILLS AND ELMO)


BRENDAN FOWLER: This is the second time I've interviewed you?

MIKE MILLS: Tilda [Swinton] used to use our dialogue to practice her American accent, because we had such weird Cali talk—it was totally "Like, dude, and totally."

BF:  It was also five hours long and like a therapy section—

MM: That was the one in the hotel.

BF:  So this is the third time! What was the second time?

MM: It was before Thumbsucker—was it for Interview? No, it wasn't, but I can't remember what it was. It was a little piece in the front of some magazine, some article about living in LA, you know, asking, "How can you possibly live in LA?"