2025/26 MCAD–Jerome Fellow Interview: Grover Hogan

Melanie Pankau: You describe yourself as an interdisciplinary artist and educator that uses personal stories to talk about universal truths. Could you share with us how the individual and collective experiences show up in your work or in a specific project?

Grover Hogan: Much of my work utilizes self portraiture and materials from my diaries and camera roll. I call these methods and materials “Evidence.” I have always longed to connect with others, and with the many intersections and layers of my identity, I find myself able to relate on some level with most everyone, but not enough to feel fully understood by anyone. I guess that means I might not be able to fully understand anyone else, either? (This thought may change later as I get older). I do know that I know myself well, and I know my experiences and how my thoughts and feelings have evolved in response to the world around me. Each piece of Evidence from work, stylized, realistic, physical, or abstract, is me becoming a shape shifter. I emphasize parts of my true self to play into certain archetypes that guide the meaning of the stories I tell.

Growing up, I was always told to figure things out for myself, so I’ve learned to spot the patterns of the world around me and create stories that helped me understand tragedy, desire, and other complicated inevitabilities. Meaning making has been vital for my morale, curiosity, and the way I relate to others. Humans desire the certainty of an explanation, the predictability of patterns. I approach each work and each of my experiences in life like a folk tale, I ask myself “What meaning can I get from this bizarre story?” While I search for meaning in our patterns, I continue to comb through headlines, posts, and emotional reactions to collect for my Evidence. I take inspiration from a teenage girl in 1969 who wrote, “Got rhyme put in my handbag from someone who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH. Man landed on the moon.”

MP: Astrology and tarot are foundational to your practice. Could you tell us more about these esoteric practices and how you weave them into your making?

GH: Cartomancy (like Tarot), and especially Astrology are some of the oldest ways people have found meaning in chaos. I am relatively new to Tarot but have been practicing game-based divination and spell crafting for as long as I can remember. Tarot was banned in my home growing up because when my mom was little, my granny would go to the brujas to get her cards read and my mom didn’t like the energy at those readings, so she didn’t allow Tarot in the house until I started practicing. I approach Tarot like a cold read of an art work. I use it for interpretation as opposed to using Tarot to predict the future (I think many practitioners feel similarly). The “standard” Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck was created in the early 20th century, pulling from a range of symbols and imagery in other culturally specific decks. Astrology, however, goes back much farther. I am still learning the fundamentals, histories, and archetypes of Astrology, so my incorporation of it into my work has been a bit hesitant. Astrology actually plays a larger part in my art making process than it does in the subject matter of my work. I’ve been into Astrology since I was a kid. As an autistic person, zodiac signs and their correspondences have helped me feel more at ease with social dynamics and empathy. To me, divination rituals like cartomancy and altar making are a gift that humans have to make sense of the here and now, while astrology feels like part of a bigger, intangible curtain that simultaneously connects and separates us from the knowledge of the fates. Divination has reflected me as an individual, while Astrology has connected me to a bigger picture.

MP: Your work incorporates portraiture, diary entries, lesson plans, comics, altars, and objects like light bulbs and overhead projectors. I’m curious if you could talk about your wide use of materials and how you choose the mediums for your different projects?

GH: Curiosity and self expression are two of my prominent personality traits, and the main driver for me to make art. My experimenting brain loves objects. I think growing up poor has also made me empathize with objects. They have so much character, story, and life, and yet other people have to speak on their behalf. As an American, I feel torn between rejecting over-consumption, and empathizing with the inanimate. I think I relate to objects quite a bit. When I was little, I was an object.

Honestly, I can get a little defensive when I get asked about my material use because in the past, I’ve received feedback that I should hone in on just a few mediums to be more marketable. As a “medium is the message” believer, I have a deep love for conceptual and assemblage artists. Artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pepón Osorio, and Betye Saar have given me professional permission to play. I often go out of my way to learn new material so that I can carry out a concept with more intentionality. A motif throughout my work is how light reveals and obfuscates perception, and an example of that is my depictions of bar signs. I’m over a year sober from alcohol, and still I find bar signs so beautiful and tragically relatable on an emotional level. So I took a neon class at the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center to learn the history of neon and how to bend. For the major project of the class, I created a neon sunfish, referencing the phrase “drinks like a fish,” and the way American culture connects being in nature to drinking (think getting a pack of beer for camping trips or bonfires). I also find something alluring about the use of the element neon and how neon signs blur the line between natural occurrence and human manipulation, much like the process of creating wine or manifesting anything, really. I made this while 5 months sober, so I titled it “The Sun (XIX)” the tarot card that represents vitality, confidence, and optimism.

MP: What is the most challenging part about your practice and where do you find ease?

GH: The most challenging part of my practice is finding an idea I believe in. I have tons of ideas all the time, but most of them distract and scatter me. People say I’m too hard on myself, and part of that manifests in how critical I am of my own ideas. To combat this, I’ve just been telling myself that I’m allowed to make bad art. I’m allowed to “waste my time” on a bad idea. I’m allowed to make something that no one likes, something that will make no money, and something I may even be ashamed of. I remind myself that failure is the only way to success. I also remind myself that I can just make a small version of my idea if I’m really that pessimistic.

In regards to ease—I love the process of research and discovery. After my first Workshop on Failure, two of my former students came up to me and said “we finally figured out what your enneagram is! We thought you were an 8 but you’re actually a 5!” Enneagrams are one of the few pop psychology areas of study that I’m not very familiar with. Apparently, an enneagram 5 is called “The Investigator,” a personality archetype characterized by hoarding knowledge and a desire to understand the world to avoid feelings of helplessness and overwhelm. I grew up being seen and not heard, floating between school, library checkouts, sketchbooks, DVD collections, Web 2.0, and the TV set. Absorbing information, making connections between unrelated things, pushing questions further and further, I am an effortless chowhound. Every struggle I face has already been made a screen play. I love the comfort of another perspective so the act of researching and critique feels very familiar and exciting for me.

MP: What artists, writers, thinkers are inspiring you right now? And why?

GH: Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic: This essay brought me back into my body and reminded me of the importance of pleasure. I read it back in the Summer of 2025 when I was ruminating endlessly about work and corporate culture.

Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes: I read D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths in 2nd grade for a school play (I played Mnemosyne) and reading Tales from Ovid connects me with the meaning making from my childhood while going more in depth about the tragedies in Greek mythology. This interpretation of Ovid has continued to add dimension to my understanding of the archetypes and stories I explore in my work.

I Got Heaven by Mannequin Pussy: I want my work to sound and feel like this album. I want to capture the messy feelings, the mixture of confidence and shame and reactivity. I also “walk myself like a dog without a leash,” and I pray that my work resonates with someone like that lyric does for me.

And Chromakopia by Tyler, the Creator: My brother showed me Tyler when I was 12, back when Yonkers came out. My work has been inspired by his music since. As a weird, bisexual, asthmatic Black kid with an artistic obsession, I have always felt seen by Tyler, the Creator's ability to explore identity and emotion within his work. He reminds me of two other artists I love Sophie Calle and Andy Kaufman in the way that he blurs the line between performance and confession. Sophie Calle once said “I can say that it did happen. True? No. It happened.”

MP: How has winning the Jerome fellowship affected how you approach your work?

GH: Winning the Jerome has encouraged me to pursue art full time, and in April I will fully make that transition. Having financial stability and institutional support has pushed me to make the leap, and I am so so excited (and nervous!) to commit myself to the work that has always been there for me. I have always known my path was to be an artist, and I can’t imagine another life outside of this. I promised myself if I got the Jerome, I would put my faith into art, and this is part of keeping that promise.

MP: If you could describe your work in one word, what would it be?

GH: Earnest