Interview
Joseph Francis
Joe is the owner and artist of Mojo Studio. He is also a working chef. He is proud to bring his two biggest passions together in this unique way. Using wooden chef knife covers as his canvas started years ago as something he just liked to do for his personal collection. Now, Joe is taking a shot at bringing his designs to the next level and putting them out in the world for others to enjoy.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I am a professional chef and have been for the past 20 years. I grew up in a restaurant family business. I’ve always gravitated towards many forms of art. It first started with drawing in sketch books, doodles on brown paper bag textbooks, or tiny houses on the notepad next to our house phone trying to copy my mothers own little sketches. As I grew, I don’t know if I found the time to still keep up with it or it found me. I still was doing all the normal childhood stuff, but more often then not, late at night I always went back to my sketchbook. And then, a lot of times, I’d see something from other people in books at the library or a comic or just something out on the street that inspired me, and I would just have to draw it the same way. Or close enough. I loved art class and theater, for it was the first time others really seemed proud and surprised by something I’ve done. Not being the best academic student, creating things from my imagination was my way of coping and feeling normal and yeah to try and stand out!
I tried everything I could. Acting, building and painting sets, writing, learning the history of every art I tried. But little did I know there was an art I haven’t tried to emerge myself in lying right under my finger tips. Food clearly was an obvious choice for a career in my 20’s. I’ve always cooked. It’s an art that somehow is so imbedded into our world more so then any other. It’s evolving repetition. Love and sacrifice like nothing else. The plate is your canvas and it must be the same painting hundred of times a night. The chef knife is possibly our biggest extension of ourselves in that tool box. It’s personal, pride, its’ identity. For years, I would buy plain wooden knife sheaths for them. Like everyone I’ve ever worked with in the kitchen, they would have the same. I had always drawn on my knife covers just like my textbook doodles. They started to get more detailed and sometimes tell a story like a comic book. About a year ago, in the middle of the night, slumped over my art table, my head rested on one arm and the other drawing on a knife cover, it hit me, I said this can be something. something even better then what I’ve been doing. It can take that extension of the knife and match it with personal identity. Something I thought chefs or even home cooks alike would find to be different and cool. And at the same time maybe that light I needed to evolve myself, all while staying under that same roof I love, cooking. I started Mojo Studio in 2023 hoping for that. And so far the universe hasn’t let me down. I still write. I still paint. and I still cook. Now, I’m putting my art on custom chef knife covers. They are my new canvas.”
What inspires you?
“People do. Let’s face it, without someone creating something like it or not, there’s a hindsight thought and a result there. It makes you think and if it creates even a thought in someone- it did its job. Also my biggest inspiration is the unknown. The fact that it may already have been done, but hasn’t been done by me. Or starting something completely fresh and that feeling it gives you that cant be explained. That’s really my driving force in anything I create. Figuring a project out, and also knowing better now at least that while I’m in those fresh and sometimes frustrating moments of freedom. Those hindsight thoughts come, that result thing happens.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“I try to always keep a culinary theme, whether its classic designs any chef or home cook could enjoy. I love pop culture as well as classical art styles when designing a saya. Even when I do customs for others i try to ask them questions about themselves so I can get in there heads and make something they can really keep and love forever. As far as an underlying message each peace is different. I’d like to think that message is only for me with each one. If others see just a glimpse of it and say ‘oh I see what he was trying to do there.’ That’s great too.”
How would you describe your work?
“Functional art. One Hundred percent. It’s more then an accessory, and not something that’s meant to stay on the wall forever. My work is making them playful and so should someone’s experience with it. I try to bring it to life with symmetry and color whether I’m painting them, using graphic design and layering. Or wood burning. It’s about bringing something completely new and different to the genre but without changing much except for what people thought it could be. Like chefs say in the kitchen. If you use it, make sure you put it back the same way you found it, or better.”
Which artists influence you most?
“The ones that are fearless and run with it. Whether you see it happening in the moment or learn about it later. Those ones. The ones I admire the most off the top of my head are Jackson Pollock, Earnest Hemigway, Hunter S Tompson. and Anthony Bourdain. They were wild renegades with something to say about truth.”
“I try to always keep a culinary theme, whether its classic designs any chef or home cook could enjoy.”
What is your creative process like?
“That’s a tricky one that I don’t think I can explain completely. But with anything I create in any medium, and a chef taught me this: I work backwards. In a dish, I’ll start with the sauce first, even though you said cook a fish dish. With the sayas it’s kind of the same. If someone asks me to do a cover with there favorite genre in mind. I’ll immediately start doing research on it. How it all started for that subject. Libraries are still my favorite research method. But it can be as simple as watching a documentary online about it. Listening to words in a song that just does it for me. Yes, they want a certain character on it. but starting in those places helps me start to tell the story for it.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“An artists role in society is the same as it ever was. Its to do the work. Create and grow. A lot of that is alone time. If you’re ever going to do your best work its either during that time or after you already experienced a good amount of it. But most of all to fully be in that scene surrounded by others that are like minded. If you’re doing that and your being totally authentic, then you have no option but to create, to grow, to evolve. And you definitely won’t care about the rest of society nor what your role is in it. you have created your own society. And in turn the rest will just watch.”
