Draft:Jason Tetlak

Image of artist Jason Tetlak painting a mural.

Jason Tetlak (born March 10, 1977) is an American contemporary artist, activist, and founder of the National Mural Awards.

Early Life

Jason Tetlak was born in Hamilton, Bermuda, where his father was stationed in the US Navy. His family moved back to Northeast Ohio when Jason was one year old, and that is where he was raised. He attended Brunswick High School, from which he graduated in 1995, after which he enrolled in Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida to study fine art. In the Spring of 2000, he graduated with a BA in Fine Art and Graphic Design.

Early Career

Post graduation, Jason settled in Jacksonville, Florida, where he taught elementary art for three years for the Duval County Public School system. Subsequent jobs included work as a graphic designer for the Department of Defense at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, the Florida State College of Jacksonville Artist Series, and the Shepherd Agency.

Art

During his career in graphic design, Jason pursued art in his free time, focusing his efforts on merging traditional canvas painting with emerging technology. In the late aughts, Jason helped pioneer QR code paintings, which when scanned sent additional images to the viewer’s phone and in 2012, his featured work Art Prize in Grand Rapids, Michigan was one of, if not the very first gallery-hung painting to feature augmented reality. When a viewer scanned the painting “The Creation of Art” while using the correct app, a sixty second video of a Rube Goldberg device going haywire would play on their phone, thus bringing the painting in front of them to life. The art itself was very simple in color and design and thus didn’t garner the attention of more traditional artwork featured in the show, but was a breakthrough piece nonetheless. Perhaps nothing underscores the work’s innovation more than the fact that it featured the first guitar solo ever recorded for a canvas painting by Pittsburgh guitarist Rick Brown.

Seeking new and innovative ways for viewers to interact with his work would become central to Jason’s work moving forward.

Nothing highlighted his new “audience participation” approach better than Tetlak’s January 2019 show titled “Burn After Reading” at Space 42 in Jacksonville’s Emerging Arts District, which highlighted his now signature Red Reveal style – a style which allows a painting to change images completely when exposed to red light. The show garnered local media attention when Jason announced that, as a commentary on the local art scene, any unsold work at the end of the show would be burned in the parking lot during the closing reception, giving an ultimatum to art buyers to either purchase the work or watch it go up in flames. The show was voted “Best Art Exhibition” of 2019 by Folio Weekly readers.

Murals

In 2016 while serving as the president of the Murray Hill Preservation Association Jason began the Murray Hill Mural Project. The project’s initial goal was to install four small murals in the Jacksonville’s Murray Hill neighborhood, two miles southwest of downtown, but the project’s initial success caused Jason and the board to expand their vision – a vision which ended up enhancing the neighborhood with over twenty large, colorful designs painted by local and national artists. A year later in 2017, Jason himself stepped in to assist the project by designing and painting his first ever mural -which he did without compensation to avoid any potential conflict of interest with his role as MHPA president. That mural, titled “Wall to Wall,” was an extension of the red/blue 3D paintings he had been working on at the time, and featured imagery to represent the history of art from cave paintings, through the renaissance, to pop art, and eventually to graffiti and mural painting.

World Record setting mural painted by artist Jason Tetlak

In 2018, exhausted by the hit or miss nature of gallery showings and intrigued by his experiences working on larger, more visible public canvasses, Jason decided to go big – as in world record big. After painting his first mural just a year prior, Jason planned and executed a 3D mural of the Beastie Boys in Jacksonville’s Brooklyn neighborhood that was measured at 179.36 square meters -  later recognized as a Guinness World Record for the largest anaglyph (3D) painting. The mural was voted “Best Public Artwork” by readers of Folio Weekly 2019. The media attention he received via the world record led to an invite to paint a mural in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami as part of the famous Basel House Mural Festival in Miami that December.

Word about Jason’s exciting new red reveal style began to get out and only two years after painting his very first mural just blocks from his house, he unexpectedly found himself painting in places like Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Marshalltown, Iowa, and Las Vegas, Nevada, He also began collaborating with celebrities like NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield on a mural titled “Woke Up Feeling Dangerous” just outside of Cleveland Browns Stadium in northeastern Ohio, as well as comedian Josh Blue, winner of NBC’s Last Comic Standing for a mural titled “Art of Comedy” that combined their unusual and dynamic painting styles in Blue’s hometown of Denver, Colorado.

In early 2020, Jason planed and installed a mural in Murray Hill featuring the likeness of actor Bill Murray, which was intended to draw attention to the neighborhood and help revitalize local business. Controversy surrounding the use of Bill Murray’s image as a representation of the neighborhood prompted a change.org petition to stop its completion, which led to more media attention and helped achieve the desired effect of publicizing Murray Hill. In the end, more people loved the work than didn’t and the mural later gave Tetlak his second “Best in Jax” award for public art.

In just seven years Jason has painted over 70 murals in 16 US States as well as the island of Bermuda – and along with Wynnewood, has been featured at numerous mural festivals including the Corpus Christi Mural Festival, Paint Memphis, and Hagerstwown Mural Fest.

Film

Thanks to a random interaction at a bar watching his beloved Cleveland Browns, Jason began to wonder just how good the athletes he watched every Sunday really were. With the help of writer/director Kevin Cramer, Jason filmed “Third Down and Forever”which was described by critics as “A delightfully funny journey into the delusions of the average guy.” The film follows Jason as he hopes to become a professional football player by working out with a personal trainer at Gold’s Gym and seeking advice from athletes and celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Chad OchoCinco, Joe Flacco, Brian Baumgardner, Dwight Freeney, Deion Sanders, and Doug Flutie. It concludes with Jason as a 33-year old elementary art teacher trying out for the Florida Firecats of the Arena II league - a tryout that was ultimately unsuccessful. The film premiered at Sun Ray Cinema in Jacksonville’s Historic Five Points Theater on June 21st, 2010.

Filmmaker Kevin Cramer and Artist Jason Tetlak with ESPN analyst Bob Ley at the Key West Film Festival

In 2019, Tetlak and Cramer teamed up again to film the comedic documentary “Here for the Free Wine,” which follows Jason as he questions the true nature of success in the art world all while juggling his everyday work and parental responsibilities in preparation for the biggest gallery show of his life – the aforementioned “Burn After Reading” at Space 42. The documentary was well received, premiering at the International Film Festival in Key West, Florida that November.

Politics

In addition to serving a two-year term as president of the Murray Hill Preservation Association, Tetlak ran on the Democratic Ticket for Jacksonville City Council in District 7. In 2015 after the city of Jacksonville failed to pass an inclusive Human Rights Ordinance (HRO) which could have led to legal discrimination against city residents, Jason decided to wade into politics to highlight the issue. Along the way, he garnered media attention by rejecting any and all monetary donations to his campaign, instead making all of his own signs and banners out of repurposed materials while encouraging supporters to donate money to a list of local charities instead. Though he lost the election, he still managed to garner 32% of the vote in a heavily Republican district and was ultimately victorious in his quest to get the council to pass the HRO just one year later.

National Mural Awards

In 2022, upon realizing no awards existed on a national scale for the talented artists like him beautifying walls around the country, Tetlak founded the National Mural Awards to recognize the top artists in this specific field. The initial awards were small and held solely online for artists who submitted their work. Tetlak and a team of judges from around the country judged each entry in six different geographic regions, determining a bronze, silver, and gold winner in each, before pitting the six gold winners against each other for the national award, which went to renowned artist Sonny Sundancer. Tetlak paid for the awards, advertising, and shipping costs himself.

Realizing that paying for everything on his own artist’s salary was ultimately unsustainable, Tetlak reached out to mural festivals around the country to partner with the NMA’s to bring an event together featuring the 2022 award winners and reward those who’d won in 2023. The Corpus Christi Mural Festival on Texas’s southern coast stepped in to do just that. In June of 2024, Tetlak helped bring big names in the street art world like Sonny Sundancer and Key Detail to south Texas while Visit Corpus Christi assisted the National Mural Awards in providing events such as an NMA hosted artist talk, an art education day at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, and also presented the National Mural Awards banquet to cap off the week – a partnership which proved beneficial to both the awards and the city.