Meet the Brooklyn Artist Paid To Manifest Cuomo's Manic Late Night Fever Dreams

After nearly a decade atop New York's political hierarchy, and showing no signs of slowing down, the internal life of Andrew Cuomo — his greatest hopes and deepest fears — can still feel like a mystery. When the work of being governor is done, as he's trolling for shark with his buddies on Long Island or in the quiet solitude of a man cave, where does his mind go? Left alone with his thoughts, do the darker recesses of his brain resemble our own, or are they somehow different, weirder?

As you contemplate, please gaze upon this wonderfully mystifying campaign poster [high-res], personally designed by the governor and presented to lawmakers and select reporters on the first day of the 2020 legislative session. This is Cuomo's blueprint through the "fog of confusion," a visual interpretation of the vaguely ship-themed address he delivered earlier this week. It is, I think it can be agreed, a towering work of art.

Like other masterpieces or that digital rendering that simulates having stroke, the work itself defies easy description. Between streaking rainbows and a Leonard Cohen quote, there is a tempestuous sea, brimming with a random cluster of nautical demons (a Siren of ethnocentrism! the octopus of intolerance!) and foreboding reefs/squalls of greed/hate.

A steady Ship of State navigates the choppy waters and converging devil-winds, as a decade-old portrait of Cuomo floats over the scene, satisfied. See that tiny silhouette at the foot of the Steps of Progress, pointing a weapon at Marriage Equality, or possibly the cannon labeled Gun Safety? History buffs will recognize that man as Aaron Burr.

Few of us could ever hope to understand the psychic whims of a governor who conjured this creation. But Rusty Zimmerman, a 40-year-old Brooklyn artist, may come closest. Zimmerman has spent a decade grafting Cuomo's literal fever dreams onto the page. This is third such campaign poster (the others came in 2010 and 2012), and the first to employ photoshop. It is by far the busiest, and my personal favorite. Below, we spoke with Zimmerman about Cuomo's artistic process.

We're told that Cuomo was largely responsible for conceptualizing this poster. Can you confirm? Believe it or not, content-wise and thematically, these are a lot of his ideas. The first time we worked together he mentioned that he'd woken up in the middle of the night and remembered this poster that Williams Jennings Bryan had done in 1900 for an election. He was inspired by that and decided, ‘I want my own octopus poster,’ more or less. He feverishly drew it at the dining room table at 1:00 a.m. I got to look at these drawings and translate them. So some souvenirs I have around the house are his drawings. They're...lovely.

How would you describe Cuomo's creative process? What I like about working with the governor is that he is open to feedback and recognizes what his strong suits are and are not. He will tell you himself that visual communication — artistry and drawing — is not one of his strong suits. So he defers to me on that, which I appreciate. To have a client who is amenable to ideas of different things is a blessing and sometimes a rarity.

[Editor's note: Despite Zimmerman's obvious respect for the governor, the artist appears to have backed Cuomo’s opponent, Cynthia Nixon, in the 2018 primary. Follow up inquiries about Zimmerman's voting record were not returned.]

What does this look like in practice? Is the governor literally describing a scene as you jot it down? More so he'll render me a picture of a ship at sea, and within the sea of, you know, division with winds of anger, anxiety etc., are representation of things that New York is sailing steadfastly through. Some of those things that he'd like acknowledged are anger and bigotry and ethnocentrism, and from there it's on me to look at the William Jennings Bryan poster and say, How would these things be represented in a nautical image from 120 years ago. There were about 30 different iterations that went from start to finish, each step refining and adding and subtracting some things.

How long did this take? We began on November 18th and we concluded around December 29th. Most of it is going through the iterative process and saying, let's see what this looks like with a staircase emerging from the sea, and what if that staircase was made of brick to symbolize building a new New York as our economic policy moving forward into the future. For that matter, if we're going to be discussing the future, where should we put the future. How about off on the horizon? If we're going to discuss gun safety, what's a nautical themed way to make a nod toward that?

The Leonard Cohen quote at the bottom is another interesting touch. Was that a Cuomo directive? Oh yeah. I received Cohen. In fact there was a moment in which we inserted the quote onto the banner and they said make sure it's attributed to Leonard Cohen, and so I signed it L. Cohen, like he did in his famous blue raincoat, and they said, nope, make sure it says Leonard Cohen.' So I did.

How much did you get paid? That's something I don't say. I was happy to do it.

[Editor's note: The Governor's Office also declined to share how much the most recent poster cost, but said it would eventually be disclosed. As part of the contract, Zimmerman retains the right to the images, and charges a licensing fee for media reproductions. Records show that the Cuomo campaign has paid Zimmerman $24,000 for for various works over the years. ]

Let's talk about the small man at the bottom of the stairs. What's he doing? That is Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton dueling it out. At one point the stairs were made of bricks, and they said, What if it was more like a mountain emerging from the sea? I said, to keep it local, What if it were reminiscent of the palisade cliffs just across the George Washington Bridge?

We've got a text thread going between me and some folks from the governor's team, and they said, Oh yeah, if we're going to do the Palisades, what if include Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton because that's where they had their duel? So I said yeah, I mean I guess, we can pepper in one more teeny tiny thing into this, sure.

Was there ever a point where you felt it was becoming...too much? There's always some of that back and forth. But thankfully the governor is open to feedback. When I made suggestions to keep things cohesive and hewing toward simple and elegant, he was very receptive to that. He's a good guy to work for.

Clearly the William Jennings Bryan poster was the major jumping off point. Were there other inspirations? The ship itself was modeled after a boat called the USS Constitution. If you go to the governor's Twitter account, it says something along the lines of 'automative and boat enthusiast and father and 56th Governor of New York State [Ed note: 'Father, fisherman, motorcycle enthusiast, 56th Governor of New York']. So the man's excited about ships. He said I want this to look like the USS Constitution. I did a cursory Google search to find out what that boat looked like and said, 'Oh shit that's a lot of sails to paint.'

So you get some instruction from the governor's team, and then how do you go about rendering that on a poster? The first two posters were done with proper paint. Since this one was on a more accelerated timeline, I remembered some work done by an illustrator, Nathan Fox, who would do ink drawings and drop them into Photoshop and color the line work itself and then the interior. I decided this was going to be a great time for me to learn that. So apart from the portrait and the flags flanking it, all the new elements were done digitally, from ink drawings that were dropped into the computer. Every separate component is essentially an 8.5 X 11 piece of paper and a Pentel brush pen and a bunch of Photoshop, which was new for me.

What are you up to when not on commission for the governor? I have a forthcoming project with Google and the Hudson Guild in Chelsea. Google saw the portrait project I did in Crown Heights and wanted to pay some respect and acknowledgement to their neighbors in Chelsea. So they what if we were to underwrite a similar work like you did in your neighborhood of Crown Heights for our neighbors in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses, the NYCHA building. That's slated to begin in late spring or early summer.

Would you work with the governor again on something like this? Absolutely.