Wayne Wilkes White (born September 17, 1957) is an American painter, art director, puppeteer, set designer, animator, cartoonist, and illustrator. He has won three Emmy Awards for his work.

Early life and education

In the documentary Beauty is Embarrassing, White states he was born in Sand Mountain, Alabama.

After finishing high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1975, and earning a BFA from Middle Tennessee State University in 1979, White moved to New York City in 1980. There, he worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for several publications, such as The East Village Eye, Raw, The New York Times, and The Village Voice.

Career

In 1986, he worked on Pee-wee's Playhouse. His set and puppet designs won three Emmy awards. He also provided many voices for the show. Other television projects include production and set design for Shining Time Station, Riders in the Sky, The Weird Al Show, and Beakman's World.

He art directed two important music videos: Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” in 1986, for which he won a Billboard award for best art direction in a music video. In 1996, he designed all the sets for the award-winning video for the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” These sets were inspired by the work of Georges Méliès.

More recently, he has focused on painting. He uses inexpensive, mass-produced lithographs he finds in secondhand stores. He carefully paints phrases or words on them in a glossy, 3-D style. His work has been compared to that of Ed Ruscha. His painting Nixon was used on the album cover for the band Lambchop. A school friend of Lambchop’s, Kurt Wagner, White has contributed to four of the band’s album covers. On September 16, 2009, at The Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, White gave a presentation about his life and work.

In September 2009, White installed a large puppet head of George Jones at the Rice Gallery in Houston, Texas. The puppet’s eyes move, and if a viewer pulls a rope, the mouth opens and a snoring sound plays. A large fan rotates at the base of the head, with the word “dreaming” written on the fan blades. The piece is called Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep, referencing George Jones’s song “Ragged but Right.”

In January 2009, White was part of a group art exhibition called There’s Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You… at the Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas, Texas. The gallery also held a solo exhibition for White in 2010 titled I Fell 37 Miles to the Earth 100 Years Ago. In March 2012, a documentary about Wayne White’s life, Beauty Is Embarrassing, premiered at SXSW in Austin, Texas. In June 2013, an interactive art installation called HALO AMOK debuted at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. White describes HALO AMOK as a “cubist cowboy rodeo.”

In November 2016, White created an art installation in Chattanooga called Wayne-O-Rama. It includes large cardboard heads of historical figures from Chattanooga, such as Dragging Canoe and Adolph Ochs, and a model of Lookout Mountain with details about the mountain, including Rock City, Ruby Falls, and the Incline. The project was partly funded by the Shaking Ray Levis Society, Benwood Foundation, Lyndhurst Foundation, and See Rock City Inc.

In January 2020, White announced his fourth solo art show at the Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City. In April 2020, he released a series of eighteen drawings from 2012 and 2020. These were shared alongside short puppet shows he created for Instagram, each containing a joke or gag.

White created the cover art, Curdled American Dream, for the X album Alphabetland. This was because the album’s vocalist, Exene Cervenka, and bassist, John Doe, are fans of his work.

White designed the cover art and 30 original illustrations for the book Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History of George Jones & Tammy Wynette by Tyler Mahan Coe, published by Simon & Schuster in September 2024. The book is based on the second season of a podcast with the same name. This collaboration is meaningful because White and Coe previously talked about their shared love of books and country music in an article published by Bitter Southerner magazine.

Personal life

White is married to cartoonist and writer Mimi Pond. They have two children, Woodrow "Woody" White and Lulu White, who are also artists.

Works and publications

• White, Wayne (2009). Edited by Oldham, Todd; Rakowski, Kelly; Cassity, Matt. Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve. Los Angeles, CA: Ammo Books. ISBN 978-1-934-42911-2. OCLC 213855083.
• White, Wayne (2010). Wayne White: Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep (Exhibition catalog). Houston, TX: Rice University Art Gallery. ISBN 978-1-932-28137-8. OCLC 949778517. – September 10 – December 13, 2009.
• Pagel, David; White, Wayne (2013). Halo Amok: A Puppet Installation by Wayne White (Exhibition catalog). Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma City Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-911-91917-2. OCLC 866857644. – Issued in connection with an exhibition held June 6 – October 6, 2013, Oklahoma City Museum of Art.