hey! I got a few questions for you! first, what are your religious beliefs? are there any characters you own that you still have and have had for a very long time? do you want to major in art or music? do you prefer digital medium or traditional? if you could be a certain race what race would you much prefer? what artists inspire you the most? favorite form of dealing with stress?
holy dang i haven’t checked my art blog inbox in so long ! hey hi ! get ready for massive answers because i can’t half-ass !
firstly, . i guess my religious beliefs coincide with a handful of things. my experience of what i would refer to as “god” has stemmed from a series of mathematical, flash epiphanies. i have always been fascinated with particle & quantum physics, and through continued exploration of those concepts, i have come to feel large experiences of Oneness and understanding. i feel i am partially the experiences of this life, partially the experiences of all mankind, and partially the experience of all matter in continuous explosion. i guess all of my reasoning has led me to build a system most similar to zen buddhism, but my practices are my own, and i do not directly follow any teachings. i believe in one “equation” that dictates the movement of all things - not an equation that can be defined, but one that can be felt. it cannot be limited by numbers, but i know there is one motion, though it may have many spectrums and dimensions. i believe in gravity, rotation, and electrical impulses - in the series of double helixes, from our DNA to our musculature, that allow us to move throughout time and space. all shapes and forms grow as we do, and i believe in dance and tactile experience as the purest form of practice, or dialogue with the All That Is. bam !wtf sorry for the essay !but thank you for the opportunity to refine my ideas a bit.. though the design of my characters may change, i think i will always have the archetypes of Ari, Lori, and Xem in my artwork. they were my first three characters (written in the order they came about), and even if i’ve almost stopped drawing any individuals consistently, i’ll still see those three personalities come up. hilariously enough, now that i think about it, they parallel my three signs - Ari (embodying heavy silence) holds my Cancer ascending, Lori (embodying obsessive/violent refinement) holds my Virgo sun, and Xem (embodying flirtatious/aggressive ambition) holds my Aries moon. they’ll always be a part of me.
. do i want to major in art or music ? definitely art ! the obsession with digital perfection down to the absolute millisecond on every tiny clip in modern day music-making drives me insane. i would have to go through so much inorganic process. if anything, i’d say i make folk music, even if it’s distorted/digital sometimes - so perfection is not necessarily my goal. but that’s why a straight up drawing & painting major doesn’t excite me anymore either. i was most pleased with the New Genres way of going about teaching art - there is only a prompt, with no limit to methods or media, and you are mostly judged by the success of the symbolism of the work. imperfection is an acceptable goal, if for the correct reasons, and i respect that - it is a practice that demands all rules be challenged. New Genres includes anything from performance art, film, new media, to dance, sculpture, or a walk in the park. it really includes anything. i think i’d fit best in an environment like that, where theory/psychology is the main focus.. as for digital vs traditional, i change my mind on that all the time ! ! ! i love the range of possibility with digital art, but drawing only really feels like carving space when you’ve got a pencil, or some charcoal. that tactile, sculptural feeling is valuable. i definitely haven’t made digital art in a while. but i don’t think i could pick which one i like best ! i love it all for different reasons.
. if i could be a certain race, which would i prefer ? hmmmmmm.. well, i’ve come to like my super super mega white nordic alien look over the years. but all throughout my childhood i had wished i were as beautiful as all the women i’d seen with very dark skin, and big, radiant smiles. i don’t think i’d ever seen joy look so lovely on a human being before. white people always looked so bulbous lmao i spent a lot of my life not wanting to be puffy and flushed/rosy and see-through. but i recognize aesthetics barely matter when faced with the fact that it’s easier for me to walk through life in this country than anyone with differing skin tone/features. so i’m always aware that i would not trade places, because the state of the world was Fucked by white imperialism, and i am still safer than anyone i would be playing with the idea of changing places with. that being said, i would love to not affiliate with Saltine Americans, and I would love to travel back in time, to have been a member of the Ohlone tribe in the pre-colombian era of San Francisco.
. favourite artists !!! oh man. well of course Jamie Hewlett and the Gorillaz - such style !! and the idea that animated characters could lead a band and become a cultural phenomenon was incredible to me, being someone who was/is shy and musically-inclined. i was obsessed with their MTV cribs session. i loved the level of detail put into the history of his characters. around the time i first experienced Hewlett there was also Aaron Alexovich’s Serenity Rose, which REALLY transformed my line work. his style is still very prevalent in my cartoons to this day. from childhood there was Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes - his manner of expressive line quality in making backgrounds and landscapes was just incredible. i loved how nothing was definite but he perfectly embodied the attitude of the form - everything was quick and gestural but absolutely recognizable. always my goal. those are the main three, but some others that touched me over the past couple years have been Egon Schiele, the movie Mirrormask, Moebius, Frank Frazetta, Dali, and Escher.the neon pop-surrealism of graffiti and board art in the past couple years has had a big affect on me too.
. and finally, my favourite way of dealing with stress is becoming nocturnal (awake from 4pm to 7am), so that i can avoid all human contact, and talk to myself, and make art for hours and hours without limitation-anxiety or disturbances. my second favourite way is showering. or listening to Death Grips. :~)
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