What about the faces that you use in your work?
I think a lot the faces came up in the last body of work that I created. That body was about this community or connectivity. It was about all this different array of characters or people from around the world—different sets of eyes interacting with each other.
And the symbols? For example, the ampersand.
That actually came up when I was developing a mark for my online shop. I came up with this phrase that I liked: You and I. I kind of liked that, but I kind of like the connotation and concept in relation to National Forrest where we’re working with design as a service all day and creating these big campaigns and creating this big gap between the viewer and the producer. With something like You and I, there’s this direct connection, a much closer connection with the consumer—the person who’s interested in the print. Every time you buy a print or an object from that shop, my hands are directly shipping you the print, or I’m directly communicating with you. It’s all about that relationship that happens. I came up with that image of the ampersand with two hands creating this little theme. That has slowly started to stick within my work, and it’ll pop up in images.
A lot of your other symbols seem old world or ancient.
The two aunts I grew up with, and my mom, are part Native American and part Hispanic. I grew up with up with a lot of that iconography in the house. Massive tapestries, animal icons, and all sorts of Native American iconography. In one sense, it’s kind of comforting to me, but at the same time the general sense of connectivity you get from those icons, is a theme I’m trying to achieve in work—creating this new world cult or tribe that revolves around that idea of community.
That seems like an important part of your work that’s been ingrained in you since childhood.
With the last tour I went on, we put out this 160-page book. When we were designing the book, we created a first portion of the book from a bunch of pieces from my past. My mom is this massive collector. So, the first portion is a bunch of objects and things I made when I was in grade school. Within the book we were relating that work with the work I make now which is in the later part of the book. That intuition that happens when making that work when you’re young and how intuitive it is now. As far as the childhood theme coming back into play in my work, it’s thinking back to those younger days because there’s something a little bit more pure and a little bit more innocent. You just jump right into an image without thinking of what’s cool now, or what’s hip today or what you should or shouldn’t be doing. In a sense, I’m trying to find my way back to those days of producing work and being really carefree and direct with making images.
