ArtDiction May/June 2021

Habitual. Art.

Drawing & Punk Art

Volume 28 May/June 2021 9

www.artdictionmagazine.com

Raqib Shaw Reflections Upon the Looking-Glass River Jun 8 – Aug 7, 2021

FEATURES 12 Artist Spotlight

In this issue, we are spotlighting Frankie Smith. She’s an abstract expressionist with a focus on aqua paintings and cool watercolors.

16 Tattoos and Sculptures

Evaldas Gulbinas, like many artists during the COVID-19 pandemic, made a shift in his art. Read how he applied his tattooing skills to other art forms like sculptures and mixed media.

28 Anonymous Collaging

Get to know Typo Grafka, an analog collage artist that anonymously creates art that explores concepts of femininity.

40 How Music and Punk Art Formed its Own Subculture

of Art

Here we discuss the subculture of punk art, which was heavily assisted by a variety of ideologies, fashions and especially music.

42 Sketches That Lilt and Dream

Mobee draws from what he says is a skewed and fluid sense of self. The result is a portfolio of sketches that provoke thought.

Cover photo courtesy of Typo Grafka

54 Portraits, Posters and Rock ‘n’ Roll Travis Braun, a deep-thinking artist, uses art to address the conflict between spirituality and rock ‘n’ roll, all while incorporating a bit of musical nostalgia.

In Each Issue 5 small talk 7

news

12 exhibits 58 artist & ad index

Photo courtesy of Travis Braun.

©2021 by Devika Akeise Publishing

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small talk

©Mobee

I

n this issue we explore art genres that have always been a fan favorite to readers of ArtDiction (and mine too!).

Drawing and Punk art seem to have a relatability factor, which I found especially true for myself.

From topics like feminist expression to music’s conflict with aspects of spirituality – I found myself nodding in agreement and mumbling the occasional “yep, that’s true” quite often.

have a spin that is unique to his art.

Finally, we interviewed Travis Braun who is nostalgic about his love for music and designs art that makes you feel good and/or a little guilty.

(You’ll have to decide for yourself.)

We interviewed four artists in this issue. Evaldas Gulbinas will inspire you to keep making shifts in your art (or your specific career) to cope with the pandemic. Typo Grafka creates collage art anonymously, using her medium as a safe space that challenges and confronts issues women face in society.

Mobee comes up with sketches with likenesses you will find familiar but

Sit back and enjoy the issue. I hope you too find yourself mumbling the occasional “yep, that’s true.”

Afterall, art has a funny way of uniting us in that way.

We also have a special artist spotlight in this issue that highlights the work of Frankie Smith. She discovered she had a natural talent for painting, and we are closely following her art career.

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news Portia Zvavahera Joins David Zwirner Artist Portia Zvavahera, who is based in Harare, Zimbabwe, and is known for her paintings of floating figures, has joined David Zwirner.

The mega-dealer will represent the artist in collaboration with Stevenson, which has locations in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. With work featured in her first European solo show at David Zwirner’s London outpost in September, David Zwirner will present its second solo exhibition of Zvavahera’s work in New York in the fall of 2021.

Zvavahera’s works have drawn attention for their exploration of spiritual realms. Her works seem to carry influences from European Expressionists like Munch and Klimt along with traditional African imagery that was later modernized by postwar Zimbabwe painters.

“The fact that Portia Zvavahera lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe, puts her outside the traditional centers of gravity of the art world, and that has given only a small group of collectors and curators a chance to see the work in person,” David Zwirner stated in an interview.

“As her work is being experienced by more, demand has steadily risen and her unique voice is becoming recognized by a larger group.”

Zvavahera’s first exhibition at David Zwirner sold out, with prices ranging from $80,000 to $100,000.

Additionally, her large-scale painting Arising From the Unknown (2019) attracted bids from global collectors in Taiwan and the Netherlands, and sold for a record-setting £163,800 ($212,400)—four times its estimate—during a Phillips contemporary art evening sale in New York this past October.

In 2018, Zvavahera’s work appeared at the Berlin Biennale and in “Five Bhobh – Painting At the End of

Portia Zvavahera

an Era,” an acclaimed survey of Zimbabwean figurative painting at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town. Five years prior, she was featured in the Zimbabwean Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale, and in 2010, she was the subject of a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare. Her work has also been shown at Stevenson and Marc Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles.

“I’m always especially interested in finding voices that are not easily categorized,” Zwirner said, adding that Zvavahera’s paintings show “that heritage does not reveal itself readily through her imagery. Her primary concerns—spirituality, belief, and transcendence—are difficult to talk about and don’t fit handily into our current discourse.”

The Pompidou plans to show works from its collection in the New Jersey City museum amid the forthcoming years-long restoration effort and impending temporary closure of its Paris venue. The new outpost, known as Centre Pompidou x Jersey City, will also prioritize programming like talks, performances, screenings, and more.

Jersey City plans to fund the renovation of the building, which is estimated to cost between $10 million and $30 million, as well as the museum’s operating costs, according to reports. The architecture firm OMA has been enlisted for the project, with Jason Long as chief architect.

Centre Pompidou to Open Satellite Museum in New Jersey

“The hope is that we will be able to leverage the Pompidou’s expertise, their experience elsewhere in the world and their collection to create something really significant here,” Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop told the New York Times.

The collection of artists Christo The Centre Pompidou in Paris will expand with a new outpost in Jersey City, New Jersey. The new museum will reportedly be located in a fourstory, 100-year-old industrial building in the Journal Square district. Itis set to open in 2024 with a five-year contract between the city and the French institution.

The extended closure of the Centre Pompidou in Paris will begin in 2023, with plans to reopen in 2027. During that period, its Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers–designed structure will be brought up to safety and accessibility standards. “We no longer have a choice, the building is in distress,” Centre Pompidou president Serge Lasvignes told the

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news newspaper Le Figaro earlier this year.

Mellon Foundation to Give $125 M to New York’s Arts Sector The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has stated that it would launch a major statewide philanthropic initiative to aid the arts sector’s recovery from the pandemic. This historic $125 million plan, the Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), is intended to provide artists with fulltime employment opportunities or a guaranteed income to revitalize the city’s cultural workers and venues, which have faced steep losses in income and revenue since the onset of the pandemic. The program will roll out over a three-year period as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s state-wide recovery plan.

The initiative received contributions from the Ford Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and will provide up to 2,400 artists with a no-strings-attached monthly income and will endow 300 full-time salaried positions at small- and midsize arts organizations across the state.

“The artists whose work helps to sustain us have faced particularly devastating circumstances resulting from unemployment, underemployment, and a lack of predictable paid incomes,” Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement. “It’s critical for the vibrancy of our cities that we recognize that making art is work.”

A February 2021 report from New York State revealed that as of December 2020, employment in the cultural and recreation sectors had dropped an unprecedented 66 percent. According to the Mellon Foundation, 50 percent of performing arts jobs were lost during the pandemic statewide; in New York

City, that figure was 72 percent.

Before the pandemic, New York’s cultural sector generated around $120 billion and provided more than 500,000 jobs.

“These funds will address the financial hardship and combat systemic inequities that have long plagued the sector,” said Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation said in a statement. “This is particularly

The initiative received contributions from the Ford Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and will provide up to 2,400 artists with a no-stringsattached monthly income... the case for those artists serving small-to-midsized organizations, often led by and serving BIPOC communities.”

Sarah Calderon, who previously served as the managing director of ArtPlace America, will oversee the launch of CRNY later this summer.

“Artists need and deserve to be paid predictable and regular incomes,” Calderon said in a statement.

“They are agents of social change, strengthening equitable, healthy, and sustainable communities.”

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A rendering of Centre Pompidou x Jersey City.

MoMA Trustee Leon Black Accused of Defamation and Sexual Abuse in Lawsuit Leon Black, former chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, has been accused of defamation and sexual abuse in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, June 1. Black recently stepped down from his leadership role at MoMA following a review of his former ties with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but remains a member of the museum’s board. Amid public controversy, the billionaire also resigned from his roles as CEO and chairman of his private equity company, Apollo Global Management.

The plaintiff, Guzel Ganieva, says that Black defamed her by describing their former relationship as a “consensual affair” instead of what she previously described as “appalling forced sexual misconduct,” according to the lawsuit.

The accuser also says that she was defamed by Black’s allegations that she had extorted money from him.

She first detailed her allegations against Black in March when she tweeted that the billionaire had “sexually harassed and abused” her “for years.” In one of several tweets, she wrote: It started in 2008 when I met with him to discuss work. While he understood my career aspirations, he could not understand me when I refused his sexual advances. I was bullied, manipulated, threatened,

news and coerced. Similarly, under duress, I was forced to sign an NDA in 2015.

In a statement to the New York Post in April, Black said that he “foolishly had a consensual affair with Ms. Ganieva that ended more than seven years ago.” He called the accuser’s allegations against him “completely fabricated” and claimed that he had “made substantial monetary payments to her, based on her threats to go public concerning our relationship, in an attempt to spare my family from public embarrassment.”

In recent years, Black has been the subject of multiple widely publicized controversies centering his associations with Jeffrey Epstein. In January, a company review revealed that Black had paid Epstein $158 million in tax and estate planning fees between 2012 and 2017. The report, however, cleared Black of any misconduct. In February, over 150 artists, including Nan Goldin, Hito Steyerl, Xaviera Simmons, Michael Rakowitz, and Guerilla Girls, called on MoMA to remove Black from its board and reimagine its donor policies. A Hyperallergic investigation spotlighted artists’ concerns about Black’s investments in defense contractors with ties to the murder of civilians in Iraq. As public scrutiny intensified, the billionaire announced in March that would not stand for re-election as MoMA’s chairman. In April, MoMA announced philanthropist and Donald Trump ally Marie-Josée Kravis as his successor. (MoMA has not responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment regarding Ganieva’s lawsuit.)

In her lawsuit, Ganieva seeks unspecified damages for charges of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gender-motivated violence. “The truth will reveal a violent, sadistic side

The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

to Black that he has shielded from public view for decades,” the lawsuit said.

A spokesperson for Black wrote in an email that Ganieva’s allegations of harassment and other inappropriate behavior are “categorically untrue.” The spokesperson continued: This frivolous lawsuit is riddled with lies, and is nothing more than a wholesale fiction. The truth is that Leon Black had a wholly consensual relationship with Ms. Ganieva for six years, and then, as we have previously advised the criminal authorities, Mr. Black was subsequently extorted by Ms. Ganieva for many years and made substantial monetary payments to her based on her threats to go public about their relationship and cause him reputational risk and harm to his family. Mr. Black emphatically denies each and every spurious allegation put forth in this lawsuit and looks forward to disproving them in court.

In an email response, Ganieva’s attorney Jeanne Christensen stated that her client’s case is “the epitome of why #MeToo exists.”

“In textbook fashion, men with wealth, power and an army of elite lawyers continue to escape ArtDiction | 8 | May/June 2021

accountability for their heinous acts by twisting the legal system to penalize their victims for speaking up,” Christensen continued. “Sadly, until prosecutors consistently go after sexual predators that wrongly accuse sexual assault victims of extortion, it is clear that #MeToo has many miles to go.”

Controversy continues to hound MoMA beyond Black’s entanglements. For the past eight weeks, a coalition of artist-activist groups has held weekly protests across from the museum, calling on its leadership to cut ties with problematic billionaires and seek an alternative, community-oriented model.

“Whether Black stays or goes, a consensus has emerged: beyond any one board member, MoMA itself is the problem,” the group named the International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings (IIAAF) wrote in a statement in April. “The rot is at the core of the institution,” the activists added.

exhibits Nina Hamnett May 19 – August 30, 2021 Charleston Museum Charleston presents the first retrospective of artist Nina Hamnett who was at the center of the British-French exchange of art and ideas in the early 20th century.

The exhibition explores key aspects of the Welsh artist’s practice from her painting to her technical drawing skills, which have, in recent times, remained little known and unseen, spanning three decades.

Hamnett’s frank and intimate portraits represent her greatest body of work, illustrating her significant contribution to the modern art movement. Additionally, her own experience as an artist’s model undoubtedly enabled her to capture the character and personality of her sitters so well.

The exhibition includes over 50 works with many portraits of her friends and acquaintances who were also some of the best-known artists and writers of the time, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ossip Zadkine and Horace Brodzky.

Hamnett’s paintings give us a glimpse into her life in Paris and London’s avant-garde communities, and into the relationships she forged. Her compelling portraits and skillful compositions such as her Parisian café scenes, reveal Hamnett to be one of the most talented and exciting artists of her time.

and sketching since grade school. As a photographer, he has worked in genres including fashion, lifestyle, editorial, conceptual, sports, portraiture, and nightlife photography. Trenity uses his camera to capture the life and composition of still life around him. His photograph style has a warmth to it that pulls the viewer into the scene as if they were present.

Trenity Thomas has been in various juried exhibitions, most recently, JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY’s 24th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art and the Louisiana Contemporary juried exhibition presented by The Helis Foundation at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana. His photographs have also received international attention when they were chosen for exhibition in photovogue, a prestigious collection of photographs curated by the Photo Editors of Vogue Italia.

The exhibition explores key aspects of the Welsh artist’s practice from her painting to her technical drawing skills, which have, in recent times, remained little known and unseen, spanning three decades.

Portrait of Torahiko Khori. Nina Hamnett.

Private Collection. Photo © Stephen White 843x1024.

primary impact for my artistry, my creative peers also contributed to my overall appreciation of art. While working at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, I was constantly surrounded by beautiful paintings, photos, and sculptures as a teen docent and also as a guard. These works deeply influenced me as an artist.

Photo courtesy of Trenity Thomas.

TRENITY THOMAS New Photographs July 21 – August 28, 2021 Jonathan Ferrara Gallery Trenity Thomas is a self-taught photographer who has also experimented with painting

The artist says of his work...

Growing up watching my mom craft and paint ignited my passion for art. Not only was my mom the ArtDiction | 9 | May/June 2021

In addition, I am a big lover of cinematography in movies, which drives my creativity and influences the imagery I choose to highlight in my photographs.

Lisa Yuskavage: Wilderness

exhibits paintings. Rather than simply depicting landscape elements, her expansive canvases imagine entire worlds that are both highly detailed and vague in implication, inviting viewers to consider the mysterious societies she has conjured.

A full-color poster celebrating the Lisa Yuskavage: Wildnerss exhibtion.

March 28 – September 19, 2021 Baltimore Museum of Art Lisa Yuskavage: Wilderness, coorganized with the Aspen Art Museum, joins more than 15 lush paintings that show the artist’s expansive treatment of landscape through dexterously crafted compositions that tantalize the eye and beguile the mind.

Over a career now spanning 35 years, Yuskavage has produced paintings that are ebulliently colorful, unabashedly explicit, and epic in ambition—and yet elusory in their meaning. Since 2007, the vastness of nature has played a significant role in her most ambitious large-scale

Photo courtesy of Allison Katz.

An accompanying catalog features color reproductions of Yuskavage’s sublime landscapes from the early 1990s to the present and an interview between Yuskavage and fellow artist Mary Weatherford as well as essays by Christopher Bedford, BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director; Heidi Zuckerman, former Aspen Art Museum Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO; and noted curator Helen Molesworth.

This exhibition is co-curated by Heidi Zuckerman, former Aspen Art Museum Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director and Christopher Bedford, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Allison Katz: Artery May 22 – October 31, 2021 Nottingham Contemporary For more than 10 years, Allison Katz has explored painting’s relationship to questions of identity and expression, selfhood and voice. Animated by a restless sense of humor and curiosity, her works articulate a tricksy language of recurring forms – roosters, monkeys and cabbages, among other things – that are by turns familiar and enigmatic. Katz’s paintings, as well as her ceramics and posters, are frequently bodily (full of noses and gaping mouths) and relentlessly wordy, thick with puns and allusions. What emerges from these multilayered works is a sustained and critical pursuit of ArtDiction | 10 | May/June 2021

what the artist has called “genuine ambiguity”.

According to Katz, “Artery” is a resonant and loaded title. Arteries are the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood, flowing from the heart to the rest of the body. Katz has said, “I want to emphasise the non-order of things, from inside to out.” Arteries are inside us (and “art” is nestled inside “artery”), but they also connect us: the “arterial” is used to describe major highways, subterranean cabling, branching rail networks and winding river systems. This exhibition is preoccupied by these networks and channels, by the spaces between inside and outside, you and me, experience and image.

Across both venues, Artery responds to the particularities of the gallery spaces and locations.

At Nottingham Contemporary, the works will be installed along and behind a series of angled walls, apertures and peepholes; at Camden Art Centre, the exhibition will be reimagined, and be joined by new paintings and works in ceramic. All of the works in Artery were made during the last 18 months, in the midst of an ongoing series of national lockdowns.

The questions they ask – of communication and connection, of intimacy without touching – are as much a response to this current moment as a continued exploration of themes that have persisted throughout painting’s history.

New York, New Music 1980–1986 Opens June 11, 2021 Museum of the City of New York During the early 1980s, New York experienced a community-driven musical renaissance. The result was an era of creativity and genre-

exhibits defying performance that stands as one of the most influential in musical and cultural history. A wide range of music, from punk to pop to hip-hop to salsa to jazz, mixed in a dynamic arts scene that stretched across clubs and bars, theaters, parks, and art spaces.

Together, they provided fertile ground for a musical revolution— one that continues to influence pop culture to this day. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of MTV, New York, New Music: 1980–1986 will highlight diverse musical artists—from Run DMC to the Talking Heads, from Madonna to John Zorn—as a lens to explore the broader music and cultural scene, including the innovative media outlets, venues, record labels, fashion and visual arts centered in New York City in these years.

“During the 80s, there was a community-driven musical renaissance in New York City. It was an era of creativity and genredefying performance that, in my mind, stands as one of the most influential in musical and cultural history,” says Sean Corcoran, curator of prints and photography, Museum of the City of New York.

“That wide range of music –from no wave to pop to hip-hop to salsa to jazz, mixed in a dynamic arts scene that stretched across clubs and bars, theaters, parks, and art spaces– provided fertile ground for a musical revolution — one that continues to influence pop culture to this day.”

Those performances and moments, some with longlasting influence, others that brought together a confluence of performers and underscored the

LL Cool J NYC 1985.

fluidity of the participants in the cultural scene, are highlighted in the main gallery of New York, New Music. Viewed together, these examples provide a sense of the innovation, energy, and crosspollination of musical ideas that was happening across the city at the moment of openness and creativity.

artist spotlight -frankie smith

Tempest 8x10

Rain 11x14

Golden Pond 22x28

Frankie Smith is an abstract expressionist who first became interested in art during a fall beach vacation in 2018. She and her husband walked past a little art class studio and wandered in on a whim. “The art teacher had no students at the time, and we spent a few enjoyable minutes chatting. She offered me a two-hour lesson at a reasonable price,” she recalls.” Those two hours stretched into at least six. She encouraged me and noted that I had a natural talent.

It was the first time I ever painted.

That painting has a place of honor on my wall. I fell in love...absolutely in love with paint and canvas.”

Frankie prefers to paint with blues, violets, and greens. “Those colors evoke a feeling of peace for me,” she explains. Her creations are also aided by her eclectic choice in music while she paints. “During the last month, I painted to Lenny Kravitz, Abba, Vivaldi, and Cat Stephens. I usually ArtDiction | 12 | May/June 2021

start with a base layer of a combination of blues and let the music guide me.” She adds: “I lose all sense of time and feel a oneness with the Creator as I paint. I am in a place of prayer. I hope in the future that I continue to embrace the holy and let that guide me where I am meant to travel in my artistic endeavors.”

To see more of Frankie’s work, go to artdictionmagazine.com/ frankie-smith.

Feeling Van Gogh 11x14

Day Breaking 16x20

Chasing the Golden Dream 16x20

Falling Water 22x28

Sunset Pond 22x18

www.nabad.art

Tattoos and Sculptures

L

ike many artists during the pandemic, Evaldas Gulbinas had to make a shift in his art. His work as a tattoo artist living in London slowed down immensely, giving him more time to think about his art and who he is as an artist. “I refined my art and started combining my tattooing and fine art skills,” he explains. “I wasn’t working in the tattoo studio or art studio any longer. I was making work in my room.”

He began working on a new collection that started from very small drawings of sculptures.

“My art has gotten darker, more objective and similar to tattoo art. I understood that by making

these sculptures I was improving my skills in fine art and tattooing,” he says. Inspired by Japanese art, human faces, and religion, Evaldas designs sculptures made of paper or metal. Each sculpture has it’s own meaning and message, but Evaldas says “the pieces work as one and communicate with each other.”

His current exhibition, “Chaos in the Making” is representative of his current situation. “At the moment, I am studying full time at Chelsea College of Arts at University of the Arts London, and I am working in two tattoo parlours,” he says.

“I am jumping from one art style to another; I get bored doing one single style. Making a sculpture

Evaldas Guliinas Photography by Fredi Mecaj

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for me is like creating a new kind of body. I think most of the sculptures can last for many years.”

When beginning to create his mixed media pieces, Evaldas first determines which material he will use. “After that, I think about the ideas and creation, which just come to my head naturally.

I love to inject the secret behind the art piece I make,” he says. “It’s pure creation.” Next, he draws on paper or metal, creating the shapes that come to mind. He take a “destruction of painting or drawing” approach to keep his art fresh. “As I’ve been drawing many years, I can get a bit bored with it,” he explains. “I try to

destroy the art by making shapes and sculpting.

I also started to engrave metal sheets and make sculptures out of it.”

Evaldas has also started to create sculptures from his tattoo pictures. He says his art will continue to evolve with creating sculptures from his tattoo designs, turning sculptures into print designs and multimedia work with a focus on futuristic objects.

To see more of Evaldas’ art, visit http://www. evaldasgulbinas.co.uk and https://www.instagram.com/efka_tattooart.

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Anonymous Collaging

T

ypo Grafka is an analog collage artist that anonymously creates art that explores concepts of femininity. Art has always been a part of her life.

She recalls: “Everything started from photography when I was in Primary School. Then it was graphic design and film. I cannot imagine my life without creating.”

Although she now works as a multimedia designer, creating collages is where she finds her artistic freedom. “It’s my absolutely private space. The decision to create collages anonymously made me feel free as a bird. I can fully express myself without pressure, expectations and deadlines,” she says. “I can face difficult topics, deal with stereotypes and complexes. And because I create analog collages, it is very relaxing and purifying.”

She admits that it took her a long time to arrive at a place where she felt free to express her own femininity. “As an

adult woman, I discovered how many burdens, limitations and stereotypes are imposed on women,” she says. “I decided to face it in my art.”

TypoGrafka begins her creative process with an image, specific color, shape, fragment or pose and then builds a composition around it. She uses a combination of very old magazines with current fashion, lifestyle or travel periodicals to create her art. “I try to make my art zero waste, so I often take used magazines from my friends and explore them. Collage is a very flexible art; you can use almost everything to make it.”

TypoGrafkfa is currently preparing to sell a few pieces of her work for the very first time. “I didn’t plan it, but people ask me about it so... why not? If it can make someone happy, it makes me happy.”

To see more of TypoGrafka’s work, follow her on Instagram at @typo.grafka.

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Nick Davis

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Nick Davis

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How Music and Punk Art Formed its Own Subculture of Art

By Rachel Best

P

unk emerged as a subculture in a variety of locations around the globe in the late 1960s.

Inluded was a wide variety of ideologies, fashions, and other expressions in the punk subculture, such as visual arts, dances, literature, and films. However, punk music was characterized by anti-establishment outlooks, anticorporate greed, and aggressive, loud music.

Music

before computer technology went mainstream when punk’s artistic ethos permeated the culture of design in the 1970s. As a result, graphic designers started disregarding the rules, and new ones never learned what those rules were.

The culture at that time was permissive. As a member of the culture and as the maker of the culture, you would shape it however you chose. In addition to album covers and flyers, punk zines were adorned with punk artwork.

Typically, punk rock bands had two electric guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and a vocalist. Occasionally, the musicians provided backup vocals, usually chants, choruses, or non-melodic slogans. Because of the great significance and overwhelming popularity of the punk rock band The Sex Pistols, this style is most often associated with Great Britain. But there is a strong lineage of pioneer Punk performers from the United States: The Velvet Underground to Patty Smith to The Stooges and The Ramones.

Hard truths

Non-conformist ideologies

Collage

Punk rock emerged mainly from underground subcultures championed by artists, musicians, reporters, and other bohemian enthusiasts. Punk stands for “thug” in its literal sense. Indeed, this is very much in line with punk’s rebel ideology -- both its politics and practices are heavily influenced by anarchism.

The tenets of punk include being true to oneself, a do it yourself (DIY) approach, and anti-capitalist. There are many branches of this subculture, including Horror Punk, Queercore, and Riot Grrrl.

The earliest artworks were black and white since they were distributed in posters and zines, photocopied at work, and copy shops. Crass, influenced by punk, helped revive stencil art. The Situationists influenced Jamie Reid’s art creations for the Sex Pistols and the movies Blonde Fist. As exemplified by artists like Crass Jamie Reid, Dead Kennedys, The Clash, and Winston Smith, punk art often incorporates collage. Cartoonist John Holmstrom created cartoons for Ramones and other

Magazines and art If you lived in punk’s golden age, you would likely encounter more than one of the artistic manifestations of the subculture, from magazines to album art and graffiti.

Deskilling in design or democratizing the design tools by introducing computers in the late 1980s is a wellknown phenomenon. The process, however, began well

Punk art is typically straightforward and clear, often expressing political concerns such as social injustices and economic disparities. A common technique borrowed from punk and used in the TV and film industry is to show suffering to shock and appeal to the viewer’s empathy. On the other hand, punk artwork may contain images that show greed, foolishness, or apathy to provoke contempt from its viewers.

Punk stars The punk movement itself lasted a short time. However, its ethos and visual strategy have been established in many genres that descended from it, including postpunk, house, ska, and goth. Today, rule-breaking is the norm in design, and DIY genius is sacrosanct.

These influences can be seen in things like the maker movement and renewed interest in new wave design.

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Sketches That Lilt and Dream

M

obee remembers immersing himself in words at a young age—from novels and poetry, to sports magazines and dictionaries. “Other than a boxy scribble of a dollar store superhero in the margins here and there, I operated under the assumption that my hands had very little visual art in ‘em,” he says. “I finished second in a children’s book competition when I was 10. Every leg in that notebook paper tome looked like bent taffy somewhat chewed.”

Mobee recalls discovering his artistic inspiration in a very particular way. He confesses that while in school, he had a crush on the writing of Federico García Lorca. “Particularly, his fleshing out of duende—that lifted expression or evocation of feeling, form, and the core of things in certain works of art,” he explains. “I have never clasped hands with Lorca’s duende. It doesn’t return my texts. It inspires me to try, to at least see it hanging out at the bar someday. Buy it a drink and then go on my merry way.”

Mobee, however, didn’t immerse himself into visual art until about four years ago. “I broke up with my ex-fiance and found a new self in the wake of an 18-month nervous breakdown.

Hadn’t really drawn before, but I figured, why the fuck not? I started drawing Mobee—a pink TV that hangs out with cartoon characters and facilitates drunken puns. It was crude, unrefined, and everything that my head is and was.”

Mobee attended university for creative writing, but says he has no visual arts education to speak of. “I’ve learned visual art through skewed photographic recall, long hours, trial and error, and feeling shit out with a bit of mania and sleeplessness,” he says “I’ve only really drawn seriously for about three years, so my education is ongoing. That mostly consists of gawking at street art and magazines and interwebs and YouTube videos and scratching my head while nursing a five-dollar coffee.”

He describes his art as “a beer tap, or a spiritual beer bong reversed.” He adds that art just floods

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out and then he dives hard into it and loses track of breathing. “Afterwards, a finished product hangs out on the other side to confuse me. I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing, so maybe this is all bullshit. It probably is. I just go and go and go and stop and go again.”

Contributing to his unique style of sketching, Mobee says he sees every source photo as a lead musician, a singer or a Coltrane saxophone blast. “It’s my job to colour outside the margins and give it a different sort of life. Every portrait is a riff, a rhythm at that moment. Some of them skronk and get all ugly and muddy. Some of them lilt and dream, at least hopefully.”

If you study Mobee’s portfolio, you will see plenty of musical influences and musicians as subjects. He explains why. “The world hasn’t made a lot of sense to me, except for music. Music doesn’t make sense, either,” he says. “But, it doesn’t make sense in the most arms-open of ways. We may not agree on the big issues or our

DoorDash orders, but we can build meaningful and fun conversations about the music we hear.

Even when it isn’t playing.”

Mobee’s creative process starts in a hole. “Every piece I do is my gut, my eye, my humor, or my nervous system at a given moment. I go into a hole with my pens and come out with a moment on a piece of paper,” he explains. “And since my sense of self is skewed and fluid, those moments aren’t the easiest to tap back into. So, I have to draw again.”

Mobee is currently working on a concept for a graphic novella and a series of interpretations of his favorite album covers. He adds: “I’ll be opening up a merch store of some sort soonish, but I’m just really not so good at all that. More portraits and random impulses, a bunch of slaps. My future projects are just as murky as my future, and that’s kinda cool.”

Follow Mobee on Instagram at @popfilteranx.

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Portraits, Posters and Rock ‘n’ Roll

T

ravis Braun does not remember a time when he wasn’t interested in drawing and creating art. A creator of surrealistic contemporary music posters, mixed media portraits, and mixed media abstract art, Travis graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Brigham Young University. “I did learn and grow a lot during my time there; however, I feel like I really came into my own style and perfected my craftsmanship in the years following graduation,” he recalls. “So, I guess I would consider myself both formally educated as well as self-taught.”

Travis says music has always been a huge influence in his life. “Back when I was in middle school, I started a band with my best friend, and we called ourselves Star Larva; rock stars in our larva stage... or so we thought,” he says.

“We played a lot of school dances and other small gigs around the community, including a show in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. After a year or two of playing some shows, we eventu-

ally booked a handful of gigs at bars around the Twin Cities. Our senior year of high school we even recorded a six song EP at a local recording studio, but that was the height of me fulfilling my rockstar dreams.”

Ten years post his band days, Radiohead released The King of Limbs, and Travis decided to purchase the special newspaper edition. “The day it arrived, I sat down for over two hours to read the newspaper and enjoy the artwork while re-listening to the album,” he recalls. “That was the first time in a long time that I felt a tangible connection between art and music. Since that day I have been striving to reconnect art and music in my life through reinventing the rock poster.”

Two of the biggest influences in Travis’ life have been rock ‘n’ roll and spirituality, which he believes, in a lot of ways, are opposing forces. He explains: “Rock ‘n’ roll preaches sex and drugs, and religion preaches abstinence from both.

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“Throughout my life I’ve felt as though I didn’t belong in either place and have been torn between these two worlds. But I’ve been unwilling to give either one up because they both greatly enrich and beautify my life.”

He remembers going to rock concerts and not feeling like he was a part of that “rock” family. “So many around me would be indulging in smoking, drinking and drugs, which I never did and still haven’t even to this day. Then on Sundays as I’m sitting in church, I also didn’t feel like a completely accepted member of this religious family because I loved the ‘devil’s’ music.” Today, Travis uses his art to highlight the spirituality he sees in rock ‘n’ roll and the rebellion he sees in religion. “I also strive to use my art as a way to personally connect these two sides of me and find peace in having one foot in both worlds.”

Tavis says he really loves mixed media and the process of using a variety of art tools. In almost all of his work, he has parts that are painted and parts that are drawn. He also frequently uses collage in photographic textures for his music posters.

“In the beginning I usually start out with expressionistic abstract texture paintings that I do in acrylic, watercolor, and /or tempera. Then I scan those and layer them in Photoshop. After that I either make a print and draw directly on the abstract print or I scan in my drawings and layer those over the top of my abstract backgrounds,” he says. “It depends on if I’m doing my music posters or a portrait. Most of my drawings are done in pen and ink because I like the boldness of the lines.”

Travis is also inspired and influence by graphic novels and manga. He adds that teaching also inspires him to stay creatively active. “I teach a variety of painting and drawing classes at a high school. Being in the classroom around budding artists is really inspiring to me and helps me stay motivated and creatively curious in my own work. And actually, part of my abstract painting process was developed around a lesson plan I created for my curriculum.”

He is also finds inspiration from other artists such as Pat Perry and Philip Burke. “Salvador Dali has to be my favorite artist of all time. Not only is his craftsmanship so precise but his ideas, creativity and imagination are completely unmatched in my opinion. Kentaro Miura, Katsuhiro Otomo & Inio Asano are the masters of manga. Their line work is so exquisite, and their stories are captivating.”

Travis is in the process of writing a graphic novel, which is 90% finished he says. “Because this is the first book I’ve ever written, I’m kind of going into it blindly, which is both scary and exciting.

As of right now it looks like this story will probably be 300 to 400 pages. I’m definitely in it for the long haul since I’m doing everything myself.”

Parallel to his work on his graphic novel, Travis completed a 3,400-word poem. “It has a kind of edgy Dr Seuss feel, mixed with some potty humor. By the end of summer, I should be illustrating the panels. I’m hoping that by starting with this smaller comic book, I’ll learn a lot of things to improve my larger graphic novel.”

Go to tbraunstudio.com to see more of Travis’ work, and follow him on Instagram at @tbraunstuido.

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artist & ad index Page 3 Afropunk Festival planetafropunk.com/atlanta Page 11 The Armory Show thearmoryshow.com/ Page 16 Evaldas Gulbians evaldasgulbinas.co.uk Page 68 Jackson’s Art jacksonsart.com/en-us/ Page 42 Mobee @popfilteranx Page 14 NABAD nabad.art Page 2 Pace pacegallery.com Page 67 Pro Tapes & Specialties protapes.com/products/artist-tape

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