Intervie w with
O B M I J S P I L L PHI y o B c M s u i tt a By F
What's your earliest memory of art? Art goes back to my earliest memories, it's always been a part of my life. I had a psychedelic painted crib when I was a baby. My dad was a hippy surf artist back then, so a lot of our things were painted psychedelic. Our only income for all of my upbringing came from art. My dad was drawing all the time so art was a natural outlet for me. My mom saved stacks of my drawings from when I was a kid, they are so fun to look at! Have you had any non-art jobs in your life? My dad would often tell me that art was a hard way to make a living, so after high school, I did some construction work and realized even though I liked it, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Shortly after, the skate industry was booming, so my dad started a studio and hired a couple of other artists and me to help him with work for skateboard graphics. The rest is history! What does a typical day in your life look like? Wake up, have some coffee, check the surf report, check emails, check messages. If the waves are good, go surfing. If not, turn on some music and start drawing or working on some art and graphics. Take a skateboard break after lunch. Work some more in the afternoon, maybe fill some orders from my webstore. Sometimes surf or skate session with my son Colby in the evening. Have dinner with my wife Jenni and my kids Cassidy and Colby. Some nights do some more
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RE-ISSUE MAGAZINE - FALL 2017
work if I have stuff to get done or work on some personal projects, paintings, or products for my webstore. Once a week I play music with some buddies, I like to play drums! I also like to go see a live rock show from time to time as well! What was the first commercially available skate graphic you did? Well, when I was about 14 I got a blank skate deck and drew an aggro face on the bottom, then showed it to my dad, The next day I came home from school and my dad had drawn the Roskopp face board and said check out this one! I was blown away! But was stoked to have inspired my dad to draw it! He also let me write things on the Kendall graffiti graphic so I wrote Nards Dangle and Minor Threat on it. My first paying art job was for the skate comic book Road Rash! I did a strip called Nuclear Locals! I think I got $200 bucks for 4 pages. I had a blast drawing it and making some money was awesome! After that, my dad hired me and a couple other artists from the comic to work for him. I started out doing some creepy lettering for the bottom of ads, I think the first couple things I did didn’t even get used, they were more of little tests, but eventually, stuff started getting used. The first skate deck I ever worked on was the Grosso Psychedelic deck. After that the Roskopp face 2 deck, Hosoi Picasso deck and the Natas kitten. Do you collect any other artists work and if so who? I collect comics, toys, books, records, and skateboards and I still have some of my collections, I also expand on them once
