Hemma Hos

The Streets are a Playground for Artist Johan Karlgren By Kristi Robinson I f there is one thing that needs to be seen right now, it is the art of Johan Karlgren. Johan’s street art is where imagination, nostalgia, and humor meet up for an epic play session. Going by the name Pappas Pärlor, translated as “Daddy’s beads”, Johan uses the unlikely medium of plastic fuse beads to create his gaming-inspired pieces of art. Through landscapes and built objects set in the natural environment, he brings his characters to life in the most entertaining ways.

With candour he describes what he calls his “strange work situation and strange life”, and the journey that brought him to where he is. As a child he was an avid Nintendo player and spent much of his adult life trying to reclaim parts of his childhood by collecting video games. Having amassed a huge collection, he refers to himself as not so much of a collector, but more of a hoarder.

Fast forward some years and Johan had two young kids. He and his wife swapped traditional gender roles to show them that, regardless

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Pappas Pärlor Johan Karlgren. Photo: Pontus Johansson

of gender, they can do anything. Johan tried cross-stitching but found it too time-consuming. He found Perler beads, known as Munkplast beads in Sweden, and says he immediately fell in love with them. The bead aesthetic was a perfect match with Johan’s affinity for pixelated 8-bit video games.

He began by selling his gameinspired art at markets and fairs, and then moved on to comic book conventions and video game fairs. About half a year later he became a full-time street artist, after his first Instagram post launched his career. From that single post he sold so many pieces in one day that he just couldn’t ignore it, and realized it was possible to make a living from his art. Now, six years on, and he hasn’t looked back. Most of what he does is inspired by his childhood, whether it is a video game, or a movie scene he wants to interpret. He considers his work play, and he just wants to make people laugh. What he enjoys creating most is smaller pieces. He finds that the biggest challenge is to minimize something down to its raw essence, and make something recognizable out of the smallest possible quantity of beads.

Johan calls his street art ‘social disobedience with a conscience’. He is careful not to leave his art on private property, or in places where it could end up in the water. His hometown of Motala has been the backdrop for much of his art, but his pieces can also be found hiding or hanging out in the streets of cities like Stockholm, Paris, and Barcelona. The biggest issue with

having his art in an urban setting is that it gets stolen, so he doesn’t always leave his work at the scene; some are given away, and some are sold. With his large online following and successful webshop Pappas Pärlor which has been put on hold for the moment to pursue other projects, it is clear that people are excited to see more of what Johan has to share.

Check out all of Johan’s amazing street art at pappasparlor.com

All photos except top middle ©Johan Karlgren