Merkley???! How’s life? Oh man, that’s a big one. I think it’s mostly about cells dividing… What do I look like, a scientist? What’s happening in SF? I don’t know… What have you heard? Should I be worried? How exactly did you get started on this photography biz? My dad always kept a camera loaded with film and wasn’t selfish with it, but that probably doesn’t count. It really started when digital photography came around in Y2Kish and I could bypass the lab and do art from bed without ever putting my pants on. Not putting my pants on is the reason lots of stupid shit happens… What do you do? Nap. What don’t you do? Meetings.How about if there was a large sum of money on the line? What—you mean like twenty bucks? Hmmmn—well, I’d probably look to see if anyone was looking, then I’d maybe scoot over very casually as to not attract any attention and then put my foot on it and look around again. Then after I was sure nobody else spotted me, I’d quickly pick it up, cram it into my front pocket and walk off as fast as I could while remaining totally calm and normal looking. I definitely would not look back—that’s what idiots do.
Ladies, ladies, ladies—am I right, or am I right? If the question was, “Name three things that have boobs, vaginas and soft butts,” yeah, you’d be right… But the answer could also be a few other things I think—like, you know—about half of all chimpanzees are like that, although I have never felt a chimp butt and they don’t really look that soft. The question could’ve also been, “What did your junior high school gym teacher yell whenever he walked through the locker room full of naked boys?” Isn’t taking pictures of naked ladies childish? Not when I was a child. I grew up Mormon, but man, that would’ve been awesome. I just said “but man.” What message are you trying to convey through your portrayal of these gorgeous women? Well, I do just abut everything in my power to include other things in the pictures to distract you from the women. I’m apparently doing a lousy job. Have I kept my word? That’s between you and the person to whom you gave it. Somehow I suspect you’re up to no good. Who? Snortzle. What? A bad dog. When? Right now. Where? In the living room. How? By lifting his leg and relaxing his pee muscle.
Why? I wish I knew—I’m at my wits end. How long have you… Art? My whole life. What city’s next? No plans to leave SF. I love it. What the fuck do you want out of life? Mostly Mexican food and jokes. A good place to sit or lay down is always nice. How has your past helped to define you as an Artist? I suspect most of what I do is an over reaction/correction to growing up Mormon with two step dads, two step moms and seventeen siblings, most of whom are steps & halfies. Inspiration? Everyone who ever rejected the idea that everything has been done before. I’m inspired by the future and people who do what they want. What about Art? It’s a great place to hide. Zero accountability. How often do you rely on others vs. getting shit done yourself? Well, other than requiring people to take off their own clothes, not very often. I’m sorta a one-man band Where does Photoshop fit into all of this? What’s Photoshop? When’s your next book gonna drop? First quarter of next year. It’s called ZZZ??? You can see some of the images from it here. Any upcoming shows? Just finished one in November—too much work and it sorta requires pants… I have a show every
day on the Internet though. What sacrifices have you made to get here today? I almost sacrificed my only son ‘til God said he was just kidding—wait, that was Abraham. I can’t think of anything… Were they worth it? No! Total rip-off. Am I missing anything? Dunno, check around your seat just to
make sure. Sucks to lose a cell phone. Are you doing what
you love? Right now? Talking about myself? Yes, it’s
my favorite thing to do. What’s next? A company
Steve Jobs started after he was booted out of Apple. It led to Pixar (one of my favorite companies) and his return to apple. You are obviously not paying attention to current
Hey mustard stain—you—out of my pants! Now! events. Any shout-outs?
Sakiroo! Hey! How’s life? I’ve been spending my time watching movies and reading books. What’s happening in Seoul? I don’t care much about the issues in Seoul. I try to spend my time on my work, because I’m not fully convinced that I’m perfect. I’ve also been collaborating with a couple of clients who want my style. When did you start your career in graphic design? I was twenty years old when I took my first job in graphic design. I started out working on character design. After doing the character design thing for four years, I felt a little tired, so I started to work on planning products with the company. Then I got on doing their illustrations, so that makes me quite good at character design and illustration together. Has much changed since then? I had a few successful projects with Sayclub and Cyworld when I was twenty-one years old. Thanks to those experiences, I got on doing other successful projects with big companies like Adobe, Hite, Domino’s Pizza, SK, KT, MLB, etc. Why the name Sakiroo? Because I wanted to be professionally known as Sakiroo. I prefer only my friends and family to call me by my real name—Sang-Hyun Choi. I’m pursuing of a
forceful personality willing to go beyond the bounds of convention, so I needed such a meaningful name. Where would you like to go with your work? I want exhibitions in NYC, Paris, London, Tokyo and Beijing. How did your Yellow Lemon characters come about? I wanted to design a character that was really ugly, fastidious and cunning. There are just so many wonderful characters in the world. I’ve used all sorts of features representative of various icons and their unfavorable counterparts. Your work with color is tremendous, have you had any professional training? Much to my regret, I haven’t had any professional training or taken any courses in graphic design, but I am now working on my own philosophy of color. The idea is to give the appearance of a single color through the use of many. How much time do you put into each piece? About six to ten hours on the illustrations and that includes all my color work. Characters take me two or three hours. Do you typically have a plan, or do you just start creating? I do plan my projects out in advance. I take the time to figure out what the project is going to need and then set quarterly goals to my
process. I don’t feel that the start is as important as it is that you keep going. Does Korean culture play a role in your work? Yes it does. I believe it’s important to promote Korean culture because it’s not as well known in the world as some other cultures are. I hope to promote South Korea through all of my works. South Korea is a great country. What do you mean by “Live with Art, it’s good for you”? Art is the common language in the world and the search for the truth. I want to share my truth with my art. Inspiration?From past to present, everyone who’s true aim is art inspires me. It serves not just as my inspiration, but also as my motivation and passion. With each new character or illustration I do, I’m coming from this place. What the fizz-nah-uck-say do you want out of life? To launch the Sakiroo Brand. Any upcoming art shows? I have plans for an exhibition of one or two hundred Yellow Lemon characters. What sacrifices have you made to get here today? At my old job I was about to be promoted to manager, but I quit for my dream. I dumped the stable company and money for my dream. Were they worth it? Twenties and thirties is
not the all in our life. I think afterwards life gets bigger than that. When you get to enjoy the world after your forties is the time that we are doing what we want. Until then you are going to do something forced by someone else. I will live by my story, so I believe the sacrifices that are made during youth are essential for challenge.
Are you doing what you love? I’ve been drawing
for thirteen years now without a single regret—I haven’t even thought about it. Why? Because I’ve
done what I love to do. It’s extremely important to find out exactly what it is you love to do and do it. What’s next? I going to
draw what I want to draw and live comfortably. I going to work in my studio and gift my works to the world.
Erms! Yo man! How’s it going? Awesome! How’s life? Great, thanks. What’s happening in Paris? Paris is all good—love this city. The art and graffiti scenes are very vibrant and as we all know, French writing style is some of the best in the world. How long have you been writing?I started out in ‘91 doing the odd piece or two each year along with getting up. That carried on until the late 90s, when I started taking it a bit more seriously. Why did you start? Graffiti was something that was fashionable at the time and on the summer holidays of ’91 some older kids we were skating with introduced some mates and me to it. Pretty soon we all had our own tags, got schooled about the whole thing and were doing our own pieces. By the end of the summer everyone had given up—except me. Why do you still write? I love everything about graffiti, the kind of homemade graphic design “craft.” I love the skill in it—it’s so much more fun than sitting behind a computer. It’s also my excuse to get out of the house and explore, meet people and create stuff that I find satisfying. Has much changed? In the beginning I didn’t really understand graf—I’d never seen Subway Art—all I saw was local stuff on the walls and buses. The area I come from—Yorkshire in the North of England—had a lot of visible graffiti. Places I frequently visited, like Sheffield, were bombed sideways and with style. By the mid 90s, I’d found out about Graphotism magazine. The full color pieces were very cool, but I never had that much paint, so I concentrated on doing silver pieces inspired by London bombing crews like DDS and local artists like Fista. I liked the idea of creating a logo and doing the same chrome over and over again to perfection and for quite a few years this was what I tried to do. Now I’m kind of opposed to that mentality, in that I’ve tried to develop a style where no two pieces look alike. I’d also say that letters, in a traditional sense, are less important in my current style, even though though they are still the basis of what I
do. It’s the overall feel and ambiance of each piece that is important. I’d say that there are now four important aspects each time I paint: the piece, the experience, finding the spot and the photo. In the past a nice flat concrete wall was enough— didn’t really matter where—now that feels too boring. Why the name Erms? I started writing Term2 in the late 90s after a local guy who wrote Term. I liked the letters and the way he wrote it looked so dope. After writing that for a couple of years I got annoyed with the ‘T’ and I also wanted a less common name. What crews do you write for? I’ve written for FMB since `97, which is ten strong now and in its 20th year. It’s a bombing crew that started at the end of the UK graffiti boom and has been going ever since. I also write for PBG, which is a Lithuanian crew I’ve been down with since ‘01, after meeting and painting with Diet DFW in Vilnius. You’re killing it on the wall and design tip, which do you prefer? Thanks, I appreciate the compliment. I love them both, each give me different ideas about how to lead the other. Where do you find the time? Whenever possible... I’m quite obsessive about creating and therefore end up producing quite a lot. One idea rolls in to the next—I have a book full of ideas, scribbled notes, lines from songs and doodles—many of which don’t see the light of day as I don’t find the time, or I’ve already moved on to the next thing. It’s hard sometimes finding a balance between doing all my art stuff and my normal stuff. Luckily my wife is pretty cool about that—she has the same tendencies as me to produce a lot and just keeps going with it all. How do you feel about graffiti as a business? I think we all have to work in some way to survive, so why not use what you like doing to make a buck. That said, I’m not into painting dolphins in kids bedrooms for a couple hundred, or food and beer. I’d rather make work that satisfies me, than someone else, even if there is no money to be made from it. For this reason, I continue to work in the design
industry while at the same time as being a writer. With graphic design I can disconnect—it’s still creative I suppose, but it’s for a purpose rather than as an artistic statement. What’s this Erms x Ecko you’ve got popping off for the end of the world (‘12)? It’s an artist’s series that I was lucky enough to be invited into. There’s a whole bunch of writers from across the world that are also involved— each person has a range of garments with their graphics on them. How would you describe your style? With my graffiti I want it to look traditional, but at the same time with no piece alike. I use elements of traditional style, but try to bring a lot of myself into it at the same time. As much as I love the vintage NY style like Dondi’s, or the European style like Bando’s, I’m not interested in cloning them. I want to do something that is definitely definitely different, but with roots to the past. I also like my pieces to look like they’re moving and for them to standout and be unique. Hopefully, I’m at the place now where someone can recognize one of pieces as mine at a glance. I developed the style to be fast—it’s a just one-line tag fattened up. With this style it’s impossible to make a mistake and I rarely change a line once it’s done. I have a different style when I’m writing Bad Tripp—it’s like a different persona. Much more traditional and precious about the letters—I usually go from a sketch. It’s more of a “hall of fame” style. With my prints, I love embracing the limitations, using only two or three colors to maximum result. There was something interesting that Banksy once said about trying to express a perfect idea with the least possible amount of lines and form, this is kind of what I try to do. Overall my style is graphic—I like hard letters and shapes, simplicity and not too much gloss! Illegal vs. legal graf and you… I used to think that the illegality of graffiti gave it a certain style, look and energy—and that was real graffiti. For a long time I didn’t paint legally—as I wasn’t located near legal walls anyhow—and
it was never about being legal. Nowadays, most of the places I paint pieces aren’t legal, but at the same time they’re not really going to upset anyone. …Freestyle vs. sketches? At the moment I’m freestyling almost everything, occasionally going from a sketch. It’s quicker and I think that the results can be just as good without one. What the shizznittlebopinskee do you want out of life? In the short term, I’d like to build my profile and get more commercial work, more gallery stuff and to be generally seen more. In the long term, I think the skies the limit and I can take my art to great places. Inspiration?I’ve been looking at a lot of illustration from the beginning of the last century and before. It’s a time period I didn’t think much of until recently, but some of the graphic artists from back then had some incredibly fresh ideas and skills. In terms of graf, I like pre ‘89 UK stuff, old breakdance graffiti and current Paris graffiti. Any upcoming shows? I have a couple of things building up for this year in the UK and in France, watch this space. Are
For ‘12 there’ll be more graffiti, some Risograph prints, collaboration tees and expos. Any shout-outs? FMB Crew, Rialto, Dyson, Coek, you doing what you love? Yeah, 100%. What’s next?
Alter, Aero, Dave, Jova, Mune, Spek & Jova, PBG Crew, Scien & Klor, Raek, Eko, Kid Acne, Ema, Orion, KRSN, Laser, Beam, TNQ30, Frote, ‘Cause I Need It blog, Chum101, SheOne, Otwo, Mr.Jago, HDA Crew and to UNDR RPBLC MGZN. Thanks for having me in the mag—cheers!
Pöl! Jake! How’s life? It’s been pretty awesome lately. What’s happening in Bogota? Sunny days and that’s pretty exotic here. You killed it with this month’s cover! Thanks! I put some time into it. Would you care to describe the meaning behind the design for you? It’s a personal version of the Jägermeister logo. The original logo is pretty badass, so I feel I kind of had a jump-start. The colors vs. the wood grain are ill—how long did it take you? It’s been a pretty natural process, I’ve always liked textures a lot and that has made me explore them as often as I can. Wood grain happens to be one of my personal favorites. Besides, it’s a splendid surface to paint on. 999!? My dad was born the September the 9th 1959. He was referred to as the three nines at an early age—I can’t believe how it didn’t catch on. Anyhow, that’s a way to have him around my work. The three nines don’t always mean the same thing in my drawings and paintings, but I’d rather leave it up to people to decide what they see. What’s cracking with Meta Cosmos? Glad you asked, we’re working with a new band called Young Casanova right now—they rock hard and we’re looking forward to make our part right in the process of showing their music to the world. We’ll be working on a new music video, pictures and hopefully some more stuff I’d rather not talk about before we get it done. You’ll be the first to know when it’s ready. …And Carma Cobra? We’re working hard on having some new material for this year. We have a couple upcoming events including walls and some traveling, but as I said previously, I don’t want to spoil any surprises. Make sure to stay tuned for nothing less than our best... When did you start
your career in graphic design? I started when I was halfway done with my industrial design career—it was pretty much meant to be. Even though I never had formal studies in graphic design, as soon as I started using tools, I started researching and working on my own stuff. I quickly found out that being an industrial designer gave me a complete toolkit to solve design based problems—the means you use to solve them can change, but your mental processes remain the same. I also believe it has been pretty important in the whole process of learning to communicate ideas through images, applied to illustration. It makes your work more rich and expressive. How about your first paid design job? Glad you asked. It was crap! As per usual, young designers are always taken advantage of when they first go out, because selling your own work is not as easy as it might seem… But it’s been a pretty interesting experience to work on my own so far—I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. Which is better for you, your completed work or the payment you received? The payment received was money and money comes and goes. I bought shit with it—probably guitars or carne or something—but the completed work brings you a satisfaction that compares to no other. When you see the things you do working as you intended them to, the approval of people—there’s a lot of reasons why I believe the completed work was better. Besides working stores priceless experience into your brain bank that you can exchange later for larger amounts of money. How would you describe your style? That’s a tough question for me to answer since it’s my work I’ll be talking about. I believe
that it’s the result of a couple of years of doing the same kinds of things and it’s clearly a reflection of everything around me, as well as everyone else. I’m just a mash up of everything that has made some impact in my life—from Dragon Ball to German wheat beer and Russian porn (not necessarily together). There’s symbolism throughout your work, why? That’s how I roll. If there was a single message that you would like to convey through your work for your audience, what would that be? Don’t keep fucking things up, like we’ve been doing so far. I see you’ve also been rocking some walls with Armando Mesías, how’s that treating you? It’s more than a pleasure to work with Armando and Felipe Bedoya, they’re pretty talented and also happen to be good friends of mine too. I respect their work a lot and feel very glad to have the chance to work side by side with artists like them. They’re also the kind of people you’d enjoy getting wasted with. Should we expect more walls soon? Hell yes—bigger and hopefully more badass. How does the outdoor boogie compare to your indoor rock? It’s kind of new to me—I have enough fingers in one hand to count the walls I’ve painted so far, but I can honestly say it compares to no other media. I strongly recommend people to try it sometime. Also try full body massages, I got one recently and it was brutal. I have you down here as a full-time wise ass, what do you mean by that? It either means most of the time I’m an annoying wise ass, or you did your homework well by reading the info on my Flickr account. What else do you do? I like music a lot—I play with a band called Diva Gash right now. Playing with them has been an amazing experience, getting up on stage is one of the
few things I can say I enjoy more than drawing. How about in your time off? Cooking large amounts of dead animals with my friends—hopefully on top of blazing charcoal, with chimichurri, BBQ sauce and a couple ice-cold brews— especially on sunny days. Who? Whoever invented mustard… What? Electric guitars. When? Probably the 90s—I heard the 90s are the new 80s, but that was a year ago. Where? Japan, no questions asked. How? Ever heard that Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”?Why? Blame it all on the Internet. What the h-e-double hockey sticks do you want out of life? A hot convertible with some bitches to ride it with. Inspiration? A hot convertible with some bitches. Any upcoming shows? Nothing has been confirmed so far, but we might have some Carma Cobra work going on outside the country this year. What sacrifices have you made to get here today? I traded most of my youth for some basic drawing skills. I wasn’t that popular with ladies back when art wasn’t the hottest shit in the lawn, but I believe everything I did to get where I am has been worth it… The ladies came later—thank God. Were they worth it? Absolutely, especially because I learned to love what I do enough to do it tirelessly. There are few things I enjoy more than drawing—beef and perky tits are all I can think of... Have I missed anything?
I have a dog, his name is Chester Alphonzo and he’s on a vacation right
Hard work! I feel I could be doing way better than I am right
now. Are you doing what you love? Every day. What’s next?
now, so we’ll be working hard on that this year.
Who are you? Isaiah Toothtaker from Tucson, Arizona. Co-founder of Machina Muerte, half of Humansuit, founder of Staring Without Caring and father of the twin Toothtakers, Eloy (son) & Oraibi (daughter). Mestizo. Where do you live? In the nightmares of my enemies and the dreams of their wives. Los Angeles. What do you do? Everything wholeheartedly. I rap exceptionally, I tattoo remarkably, I drink excessively, I fight infamously and I fuck incredibly. Also, I make money. Rap/sing/produce/create/fight/love. When did you start? As soon as I realized I was able. At four. How was your first live performance? I first performed at an open mic and it was ok—I guess. I had some rougher shows at the beginning of it all then at any other point of my career, but that’s nothing outside of the usual learning experience that comes from testing the waters. I murdered it at a talent show in the 4th grade. What would you like to gain from your work? The reason I make music or continue to make music is because I take satisfaction from bringing my ideas to sound or composition, having the words and statements create a
cohesive piece. Also, the interpretation and effect my music has with others is interesting and I enjoy that, but that’s only secondary. World peace/domination/money/power/respect. What would you like your audience to gain from your work? Inspiration or a relation to it. I hope my music resonates in a variety of ways that allows my listeners to revisit or apply it to their lives from a different understanding or vantage point. Perspective on everything and nothing. Who or what are your biggest influences? It would honestly be very hard to make a list of other recordings or artists, because I listen to a wide spectrum of things that help shape my approach to making music, but my life experiences have the obvious influence directly.Life/death/Andre 3000/Gonjasufi. What keeps you up at night? I sleep rather well. Music & cocaine. What’s
next? The full-length Humansuit album and a
special project that will be kept secretive until its release, which will be soon. Mestizo—De’Nir and Humansuit (Isaiah Toothtaker & Mestizo).