Is This Art? A Journey Through My Days As A Wannabe Artist.

I'm not sure how many people feel this way, but I find it odd to be called an 'artist'. It just seems so... pretentious. Maybe that isn't the right word, but it makes me feel dirty, as if I don't deserve that title, because I'm not Leonardo Da Vinci or Banksy. Although I still hate the word, I can't seem to stop creating in one way or another, seemingly embracing the artist archetype.

If there's one thing I learned while in film school, it was that if you can't leave your fears and preconceived notions of who you think you are suppose to be behind in rehearsal and embrace an area outside of your comfort zone, you'll never progress or be able to create a compelling art piece. I thought I'd create a post based around my art work spanning the last 5 years or so. Here we go.

“Art is what we call…..the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the ...eve of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.”

— Seth Godin

When I was still living at my parents house in my early 20's, my sleep schedule was dictated by working at a Pacsun and Barnes & Noble, then shortly after, a guest services booth for the same mall. I would wake up at 3-4pm, go to work, skateboard in the middle of the night, and then go home and work on odd projects until 6 or 7 in the morning. To be honest, I sometimes miss that lifestyle.

These projects would consist of writing, creating art, and various other weirder, more abstract activities. One of the art projects I created was with a potato I saw living out it’s last days in the kitchen. My first thought was, "That potato needs an adventure." So, I gave him one.

Archibald’s Grand Adventure

I first gave him a name: "Archibald", which would later become the name of a minor character in my book, "The Very Strange Universe of Doctor Natalia Zeal." Then I gave him pennies for ears on top of his head, cardboard arms, and a leg. His other walking appendage was a pirate’s peg. Once alive, he wouldn't tell me how he got it and I was feeling too polite to ask. He didn't seem to mind having paper eyes and a mouth either.

"It's time to adventure, Archibald." I told him. He ‘tatoed and came along.

Archibald asked if I could just call him “Archie”. I said sure. Archie visited The White House first.

Sadly, Archie lost his was when leaving Washington D.C.. He found himself lost in cornfields and traveling down abandoned dirt roads. He told me he felt a bit like a dirt road sometimes; forgotten in a grocery store first and then on my parent’s kitchen counter. I asked him if he would like to travel back in time for a bit to forget his troubles. Humans nor potatoes apparently turn down a free ride through the fabric of space.

Archie was concerned where we had ended up. We were right in the middle of one of humanity’s many needless wars. Archie asked to travel in time to a happier place. I knew just the decade: the 1960’s.

"The moon is beautiful" he said, "but I'm beginning to get tired. What a day!" Off to bed Archibald went when he returned to the present and to Earth.

Guest Services Booth

In 2009, I worked in a mall office; more specifically, a guest services booth. This job allowed me a LOT of free time. My boss and other upper management would encourage us to read to pass the time as hardly anyone ever came through looking for directions. I'd like to show you some of the random pieces of art I completed during this time.

In the booth, we had a lot of extra, almost-dried up modeling clay, to which I took full advantage of. This was used in the top three images. The bottom three photos were made of miscellaneous office supplies. It was interesting to me how changing the angle of the scissors would change my character’s mood. (He said a lot of really nasty and polite things to me that day.)

It would be advantageous to you as the reader and me as the artist/writer for me to add that during this time, I was confused religiously and found all religions to be somewhat of an interesting topic. For this small sketch, I tried combining different religious symbols into one meditating human outline. At the time, it was my ode to a general respect for all of them.

These were made on small manila envelopes and represented different moods, characters, and cultures. Over all though, they were just fun to make. Small arts and crafts like these almost always lead to a larger project, though this time, they remained 'as is' and hung on my wall for a long time. Sadly, I've lost track of them now. I hope they’re still intact and off living their best lives.

Here are some more clay designs. I'm not sure if you can tell, but I was a huge Tim Burton fan at the time, (and still am). Something about his art makes me feel whimsical and creative. I'd love to create something with him one day, be it art, a movie, or something in between. I’ll have my people call your people, Tim.

Occasionally, I’d have to leave the guest service’s booth and attend meetings in which I would generally just sketch while my managers talked about business-related things that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone in a few years time. Here are some of those doodles.

The three photos above are a story about two screw people. The one standing was happy to see his friend dead or rather, really screwed. The demon character in the center is surprised by what has happened, but doesn’t care much. The demon’s younger brother on the far right finds it all quite hilarious. The screw guy never got his angel and demon to balance him out on each shoulder, (as is common in most depictions of one’s conscience) just these two demons.

I was a huge fan of Doug in the 90's and for some reason, when I saw these two batteries, I felt compelled to create Skeeter. He was appreciative and gave me a “Honk! Honk!” Time flew by while we talked about what it was like to be on a hit TV show. After he got that out of his system, Skeeter asked me to make some paper airplanes to conclude my guest services section of art. I obliged.

“Borrowed” Canvas

Above, is a design I left in my friends apartment one night when he was out of town and I had a key. It’s on the back of McDonalds standee my friend and I “borrowed” from a local Mcdonald’s around 2011 after work one hot, Texas night. Incorporating other designs into forming a face has always been fascinating to me. If you keep the human facial structure outline, you can almost use anything and everyone will know it's a face. Hooray for our natural facial recognition software.

Tide Commercial @ SMU

So far in this article, I’ve displayed mostly older art. Now I'd like to present some of newer pieces.. This first piece was a sketch I did during a scene in a Tide commercial I was filming at S.M.U. - I was playing an art student and made this as the cameras rolled.

Board Game Designs

This was the beginning of a board game I started, but haven't finished. It's based around each player being a serial killer from the world's past as they descend down into hell. The rest of the game is played out in alternate dimensions of hell. I made the dice extremely intricate and trapped a few ghosts inside the game. (The ghosts told me not to release it until 2030, so I’m obeying of course. 👻)

The next board game was finished and was a much larger project.

Introducing, PLANET A.

I worked on this for a month or two. So far, this was the most work I have put into creating a board game. When looking at the actual piece, I wanted your eyes to be able to discover new parts and pieces each time.

The idea was that the god of christianity had destroyed the world, but chose 6 lucky humans to be flushed down a cosmic toilet into a world called, "Planet A", (which was the name of the game.) Each player had to make it through the world by rolling special dice. Each person had to perform different tasks, make up songs, watch videos, (that I made for the game), solve puzzles, and more. The game was only played once, took almost 4 hours, and was never completely played through. It was a lot of fun though.

Box Trolls Art Contest Entry

The last piece I'll show you was my entry into the Box Trolls Nike contest. If you won, you got a limited edition pair of Box Trolls Nikes.

Fortunately, I did end up winning with this project and got the shoes, a specialized box, and Box Troll-themed socks made of gauze. The tissue paper inside the box was a crumpled up newspaper from the fictional town in the movie. These were the winning pair:

I hope you enjoyed looking at my art as much as I had making it all. I suppose the only way to end a post on artwork is to show a picture from the one art show I hosted in 2013 showcasing some of the pictures you've seen and some you haven’t. I hope all of this somehow inspires you to go and create your own art! ✌️