Page 97 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2023

What are some of the insights you gained?
Somebody brought up homelessness to me and how these figures reminded them of bag ladies, or bag men, who live with everything they have. And that makes me think even deeper about what aspects of yourself are intrinsically you. One of my good friends told me that he looked at the piles and felt a sadness. He thought that it looked like these piles were very burdened. Even though you can’t see any physical traits, I guess it was making him think about how
probably put like 10 years into it because I’m going to be a bit of a psychotic perfectionist about it all.
The story is called Ghettomancer, but I’m just world-building right now, coming up with characters, their motivations, and overarching stories and themes that I can take from my real life and experiences and kind of codify them or stick them into this very supernatural world that I’m working on. The nerdy kid in me is like, ‘Wow, this is really happening, I’m going to be able to contribute to this world of incredible art that I’ve always admired.’ That kid is like my best friend.
As a working artist, how do you feel about the rise in AI-generated images? Does it inspire you to make your work more bespoke to human experience?
Definitely. The idea of AI having consciousness or trying to supplement humanity is what concerns me. I like technology, but when it comes to my work, I’m definitely an analog guy. The solitude and the simple act of exploring and using my hands and my mind to solve problems is my favourite part. And I love to leave evidence of humanity in everything I do. I leave the tape on my paper works, and you can see fingerprints and mistakes that I painted over. It doesn’t take away from the beauty, in fact I think it adds to it in many ways.
I don’t think that AI could ever get in the way of that, or compete with real artists, to be honest. And I feel like the people who want that out of art don’t appreciate artists and art very much. It’s probably mostly advertisers who don’t want to pay a model, and who would prefer to generate an image for five cents. I just don’t see the point of trying to fake that, or trying to force some evolution to that thing that is already so essential and beautiful about being human, you know?
heavy it would be to carry all those things, and how limiting it would be. Things like that can set me off in new directions and are beautiful ideas that wouldn’t necessarily have come from my own mind.
You’ve spoken before about wanting to do more multimedia and textile work. What are you working on now?
I can’t say too much right now, but essentially I’m working with a company who are providing materials for me to figure out how to design sculptures. They are essentially PILES, but for a brand. So they’re maybe not as chaotic as I would make ones for my own purposes, but it’s my first endeavour in trying to make them real using textiles. I’m profoundly excited about working with textiles in limited runs in a sustainable way.
I’m also moving to the UK at the end of the year because I want to work on a comic book full time, and I’ve decided that that’s the place that’s best to do that (laughs). I think I’m going to treat it like [Katsuhiro] Otomo, where I’ll
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