We commission the work of great artists to create our products. Here are some of the artists we are currently working with:
JEREMY FISH
Jeremy Fish lives and works in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. His artwork deals with the relationship of all things cute and creepy, and the balance between the two. The work tends to be narrative stories designed with a library of symbols and characters. In the last few years Fish has exhibited his work in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan, Poland, Hungry, Denmark, Canada, Holland, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, and all over the United States.
In 2007 Fish started a new brand called Superfishal, with the help of his loyal team. 2007 was a busy year for Fish, during this year he was fortunate to work on several projects with his musical hero Aesop Rock; including the cover artwork for the album “None Shall Pass” along with posters, tee shirts, and two music videos.
MIKE GIANT
Mike Giant’s career is the result of genuine curiosity and decades of drawing for five hours a day. He’s been – and remains – a world-class graffiti writer, tattooist and illustrator with his REBEL8 line. He’s made zines, skateboard designs, animations, prints, collages and stacks of interesting artist and company collaborations. He travels all over the world, rides his bikes, practices mindfulness, smokes a gang of weed, and is a fully tattooed goofball that one can bring to dinner parties.
Whether a page drawn in a friend’s black book amid collected signatures of other graffiti writers, or the large-scale works he hangs in galleries, Mike Giant’s drawings will fool you, even up close. The cleanliness, razor edges and solid blacks of the images all come from a Sharpie and Mike’s surgeon-steady hand, but look like they were printed. “In some ways, I took a lot of pride in that,” Mike explains. “As the graphic world has become more fixated on vector graphics, I think I wanted to show that I could replicate the same results by hand, thereby usurping the notion that computers are somehow ‘better,’ which I think is bullshit.”
SOURCE: text by Caleb Neelon – from Swindle No. 19
BUFF MONSTER
Buff monster lives in Hollywood and cites heavy metal music, ice cream and Japanese culture as major influences. The color pink, as a symbol of confidence, individuality and happiness, is present in everything he creates. He got known by putting up thousands of hand-silk-screened posters across Los Angeles and also in far-away places. When his original and one-and-only wheat past brush was no longer usable, seven years of frequent poster missions came to an end. Having given up a very productive street art career, he now works exclusively on fine art paintings, collectible toys and select design projects. He paints on wood, taking great care to create them as flat as possible. His work has been shown in numerous galleries, usually creating large installations to accompany the paintings. He has released loads of signature vinyl toys through MINDstyle, and has many other projects in the works with other leading toy companies. His art has been published in a long list of magazines, newspapers and books, including Juxtapoz, Vapors, Angeleno, XLR8R, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and others. Buff Monster works tirelessly day and night to spread happiness, joy and a love of pink.
RON ENGLISH
Ron English can be considered the “celebrated prankster father of agit-pop”, who wrangles carefully created corporate iconographies so that they are turned upside down, and are used against the very corporation they are meant to represent. Ron English is considered one of the fathers of modern street art and has initiated and participated in illegal public art campaigns since the early eighties. Some of his extralegal murals include one on the Berlin Wall’s Checkpoint Charlie in 1989 and one on the Palestinian separation wall in the West Bank in 2007, with fellow street artists Banksy and Swoon.
Ron English has also painted several album covers including The Dandy Warhols album cover “Welcome to the Monkey House”. Some of his paintings are also used in Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super Size Me. During the 2008 Presidential Election, he combined the features of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln for a popularly-distributed image entitled “Abraham Obama.”
English takes inspiration from Andy Warhol and references him in his work. He also references the band KISS, and various cartoons. Also inspiration comes from the large billboards and posters he sees outside his city apartment, usually fast food companies.
English also references Picasso’s Guernica. He has created dozens of versions, transforming the original Spanish civilian characters into Disney characters, Peanuts characters, soccer players, schoolchildren, and many others. He also painted the world’s largest version of Guernica at the Station Museum in Houston. It is one foot longer and one foot wider than Picasso’s original and features schoolchildren playacting the violent scene of the original.
OLIVER BLACK
Oliver Black is a Bay Area based-artist who paints canvases in all shapes and sizes. With his signature style he brings to life a unique breed of characters, creating a world where it is not uncommon to see diaper-adorned birds playing the banjo or cults of crowned fish dancing. Often describing himself as ‘a reclusive, self-taught scribbler,’ there’s no denying the inner humor and oddity within Oliver that can’t help but to transcend itself onto his colorful canvases. With a relentless eye for detail and a preternatural sense of symmetry, Oliver invites viewers to get lost in his complex yet accessible oeuvre.
MARK BODE
Mark Bode was born in Utica, New York. He is the son of the legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bode.
Mark is best known for his work on COBALT 60 and as the creator of the hit comic Miami Mice.
Bode attended The Art School in Oakland, California. His first professional job was for Heavy Metal Magazine when he was asked to color his father’s black and white strip Zoos, the First Lizard in Orbit when he was fifteen. He was a fine arts major at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and studied animation and etching at San Francisco State University. His publications include Gyro Comics, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cobalt 60 (the graphic novel), GWAR comics and Lizard of Oz.
In his spare time, of which there isn’t much, Mark occasionally performs the Bode cartoon concert, teaches art, plays New Orleans style piano and zydeco accordion.
In the near 30 years of Mark’s professional career as an artist, Marks work has appeared in HEAVY METAL, EPIC MAGAZINE, PENTHOUSE, HUSTLER , GAUNTLET MAGAZINE, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING , GRAPHOTISM, among many, many other magazines and comics. He has had articles featuring his work in the NEW YORK TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, JUXTAPOZ and TABU TATTOO. Marks work has been exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Psychedelic Solution Gallery in New York, Upper Playground Gallery in San Francisco, and has had art shows abroad in Berlin, London, Milan and Barcelona.
VAUGHN BODE
Vaughn began drawing at the age of five. He remembered himself as “an extremely introverted kid, completely unable to relate to the world around me…I started creating my own fantasy world populated with my own little creatures.” Vaughn is one of the most influential American cartoonists of our time. Much of graffiti art itself comes from the work of Vaughn Bode. Rendering his characters, lettering and cartoon semiotics is a rite of passage for graffiti art crews. Vaughn Bode’s art was made popular by writers like Dondi, Seen, Tracy and Mare 139. Unrecognized by most in the fine art realm, the worlds and characters he created permeate our collective pop image bank like a classic visual rock & roll soundtrack for our times. Vaughn was the recipient in 1969 of a Hugo Award. In 1975 he received the Yellow Kid award in Lucca, Italy.
