Artist Decoded by Yoshino

"Making pictures is one of the earliest memories I recall. Before learning to write the alphabet I was drawing from my imagination in crayons. And over all the years that followed, there has never been a period where I didn't continue the practice. I remember for example just after graduating high school and living on my own as a dishwasher with no ambitions in life but to get drunk and high. But when the party was over I would be in the kitchen of a house I didn't live in, drawing past dawn. Or even when I was a student at the University of California Berkeley, on my way towards a corporate life, having never conceived even the possibility where art could be a profession, I filled my notebooks not with words from lectures, but with sketches of teachers and classmates. And though later I would become a 'professional artist', I sometimes look back at such moments if confused with the roots of my creativity. It started purely as an act of autonomy, where nothing outside myself influenced or affected it. I simply drew because I enjoyed it above all else. Sure, like anyone I've had plenty of typical life experiences that have brought their own joy, but nothing compares in consistency and meaningfulness that making art has provided. Even during those unavoidable periods with living that challenges us most, drastic life change/loss/death, art has functioned as a medium with giving meaning to suffering, transforming it into an experience with healing. This I hope, begins to describe the art I make. The drawings and paintings you see on this site, are similar to snapshots with the lens pointed in Life's direction with penetrating force. I hope you enjoy any of what's reflected back. Thanks for visiting." - Akira Beard

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Identity
• His Japanese American heritage
• Akira's self portraiture work where he addressed the theme of identity
• The idea of "self, culture, nature"
• Self-realization
• The Buddhist concept of impermanence
• The difference between a technician and a fine artist
• "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying"
• The enigma of love
• His body of artwork called "Love In Spite of Everything"
• His 4 year path of discovery
• Marcus Aurelius
• Stoicism
• Daily rituals
• Anais Nin

www.artistdecoded.com

Steve Kim is an artist and illustrator. Born in Seoul, Korea, he immigrated to the states at the age of two and currently resides in Oxford, Mississippi. He received his undergraduate degree from Art Center College of Design in 2006 and his masters from Claremont Graduate University in 2010. He has shown in Korea, Italy, London, Amsterdam, Krakow and throughout the United States and clients include The Outline, FRAMƎ, Matter/Medium, Adobe, Hohe Luft, The New Republic, Arc/New Scientist, and The Verge. His work has been featured in print in Quiet Lunch, New American Paintings, Computer Arts, Beautiful Decay, PRINT Magazine, and American Illustration and online on Hi-Fructose, Juxtapoz, BOOOOOOOM!, The Fox Is Black, Supersonic Art, and Tumblr's Radar. Most recently he completed a 3 month residency at the Red Bull House of Art in Detroit.

www.artistdecoded.com

Colin Chillag, born in 1971, is a painter based out of Phoenix, AZ.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Personal approaches to creating artwork
• Meditation
• The challenges of commercialization
• Realism
• Painting from found photographs
• Colin's "girlfriend" series
• Black Mirror
• Ray Kurzweil
• Museum of Jurassic Technology
• Psychedelics
• The realities of being an artist

www.artistdecoded.com

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Casey Gleghorn grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He is the Director @ Booth Gallery and Last Rites Gallery in New York City. He has been a gallery owner/director for over 9 years, has curated international museum exhibitions, and currently works with various international established and emerging artists.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• How he became the director of Booth Gallery
• Jesse Draxler
• Richard Prince
• Stress and overworking
• Creating balance in your life
• Meditation
• NOH/WAVE
• Modern technology effecting the way galleries operate
• Extinction of the mid-tier gallery
• Artist run spaces
• Adapting to the changes in the art market
• Eric Lacombe
• Odd Nerdrum
• Social media marketing for artists
• Casey's opinion on art fairs
• Remembering Gregorio Escalante

www.artistdecoded.com

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Ian Daniel is a filmmaker, producer, writer, and curator. He is the Co-host and Executive Producer of the Emmy-nominated television show GAYCATION on VICELAND, where he and actress Ellen Page explore LGBTQ culture around the world. He is currently in post-production on a feature-length documentary film he directed and is developing other documentary, television, and art projects.

Daniel is also the former Director of Artistic Programs at The Civilians, a theater company in NYC that derives their work from intensive investigations into today's vital questions, on topics such as death, crime in the US, LGBTQ issues, the porn industry, and the Women's Prison in Bogota Colombia.

As a curator, he has organized several exhibits and multimedia events at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Exit Art, LaMaMa Gallery, Storefront Bushwick and the Waterpod Project in NYC and Brooklyn.

www.artistdecoded.com

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Dave Elitch first garnered attention with his band Daughters of Mara's debut album "I am Destroyer" in 2007, but his time touring with the American progressive rock band The Mars Volta in 2009-2010 is what really put him on the map. He has since worked with Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, M83, The 1975, Juliette Lewis, Big Black Delta, as well as many others. He is a regular in the LA session scene, including performing on various records, syncs and film scores for major motion pictures, (most recently "Trolls" and "Logan.") In addition to playing, he also conducts master-class lectures worldwide and keeps a busy private teaching practice in Los Angeles where he has developed a reputation as THE technique/body mechanic specialist who has helped many of the industries top players as well as educators.

"Ever since I decided that I was going to be a drummer, I wanted to be the best I could possibly be, and I put all my faculties toward that. Eventually that can take a toll, so I kind of hit a wall and needed a break. I've always had an appreciation for art, and luckily where I live in LA there are all these rad galleries – the Getty, the Hammer, Thinkspace, C.A.V.E., Giant Robot – so I frequent those. I get a different vantage point on the creative experience. I started getting inspired by documentaries about artists, like The Radiant Child about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rivers and Tides about Andy Goldsworthy, the Gerhard Richter documentary Painting, Francis Bacon movies on YouTube… It's just such a fascinating take on making sense of the world around you. Plus, I've dedicated my life to knowing all there is to know about drums, and I'm expected to know everything, With art, I can just go from my gut, so there's a huge sense of freedom and escape for me there." – Dave Elitch

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• The pitfalls of formalized education
• The realities of being a musician
• Over exposure of art through technology
• Distractions of social media
• How Dave became a professional drummer
• Andy Goldsworthy "Rivers and Tides"
• Drawing similarities and differences between his approach to music and his approach to art
• The compulsion for knowledge and exploring
• Understanding the veil of perception
• Creative adaptability
• Spirituality in art
• Breaking free of systematic thinking
• Branding within the art world
• The ripple effect of art and commerce interacting with each other

www.artistdecoded.com

With iconic photography of young iconoclasts, musicians, and bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, The Circle Jerks, Ice Cube, and Bad Religion, as well as hundreds of other early punk and hip hop bands, Edward Colver was an insider to the turbulent and burgeoning underground music scene of early-eighties Los Angeles. Since active in photography for more than forty years, he first documented an average of five local shows a week using only a 35mm camera, flash, and Kodak Tri-X film.

Colver's book, Blight at the End of the Funnel, collects some of the best of his hardcore punk and promotional work for record companies. His shot of Henry Rollins for the cover of Black Flag's "Damaged" album was used on billboards and lamppost flyers throughout Los Angeles during the Annenberg Space for Photography's Who Shot Rock and Roll installation in 2012, curated by Brooklyn Museum curator and author Gail Buckland. In addition to numerous other openings, including Shepard Fairey's Subliminal Projects gallery and a solo show at Lethal Amounts this last year.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• The punk rock revolution in Los Angeles
• Edward's experience shooting Henry Rollins for Black Flag's "Damaged" album cover
• His run in with Jerry Lee Lewis
• Working with Ice Cube
• Suing Interscope Records
• His experiences shooting photographs for 36 years
• Shooting the Circle Jerks "Group Sex" album cover

www.artistdecoded.com

Winning the Archibald Prize as Guy Maestri did in 2009 would be a defining moment in most artist's careers, but he is quick to cite physical immersion in the landscape as revolutionary to his painting practice. It's easy to gloss over the history of plein-air as a European tradition, born of gentle grasses and mild sunlight. Practiced in Australia, away from the slip of green coastline, plein-air demands rigor of vast dimensions. For Maestri, the material and temporal challenges of extended painting sessions in the hard country around Hill End, Wilcannia and Broken Hill has been instrumental in a new understanding of local art histories and ecologies, as well as the atmospheric and elemental qualities of landscape. Beholden to intimacies of place, the artist stakes out a subtle void or stillness in these dry landscapes without surrendering his animated, almost kinetic approach to paint.

Masquerading as a shady retreat, the studio retains its disciplinarian attitude but demands a different kind of focus. Here the void is more theatrical, Maestri's compositions orchestrated with operatic tempo. Desiccated road-kill (the anti-trophy of inland highways) perform as contemporary Gothic vanitas, shot through with equal measure of beauty and pathos, the eye and the heart facing off.

A graduate of the National Art School, Maestri won the 2014 Kings School Art Prize and the 2013 Premier's Plein Air Painting Prize. He is a regular finalist in the Wynne Prize for Landscape at the Art Gallery of NSW and his work is held in several public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and Parliament House collections.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• His experience studying at The National Art School in Sydney
• Education in the arts
• Exploring mediums within your artistic practice
• How his work has evolved over the years
• His paintings of road kill
• Discussing self portraiture
• How he began experimenting with sculptures
• His process creating his sculptures
• Morbid curiosities
• Wes Anderson

www.artistdecoded.com

Virginie Picot – originally from Paris – has devoted the last 17 years of her career to talent management and visual creations, specializing in the fashion and music industries. Currently living in NYC, she is an agent and Executive Producer for Iconoclast Image and leads the print department. She represents emerging photographers such as Olivia Bee, David Uzochukwu, and Mathieu Cesar, as well as established talents such as Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Cyrille de Vignemont, and Gus Van Sant. She has worked alongside globally renowned recording artists such as Katy Perry, Future, and Kesha, as well as fashion designers including Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy, Damir Doma, and Zaid Affa.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Starting her career directly out of university within the music industry
• Working for V2 Music
• Her experience working at a photo gallery in London
• Working for Givenchy in Paris
• Magic vs magick
• Her love for the work of Francis Bacon and Alexander McQueen
• Working for Iconoclast Image in NY
• The balance between art and commerce
• Servicing clients
• Changes going on in the entertainment industry
• Understanding the creative vision before developing a project
• How to stay true to your creativity while taking a brief from a client
• The realities of commercializing your artwork
• Floria Sigismondi
• Creating a body of work that defines your creative vision
• Creating long term relationships vs. creating short term networks

www.artistdecoded.com

Brad Kunkle was raised in rural Pennsylvania and graduated from Kutztown University with a BFA in painting in 2001. Rather than continue his artistic pursuits in an academic environment, he became a house painter. That dubious, professional beginning however, taught him valuable lessons that became crucial to his later success. Having taught himself how to gild with precious metals for some of those residential projects, he later implemented those skills in his personal, fine art works.

His debut, fine art exhibition in 2010 at Arcadia Contemporary in NYC sold out before the show's opening night and was followed by a second sold-out exhibition two years later. Since then he has exhibited his paintings in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Miami, and his works can be found in private collections all over the world. His paintings have twice graced the cover of American Art Collector Magazine and have been published extensively online and in print in such highly read publications as Hi-Fructose, American Arts Quarterly, Lapham's Quarterly, Juxtapoz and Fine Arts Connoisseur. Kunkle continues to be represented by Arcadia Contemporary in Los Angeles, where he had his debut, West Coast solo exhibition in November of 2016. More recently, Kunkle collaborated as an Art Director with the award-winning, special effects house, Imaginary Forces as his paintings became the foundation for the main title sequence of the Netflix original series, "Anne With An E."

He lives and works in New York's Hudson Valley.

​​​​​Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Reflecting on his 2016 show "Invisible"
• Muses
• Social media misconceptions
• "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells
• Technical elements behind his work
• Dreaming and lucid dreaming
• The benefits of listening to music while you work
• Meditation
• Intention in creation
• Elevating vs. entertaining

www.artistdecoded.com

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