I had the pleasure of doing an interview about my Live Fast Burn Slow collection with Gustav Magazine Switzerland. Gustav is a quarterly publication on all the latest design, fashion, action sports, tattoo and urban art world’s finest and freshest. The interview appears in Gustav Urban Influence Mag Issue #27 this past summer. The digital archive version will appear online later this fall. If you want some insight into the concept of my work and sit in my head space for a moment this is an interview you will not want to miss.
GustavMag: First of all, How are you Nick?
All things are moving in a fast-forward progression here at Beery Method Studios. It has been a whirlwind of projects and collaborations with the fresh summer season. Between group exhibitions in L.A., closing my gallery Coalesce Studios, and getting involved with a new collective of underground artists life has been exceptionally awesome. I can’t foresee time slowing down even on a micro level so my creative engines are full-fueled and at full steam. In short I’m excellent and excited for some surprises in store this fall and 2014.
GustavMag: If you should describe yourself in 3 words, what would they be?
Passionate, Esoteric, and Dynamic have been used to describe both my personality, work flow, and growing body of personal styles.
GustavMag: Can you explain your career path? Where you are from, your age, schooling, and work?
I grew up off the grid. Not from a small town, a suburb, or even metropolitan city. It’s this solitary environment set on the fringes of mass culture and collected society that sparked a need to delve into the inner recesses of my own intellectual creative mind. I now work on and off the grid. Sometimes collaborating and engaging clients large and small and other times formulating and assembling the next round of artillery to be released with a state of precipitation.
I’m 34 years old this year of the snake, however I’m an old soul steeped in lengthy experiences of world travel and even sub-human experiences. Being engaged as an illustrator after acquiring my BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design was my entrance into the headlong vigilant career that has turned into an expansive repertoire of media and concept design. I was an educator for 3 years teaching the traditional tricks of illustration pioneers. After teaching I worked as a creative consultant for apparel and private label companies which allowed an insight to the inner workings of the commercial art world. These experiences propelled a fervent manner which is the double edged sword of being an independent creative. I opened my own design company extending my talents combined with fellow industry collaborators which took hold as a platform for various extensive projects over the last 12 years. I currently work as an active curator, educator, collaborator, and instigator within the established art scenes throughout the US.
GustavMag: What is the “Beery Method”? How did that name came to your mind?
While working with various creative companies as a consultant I was allowed to wear a plethora of hats. Getting my hands dirty and feet wet with such a variety of projects culminated a large bank of knowledge regarding the complex extraordinary machines of production and deadlines. I’m a problem solver and a solution expert. Most artists are no different than magicians. We make things appear and give life to ideas that simply cannot exist without our power of intrigue. There is certainly a method to one’s affect and at many times a multitude of methodologies that can be introduced to bring concepts to fruition. After playing many roles it became apparent that I can offer my own methods of ingenuity and ingress to benefit the functionalities of different yet specific individuals and industry entities. Thus Beery Method was born.
GustavMag: How did you come to this “trash style”?
While wearing the inverted filters I digest an excessive amount of information through the channels of the art world’s existence. After living in proximity to the slummy neighborhoods of San Francisco and Seattle there came a seditious underpinning to an attraction that is the urban underbelly. In times talking to ‘the street’ and living on ‘the street’ it became a another swatch of color in my palette of expression. Also working in tandem with other urban artists putting up street art and collectively creating shows that express the grungy nature of American inner cities impacted my own need for a coliseum of anarchistic complexion.
GustavMag: What is the message of the series LIVE FAST BURN SLOW? What does the expression mean to you?
The Live Fast Burn Slow collection from Beery Method explores social commentary on the exploits of glorified sub cultures within global society, specifically the US. The return of my dark-cartoon Hobo Eaters : this installment brings back the cartoon character forms as the embodiment of society’s invasive evils. Each character represents a stereotype found within the sub genres of sociological and contemporary ethnological entrapments. I seek to create a collection rich with candy-pop death-heads attributed to the heedless fast-pace of sin and over indulgence of our world. The collection is filled with decomposing souls and subliminally scrutinizes celebrated American nefariousness that underpins the vicious cycles idolized by a non-stop civilization.
GustavMag: “Exploits of subcultures” within larger society… What are those exploits for you?
There are multiple folds of ‘subcultures’ embedded in various societies and cultures of our world. Some of these underground cultures become mainstream as there is a rise in popularity and awareness to the overall general public of the true effect these micro-cultures have as they impact more lives and layers of common society. The exploitation of these subcultures through television, internet, corporate entities, and affiliated global media allow for a seeping of acceptance for extreme negative actions, coercive advertising, and reification of barbarous concepts. Once the vein of these underground cultures are bled to feed society in a way where injustice is acceptable and the general public of society are desensitized to prospectively morally objective concepts the only true meaning gained is by those who make a dollar off of the benefits of the exploits and give rise to waves of a consent to the taboos which undermine civil unity. Much of the focus of Live Fast Burn Slow deals with top tier poisons of inhumanity which are current in the trends of today’s sub-cultural society. I will briefly touch on the undersurface of these specific toxins for the selected LFBS collection pieces in Live Fast Burn Slow Interview PART II.
GustavMag: What does “hobo eater” exactly mean?
Hobo Eaters: Agents of Chaos The term hobo-eater refers to an entity who, through ritual means, would take on the sins of a deceased bum or street person, thus absolving his or her soul and allowing that person of the street to rest in peace. What was once a ritual performed by beggars and vagabonds in certain villages of bygone years is now performed in a reverse of roles by animated entities who take on the form of the hobo whose diabolical or nefarious lifestyle is reflected upon the appearance of the hobo-eater. The hobo-eater would be brought to the dying vagrant’s curbside or stoop, where a neighborhood drifter would place a piece of dumpster pizza crust or discarded bread on the chest of the dying and pass a 40 oz. of malt liquor to hobo-eater over the corpse. After reciting the ritual, he would then drink and remove the crust from the derelict tramp and eat it, the act of which would remove the sins and deadbeat-scars from the dying transient and take it into himself. Often times hobo-eaters are not only filled with the sins and scars of the deceased but take on a ghostly appearance, ragged with the lines of deceit, detritus, and chemical abuse of the former vessel. The result is a vaporous semi-satirical apparition whose tattered clothes and grungy presentation is forever portrayed among the urban environment. Thus the ethereal term Agents of Chaos has come as a contemporary descriptor for these aeon old hobo-eaters who are destined to drift the streets perpetually consuming fiendish souls.
The term Hobo Eater is also a dichotomous reference to the ancient term Sin-Eater.
GustavMag: It looks pretty much about fast car, drug and death or am I completely wrong?
Live Fast Burn Slow is not what it seems on the surface to just any youthful audience. The entire series is a poke in the eye to those seeking to just enjoy my work just because it “looks awesome” or makes a reference to their very own subculture. Elements are strategically put in place to act as a veil of “awesomeness” with a much deeper meaning. Live Fast Burn Slow takes aim at the facets of human culture which are revered as popular but in world terms are the very pin holes inevitably leaking any altruistic emotion left in the sludge filled fuel tanks of civility.
GustavMag: Some of them show tanks, which relation do you have American wars, and with war in general?
Each piece exploits villains as heroes in a refreshingly lampoon-antagonistic approach through characters, vehicles, and symbology. The anthology explores everything sinister from political corruption, violence, racism, male aggression, commercialism, addiction, war, gambling and debt to gangsterism, corporate greed, sex, speed, and news media. The characters represented are ammunition for ironical socialistic retaliation through anti-hero heroism.
GustavMag: What do you say to people that would find it a little bit “politically incorrect” or that it would corrupt youth?
I’d have to say look beyond the gloss of imagery and what the actions of the characters and catalytic vehicles seem to portray. The collection is not intended to glorify villainous acts but is a sly trickery on the minds of the youth who are stuck on “image” not on what is true, genuine, and now exotic to our global societies.
GustavMag: In the end, do you burn your live fast or slow?
I’m just another hero portrayed as a villain at times. The anarchistic views coalesced through a life of retaliation through visual art will burn slowly. I’m still on the fast track to punching holes in the rigid belief systems put in place to control our society and hopefully protect the freedom of youth in the process. I will always respectively and dutifully be a general at the forefront of visual art combat!
GustavMag: Anything to say more?
Beery Method Studios will be releasing his latest collection It’s A Cruel World After All! this fall in San Francisco. The show will further engage a new battle of insidious nature that deals with consumerism and the breach of civility with corporate conglomeration. This upcoming exhibition will explore a new wave of concepts that unconditionally tip the balance of intellectual property rights and the unhindered progress of brainwash through socialized media.
