The KAWS Effect by Kathryn Branch June 7, 2011
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The KAWS Effect By Kathryn Branch June 7, 2011 In the back of Brian Donnelly’s studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, behind three wheeled, wooden work tables and neatly organized racks containing bottles of brightly colored acrylic paint, past an array of painted canvases in different shapes and sizes, hides a four-foot-tall sculpture of ickey ouse! ickey has seen better days, apparently. He’s gray. #nd his eyes are $-ed out, as if he %ust drank from a bottle labeled &'oison!( Donnelly, )*, who is better known by his alias, +#W,, is getting ready to haul a -*- foot-tall version of this mouse, titled &Companion /'assing 0hrough1,” from the #ldrich Contemporary #rt useum in 2idgefield, Conn., to the ,tandard hotel in 3ew 4ork! # graffiti artist, illustrator, toymaker, sculptor and painter, Donnelly first collaborated with the hotel earlier this year, with a series of blue, red and green light bulbs that sold out in a matter of days. 5or all of his visibility in the worlds of fashion and art, Donnelly remains an unassuming, self-proclaimed &blusher( from 3ew 6ersey. 0 caught up with him on the eve of the unveiling at 0he ,tandard to talk about art, life and why his large &companion( looks so darned shy! Q. Where did your signature &7( come from8 A. Before I got into painting over ads, I was %ust working traditional graffiti! #nd that kind of led me into painting over billboards. ,o, in -99), I was still doing letter stuff, but I %ust started incorporating it into ads. I’d stand there painting while cars went by! How did you et involved in raffiti? It was %ust all around. It’s sort of, you know, if you have an art interest! … #ctually, it’s great for a young kid who’s %ust interested in being creative, because you meet other kids who have the same interests. It’s like you play soccer. 4ou meet kids that play soccer, and you %ust come out of the woodwork when you get involved. I started painting other imagery like the skull and crossbones and when I got into breaking into the phone booths and the bus shelters, and I started using that imagery and kind of let the lettering fall out. I started to think about it almost like competing with the advertisers for space! 0hat’s how I saw graffiti; I mean it was the parallels that were really kind of funny. 0he point is to make work that would last on the streets and almost %ust be there, but not. 4ou know? aybe someone doesn’t even stop but later is like, &What was that8 Weird ad!( And $ew %or& wa' your canva'# 4eah, I grew up in 6ersey City and I was coming to 3ew 4ork when I was a little kid skating. I moved here in ’9*! <rowing up, a lot of the way I got to see art and learn about things happening outside of 6ersey City was through magazines and stickers and graphics and stuff. ,o now, when I’m making work, I’m always thinking how can I communicate within these avenues to make those bridges for kids and pull them out of their holes into other worlds? #nd I’m not %ust thinking of kids when I’m creating something. I’m always thinking of like = I’m probably turning red, I turn red a lot = but I always think of how I grew up and how I came to this and sort of the different opportunities and different ways of finding that. #nd I always try to think, there have to be other people like that! How do you reach them8 >r, how do you like pull them into the mi$ or show them kind of ways to get into other things that they want to get into8 0hat they might not know they can get into8 How did you (a&e the ju(* to o to the Schoo" of +isua" Art' ,S+A- and 'tudy illu'tration# ?ver since I was little, I wanted to be in the arts, I %ust never really saw it as a reality. ,o, when I got out of high school, I took a semester off %ust ’cause I didn’t know what the hell to do. #nd I figured I would go to ,@# and when I got in there, that’s when I realized there’s always opportunities and I got super focused! I feel like from entering school till now, it’s %ust been like ch-ch-ch, you know, %ust working! .id *eo*le ever 'u e't that you 'to* ta in # 4eah, I mean you meet all kinds of people who don’t understand what you do. I’m sure if you were trying to go into any profession = I mean, maybe people don’t get talked out of being a doctor = but if I had kids, I’d be like, &0here’s a lot of other things you can look into!( /an you '*ea& a0out your childhood at a""# What’s to speak about8 I mean, I think I spoke a lot about it, %ust through graffiti, through meeting kids, through skating! : I’m definitely not the spokesman type. I feel like your actions are what speak and the stuff you make, and so now I’m getting these opportunities, like with the #ldrich AContemporary #rt useumB and the sculpture going to go from the ,tandard to the High useum of #rt. #nd then in December I’m going to do the odern #rt useum of 5ort Worth for this series they do each year called &5ocused!( But I also feel like it’s important to continue to make the stuff I make, like 0-shirts, and I have my store >riginal5ake in 0okyo and my clothing line and to continue to make the toys. What in'*ired you to o to To&yo when you raduated fro( art 'choo"# 0o be a nin%a, like everyone else, of course. 3o I’m %ust kidding AlaughsB! I %ust went to 0okyo ’cause, like, at the time, these guys ,tash and 5utura who were already working over there were super- embraced and, you know, I was always interested in 6apan, it %ust seemed so far away and so different than 3ew 4ork. ,o, it was %ust a place I wanted to check out! 0here were some people making things in 3ew 4ork, but it wasn’t with the, I don’t know, same seriousness, I guess, as the kids who were making stuff in 6apan. Cike what 3igo was doing, you know, with A Bathing Ape! 0he attention he was giving to the product, to the store = it was %ust trumping everybody, worldwide. 0here was no one that was making stuff for that market, in that way. When I went the first time, I was like &I need to be working here with these guys.” #nd then slowly, it kind of bounced back to the D!,. When I was going there in the beginning I had friends that were like, &Why do you waste so much energy toward 6apan8( #nd I %ust always thought, Well that’s where like the creative kids are. #nd that’s where I went! Where the creative &id' are in art# 3ot for art, actually. It was %ust the opposite! When I went there, I felt like there was no support for art, or very little. I did a show at 'arco in EFF-! 'arco’s a shopping center! If you told somebody in 3ew 4ork you were doing a show at the top of a shopping center, they’d be like, &>h, that’s really tacky, commercial!( But over there, that was the normal outlet. ,o yeah it was weird, kids weren’t buying art, it %ust wasn’t on the radar! 0hey’d sooner spend G)FF on a pair of sneakers than they would on a small drawing! 1' that how you ca(e to (a&e *roduct' and toys# 0he toy thing was %ust a coincidence. I’ve always loved editions, I’ve always loved the pop artists like AClaes] >ldenburg and A0omB Wesselmann and what they were doing with <emini = making silk- screen editions, which I was also interested in. But then they would do these ob%ects as editions and then there were sculptures. I always saw making sculptures as so unobtainable, like you need patrons. ,o when the idea of making a toy came up, it was like the only way I could see my work three- dimensionally. ,o instead of making this monumental -F-foot thing at the time, I made a thousand H- inch things. But it was with the same sort of attention given and the same Iuality control. 0he sculptures I’m trying to make now, I want them to feel and look like the toys that I was making! 2ike 3/o(*anion ,4a''in Throu h-5 at the Standard# 4eah, I mean that sculpture’s fun. >riginally it was in Hong +ong for Harbour City! When I was invited to do the piece, I went and saw the site. #nd immediately I was like, &<od if I had to sit out here, I would %ust be mortified if this many people walked past me!( #nd that’s how that pose came! I %ust went up to the #ldrich last week to see the sculpture! I saw it in the winter, but I wanted to see it with the grass grown in and everything before they disassemble it = and even %ust sitting in the museum and watching families come up, stroll out to it, like kids, adults, it was surreal! %ou have a lot of 'u**orter'.