Things You Draw When People Can't See You

I can trace my current style of work back to a very specific point in time. I'll recap my current foray into abstraction later in the newsletter but I think that some context is needed first. My interest in being artist can be directly traced back to my fascination with graffiti art and hip hop culture. In early 90's Los Angeles, skateboarding and graffiti were the dominant subcultures in the neighborhoods I lived in. I did both and spent many afternoons thumbing through my copy of Subway Art and watching a super bootleg copy of Style Wars. My favorite writers were those who pushed their wildstyle lettering to the brink of legibility like Kase2 and Rammellzee. But of all the artists I idolized as a kid, the one that stuck was Futura 2000.

His super stylized tag and whole cars painted as abstract patterns reframed how I viewed graffiti and the work he did later with his Recon brand and experimental websites were big influences as well. So the seed for the work that I make currently was planted way back at the beginning of my artistic development but it took quite some time for me to get back to it.

It actually wasn't until the Covid shutdowns that I began to focus on abstraction again. I found myself working from home and my photography freelance work had completely dried up so I redirected my creative energy back to my art in a serious way for the first time in several years. I had previously found some success with my line heavy, character based artwork but I felt that direction was a dead end (turns out I was wrong but that's a different story). So I started from the opposite end, drawing shapes and lines that had a relationship to each other but were not figurative in a traditional sense.

Over the course of the next year or so, I would paint dozens of these compositions. I eventually reincorporated some of my line based characters into the new direction I was headed in. The break in style was liberating and led to my current body of work.

There was more to my creative shift over the past few years than a desire to change course visually. Beneath the surface I was seething and the transformation was a symptom of things boiling over. This period was the height of the BLM movement and the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd had set the country ablaze. My work became a way to express the disconnect between how the world saw me as a person and who I really was. The patterns, shapes, and colors are representative of the depth and nuance lacking from how this country views and treats Black people. I was determined to bring life to the world as I saw it, even if I was the only person who understood what I was trying to accomplish.

This path has revitalized and centered my art, photography, and design practices. I have found a great deal of inspiration in the work of Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, and the quilt makers of Gee's Bend, whose abstract patterns and history have provided a tangible, concrete connection to the Black experience in the United States. In the year ahead I will continue to explore and expand on this path I find myself on.

I don't have a recap ready for y'all but I can say that 2025 is going to be a big year for Nonstndrd Creative. Aside from developing the +Process newsletter I have the Archival Recordings zines and a new art zine called "Rap Dreams" on deck for the first half of the year. I'm also applying to several local (and not so local) book and zine fairs. I learned this year that in-person events are the best opportunity for me to share the work I'm making and connect with people so I'm doubling down on that approach. See you out there and thanks for rocking with Nonstndrd.

Happy New Year!
Kwasi