Departure – 40 Years of Art & Design
Cey AdamsAbout this video
Monica Quinonez of West Chelsea Contemporary calls Cey Adams “a cultural icon; a visionary that has been at the forefront of many art and cultural movements.” Join Cey as he chronicles his career of more than 40 years. Beginning in the early ‘80s in New York City as a subway graffiti writer, he’ll describe his time as the creative director for Def Jam Recordings, designing album covers and brand identities for Run DMC, Beastie Boys, LLCoolJ, Public Enemy and many more. He will also highlight work from (present day) brand partnerships with The Smithsonian, Levi’s, Mattel, Footlocker and Google.
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Hey, everybody. Thank you for, uh, hanging out.
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I know it's been a long day,
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but I've been looking forward to this for a couple of months actually.
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Um, wow. Uh, you know, before I start, I,
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I just want to, you know, literally just thank everyone for, you know,
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being here every time I come to Canada. It's always wonderful,
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and I'm gonna just jump right into this because we have a lot of
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ground to cover. And as the title mentioned,
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my career spans more than 40 years,
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but we thought we'd keep it manageable considering, you know,
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the age range of everyone. But, uh,
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I come from New York City and when my career
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started, I was a teenager. And I, I, I,
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I say my career started even though I wasn't a professional
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anything, I just knew that art was something that I wanted to make,
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and I've always been an artist.
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And these are photographs when I was a kid with my family,
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that's my little brother on the bottom.
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And that's maybe the first painting I ever made. And a,
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as you can see from the t-shirt, uh,
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for those of you that are familiar with the, the history of art,
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Keith Harring was a buddy of mine back in the day.
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And this talk is really gonna be a lot about the journey that I
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was on from the time I was a teenager to literally present day.
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So this is one of the graffiti sketches that I would create
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before I would go out and paint a train. And so this was, you know,
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really back in the seventies. And,
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and it was something that really was, you know,
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there were preliminary drawings and the idea was you would do these
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just to get a sense of what you'd want to create when you went out onto the
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subways. And so this is an actual subway train,
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and it's funny talking about this in front of people knowing that it's gonna be
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recorded because it's living proof that I, you know, vandalized something.
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And so now I'm so conscious of it. I,
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I'm always trying to like dial it back, but it is a part of my history.
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So this is a photograph that my friend Martha Cooper took
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in 1981.
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This was the one of the first graffiti galleries that represented people
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like myself and Crash and Days,
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and Lady Pink and Futura and, and Dondi White and Lee,
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and a bunch of others.
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And this was really the training ground that
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taught us a lot about what it meant to be a professional artist.
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And it,
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it's really emotional for me looking at these photographs because I
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have an exhibition that's traveling around the country in America right now
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called Departure of 40 Years of Art and Design,
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and that's where the title comes from.
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And this was one of the first paintings that I made,
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and it was really amazing to have my son in my
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studio now working with me on things that referenced things that I did
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some 40 odd years ago. And this is one of those paintings,
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Beastie Boys. Wow. Um,
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I met the Beastie Boys in the early eighties, and so when I met them,
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they commissioned me to make this piece, and they just loved graffiti,
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and they said, just do your thing. There was no real art direction.
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And like you probably heard, uh,
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from the folks that you know at Nike that, you know,
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when they first commissioned the logo for the swoosh,
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that person was paid $36.
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So this is one of those situations where I got paid $35
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in two parts. And, you know,
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it's just so much fun to look at it now because this is something that the
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band still uses. And for me,
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that's really a testament to what quality is all about.
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If somebody continues to use your design over and over and over again year after
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year after year.
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And that's gonna be a reoccurring theme that you're gonna hear me talk about is,
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you know, people sort of going back to the well, because for me, a,
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as a, a full grown adult now, I'm, I'm 61 years old,
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and I started when I was a teenager,
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and in my mind I was sort of professional even if I wasn't.
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But it's really important to just nurture those relationships.
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So I am gonna say that again. Um,
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Def Jam started in 1984,
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and I know I'm in front of a design community,
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so I have to say this out loud. I did not design this logo.
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Rick Rubin, the founder of Def Jam Art,
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directed this logo and it was executed by a friend of a friend.
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And I, I know that, uh, I don't know if Debbie Millman is here,
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but she had Rick Rubin on her show, you know, very recently.
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And I was listening,
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wondering if they were gonna tap into the history of designing this logo
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or if he was just gonna take full credit in present day.
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But it's here for me, uh,
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to represent a brand that I've been a part of from the very beginning,
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and it's something that I'm really proud of. And I, I art directed a pinch,
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so I am gonna take a little bit of credit.
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LL Cool J was one of the first artists that I worked with at Def Jam at the
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time. He was 16 years old.
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And these are a couple of the albums that I worked with on,
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with ll L on. And you know, what,
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what's Not Lost on me is, you know,
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he's in his fifties and he was a teenager at the time.
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We made so many records together, but these are just a few of my favorites,
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and I thought I would just highlight a couple of them.
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Public Enemy Fear of Black Planet, again,
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like with LL and a couple of the other artists,
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I worked on a lot of records with Public Enemy,
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but this one in particular was my favorite because it was the first time I
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truly understood what art direction was. We had to hire an illustrator.
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His name was b e Johnson,
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and we basically told him we wanted to create this sort of
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interesting space illustration,
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and he just knocked it out of the park. Every time I look at this,
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I get emotional.
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So I have to really sort of turn away for a second because
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it's the,
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I think the 37th anniversary of when my team and I designed this
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record.
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And that's one of the other things that I'm going to get into in a little bit
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is I've heard a lot of people up here talking. And the,
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the thing is, I have to let you know,
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I'm a representative of a much larger community of people that are not here.
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And I'll talk about that a little bit more later,
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but I have to say it so I don't forget it. Um,
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this is the notorious b I g This photograph was taken by Butch
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Belaire,
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and the little boy's name is Keith Roy Yearwood,
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and I mentioned that because everybody's familiar with the album,
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but nobody knows who the baby is.
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And so I thought it was important to include that in the text because it's been
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so many years now,
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and I imagine this young man is walking the earth telling this story,
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and not a lot of people probably believe him.
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Dmx, wow. It, it's, uh, you know, it,
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it is so bittersweet when I,
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I I go through a lot of these now because some of these people are no longer
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here, and they came, they made amazing art,
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and they just disappeared. And when I look at it,
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I just think about all the moments that we shared, but in particular,
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every one of these photographs was taken by a photographer named Jonathan
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Manion,
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and he worked very closely with myself and my team at Def Jam. And so,
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as we go through these, I'm gonna continue to keep mentioning his name,
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because it,
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it's really important as creatives to acknowledge the people that work
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alongside you. And it's something that's not lost on me.
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So I just wanted to mention that
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Jay-Z, he's another one. This is another Jonathan Mannion photograph.
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And as a matter of fact,
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every single one of those album covers was taken by Jonathan Mannion,
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and he was a collaborative partner in the same way that Jay-Z was.
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And what was really wonderful about working with Jay-Z is he was really
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bright. He knew what he wanted,
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but he was always willing to listen to good ideas.
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And even early on in his career,
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he would always sit down with me and we would discuss how we were gonna create
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this design, or whatever we were gonna do for the, you know, the cover.
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And every time we came up with something,
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it seemed like we hit a home run, you know, like right out the box each time.
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And when I look at everything that he's doing now in his career,
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I feel really proud that I was the first person that got to work with him.
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And he still continues to call me from time to time to work on things. But,
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you know, I,
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I've sort of have done that and I'm sort of moving on because for me,
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I'm never gonna be able to recreate these magic moments with these recording
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artists because people grow so fast. Now, back then,
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it seemed like everyone was hungry, and we were a shared community,
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and we had a lot of different ideas that we would, you know,
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basically work together to make a reality. And, you know,
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you all know everybody that's making music or art or whatever it is today,
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you know, you have to be hungry because when I came from New York City,
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all these people were fiercely hungry.
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And I think that's the one thing that we all had in common.
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Not to mention the fact that nobody knew what success looked like. Um,
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like I said before,
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these are just some of the album covers that my team at drawing board graphic
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design, and I designed, I was the principal designer,
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and I had people that worked under me.
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And whenever I was traveling or couldn't work on something,
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I would delegate something to another designer or art director.
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And we just had so much space to be creative.
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And this was at a time when, you know, the music business wasn't as,
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you know, popular. Well, you know, I, I,
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I don't wanna say it wasn't popular because it was,
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but I think because we were doing hip hop,
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there were no sort of preconceived ideas of what it was and what it was not.
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And they just let us do our thing,
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and we just had such a good time and we created so much amazing art,
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and it just makes me really proud that I was a part of it.
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So one of the things that happened while I started doing album design is I
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always knew that whenever the time came to make a logo for the cover,
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that was gonna be my job.
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I've always loved logos even before I really had a strong sense of what they
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were.
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And I think a lot of that comes from my love of graffiti and street art.
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And so every time we made a logo, I was in charge of doing that, or I, you know,
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took charge of doing that. But for the purpose of this talk,
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I'm gonna mention Hot 97 on the top left there,
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because in America,
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that is one of the most copied radio designs that I
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have ever seen traveling around the country.
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There's a hot something in every city you go to.
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And for whatever reason, they've all copied this particular design.
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And it made me think, what is it about that design that I created,
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I think in 1992 that made it so special that all of these other
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radio stations wanted to copy it? I don't know what the answer is,
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I'm just sort of throwing that out there.
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Wow. Um, for the purpose of, you know, what we're talking about, I'll,
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I'll just mention that, uh,
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Don Henley from the Eagles was somebody that I was really excited to
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get an opportunity to work with, because when I was a kid,
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the Eagles were a gigantic band. I mean, they still are,
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but I would've never thought that I would get an opportunity
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to work with a band like that because the stuff I did was hip hop.
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And I also didn't think it was on anybody's radar, but man, was I wrong.
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And so when I got that opportunity, I, I thought, man, I,
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I finally cracked the shell. I'm, I'm sort of breaking out of this, you know,
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stereotypical mold, and I'm working with other kinds of music.
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Little did I realize hip hop was gonna take over the whole world,
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and I wouldn't need to break out of the mold that I was in.
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So in 2006,
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I got a call from the folks at Adidas about working on a collection of apparel
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with Muhammad Ali that he was sort of armchair art
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directing through the creative director.
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And we got on a conference call and he asked me a bunch of questions
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about what I thought of his image and his legacy,
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and he gave me access to his archives.
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And I got a chance to look over all of these images
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and create a piece of art that they were going to make into
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a line of apparel and shoes.
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And so this was that design.
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And one of the things that was a lot of fun for me was that I got to make an
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original piece of art,
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and they were gonna translate how it was gonna work on fabric and shoes and all
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the rest. But more than anything,
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Muhammad Ali himself hand selected the handful of artists that worked
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on this particular campaign. It was myself, shepherd Ferry,
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and a handful of others that I can't remember. But I, I, I thought,
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wow,
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this is such an amazing thing to be handpicked by Muhammad Ali.
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And clearly he saw something in my work that, you know,
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and sometimes I didn't even see myself. And every time I look at this,
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I'm sort of reminded of that,
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especially considering that he's no longer with us.
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This is a piece or a couple of pieces that I created
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with Jan Sport.
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And the idea was to create something for young people for back to
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school. And they just told me,
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make something that's gonna make people feel good. And for me,
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I wanted to basically tell the story of hip hop from the early
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years.
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And the idea was that I wanted to create something that just made people feel
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good. And I wanted to use, you know,
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elements of graffiti and street art.
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And so there was a lot of spray paint involved and magic markers and
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stencils and tagging. And this collection sold out,
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not, not, you know, fast, but not, you know, in the considering the way things,
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you know, sort of, you know, sell out in seconds nowadays. But when I made this,
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this is my first time working with jansport, and it was a lot of fun. So
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Dave Chappelle, wow, uh, in I think 2001,
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I met Dave Chappelle through, uh, a friend of mine,
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and he wanted to have a logo done for a sketch comedy show.
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And so he commissioned me to make this piece.
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He didn't give me any art direction, he just showed me a couple of VHS tapes,
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vhs, uh, of his show.
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And I thought of it as something really revolutionary because to
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me, I hadn't seen anything that edgy since Richard Pryor.
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And that's why I, I created the logo in the colors of red, black, and green,
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because I thought of it as this sort of revolutionary, you know,
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comedic statement. And like I mentioned before,
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Dave is one of those people that continues to call me whenever he's got work.
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And I think that's the most important thing as a creative that you
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want to try to achieve, is a repeat customer.
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And so he had me do a line of merchandise for his, uh,
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residency at Radio City Music Hall. And this is one of those pieces,
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and this is an homage to the old subway tokens that we used to use back in the
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day to get on the subway.
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So after doing all of those other things, I,
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I sort of got disillusioned with the music business and all the misogyny and
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all of the other things that go on. And, you know,
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a lot of my friends became titans of industry and made a lot of money. And I,
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I just got tired of all of it.
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I designed more album covers than I knew what to do with. I, you know,
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had a giant team of creatives. I made a whole bunch of money,
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all of these things, and somehow I still wasn't happy.
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And I decided to walk away from all of it. I sold my design firm and I said,
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I'm done,
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and I am going to get a small studio and I'm gonna start making art,
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and I'm literally going back to square one and I'm gonna get a little gallery
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and I'm gonna sell my work,
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and that's what I'm gonna do with this portion of my life.
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And what I thought about was, I, I didn't, you know,
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really know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I did not want to do.
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And that's make paintings using spray paint,
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breathing in fumes and all of these things. And I says, well,
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let me try my hand at collage.
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And at this time I was also teaching grade school kids
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how to make designs using paper.
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And so as we go through everything that you see is gonna be,
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you know, work that I've created in that same vein, the piece, uh,
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that says MCA was an homage to my friend Adam Ya,
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who had passed away in 2012.
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And so I wanted to incorporate a little bit of the collage work that I was doing
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present day. And the other piece was a piece that I made,
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you know,
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really just to celebrate the journey of myself and Beastie Boys because we had
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traveled all over the world multiple times,
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and it just made me feel good to think back to those times when we were all
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together again.
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So this is some of the detail of one of the collage pieces that I made.
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00:20:18.210 --> 00:20:22.570
And when I started doing this, one of the things I realized was,
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I love logos, I love branding,
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and I was going to make art that celebrates the brands that I love.
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Whatever they were, I, I really didn't have any idea.
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I just knew that I wanted to focus on logos and branding, and that was it.
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And I started making these pieces and I did an
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exhibition in 2014. Well,
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before that I did a residency in Omaha, Nebraska for three months.
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And I hadn't been there, you know, Nebraska, you know, since the early days.
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And I started making these pieces one at a time,
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and it was just so much fun. And every time I look at it,
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it just makes me smile.
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And then I came back to New York City and I had my first one
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person show in 2015,
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and all the paintings sold really quickly and everybody got it.
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They understood that I was celebrating the brands that I loved,
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but I was doing it in a new and different way because all of my peers,
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like I said, were using spray paint and acrylic and all of it.
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And I'm not saying anything against that.
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I just wanted to try something different for myself.
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And so all of these pieces that you're looking at are made with
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100% paper cut with an Exacto knife, and it's,
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you know, painstakingly difficult. Well, for me anyway,
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but it was a lot of fun.
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And one of the things that I also got an opportunity to do when I was making
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these pieces was to celebrate my friends.
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So if you look at the Captain Crunch piece,
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you'll see a little piece of Keith Herring's work.
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00:22:14.090 --> 00:22:18.940
Jean Michelle Basquiat is in the mustache and in the cheeks,
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Ellsworth Kelly is in the nose.
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And I thought it was an amazing vehicle for storytelling.
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And like I said, once I started doing this,
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other people started to catch on and the pieces really started to sell.
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And it made me really happy because I'd found something
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that really spoke to me, but also obviously connected with other people.
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And I forget who was speaking yesterday, but you know,
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they were talking about joy. Oh, um, I, I remember now,
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I think it was Palmer.
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And the idea is that the work that I was making was really about me.
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First and foremost. I wasn't thinking about connecting with anybody else.
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And then all of a sudden the circus came to town and everybody started to
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identify with what I was doing. You know, mostly people of a certain age.
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But it was also something that young people connected to,
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because I guess for them it was nostalgia,
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maybe growing up stuff that their parents loved. And for me,
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that was the thing that I think I had in common as well.
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And so at that moment,
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I created this body of work and for the exhibition,
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I called it Trusted Brands.
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And I thought to myself as I was going through creating all these logos,
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what's the number one brand in America? The American Flag.
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And this is before the election, I have to say that.
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And before things really went crazy. But
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this flag is a perfect vehicle for storytelling.
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It gives us an opportunity to showcase everybody,
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not just people that are patriotic. We get to tell everybody's story.
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And that was my goal when I started making these pieces.
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I wanted everybody to see themselves in there.
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00:24:19.830 --> 00:24:21.610
So when I'm creating these pieces,
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00:24:22.040 --> 00:24:26.730
Tony Bennett has represented Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali,
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Katherine Hepburn, Gandhi, John Lennon.
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It's not just one thing. And again,
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this was one of those things I think that everybody got it,
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didn't need any explanation.
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And it made me feel really wonderful because I'm not pretending that I
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discovered the American flag. What I did was just
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recreate it in a way that people could see themselves,
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where maybe in the past they couldn't.
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00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:05.790
And so after doing all of that, mind you,
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00:25:05.890 --> 00:25:09.590
I'm still inside and my friends like Shepherd Ferry,
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00:25:10.090 --> 00:25:14.710
are out painting these beautiful murals and my street art friends,
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00:25:14.850 --> 00:25:19.790
and everybody's enjoying the beautiful weather and they're literally
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00:25:19.790 --> 00:25:22.390
getting their hands dirty. And I said, you know what?
375
00:25:22.420 --> 00:25:24.150
It's time to go back outside,
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00:25:24.690 --> 00:25:29.630
but this time I'm gonna go out with a different message than I did when I was
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00:25:29.670 --> 00:25:31.310
a teenager. And I says, well,
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00:25:31.310 --> 00:25:36.030
what's the number one thing that we need more of in the world today? Love,
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00:25:36.490 --> 00:25:37.830
it needs no explanation.
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00:25:38.510 --> 00:25:42.230
I can just go paint this and walk away.
381
00:25:42.650 --> 00:25:46.750
And you can use it however you want. Most of the time, I never sign them.
382
00:25:46.990 --> 00:25:50.910
I just create it and I step away. You know what to do with it.
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00:25:51.640 --> 00:25:55.660
And I've seen people take pictures in front of these with their dog
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00:25:56.690 --> 00:25:59.580
when they're going to a wedding,
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00:26:00.620 --> 00:26:01.700
somebody's on their knees.
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00:26:02.570 --> 00:26:06.420
I've seen people come from funerals and they stand in front of these,
387
00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:12.260
and there's nothing that I've done that gives me more joy
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00:26:12.890 --> 00:26:16.660
than watching somebody take a picture in front of this
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00:26:17.370 --> 00:26:22.340
proposing to somebody they love or just holding somebody that they love,
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00:26:22.760 --> 00:26:24.260
or a pet that they love.
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00:26:25.620 --> 00:26:28.360
And because I'm in front of a graphic design audience,
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I am going to tell you that this is not stencils.
393
00:26:33.750 --> 00:26:35.400
This is not spray paint.
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00:26:35.790 --> 00:26:39.040
This is all hand painted with a brush.
395
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:40.960
I did use a little bit of masking tape,
396
00:26:41.540 --> 00:26:45.760
but it is still hand painted
397
00:26:46.780 --> 00:26:48.440
and there's a lot of bricks there.
398
00:26:55.160 --> 00:26:57.880
I did not expect that, but thank you. Um,
399
00:26:58.860 --> 00:27:03.400
and it just makes me feel absolutely wonderful. And then
400
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:06.060
during the pandemic,
401
00:27:06.260 --> 00:27:11.020
I got a call about leading the charge to do a Black
402
00:27:11.020 --> 00:27:15.320
Lives Madam Mural in New York City. And I,
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00:27:15.400 --> 00:27:16.480
I jumped at the chance,
404
00:27:17.460 --> 00:27:21.650
and this is a giant mural
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00:27:22.360 --> 00:27:27.180
that honors the people that were killed at
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00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:29.420
the hands of gun violence.
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00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:35.120
And it was really emotional and it was really hot.
408
00:27:36.330 --> 00:27:40.190
And every time I look at this, I just think to myself,
409
00:27:40.900 --> 00:27:45.030
this is the least I could do to honor those people that are no longer with us.
410
00:27:49.450 --> 00:27:53.900
This is a three story mural that I was commissioned to make by the folks at
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00:27:53.950 --> 00:27:58.820
Footlocker and I did it digitally and then they printed it
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00:27:58.820 --> 00:28:00.140
on vinyl and installed it.
413
00:28:00.840 --> 00:28:05.300
But it was really exciting for me because it celebrated their 30th
414
00:28:05.330 --> 00:28:10.220
anniversary and it gave me a chance to get back in front of the computer
415
00:28:10.320 --> 00:28:15.260
and make design that celebrates the city that
416
00:28:15.300 --> 00:28:20.220
I love so much. And a funny thing happened after I walked,
417
00:28:20.320 --> 00:28:21.620
you know, I didn't mention this,
418
00:28:21.620 --> 00:28:25.220
but after I sort of walked away from graphic design to do other things,
419
00:28:26.620 --> 00:28:31.240
brands started calling because now we were in nostalgia time
420
00:28:31.900 --> 00:28:36.840
and they wanted to celebrate their brands by attaching their
421
00:28:37.540 --> 00:28:42.200
brands and their identity to what was happening in the street.
422
00:28:42.460 --> 00:28:45.400
And so Google approached me and they said,
423
00:28:45.400 --> 00:28:49.300
we wanna celebrate the 44th anniversary of hip hop.
424
00:28:49.710 --> 00:28:51.060
We're gonna give it a birthday,
425
00:28:51.760 --> 00:28:55.900
and we want you to design the Google Doodle that we are going to use.
426
00:28:56.200 --> 00:28:59.020
At the time, I did not know what a Google Doodle was,
427
00:29:00.480 --> 00:29:04.380
but they came to New York, we hung out in my studio, we talked,
428
00:29:04.780 --> 00:29:08.740
I learned all about Google Doodles, and I created this one.
429
00:29:08.800 --> 00:29:13.220
And I will tell you that this is the 50th anniversary of hip hop.
430
00:29:13.720 --> 00:29:14.740
If you get a chance,
431
00:29:15.070 --> 00:29:19.500
treat yourself to playing with this because it's interactive
432
00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:22.260
and you can learn everything there is to know about hip hop.
433
00:29:22.280 --> 00:29:24.620
You guys are all young, so you probably won't learn anything,
434
00:29:25.040 --> 00:29:29.860
but you will have a lot of fun learning how to scratch and dj. So check it out.
435
00:29:32.080 --> 00:29:36.980
Uh, this is the outdoor facade of the new,
436
00:29:37.250 --> 00:29:39.860
well, it's not new anymore cuz it was 2018,
437
00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:45.320
but to me it's still kind of new. The Levi's flagship store in Times Square,
438
00:29:45.590 --> 00:29:48.840
they commissioned me to do the whole facade,
439
00:29:49.910 --> 00:29:53.210
no art direction. They just said, do your thing,
440
00:29:53.840 --> 00:29:55.570
celebrate New York City.
441
00:29:56.110 --> 00:30:01.090
And so I used elements from their brand kit and
442
00:30:01.130 --> 00:30:06.120
I went in and I just had a good time and they gave me
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00:30:06.120 --> 00:30:08.800
a color palette and that was it. And, you know,
444
00:30:08.840 --> 00:30:12.400
I wanted to incorporate a lot of the collage work that I do today.
445
00:30:12.790 --> 00:30:17.560
Some of the logos I I I squeezed in a few things from back in the day that had
446
00:30:17.560 --> 00:30:20.920
not been realized in other campaigns that I'd worked on.
447
00:30:21.700 --> 00:30:24.240
And they were just a wonderful, wonderful client.
448
00:30:24.820 --> 00:30:29.520
And that's the other thing that I'm gonna talk about a lot
449
00:30:30.420 --> 00:30:34.400
is how wonderful the clients are that I work with that get it.
450
00:30:34.740 --> 00:30:36.800
I'm not saying that I have a lot of clients,
451
00:30:37.220 --> 00:30:41.800
but the handful that I do have feel like family to me.
452
00:30:42.230 --> 00:30:46.520
They understand what I do. They don't ask me to do anything outside of that.
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00:30:46.940 --> 00:30:51.800
And they give me a gigantic platform to have fun and to hire other people
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00:30:52.140 --> 00:30:55.320
to have fun and make work that matters.
455
00:30:56.420 --> 00:30:58.440
And Levi's is one of those brands.
456
00:31:02.030 --> 00:31:04.480
This is my buddy chef Marcus Samuelson.
457
00:31:04.660 --> 00:31:07.880
He is a world renowned rockstar chef.
458
00:31:08.860 --> 00:31:13.520
And this was a campaign we did with Bombay Bramble. And again,
459
00:31:14.140 --> 00:31:17.960
he just said, I have a project for you.
460
00:31:18.460 --> 00:31:23.010
The brand's gonna get in touch with you no art direction. They just said,
461
00:31:23.590 --> 00:31:28.010
do your thing. We just wanna celebrate freshness. And I says, okay,
462
00:31:28.010 --> 00:31:29.130
I know what to do with that.
463
00:31:29.430 --> 00:31:33.370
And so I created this giant mural that said fresh,
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00:31:33.950 --> 00:31:38.410
and it was supposed to evoke the freshness of berries
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00:31:39.150 --> 00:31:43.060
and really celebrating making people feel good.
466
00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:46.380
And so this is on hundred 25th Street in New York City,
467
00:31:46.680 --> 00:31:51.580
across the street from the world famous Apollo Theater. And we just had a blast,
468
00:31:51.710 --> 00:31:55.180
especially once Chef started making food after that. So,
469
00:31:58.460 --> 00:31:59.293
uh,
470
00:32:00.290 --> 00:32:05.100
last year I got a call from the folks at Hot Wheels and
471
00:32:05.130 --> 00:32:09.740
well Mattel and, uh, I'd love this Branson.
472
00:32:09.820 --> 00:32:10.700
I was a little kid.
473
00:32:11.570 --> 00:32:15.390
And for them to come back to me as an adult and say,
474
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:20.380
we have a project for you and we wanna collaborate,
475
00:32:21.040 --> 00:32:24.860
but again, no art direction, they just said, what do you wanna do? And I said,
476
00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:28.420
oh, I got a couple of ideas. I wanted to create
477
00:32:29.950 --> 00:32:31.190
a car, well,
478
00:32:31.310 --> 00:32:36.310
a van or a truck that reminded me of the mystery machine back in the
479
00:32:36.310 --> 00:32:40.200
day with Scooby and the gang. And so that's what this is an homage to.
480
00:32:42.540 --> 00:32:46.720
And it was their idea to incorporate my love graphic
481
00:32:47.430 --> 00:32:49.680
with Hot Wheels, because like they said,
482
00:32:49.870 --> 00:32:54.320
there's a lot of people that absolutely grew up with Hot Wheels and they love
483
00:32:54.320 --> 00:32:58.680
Hot Wheels. And I didn't imagine those two things coming together.
484
00:32:58.980 --> 00:33:03.320
But once we figured out a way to make it work, I got it.
485
00:33:03.620 --> 00:33:07.960
And it has made me so happy to see my past and present come together.
486
00:33:11.910 --> 00:33:16.570
So the one thing I did tell them was I wanna make
487
00:33:17.090 --> 00:33:19.730
a sculptural piece of the Hot Wheels logo.
488
00:33:20.630 --> 00:33:25.490
And so I flew to California and I
489
00:33:25.510 --> 00:33:30.130
met with their team and they showed me with this little 3D printer how they
490
00:33:30.130 --> 00:33:34.890
could fabricate the Hot Wheels logo in, you know, some sort of,
491
00:33:34.910 --> 00:33:36.530
you know, like plastic.
492
00:33:36.930 --> 00:33:40.370
I think this ended up being fiberglass.
493
00:33:40.670 --> 00:33:45.250
And we made a little model and within two months they shipped this
494
00:33:45.250 --> 00:33:49.090
massive crate to my studio with this beautiful
495
00:33:50.020 --> 00:33:51.930
white porcelain logo.
496
00:33:52.950 --> 00:33:57.690
And I created this piece in a couple of weeks and
497
00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:03.270
it just was so much fun and it just made me really
498
00:34:04.300 --> 00:34:08.590
believe in a brand that I had loved as a kid that really, you know,
499
00:34:08.590 --> 00:34:11.670
I didn't have any idea of quote unquote working with.
500
00:34:12.370 --> 00:34:14.690
And now here I am as an adult,
501
00:34:14.690 --> 00:34:18.250
working with this brand that I loved so much as a kid and I would've probably
502
00:34:18.250 --> 00:34:20.140
done it for free. Um,
503
00:34:21.160 --> 00:34:25.730
this is a mural that I did for a city harvest in New York City. Uh, well,
504
00:34:25.730 --> 00:34:30.210
I meant in Brooklyn, New York. In New York City. But again,
505
00:34:30.680 --> 00:34:33.010
they said, we have a piece of real estate.
506
00:34:33.060 --> 00:34:38.010
We're building this brand new facility that's gonna rescue food and
507
00:34:38.320 --> 00:34:39.210
help feed people,
508
00:34:39.550 --> 00:34:43.610
and we want you to be one of the artists that does a mural in this space.
509
00:34:44.470 --> 00:34:47.450
And they said, do whatever you want.
510
00:34:47.590 --> 00:34:50.050
And I thought about the mission of what they did,
511
00:34:50.070 --> 00:34:53.650
and they rescue food and they help people. And so I thought, you know what?
512
00:34:53.920 --> 00:34:57.010
This, this is a no-brainer. I'm gonna make, you know,
513
00:34:57.060 --> 00:34:59.730
fresh fruits and vegetables, and that's what I did.
514
00:35:00.230 --> 00:35:02.970
And this is all latex and it,
515
00:35:02.970 --> 00:35:07.170
it's much larger than it looks in this photograph. I should have had a,
516
00:35:07.210 --> 00:35:10.410
a picture of, you know, my, my son there or something.
517
00:35:10.430 --> 00:35:12.450
So you could see just how big it is.
518
00:35:13.030 --> 00:35:15.330
But it took me about three months to make that,
519
00:35:15.630 --> 00:35:18.250
mostly because they were putting the building together.
520
00:35:18.310 --> 00:35:22.450
And I had complete creative control in terms of, you know, working around my,
521
00:35:22.550 --> 00:35:26.520
you know, busy schedule. So let,
522
00:35:26.910 --> 00:35:27.960
like I mentioned before,
523
00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:32.730
this is the 50th anniversary of hip hop and I was commissioned
524
00:35:32.950 --> 00:35:34.650
by, uh,
525
00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:39.760
mass Appeal to create the official hip hop 50 logo for
526
00:35:40.990 --> 00:35:44.240
this year's event. And like a lot of you, you know,
527
00:35:44.240 --> 00:35:48.040
are probably aware of whenever you make designs,
528
00:35:48.060 --> 00:35:53.000
you probably do a bunch of different variations and oftentimes
529
00:35:53.030 --> 00:35:55.360
your favorite is not the one that gets picked.
530
00:35:56.770 --> 00:35:59.750
And that was the case with this as well. They,
531
00:35:59.810 --> 00:36:02.830
the one that they selected that I did was fine,
532
00:36:03.530 --> 00:36:08.470
but this was my favorite. And I decided, I'm gonna show you the one that I like.
533
00:36:15.450 --> 00:36:20.150
But, uh, I, I really felt honored that they asked me to create this logo.
534
00:36:20.570 --> 00:36:24.310
And they're, they're using a variation of it, you know,
535
00:36:24.650 --> 00:36:25.710
all around the place.
536
00:36:25.850 --> 00:36:28.790
So you'll probably see something online that looks similar.
537
00:36:32.520 --> 00:36:36.780
Uh, this might be the, uh, next to last slide.
538
00:36:37.400 --> 00:36:41.700
Uh, very recently I was asked to create, uh,
539
00:36:41.800 --> 00:36:46.180
an art installation to celebrate Hip Hop 50 for the Grammys.
540
00:36:47.040 --> 00:36:51.980
And I went to LA for the better part of a month and transformed
541
00:36:52.290 --> 00:36:56.380
this nightclub into what, you know,
542
00:36:56.500 --> 00:37:00.860
I imagined was like a space that we would've used back in the day to have
543
00:37:01.090 --> 00:37:05.700
parties and to perform and things like that. And so this was,
544
00:37:06.120 --> 00:37:10.660
uh, the Grammy house. And so it was myself, my friend, Jeannette Beckman,
545
00:37:11.270 --> 00:37:14.980
Danny c Clench, Jonathan Manion, they're all photographers.
546
00:37:15.020 --> 00:37:17.500
I should actually mention that. But, uh,
547
00:37:18.540 --> 00:37:23.160
it reminded me a lot of the old days just having an opportunity for myself and
548
00:37:23.160 --> 00:37:27.750
my friends to get together and just create art with nobody
549
00:37:27.750 --> 00:37:28.870
getting in the way.
550
00:37:29.570 --> 00:37:34.350
And we just had a blast and we got to celebrate the culture
551
00:37:34.450 --> 00:37:38.950
in a way that I would not have even imagined would be possible when we first
552
00:37:38.950 --> 00:37:43.640
started out. And we were all so very young. So when I look at that,
553
00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:44.840
I get really, really excited.
554
00:37:46.270 --> 00:37:50.930
I have to tell you that I have done so
555
00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:55.770
much more work than you can imagine in a lifetime and worked with so
556
00:37:55.770 --> 00:37:57.010
many wonderful people.
557
00:37:57.990 --> 00:38:02.570
And I have to sorta keep it moving when I'm up here because I really do get
558
00:38:03.220 --> 00:38:06.030
emotional and nostalgic when I look at those images.
559
00:38:06.370 --> 00:38:09.870
And I think about all of the other things that I could talk about,
560
00:38:10.040 --> 00:38:13.030
about all of these wonderful people that I have met.
561
00:38:13.850 --> 00:38:17.020
And I just want you to know that
562
00:38:18.550 --> 00:38:22.530
if you get an opportunity to work with somebody you love
563
00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:25.700
and to do something that you love,
564
00:38:27.240 --> 00:38:30.910
appreciate it in the moment. And I say that because, you know,
565
00:38:31.090 --> 00:38:32.150
we are all creatives.
566
00:38:32.690 --> 00:38:37.480
We are difficult to deal with sometimes we have people that are difficult to
567
00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:42.200
deal with sometimes, but you all, I'm, I'm really talking to the young ones,
568
00:38:42.700 --> 00:38:46.520
be in the moment. This is the best time of your life.
569
00:38:47.330 --> 00:38:51.590
You might make money, you'll spend money, you'll fall in love,
570
00:38:51.610 --> 00:38:54.430
you'll have a family, all of those things.
571
00:38:55.530 --> 00:38:59.990
But enjoy every single moment because there literally is,
572
00:39:00.090 --> 00:39:04.390
and I'm gonna say this in spite of what we are all talking about,
573
00:39:04.680 --> 00:39:08.310
there is no such thing as the future. Now is the future.
574
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:12.880
Enjoy it. I'm 61 years old,
575
00:39:13.280 --> 00:39:17.320
I started making art when I was, you know, in single digits.
576
00:39:18.260 --> 00:39:21.480
And I've had so many great things happen in my life.
577
00:39:22.140 --> 00:39:26.520
But the best thing that's happened in my life is that I'm 61 years old
578
00:39:27.720 --> 00:39:29.180
and you have to appreciate it.
579
00:39:34.680 --> 00:39:37.060
My name is, say Adams. Thank you for listening.
Cey Adams