The anonymous tagger/ artist / skater known as "Neck Face" was born in 1984, in Stockton, CA. He created his nick name and works anonymously because he believes this keeps the public interested in his work. His career in tagging began when he was in middle school and continued into his high school years. In interviews he always states that he hated school and that he never learned anything in the later years of his education, because by that point he had stopped caring. The only thing he credits school with is letting him explore his creative side. "I think I learned more in school in the earlier years than the later years. I think if you are a teacher you should teach the kid as much as you can in the beginning years of school." As a teen he began to gain notoriety with his tagging/graffiti by plastering his self made stickers all over the city of Sacramento. The easily-recognizable scribble, “Neck Face” with accompanying random quotes, not to mention his awkward demonic monsters and larger than life hairy arms and clawed-hands lurking ominously around the sides of buildings became widely noticed. This spread to other surrounding cities like Stockton and Lodi, CA. After high school Neck Face attended The School of Visual Arts in New York City for 2 years before dropping out.
When describing Neck Face's style the words dark, creepy, and violent come to mind. He credits his early exposure to horror films for being the inspiration to much of his work. He believes it to be a kind of comic relief. "I have a lot of favorite horror films. Two main ones that I like are Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street. I’ve watched a lot of horror films now, but those two are the ones that fucked with me when I was a lil’ bastard." Metal music is also an influence, especially King Diamond, which he calls his father and describes the discovery of this artist as a kind of awakening. The fact that his family had a dark sense of humor also influenced the direction in which Neck Face's art has evolved. He says the reaction he gets from his violent images are what he likes. Especially when he sees people laugh at his violent pieces , then look around and wonder if it is ok to laugh at it. Neck Face wants people to walk away from his art entertained. If they had a bad day or are going through some drama he want the viewer to at least for a bit, forget their problems. After dropping out of art school Neck Face made New York his permanent address. His most famous public art piece once appropriated the sign on an abandoned storefront of the store "My Old Lady" in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood ; he painted under that "...♥'s Neck Face". Recent renovations to the storefront, however, have removed the sign.
The attention Neck Face received from his tagging/graffiti , allowed him to move his work off the streets and into art galleries. Galleries that have shown his artwork include the New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles, the Luggage Store in San Francisco, the Dactyl Foundation in New York, and the OHWOW Gallery in Miami. And he is just as surprised as the public is that he got such an opportunity. "I guess it’s natural because I kinda just fell into it. I wasn’t going around showing my work to galleries and shit, it just happened, but I’m very thankful that it happened to me and I know that I’m lucky". Showing in Galleries have also allowed him to become more mainstream and he recently made a deal with Vans and Baker Skateboards to have his art on the companies merchandise. Since Neck Face has also been a skateboarder his whole life aside from painting this was a great and very fitting merger.
Aside from just doing tagging/graffiti Neck Face says, "I like to work with all mediums; I like to keep it movin’ around here. I get bored with stuff real quick, so I like to try out new shit. But you know what they say; “Trying is the first step to failing.” He has recently begun using water colors and making metal masks. In addition to appearing across billboards and buildings in the United States, Neck Face's work can be seen internationally in places such as Melbourne, Sydney, Copenhagen and Tokyo. While researching this artist It's obvious fans of his work have an aquiered taste and that not everyone will like it. Neck Face is aware of this but he doesn't care. He currently lives and has a studio in New York.
BTW*I tried to contact Neck Face through his myspace page to get some of his input into my assignment but he never replied*
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You had a great artist overview. I think our artists are very similar in the way that they were graffiti artists and they had artwork in a gallery. I think it is really cool that your artist, kinda in a way, "grew up." He seems like he was "hardcore" then almost matured with his artwork and took it to a gallery. I really like that he had progress. He didn't just go one way and stick to it.
ReplyDeleteMy artist is Keith Haring. He also reached out to the community and had meaning with his artwork. He like the community to see his piece and know exactly what he meant. Great work!