When asked about himself and his work, Popdada responded sardonically so:
My plan is to become Internet famous like a Kardashian, with my brilliant Instagram portfolio, and then just sign work that my employees produce and make my living that way.
I feel like I’m still in the arts a little, as long as people keep liking what I’m doing. I started this as an experiment to see if I could get a hundred followers just doing something that makes me happy. An audience of one, all that mattered was that I liked the piece and I’ve tried to maintain that. We are kind of at the start of something new here; you can now carry so much creative power in your hand. I’m a phone artist I guess.
How did you get into the medium of cut and paste art? How has technology changed the way you compose these pieces?
I worked at Christie’s as an art handler, in the modern and impressionist department, and I really got exposed to Kurt Schwitters, I had seen his work before in photos, but, they didn’t do him justice.
I had always dabbled in silk screening and Xerox transfer so it was a fairly easy move to cut and paste.
As far as the technology today, it’s…indescribable, I’m amazed at the number of free little apps just out there, basically just daring us to be creative with them. My studio is my phone, I carry it everywhere. Everyone can be an artist, a photographer, a DJ.
What was your time as an art handler in NYC like?
Christie’s was huge fun when I started; it was still an English company then, before some corporate thing took over. We use to do “summer hours” and have 2 weeks off at Christmas.
It was crazy too, running around New York with a Picasso tucked under my arm. Holding a Jasper Johns or Pollock.
Do you think there’s a difference in quality when comparing your work from the days of cut and paste to what you do now digitally?
I actually tried to do some old school Analog cut and paste recently. And I was like damn! Why can’t I make this dinosaur any size I want? Why can’t I flip him in the other direction?
Does the digital work feel more fleeting because of its ease of production when compared to analog?
There is certainly an ease to digital, but fleeting is not the word.
I know it feels that way sometimes, like sandcastles, especially since I don’t save anything for very long. I just don’t have the room on my phone.
But, the Internet is forever. This digital trash will be floating around indefinitely.
How do you come up with your work? Is there any theme or meaning you try to put into them?
I grew up in the golden age of record covers; you had these great artists and photographers working on these things. The cover was a huge part of what sold albums. So I love the little square format of Instagram, I’m making little album covers, that was my dream job as a kid, but it doesn’t exist anymore. We lost something there.
Then the rest is just whatever I’m thinking about that day, I seem to do a lot with sexual innuendo, and bad movie posters.
Other times I’m just working through influences, Rauschenberg, Duchamp, Dali
Video Games posted July 19th, 2014
Images Courtesy of Popdada