Artwork Portfolio | Resume | Daniel, By Stephen

First of all, theres no way im writing another bio in the third person, like most people tend to do.
A. im clearly writing this myself; i dont live under some grand delusion that anyone is honestly going to believe i have been researched and documented for historys sake by some writer from the new yorker or whoever. though i wouldnt be terribly surprised if i end up in some "daniel danger meets the cast of Friends" fanfiction.
B. theres a really good chance halfway through this i would forget to write in the third person and would lapse back into the first, effectivly confusing absolutely everyone. And given the fact that ive existed under a moniker since i was 14, that would just add fuel to the fire of my own mis-identity.

i literally grew up at art shows, so my outcome was pretty much decided from the get-go and im not one to fight such things. my parents were both painters, professional potters, photographers, printers, and art teachers, so im pretty sure all this is fairly genetic. the concept of making a craft and then finding a market for it was literally drilled into my eight year old brain, because theoretically, i was old enough then to be turning a profit. hell, my brother had his first wholesale order when he was 10. i too had dreams of junior sized oak desks, and junior sized filing cabinets full of junior sized sales invoices, but legos were so damn distracting and thusly my various marketing schemes rose and fell quickly with marginal success. mind you, i was eight, so i didnt have any property for anyone to repossess and no wife to leave me in my failure.

my work as an artist, whether it be visual or musical, is entirely about release and the obfuscating documentation of my thoughts; getting them out and getting them down in a manner that people can visit and relate to, but only i will ever truly understand in its original intention. its all entirely autobiographical, but just in a very methodical code of metaphors and imagery. the presence of ghosts, quiet tall trees, extended frail and fragile figures, tigerlilys, and moths, are all thematically defined. im a sleepy kid who chooses to see my surroundings in a way that is more in line with modern quasi-surrealism, i.e., what i wish would happen in order to make things marginally more exciting and beautiful. i wish power lines would randomly fall over and pull others along with it, i wish people would get out of their cars and float away, and i wish one of my ghosts would throw a telephone through an open window. i see my work as either a documentation of these moments, or a deeply coded personal memoir.

at the same time, im deathly afraid of interpretation, given that at multiple times in my past, total strangers have felt the need to involve themselves in personal matters in my life based on their limited knowledge and horribly incorrect interpretions of my work. and no, as much as youd like to think youre in the right, that four sentence piece of prose is not about how i hate my girlfriend, so please dont email her and tell her as such. if my work takes on its own meaningful meaning for you, then thats amazing, but remember that its yours.

all that being said, ive had a lot of shitty things happen to me. all this is how i get along after the fact. any artist will agree that what we do is theraputic, to me its something of a prescription.

i did the art school thing, as many do, graduating in 2005 for RIT with a BFA in illustration. i spent most of my time there ghosting around the studios, keeping to myself and making a complete mess of pretty much everything. professors would constantly harp on me about why i kept such a low profile, wasnt in the "illustrators guild", and never once entered my work in any shows. i usually told them i had simply forgot, but in reality, i really didnt care all that much. i worked in a small art gallery for over 2 years. i existed in the gallery so my work could stay home and sleep in. i think if a real gallery ever calls me up and is interested in doing a show, im just going to show up with a pillow and some crayons and take up residence for 2 months. try to bring some crackers if you stop by, ill likely be quite hungry.

during that time i started doing considerably more silkscreen work, something i initially learned while working at a tshirt print shop after high school. if there was a job involving chemicals, water, and dark rooms, that job was mine. for a half hour each day the people in charge left for their lunch break, and that meant me and my best friend had 30 minutes to print whatever we could. this mostly resulted in alot of bootleg band tshirts and large scale ink spills. it also resulted in a strong working knowledge of the tricky art of silkscreening; which turned out to be somewhat useful, given that its now how i pay by bills.

my work has been featured, and possibly discussed, in DIW magazine, Gasoline magazine, Frank Kozik's Panda Meat I and II, Dark Horse Comics' Fistful of Rock book, and a few other random things that i may have seen once. Ive got a good number of album covers under my belt, a good amount for bands i loved and was totally fanboyish about. id estimate my prints are in over 400-500 private collections. ive shown in a few major art shows along side some of the biggest names in modern and rock art, which is honestly pretty awesome. im the young kid in the industry whos getting a lot of attention, and im fucking thrilled.