Entertainment
Spending the Summer Being Yoda: The Quirk and Twerk of Artist Michael C. Hsiung
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]T[/dropcap]wenty-eight year old artist, Michael C. Hsiung is a funny dude. After picking up on that, one will inevitably notice the illustrations that he dreams up seem to exist as a quasi-literal extension of himself. Today, Hsiung resides in Eagle Rock, California with his wife Rachael and makes art everyday. Hsiung’s work could be described as a comical iceberg. While his illustrations are minimalistic in appearance, all it takes is a quick glance under the surface to see the scale of conceptualism at play. It takes a skilled artist to communicate the way Hsiung’s characters are able to do especially without using any gimmicks. His drawings and his paintings are his inner most thoughts, worries, and beliefs disguised by eye-catching lines and patterns and then cloaked with a little comedic relief. Light hearted coupled with a slightly dark undertone, Hsiung and his art are one in the same. CULTURE was pleased to have the opportunity to interrupt Hsiung and his practice of doing at least one drawing a day, to speak with the artist himself.
Where do you draw your inspiration?
The inspirations for my drawings come from various sources– such as personal experiences, daydreams, my imagination, antiques and collectibles, scrimshaw, ledger art, Greek vase art, books, mythology, Viking, Celtic history, dungeons & dragons, alien and space documentaries, mushroom experiences, skateboarding, music, weird friends, weird movies, and pretty much anything that seeps into my subconscious mind. I often mish-mash a lot of inspiration into a drawing or learn about an interesting tidbit that I like to use as the seed of the drawing.
I once read a tidbit about how a man was kept alive on a ship in the 18th century inside a vat of beer for some reason maybe as a prisoner and lived for a few days, until they found him dead drunk. Of course the crew didn’t want to waste any of it, so they partied the next day and drank all the beer after removing his body. And this story also reminded me the story about how Admiral Lord Nelson’s body was preserved in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh after the Battle of Trafalgar. Anyhow, this is sort of what inspired some of my mermen and mermen in a bottle drawings.
What are your thoughts and/or beliefs on the medical cannabis movement taking place in the United States?
I’m really excited about the medical cannabis movement in the United States–its great to finally decriminalize cannabis and expel the myths about it as a “drug.” I believe that cannabis can help people in a positive way. For myself, I was a hyper active kid with an extremely short tension span. . . and as I became an adult, that hyper activeness became stress and well, just my thoughts and my mind run wild and fast. I find that cannabis for me not only helps me focus, slow down, but it also relaxes me to a point that I don’t get stressed out and can handle things with a bit more ease. So for me it has positive effects as I think it does for lots of folks. Of course, I’d like to see it completely legalized in the United States.
In your opinion, what’s your greatest accomplishment to date?
Gosh, my greatest accomplishment to date. . . I guess it would include a lot of last year’s projects for me – I did an exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) as well as worked on three drawings designs for Blunt Umbrella’s Ad campaign which managed to win both Best Award – New Zealand’s Best Graphic Designs (Gold) and a Silver Trophy for Print for Spikes Asia. I also got to work with Burton snowboards on a design, which will be out 2015/2016 . . . super excited about that.
But this year started pretty cool because I had a piece as part of the set in Comedy Central’s Workaholics (love that show)!
What are you trying to communicate with your art?
In my work, I illustrate my own imaginative world, a place where creatures of fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and lullabies, which are apart of our childhood and adult culture, interact – be it warring or not.
My work addresses gender roles/gender assignment given to mermen, the fragility of unicorn/panda dynamics, domestic violence between centaurs and unitaurs and the underlying threads of violence and danger that underpin all other-worldly societies.
What’s something not many people know about you?
I spent a whole summer being Yoda and wearing a Yoda mask and walking crouched down in a black robe. It was probably the best summer of my life.
