Studio Visit: Andy Davis
I was down in San Diego dropping into the Sun Bum office to say g’day.
Parked out front was your quintessential surf-shaggin-wagon - dusty, sandy, boards strapped to the ceiling and salt water dripping out the door. I thought, whoever drives this thing is a damn legend.
I wandered into the building met by a shaggy blonde dude that had that is my car written all over his face. I introduced myself, “I’m Andrew” - “I’m Andy”. I quickly realized, this is Andy Davis. He is someone who’s art I have always admired and had heard the accolades of his legend for years. He was like “Oh man, we just collaborated on the Mattson record cover for Sonny’s Porch but you probably haven’t even seen it yet”. I hadn’t so he proceeded to show me what he’d done to my photos in which I was super pleasantly surprised.. after all they probably needed a little polish and the sensitivity of Andy as an artist was the perfect compliment.
It was pretty common knowledge that Andy did a lot of work with the brand but I had no idea that he actually had a studio on campus. I popped my head into his beautiful space and remarked “I’ve got my Hasselblad and a roll of film in the car, can we do a studio visit interview right now for Monster Children?”.
He obliged and here we are!
How far do you live from your studio?
I live about 5 minutes away in the car. I live in Leucadia so it’s really close which is cool and a lot of times nobody really here. Technically I’m an independent contractor but they (Sun Bum) let me have this space, so ever since covid I’ve been here and spend most of my time here. Whenever I’m not immersed in a project I’ll take a long walk down 2nd street that runs parallel to the beach or if it’s low tide I’ll head along the beach to get a bit of exercise.
It’s such a good studio space.
Yeah man, it’s pretty cool. For the most part I’ve always worked from home. For about 3 years pre covid I had partners that helped me run my business and I had a gallery in Solana Beach. It wasn’t intended to be a gallery but it just kind of turned out that way, but other than that I’ve just always worked out of a makeshift garage studio so having this space is really cool. Especially that it’s right on the beach and it’s this big beautiful building. The fridge is always stocked and everybody is super nice. There’s no way I could afford it so having it be wound into my deal, I’m super fortunate.
How did that even come about? You were already doing a bunch of stuff for Sun Bum right?
No actually, I was leaving my gallery cause the owner was selling the building during covid. I’d met the owner and founder of Sun Bum years before and he just happened to walk in the door and got my story of what was happening. He was like “we’re launching a new skin care line and I’d love if you’d consider helping do the packaging for it, looks like you need a place now and I can offer up studio space in our campus and there’s a big wall if you’d like to do a mural on it”. It just came at a pretty amazing time in my life where I was pretty unsure of a lot of personal stuff that was going on. It worked out and I’ve been here since and just signed another contract for another year. I’m going to be doing a little bit of different stuff but I’ll still be here and have the space and I feel pretty lucky to have that opportunity.
They’re also very luck to have you too.
Oh that’s super nice of you.
Seriously, I feel like your aesthetic in your artwork fits in with the brand so synonymously to the point that it feels like it was there all along. They must have had you in mind for a long time before Tom walked in that door.
Again, you know, you’ve worked with a bunch of clients. Sometimes things are really meant to be. Other times it can be a struggle and you really have to work on it to figure it out and learn from the things that didn’t work out. You always know what you know and know what you don’t know going into it. I just go back to that gratitude thing of, you know, I’m a 53 yr old dude that has had a pretty good life and I get to make art. I’m not good at a lot of other things, I don’t know how I’d function if I didn’t do this. To be able to keep going and try to stay prolific and try to stay in the moment is really significant to me. Even recently doing the Andy Neiblas thing with Quiksilver recently, that was a big deal for me.
How was that process?
Super fun. Working with friends. It’s best when I work with friends. You know that you’re going to enjoy the process which is the funnest part and it truly is a collaboration which is great. Sometimes, like I was saying, you work with a client and you don’t jive and don’t end up having your heart in it but you have to do it, those can be the interesting ones that sometimes turn out really cool and other times you’re not as happy with it but you learn from it.
I was stoked we got to collaborate on the Mattson 2’s record cover, that was a nice surprise, I didn’t even know we were collaborating.
That was great, it was so funny meeting you and just going “man I hope you don’t get upset that I butchered your beautiful photographs.”
No, you definitely added to them. Have you ever had a photographer turn around and be bummed that you turned their picture into a painting or in our case a bitmap.
No because usually I would be the one dealing with the photographer, so we would work together and come up with things together. There’s never been an issue, I just like to let them know how appreciative I am of what it is they’re doing. I like to be transparent about it if I’m going to go in and let them know, this is what’s happening. On that one I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen, I was just giving ideas.
I think that your gratitude towards your work comes out in the artwork that you make. Do you ever make darker artwork and imagery? Is there a scrap book where all the dark stuff comes out?
No, I think the dark stuff is deep rooted and in my head and I work through that on my walks and my meditative thing. I’ll listen to dark music, moody jazz or something super heavy and kinda fucked up. I have that schizophrenic tendency when it comes to music and the stuff that I like. I think with the art, I’ve learned over the years to keep it light and keep it fun - keep it happy. It’s like a safe place for me because life’s not really like that, but if I imagine it being like that than people can take away their own version of that. That is where it gets a little tricky because art’s so subjective. When you’re showing in galleries all over the world there’s different takes on it but I’ve learnt over the years that this is who I am and to be true to that. To the people that connect with it, I feel really lucky and fortunate that they support me and it makes them feel something positive. I’m not trying to be selfish I just don’t do enough for others, so if I do that and even if one person tells me they love seeing a painting every day, or a print or even apparel that you designed, something that made them laugh or feel some joy means a lot. Often I am thinking “man I’m not doing enough”.
I’m sure you’ve got your own personal jokes in the paintings.
For sure, some of it’s really funny to me, it’s not deep at all and I think that’s why some people are drawn to it. It’s not too complex and not going to make anyone overthink things, in fact it’s kind of the opposite where I’m taking them away from reality for a little bit.
What music do you listen to while you’re working away.
Oh man, I listen to all kinds of stuff. I’m not a podcast guy, I don’t like listening to people talk all the time cause I figure that’s all I hear anyways, so I really like just getting lost. It can range, I’ll be listening to instrumental jazz, Herbie Hancock.. it’s crazy what Spotify has done and I didn’t buy into it at first and then it became really convenient and now sharing playlists with friends and stuff, it’s all over the place. It’s an endless rabbit hole and I’m really enjoying it. There used to be a radio station here that played a 3 hour reggae special every Sunday and I love reggae, but I can’t listen to it all the time, so now I’ve got this routine of listening to reggae all day on Sunday and then I don’t listen to it any other time during the week. So this morning I’ve just been listening to Augustus Pablo radio on my Spotify. I can’t function without having music on.
Looking at your instagram, you’re always posting record covers. Do you still pull out the record player or is all on Spotify in all honesty?
I didn’t have any vinyl for a super long time. I had them when I was a kid, when I was really young, cause I grew up in the 70’s so that was my first form of having it and I loved going to the record store and holding them in my hands and putting it on and not knowing what was going to be. The romance of that was really great. As things went on I got distracted more by TV, then there was cassettes and making mixtapes and then high school, getting a car and wanting a cassette or cd player. So I didn’t revisit vinyl until about 4 years ago now, every month buying a couple of records. I have friends that have thousands of records and I felt like I missed the boat, but little by little I’ve been collecting things I know I love. Every morning when I have my coffee I put a record on and every night before I go to bed I put one on, so when I’m at home I’ve got it on.
How did your brand ‘Free’ come about and where is it going?
Short and sweet with it.. When I was in my early 20’s I was trying to go to junior college but I’d had a really tough time with school always. I was thinking in college I could just take art classes and things I wanted and maybe something would spark but it didn’t, it still seemed too academic, I was too distracted and didn’t have any self discipline or patience for it. So I dropped out. I had a friend that was going to La Jolla Academy of Arts. I talked to my mum about it and she mentioned my grandparents had some money for me to go to school. I figured out how to enroll which was even a stretch for me cause anything with responsibility I was lost. I enrolled but I didn’t even look at what the curriculum was, I just thought I’d learn to draw and paint properly and get to work on projects and it’d be cool. I went in the first day and they had computers on the desk and explained they were going to teach us how to use photoshop and Illustrator and for the first project we’re going to help rebrand this mall that’s in San Diego. It’s going to get a new identity and you’re going to figure out how to do that. I immediately hit the eject button. Anything to do with a computer was math and it was all super technical and scared me to death. I think I was there for 2 days and then I just went and asked if I could get a refund and luckily they did refund me. At the time I was just working at a little surf shop and I thought, I’m gonna start a clothing brand. I didn’t know what I was doing or how I was going to do it but I loved the name ‘Free’. I was really inspired by skating and really into snowboarding. I was traveling wherever I could drive, we’d drive to Baja to go surf, go all over the states to go snowboard and we’d skate anywhere. Started seeing tons of bands and really had a freedom with me and my friends that I’d never had. Finally we were all able to do whatever we wanted, which was amazing. I had a friend who was working at the time at a skate shop in Oceanside and he was going to Palomar college and doing a screen printing class, making stickers and tees and stuff, that friend happened to be Ken Block who founded Droors and DC. I’d known Damon Way through him too as we had mutual friends and they had just started ‘8 Ball’ which was the very first thing they did, pre Droors and DC. There was all this creative shit happening and I’d found out I had this money for school that I wasn’t gonna use so I thought, I’m gonna start this clothing brand called Free and that’s how it all started.
What are you doing with he brand now?
Nothing (laughs). People that knew the band from back then were always asking me “are you ever gonna do anything with that again?” Which I thought probably not. But I relaunched my website again and I had a friend that has a screen print shop, so the first thing we decided to do was roll out a few little ‘Free’ capsules. They’re just super small limited runs of stuff.
It seems to sell out super quickly. I’m on the site right now trying to buy a tee shirt and everything is gone.
There’s a new range about to drop in two weeks, everything is at the printers right now. What size are you, I’ll hook you up.