first real break I think. Mishka has given me so many things. Mishka has taken me to Japan, they’ve given me art shows, they’ve given my sister art shows, they’ve given my friends art shows, they made a jacket with my name on it “The Gazin Bomber.” My art has appeared on different t-shirts that I’ve designed, sticker, keychains, three dimensional rubber things, and toy packaging all through Greg and Mikhail and the various people who have worked there. They even made me their copy-writer for a while — I had so many different jobs at Mishka. I had a web series called The Creepy Touch for ten episodes. The whole series ended with me getting beaten to death by my friends in Cerebral Ballzy in a remake of that scene from Kids where they all beat up that guy in Union Square Park until he dies. If you want to see me getting beaten to death by the members of Cerebral Ballzy, that’s online. Mishka is an amazing family. If you haven’t bought something from Mishka lately, go buy something from Mishka why don’t you. It’s a fine company and they deserve your damn money more than you do. Then I got a Threadless shirt at some point!
You mentioned a while ago that LiveJournal was something a lot of artists were using at the time to share their work and develop a community? What role did LiveJournal play in your life at the time? LiveJournal was amazing… Not really, but it was good enough. Oddly it was better than Tumblr, I think, by a longshot. Everyone just jumped to Tumblr, and left behind LiveJournal. I guess they also jumped to Blogspot too. LiveJournal was more comfy to use. It was more natural. I didn’t like not having one and people stopping using it. Ines Estrada was on it, Lala Albert, Michael DeForge, some other artist I think posting their stuff on there. It was an exciting time to be on the internet, haha. I also learned how to write better because my other friends, who were as mean and judge mental as I if not more so, would razz me for bad writing or for having too many typos and errors. It helped me tighten up a little bit, becasue I was consciously writing for an audience who would get annoyed with me if I spouted bull shit ideas or wrote boringly. It’s certainly how I learned how to write more than school at all. The criticism of my peers helped a lot. I would write about whatever. Sometimes I would put up
“I made all of these Threadless designs, and none of them got picked. But I had a portfolio of 30 t-shirts, and I sent them to every skateboard company, t-shirt company, and street wear brand.”
120 JULY•PATIENCE