Brothers in Sticker Art: dRim
Stickers in the street from: 2000
City: Žilina (Komix city)
State: Slovakia
1 - Introduce your sticker art project
My stickers reflects people and friends I have met in my life, city I have been living in and all the situations and small things from my life. No big deal for the rest of the world but the whole world of mine.
I have started making stickers during high school (years 1999-2003). A friend of mine had a father working at the post office, so she had free access to clear mail stickers for envelopes, on which I started tagging and did some freehand drawings, than I made some characters and tried to do some cutouts. It was a great time, all of the things were handmade, each peace was original (due to economical reasons at that time and lack of contacts and material knowledge). Soon after I found a magic of coloured self-adhesive vinyl wallpapers, stencils and ended up with graphics software. The most important part of my work was meeting with a writer and my homeboy Nois12 (a.k.a. Nes), who gave me plenty of useful tips and allowed me to produce tons of vinyl stickers and other stuff. GOD BLESS YOU, NES!!!
I focus on stencil-look, simply coloured stickers, highlighting the contrasts, showing a main character occasionally combined with simple keywords. I started with a picture I have taken of the people I have met, places I have been to, or things I have seen, then I use some graphics software to simplify the message from the photo scene. On the other side I like also simple hand drawn characters. Almost like childish drawings. So theese are two fundamental pillars of my work.
My Character with big teeth was born during my studies at the university. Once I took a picture of a training dummy for dentists (that has removable plastic teeth) and had only “his” canines in the mouth. It looked like a shocked vampire. At that time I was already learning with photoshop and experimenting with stencils, contrasts and playing with photos I have taken. And then …”pufff”… a character was born :D
Stickers are great medium to spread the information all over the world, leaving a personal tag practically everywhere you are and are easy to make. I don’t leave my home without some in my pockets.
I don’t take it as a project or a mission. I just want to share my point of view and maybe someone can take some good from it. Make people smile.
2 - In what creative ways have you collaborated with other sticker artists?
I have never done any sticker collabs, but I am opened for any calls. Feel free to ask.
3 - Have you ever organized an event about sticker art? If not, you can write something about an event you have attended
I was attended mostly at Stelleconfuse’s projects as a little part of "The Big Hearts...". Since last summer I started sending out stickerpacks worldwide for any strickershows. Its pretty good organized on Facebook, where anyone can put a call for sticker artists for his own event. A great way to spread stickers worldwide. Hoping that one day I will organized my own event.
4 - What are your future projects in the world of sticker art?
I will see what life will bring me. I hope I will meet more new good hearted people with a smile on the face, that I can stickerise :D. Make a sticker event in my hometown. New designs are still waiting to be vectorised and printed, when I will have some more time for it. Had a lot of material unfinished, but a little time to make everything here and now.
5 - What sticker artists do you admire or are important to you?
There are many of the sticker artists that I respect and admire their work. But in my life there were a few that really influent my work….. Bones, Asterix, Nois12 (a.k.a. Nes) and Stelleconfuse …these are the brave four that affect my work mostly. Bones for his simple freak cat character stickers that flooded the Komix city theese days (according to them I made the Angel and Devil tagged characters). Asterix for his awesome big cutout stickers from the colored self-adhesive vinyl wallpapers, that started to show up in the city some days ago, but stopped after few years. I don’t know why, never met him but hope he is fine. Nois12, for helping me to bring my stuff to a whole new level, being a real friend, despite we don’t know each other for that long. And at last , but not least Stelleconfuse for what he is doing, international events, collaborations, being like a glue of the whole stickerart scene, real Il Padrino!
Of course there are many other artists, that I like their work, but it will be a huge list here and I hope I will find another brothers and sisters thanks to this wonderful project.
Contatcs:
Email: drim84stickers@gmail.com
Facebook: DRim Stickers
