MCA of Evil Design (U.S.A.)

Brother in Sticker Art: MCA of Evil Design

Stickers in the street from: 1991

City: Boston

State: Massachusetts - U.S.A.

1 - Introduce your sticker art project

Hello Hello StelleConfuse! First off, thanks to you for asking me to be part of your wonderful WhiteBooks interview blog series - good stuff & I do appreciate it.

So yes, Lets get it going.... Evil Design was born out of an early design I did that was based off of the police mug shot of Paul Reubens, the amazing actor/comedian/performance artist that was & is most well know for his alter ego Pee Wee Herman. I was & I still am a big Pee Wee fan, I saw the Big Adventure movie at the Dartmouth Mall with my mom & sister when it first came out & I would get up early to watch & record Pee Wee's Playhouse when it was on Saturday Mornings (I think it came on at like 10am) I'd jump outta bed at like 9:55 & race to the VCR. I think my dad thought there was maybe something wrong with me - getting all excited to watch a 'children's show' & even taping it to re-watch it later on, but hey - what can ya do. So yea, when he got arrested - It seemed to be blown way outta proportion - like why else are you going to an Adult Theater?! Anyways - I cut out his mug shot out of the newspaper, blew it up on a Xerox & then messed with it & turned him into the Devil. He was being vilified & people were burning Playhouse toys & stuff - It just seemed crazy. So, I turned him into the devil & then write EVIL under the portrait. I know this was a long rambling story, but this is where the name Evil Design came from. I made tees of this design (& Stickers!), they did well (I sold em at the TAANG! store in Cambridge - shout out to Sunshine Boy), I decided to make more tees & stickers w/different designs & I decided 'EVIL' was a good name to wrangle 'em all under. So there ya go.... that was the start.

My early stickers were of this Paul Reubens as the Devil design & then other random things - I'd go to the library, Xerox stuff, mess with it - add Evil to it somewhere & then tape up a full 8.5" x 11" piece of paper that I could bring it to a copy store to get it copied on to sticker paper. I'd do evil stickers of Edith Massey, Mister Rogers puppets, ummm random drawings - I was kind of all over the place, but they were fun to do. The full sheets would be cut up with scissors as I watched movies & stuff at night.

Ok so, jump ahead a bit & we'll get to the Evil Ape, which I think is my most well known character due to the fact that I ended up making vinyl toys of this guy with the Hong Kong toy co. Toy2R. Toy2R made tons of really cool toys - I did most of my toys with them - the last being the QeeZilla Kid & I wish they got back into it & made more of my designs into toys, but hey whaddya gunna do. I know this is a sticker focused interview & I apologize for going all over the place - but it all relates i think, right? So if any toy co.'s wanna collab - get at me.

Back to the Evil Ape, he was born out of my nightly drawing sessions - I would (& pretty much still do) draw every night. I usually would have no idea of what I was going to draw, I'd just go & see what came of it. I'd be influenced by things I saw that day, music I heard or was listening to at the time as well as TV/Movies & all that stuff - ya know? "What are your inspirations?" = everything, right?! So yea, one night I drew an Ape kid & thought it was cool - so I just kept going with it & drawing different variations of my new ape guy. Stickers of those guys were very very soon to follow.

I drew my Ape kid as well as human kids & made comics & stickers with the kids saying song lyrics, movie quotes, misheard bits of conversation & anything else that I thought was funny. My main 'message' or reason behind making so many stickers was just to entertain myself  & also to make folks laugh. Not everyone got the references, but the ones that did - seemed to really appreciate them. It's kinda weird to think most of these or the birth of it was way before the internet existed - crazy right?, but yea. I was living in Dorchester at the time & working in Boston (Cheers bar anyone?) - so as I wandered around I'd put up stickers & I'd hit Tower Records & put stickers in magazines & then I'd stop into Newbury Comics & always leave stickers on the counter where there'd be flyers & stuff - It's funny 'cause even still I'll get messages from folks saying they used to always get my stickers at Newbury - which is cool. But yea, if I saw someone pick up a sticker of mine, read it & kinda laugh to themselves - that was it.. - all I was going for really.

As far as making stickers - I would draw them on labels, get them Xeroxed on sticker paper, I made a bunch with Print Gocco on sticker paper for awhile, I've screen printed them - basically anyway to make 'em, I'd make em. In Boston, I met a friend of a friend that would then later on become a friend of mine that worked overnights at a Copy Cop (this place was open 24 hours a day) - they'd be printing/copying all night long - so yes I met him & he started making stickers for me, stacks of em. I'd show up at like 2-3AM & go wild. First we'd do just regular Xerox, there was Black, but also red, green & blue xerox which was cool. Then we were able to do color xerox's on sticker paper - which was awesome. During my peak of making & mailing out stickers, they were mainly all color xeroxed characters of sticker paper. They were awesome - I'd put ads in zines (usually free classifieds) like Slug & Lettuce  - telling people to mail me something in trade for Evil stickers. I was able to mail folks huge packs because I had a good hook-up on getting them made. Thats how I got a bunch out all over the place & I started doing my own zines & I was adding them in with those too. These were just ways to get my artwork out to kids that may be down with what I was doing.

How was my character born? I think I kind of explained this in the previous questions - but short answer: Pee Wee/Paul Reubens pretty much helped start 'EVIL' & I'd say my most well know character, the Evil Ape, was born of a mix of my love for Grape Ape cartoons & of course those of his fellow saturday morning friends (mostly of the 70's & 80's) and also the Planet of the Apes movies, cartoons & the TV show as well as one of my other super favorite shows 'Lancelot Link the Secret Chimp' as well as Zippy the chimp & also that movie with Tony Danza & Danny DeVito called 'Going Ape!' & of course Clyde & Bear & Dunston - but yes all that stuff helped build my love of Apes. I had to draw my version & add my 'Evil Ape' to the long line of famous apes. No matter how minor or low on the list the Evil Ape may be in the History of Famous Monkeys (cartoon or otherwise) he's on the list!

The message behind my project: Evil! Satan! Beelzebub! - naw, just kidding. Although some folks thought that. I always used 'Evil' in an ironic way or maybe more so the way a neighborhood kid's mom would describe 'Diary of a Madman' era Ozzy as 'EVIL!' but yea - My message or meaning or reason was always to just make people laugh, smile, crack -up, look confused, ask a friend, learn about a new song or movie - i dunno, pretty basic stuff. Fun.

I make stickers all kindsa ways - lately I've mainly been drawing them on postal labels. If ya look up the hashtag MCApostals on instagram you'll see a bunch of em. I actually have hung onto the last few hundred or so - I might scan 'em and make a zine or something, I dunno yet. But yea, they are fun to do. I pretty much draw all my characters on paper, then scan in to color in illustrator usually (exciting stuff right!?). But any kinda sticker is a good sticker. I've had them made for me by friends or just sticker making companies, I've screen printed some, gocco'd some, xeroxed stuff, stamped the 'hello my name is' ones - all that stuff is good. Any sticker is a good sticker.

Why I spread my art with stickers? Good questions - Why!? Why!? All these damn stickers! Umm, I dunno - I somehow stumbled on making some way back & just really liked the feeling of like having my own type of 'baseball cards' to give out & or trade with other sticker / art / zine makers. I collected baseball cards when I was younger (Carl Yastrzemski was my favorite player) & i also would collect all the other non-sports cards like Star Wars cards & stuff  - and what was always the ones you wanted when you opened the packs? - The stickers! C'mon, getting a Jawa sticker! - so good. So yes - making my own stickers, was kinda like my own cards so to speak  - ya know? They are an easy, unpretentious way to share / giveaway / showcase your art without having to be in a gallery or coffee shop or whatever. Sidenote: is was cool to later on in the journey of making art to be included in one of the later series of the 'Art Hustle' card trading card sets, they didn't make me a 'sticker card', but having my own trading card was pretty cool - so thanks Art Hustle! 

Umm, this project of sticker making? ... Always has been character based, influenced by many, many things - such as Geraldo getting hit with a chair, Rip Torn, that little old guy that was Benny Hill's side-kick, Mr.T, Shaft, Dolemite, Superfly, Foxy Brown, Holiday in Cambodia, Neil Diamond, What's New Pussy Cat, Deputy Dawg, The San Diego Padre's Chicken, Marty Scorscesse, Bobby Deniro, Junk Yard Dog, J.J. Jackson, Pineapple Now'n'Laters, Kareem Abdul Jabar in the movie Airplane, Paul Reubens at the movies, Mr. Green Jeans, Dr. Hook's 'Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk', The Banana Splits, Darby Crash, Public Enemy, Donald Duck swearing in duck language, Good Times, The Three Men and a Baby Boy, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, Edith Massey, Flounder, Mushmouth, Gary Coleman, Tootie, Jack Tripper's friend Larry, Ozzy, Lux Interior, Earth, Wind & Fire, Harvey Keitel in The Bad Lieutenant, NWA, Female Trouble, that 'Where's the Beef?' lady, Raging Bull, Prison tattoos, Larry, Daryl & Daryl, Shemp, Jeff Spicoli, Chris Farley, Ted from Mary Tyler Moore, Ol'Dirty Bastard, Bruce Lee, The Fat Boys, Car Wash, Froggy from The Little Rascals and Hot Buttered Soul. I love drawing/creating a character that did not exist 20 minutes earlier - it's like they are all out there, floating around just waiting to get channeled down into your pen.

2 - In what creative ways have you collaborated with other sticker artists?

I really do enjoy collaborating. Creative ways? The collabs were the pretty regular ol' 'you draw a bit & I draw a bit' style. I've collaborated with Magmo, Evoker, Chris RWK, EKIEM, Brian Butler, Abe Lincoln Jr., Bomit, Wrecks (& maybe a few others, my memory is slippin') on printed stickers - Like we both would mash up soem sort of cool design & get stickers made. In the Brian Butler instance - he actually did his version of my Evil Ape, Chris' Robot, Abe Lincoln Jr.'s Char & an Evoker guy - (it's really cool) & he made some stickers of it - but I still consider this a sort of collab. 

I've also kinda recently been doing so hand drawn collabs with friends & folks I'm a fan of  by sending out a postal label 1/2 done & asking that they finish it up. I've done these with Pars, Downtimer, Barely Human, Space Jockey, Abe Lincoln Jr., Turd Wolf, GregandFake, Goop Massta, Chris RWK, JxJ, Merde Illegal, Acamonchi, MattyCaz85 - that might be it for now - more coming soon. They are def fun when you get to see the final sticker. I'd like to do more collaborations & I have some ideas for them - we'll see what the future brings.

One significant collaborations... I guess I would say - the collaborations I did with Magmo the Destroyer. We did all kinds of stuff together - including lots of stickers. Once we did live stickers screen printing at this kinda fancy NYC bar/club (I forget the name). This girl Liat I had met thought it'd be cool to do it at an event she was doing - so why not. We set up in like a round booth, hung a clothes line type thing to clip the wet freshly printed stickers on & broke out the ink & screens on the table & got printing.  So yea, we did that - we also did live screen printing for a Mr. Rogers tribute art show in NYC that the mailman Mr. Mcfeely was at - that was put on by GUM magazine - they were awesome, They also flew me & Magmo out to LA to do a screen printing event with them & a few girls from the Suicide Girls (Bee!) assisted us - it was a fun night.  Ok, so then we did our first full on art show together in 2005 (I think) at the Orchard St. Gallery in the Lower East Side, NYC - (Skewville twins, Pufferella - yea, so awesome) - It was called 'DESTROY YOU, NYC' - then we did one in Boston at Space 242 (DESTROY YOU, BOSTON) & the last one we did, DESTROY YOU, NEW BEDFORD was at the U.G.L.Y. gallery (which is now sadly closed) in downtown New Bedford. All of these shows & event always included stickers -  collab ones, solo ones, give-aways from friends, all kinds - stickers always played a big role. The most I ever collaborated with anyone - was with Magmo. We haven't collabed in awhile now & I miss it.

3 - Have you ever organized an event about sticker art? If not, you can write something about an event you have attended

I have organized art shows, yes, but not a 100% sticker show. I did a cool T-shirt only show called 'Texstyles' w/my friend Glenn Brandwashed - in Somerville once, it was pretty great. But anyways, yes I've been in a bunch of sticker shows. Abe Lincoln Jr. put one together a bit back, BOMIT did one down in FLA, there was a pretty classic one in Philly, DB has done a few with the Stuck-Up book project & of course random sticker shows that ya mail stickers too. The last or most recent 'stickers only' show I attended was the one by DB & Stuck-up in New Bedford, MA a little ways back. I kinda connected the U.G.L.Y. gallery & DB  and I was psyched they were able to work it all out. Because of the number of sticker panels, 1/2 of the show was at UGLY & the other 1/2 was at the New Bedford Art Museum. It was def cool, first was the NBAM with a book signing - then later in the evening the rest was shown up the street at UGLY. It was a cool show,  good mix of artists. styles, genres  - DB is a great curator, can't wait to see the new book. Even though there are a bunch of em now - I think putting together an all stickers show would still be fun & maybe would make me try & figure a unique spin on it - ya got me thinking!

4 - What are your future projects in the world of sticker art?

Making More! Drawing More! More Collabs! - All that stuff. No real real fully figured out Sticker art projects yet. I would like to make a zine of soem of the hand drawns I've been doing & even maybe doing a show of 'em - Like 200-300 all in a grid up on the walls, could be cool. So yea, those are my 1st thoughts....

5 - What sticker artists do you admire or are important to you?

So many - right!? These questions can be tough cuz I know so many good ones & admire many too. So yea, as far as a favorite artist that does stickers, I'll limit it to one - Barry McGee is def an artist I admire & is important to me - If I'm going to directly answer the question. His style, his eye & way of putting together a show, making zines & books & Stickers & everything else that comes with being a creative person is up up up there in my book. I do not have a tagged or drawn sticker by him, but maybe one day. 

Contatcs:

Email: mca@evildesign.com

you can always drop a line there.

Instagram: mcaevildesign

As far as social media, I'd say the best to check out & or 'follow' me (cult leader?) would be on the Instagram. I do have still have a Tumblr & Twitter & Fotolog & MySpace & Flickr & Ello & a Face Book page & Friendster & Google Plus & an ad in the Yellow Pages, but yea I mainly just use Instagram these days... Swipe, Like, Comment, Follow - c'mon do it! all the kids are...

P.O. Box 4005 Westport, MA 02790

I do have a Evil Design P.O. Box if ya wanna send an SASE for stickers - you could do that too if ya want, add in a dollar for a few extra.