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| ©Rich Arbitelle |
The voyeur in me loves to read other people’s diaries. A couple years ago, Atlanta based artist Rich Arbitelle let me have at his drawing books, and even allowed me to copy some pages. I've been hanging on to them ever since. They're doodles, scraps – characters, paired with crude (as in raw and unpolished) bits of thought. Not quite Mash-Ups, because the words and images are meant to go together, these are pastiches of verbal and visual that create little worlds unto themselves.
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| ©Rich Arbitelle |
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©Rich Arbitelle
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| ©Rich Arbitelle |
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©Rich Arbitelle
When you Google Rich Arbitelle, you'll be linked to his IMBD page for his role "Kid in Park" in the 1995 skater flick Kids, which starred his best friends and skaters he came up with in early 90s New York, like Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter. Arbitelle’s acting career might not have panned out, but like many artist/skaters, he's done graphics for a ton of skateboard and urban apparel companies including Brooklyn Boards (a company he owned and operated in the 90s, counting among its riders Aaron Suski and Tino Razo), Stereo, Zoo York, SHUT, Capital, Rookie, 5boro, J. Money Collection, Interracial Productions, Nimbus Skateboards, and Stratosphere Skate Shop.
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Birth of a New Light
"I remember back in the day Jamie [Jamie Story, owner of the urban apparel brand J. Money Collection] and I would blast Bad Brains and just draw in our books forever. Then we'd go skate. That's what we did for fun." These days, Arbitelle draws and paints -- sometimes on art boards, sometimes on canvas -- creating large-scale pieces that are intricately detailed with his own signature self-taught style. "I've taken a lot from different artists over the years and learned from them," he explains, counting among his influences surrealists like Dali, H.R. Giger, "The Alien guy," and Robert Williams (creator of Juxtapoz Magazine). "I picked up shading techniques from Barry McGee (a.k.a. Twist) who did faces all over San Francisco and (NYC graffiti artist) Erni Vales who was big into the 3-D letter technique." All of Arbitelle's influences are "deep into creating and coming up with characters. They're original -- doing their own thing, not trying to copy other people's shit; they were on their own paths."
One of his recent projects, inspired by a trip to Guatemala, features a collage of things he saw during his 5-week stay. "It's one of the more simple stories I've told through art," he says. "I thought it was good to detail my experience."
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Adventures in Guatemole, Detail
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