"Issue No.4
on stands now"

and erotic enough to make even the harshest prude happy (in the pants). RJB has been known to create the sense of a unique alternate reality with his art, a reality of mesmerizing sexploitation and dark, hypnotically alluring undertones that pull the viewer into a world of Russ Meyer-esque surrealism and impossibly sexy women with Pam Greir-proportioned measurements.

As for the artist himself, Rockin’ JellyBean maintains an almost frightening air of mystery. Shrouding himself in a variety of custom-made Mexican wrestling masks (which he has never been photographed without). RJB has created himself an artistic persona which transcends man to mythical proportions, swathing him with a level of intrigue that only heightens the depth of his expression.

Wide-Eyed’s David Dodde was able to touch base with this ellusive artist to discuss his inspiration and his technique, hoping to illuminate the man, the concepts, and the direction behind the visual orgasms of his intensely evocative work.

Wide-Eyed: Your work reflects a variety of American and Japanese influences, what do you point to as the most influential?

RJB: I think my childhood period is reflected. Experiences of childhood memories and time spent in Hawaii with my Grandma. As well as experiences growing up in the old Japanese town of Kyoto. These connect me to an admiration of both American and Japanese old culture. I think that’s my great influence and early formation of my style.

WE: How have these inspirations changed or progressed throughout your career?

RJB: I’m inspired by all I see, feel, and experience… solar sunlight to pour, cool cars, a blond-haired girl running on the beach with a small triangle shaped bikini. I longed to experience American culture very much, so I lived in the U.S.A. for a while. Even though I left Japan, I could see Japanese culture very well here. I think it goes both ways and that’s cool to recognize it happening.

WE: What artist or movement is currently getting your attention?

RJB: I’m affected by many artists. But if I have to mention some, I would say the Japanese comic, “GO NAGAI” who’s a popular artist of the comic “DEVIL-MAN.” And, of course, R. CRUMB! He opened the door of my “related freedom of expression of sex.” And, I was excited about that and of the culture appearance of 60’s POP ART.

WE: The Japanese educational system is notorious for creating over-achievers, did you receive an education in art or did it develop outside of the system?

RJB: You know, it is hard to enter a Japanese school, but to graduate, it’s easy. I studied drawing art hard till I entered. But I was busy with my music and my scooter in school. But when I had this position as assistant of senior artist, or something like that, I really learned a lot about the work and of the art. I also learned by a sense of the street. I learned from band fliers and custom signboards…those were my textbooks.

WE: Your sensitivity to the human form, combined with the craftsmanship of your illustration sets you apart, where do you give credit for this sensitivity?

RJB: I’ve always loved beautiful girls and I draw them as I see them in my mind’s eye. You know my hand is merely a filter for the art to flow from. The art comes from my soul and it somehow translates well into an image on paper or computer screen.

WE: How does the American Lowbrow art movement influence Japanese art culture and vice versa?

RJB: Lowbrow art meshes well to the Japanese as we basically all have a craftsman spirit. It has increased the popularity of good technical custom shops and paint shops throughout Japan. I also feel the American movement is interested in Japanese culture from a little different angle. For example, interest in Kaiju Toy, Anime cartoons, Manga, and other “Otaku culture.” The interest is shared equally I think. Anyhow, even Japanese high school girls know about RAT FINK now!

WE: Why have you created a character for yourself, is there greater intent or is it more simple than that?

RJB: Perhaps it’s because I just wanted to attract attention. Perhaps it’s got to do with the way I noticed how some band members would wear costumes at their shows. You know, like the Mummies and Invisible Men, they look so cool! I guess I would say both of these things helped my image to grow naturally and into how I look today. But maybe I’m just shy…

WE: What are your feelings on creating work with pen and paper versus relying on the computer?

RJB: Well, back in my late 20’s, I thought of the computer as my rival. I fought against BitMap with airbrush and pen every day and night. Then one day, I just started to use the computer, and realized I gained one more good tool for my art. I’m using both, but I really feel drawing by hand is more pure. Recently, I’ve been drawing on canvas and it’s like playing in the mud for me. It is a “sense” to draw a picture. To use my hands is so natural and fun to create that I thought an artist should use their “sense” and tools more like hands.

WE: Your typography is superb, why when creating pieces for the Japanese market do you use latin letter forms or English?

RJB: Well, I think that the reason is because the motif of the picture which I draw is western-style. I use Japanese letter depending on a style!

WE: Where does your work go from here… what excites you?

RJB: It’s my greatest aim to continue the same thing for a long time with friends who work at my brand and shop, and the eighth generation, aka the JELLYBEAN GIRLS!!! Continuation of these things and my band and my friends, and my art, and my experiences, and… just being able to do this. Thank you to all the fans and art lovers who supported us all these years… Oh yeah… most exciting things is about my first art book to be published by end of this year or beginning of next year. I know I keep saying the same thing every year... but it’s coming you crazy kids!

Thank you. Keep on Rockin’!!!

www.erostika.com

I’m a nerd {laughs}. After September 11th, I was really disturbed by the idea that the media had the power to define terrorism, had the power to point their finger and say “This person is a terrorist” or “This is what a terrorist is.” I saw it as a culture of them (the media) using their power to lynch people spiritually. I wanted to take a symbol of terrorism and make it edible. So what I did was, I heard that they (the terrorists) used box cutters to highjack planes, and I don’t believe any of that shit anymore, there are conspiracies to decide, so I made a chocolate box cutter. IT was a hit in the underground, I showed it to a friend of mine who owned the Anti-Market in Echo Park and he put it in his store and the first one he sold was to a comedian that used it in his play about September 11th. He actually ate the chocolate and it was a great beginning because that is exactly what I had wanted it to exist for, I wanted it to be consumed. After that I started thinking about other symbols that could be used as a metaphor and hip hop was the first thing. Obviously chocolate and hip hop are related somehow and I saw how this could be used, just having a symbol, and an aspect of the culture and having an opportunity to put that inside your body can give that person a deliberate spiritual experience. You can choose to have a relationship with the culture almost instantly by eating a symbol. At least that is how I was thinking about it. It is kind of psychedelic.

WE: It’s ritualistic.

MG: Yeah. Having a Native American background, and being interested in the culture or just studying religion and the idea of the Catholic communion. Just communion period, infusing a symbol with your intention and then eating it. So this was my gift to the culture, and I hope to at least start a dialog in the culture about how we are affecting hip hop. You are not going to give a tainted piece of chocolate to your little boy or little girl, you (hip hop artists) should really think about how you are personally effecting the culture and then love it and then pass it on.

WE: Can we be friends? You are spot on man.

MG: I think this is how we should be creating art.

WE: You grew up in Colorado. What was the first medium that you got your hands on? Can you recall when you began creating art or some of the things that were influencing you growing up?

MG: I can’t remember the beginning. I was always interested in creating and destroying shit, like most kids growing up especially in hip hop. So I gravitated towards skateboarding and trying to kill myself on a skateboard. I think that culture (skateboarding) is so popular and prevalent with youth, because they are initiating themselves into adulthood in some way, so that was me. I was actually one of five black kids in high school, so I grew up listening to Fugazi, DRI, and Day Glow Abortion {laughs}. I think I heard hip hop for the first time when I was in high school, I heard Low End Theory and Tribe Called Quest when I was like a freshman. Before that it was Anthrax and jazz. My dad listened to jazz, Keith Jarrett and my mom was into funk. I had a unique background, my mom was actually in a biker gang for most of my life. She was in a biker gang that came from St. Louis and was running from the FBI, because they thought she was Angela Davis {laughs}. I want to write a story about it.

WE: If you could do an abridged narrative for Wide-Eyed, I’d publish it. That is very interesting.

MG: It’s really bizarre to me that they thought it was true. They (FBI) thought my mom was Angela Davis {laughs}. She had a big red afro, running with sixteen dude bikers, and they followed her to Colorado and because of that we really couldn’t stay in one place. So it was me and my half sister on the back of a motorcycle sleeping under pool tables for most of young childhood. I think that I missed my first year of grade school because of that. I was able to make it up. She got married and turned into a Christian housewife. I guess that kind of accounts for who I am today. The extremes have lead me always to try to create some kind of harmony, since I was young I have always been interested in the nature of reality {laughs}. Plain and simple, I have always been interested in what the hell is going on. So I was really drawn to religion and mythology, magic and occult studies. So first year I went to the Colorado Art Institute and got my associates degree there.

WE: In sculpture?

MG: No, I was in the Film and Video program, I wanted to be a director and writing was my first love. I was writing screenplays and short stories and then, I don’t know, something clicked and I just wanted to run away to India and become a Sadu and smoke hash and grow my hair. So instead I had an opportunity to study theology in Boston and I went out there when I was 21, I was there six years. Man, I couldn’t make it through that either, because after studying to much religion and belief systems you see that we can create our own belief systems. Anton Wilson, who is a writer, kind of in the vein of Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna, he calls belief systems BS. A lot of intellectuals believe that culture is the problem, culture is what keeps us away from each other but we have to go through culture to create a new paradigm which I believe we are in the middle of right now. I consciously and unconsciously want to embody that in the way I carry myself and the way that I dress. I don’t like the idea that someone could point at me and be like “this is where he is from and this is who he is,” because I don’t like to do that to other people. There is no reason to assume anything. So yeah after studying religion, I had a few epiphanies to say the least, I narrowly escaped the mental hospital and then I came to LA to work on a film that a friend of mine was doing. I have been here ever since, I’ve been doing the chocolates for two years now. I have had to put aside the art part and really pick up the business side, I still have a long way to go, learning about the FDA and trademarks, so this is a novelty if anybody asks, you’re not yet supposed to eat it.

WE: So you are in the works for getting your patents and trademarks?

MG: Yeah and it’s a lot of work. You have to be on the phone with your lawyer, and you’re like, I don’t want to spend more money, but when you have to, you have to. So I have been working on the business side more and collaborating with different artists, which has been my new epiphany, any artist I meet within the culture, I want to collaborate with them. Most artists are used to working independently whether it is music or visual art, especially nowadays there is not as much currency going around, few people get those million dollar music contracts anymore, there is not much room for Andy Worhols and Banksys these days, or overnight sensations in the art community. So I feel like as a community, through association, collaboration and solidarity, its the only way that anybody can be seen. To have a voice and be associated with others, like doing this interview. The little that I read about you guys and just knowing that you were interested in Saul (Williams), I was like, I have to work with you guys, that is what you are associated with, it’s like the chocolates. You are attached to that intention, and as a mystic that’s what creates the path for abundance, because I don’t want to be associated with anything negative. So I have been doing collaborations. This (holding a sculpture of graffiti spray can) is a collaboration that I have done with this guy Thomas the Messenger, he is an amazing sculptor. Man he has a story of his own you should speak with him. He actually went to Pratt Institute in New York. So prolific, yet lives on the floor of this lady’s kitchen floor in South Central right now, and he is getting evicted today so he is moving in with me. He made my large format hip hop chocolates sign. He used to go back and forth from Long Beach on the train and give art lessons to the kids. He would set up and give them crayons and paper and put on a class. There are so many artists like that, who are struggling .

Wide-Eyed: You grew up in a family that had serious involvement in the custom car scene. This must have had an influence on your design sensibilities.

Andy Cruz: My dad was the hot rodder/bad influence. Some of my earliest memories are admiring the red vinyl interior of his ‘56 vette on the way to the babysitter. My father did body work by day and wrenched at home at night. It seems like every aspect of growing up in part had something to do with cars. From the model kits to my first bike that he painted candy-apple red for me, I was fortunate to have this as a foundation.

WE: As an east coast kid growing up in the skate and hardcore scenes, could you speak to how the DIY movement has made an impression on your career?

AC: Skateboarding was the gateway drug to a lot of the graphics that influence our work. The flyer art of the punk/hardcore scene, zines, etc... they all exposed me to design and illustration before I had any real notion of what graphic design was.

WE: Through observing the catalog of House’s material, it is evident that your aesthetic is derived from popular cultural icons. Could you speak to us about the process of deciding which icons become the thematic of your typefaces?

AC: We like to incorporate our hobbies in our work. When creating the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth font collection, we pay tribute to the impact that Roth had on custom car culture. We take it upon ourselves to make small contemporary art history lessons based on some of our favorite sources of inspiration... hopefully this is evident in the presentation of our type collections, from the packaging and collateral that accompany each set.

WE: Was your original intent to design fonts?

AC: No, we didn’t know shit about fonts or typography in the beginning. We were a design shop that decided that we wanted to be in charge of our creative output, so rather than provide design as a service we needed to provide design as a product. Fonts would be our product. When the Creative Director at Warner Bros. (House’s first font customer) wanted to purchase one of our sets, I don’t think she was aware of the twelve week turn around indicated in the fine print of the contract {laughs}. At that point we had only conceptualized the letters that made up the name of the font. So that being said, we live and die by our design work. While we have the ability to have freedom in our work, we’ve gotta be able to continue to produce things we like that also pays the bills. Doesn’t always work.

WE: Many designers find themselves locked into the digital realm as their primary mode of output. What are the benefits of using traditional tactile mediums when conceptualizing your typefaces?

AC: The reality is most everything we do these days ends up going through or is eventually produced on the machine. We try our best to retain that craft/warmth that you can only get by using pencils and paint... then making sure that our hand work comes through in the final piece.

WE: Like the recent Agent Provocateur book… It comes in a pink vellum envelope, with valentine tones, as if you are receiving their product (lingerie). The aesthetic is embedded with the creation of the lettering and identity.

AC: We do take on commission jobs, as was the case with Agent Provocateur. They had a nice script logo, and it worked for years. But after all the Victoria’s Secrets of the world started using the same “off the shelf” font, the folks at Agent asked us to give their mark a make-over to help distinguish the brand from their competitors. In taking on commercial work, unfortunately we have to do the cost analysis; will this gig justify taking us away from developing a product that can be part of our catalog? In this instance we could. There are many other projects we’d would love to work on, but it has to make sense.

WE: Could you say you have perfected the marriage of art and commerce?

AC: I think I would be on a beach right now talking to you on a satellite phone if that was the case {laughs}. Has anyone really pulled that off? It’s still fun to come to work knowing that some people dig some stuff we’re producing.

WE: Like a refined rock band that gets to pick their studio, producer — on their terms.

AC: Yes and no. We have been fortunate enough to have loyal customers who afford us the luxury to do things our way. Rather than remaking our “best album” every time we find that customers have responded to some of our down-tempo numbers. After doing the flashy display-type thing for years, our personal tastes “matured” and we did quite a few geometric san serif fonts. It’s tough but you’ve gotta step outside of the vacuum/studio every once and a while so this stuff doesn’t always look the same.

WE: Outside of your crew at House, who are the new pioneers of low-brow, in your opinion?

AC: The outsiders who couldn’t care less about getting into a gallery.