Madsteez

No, it’s artwork because there’s a show going on in Vancouver and the theme is He-Man and She-Ra.

It’s pretty cool, yeah. There are a bunch of cool artists like Mike Giant and Mister Cartoon. Those types of people are all submitting interesting material.

Actually they are in the normal pose that they are always in. I did this similar pose but instead of it being them, they’re black. He-Man and She-Ra are black and He-Man has a big gold chain on. If they were black this is what they’d look like.

It’s pretty funny because when I thought of that I was like “That would be sweet”.

I’d say it’s been building over the past three or four years.

Yeah, I still trip out that even anybody wants to look at what I do. I definitely trip out when people ask me to do something or when I get fan mail from kids saying I inspire them and that sort of thing. It’s pretty weird to be looked at like that.

I have two words that describes me and it’s “Hey Dick.” “Hey Dick” is more like a sarcasm and funny type thing. My whole personality is that I’m not too serious and I think that comes out in my artwork because I’m not doing politics and stuff like that. I want to be portrayed as having fun. I want to brighten your day. I’m not about all the bullshit that’s really going on, like it’s almost like a fake world that I live in. I don’t know if that describes my actual artwork but that’s what I try to portray.

That might be me. I’ve done graphics for Burton to this ecompany called Armada that I did stuff for. There’s actually another rapper called Madsteez but you don’t really see his name that much.

I do video stuff as well. Photography, I have a clothing line, pretty much anything that you can be creative with I’ll do.

Right, I would say my paintings are what also gets me my client work as well because people see that and it gets them to contact me and say “hey, we want you to do this” and what I’ll do for them won’t be painting, it’ll be like ad type work or collaborations on t-shirts or products. But definitely my painting is my main thing.

I feel actually lucky because I’m also a graphic designer. That’s my main job where you wouldn’t even know that Madsteez made stuff, but for stuff that I commercially put out, I’m actually quite selective with companies. So it has to fit my style, it’s not like I’m reaching out to work on a Mountain Dew can. I’m really strategic in who I choose so it doesn’t come out wrong.

Acrylic, spray paint, paint, whatever gets the job done. I’ll even use stupid kid’s crayons because I have a two year old son so he has stuff for coloring and I’m like “I’ll use that.”

I started doing street art around the same time as I was doing gallery pieces.

No, I wouldn’t call myself a graffiti artist just because those guys are so gnarly and they’re doing it all the time. I have a family and shit so I can’t really afford to be arrested. I’d feel like a pussy to call myself a graffiti artist but every once in a while I get up and I have fun. I think it’s fun more than anything. I’m not out there to prove a point like getting my name across the whole city.

Yeah, music’s a huge influence, just from listening to it and getting inspired by it while I paint. Even musicians’ appearances sometimes do it for me like David Bowie and stuff like that.

Everything. My style looks like urban type art but I also listen to The Sounds and hipster type stuff and even oldies.

That had a double storyline. I have these characters that are called Ween!mals and then my main character is named Weeneze and I had a seven foot, thousand pound sculpture that I did of him in the middle of the floor. His back story is that I brought him to New York with me and he got lost in the city and I was doing a tribute show to him. Then my latest piece was of Dennis Hopper.

Yeah that’s the one.

Oh cool, at The Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills.

I know, that was the coolest shit I’ve ever seen. Hopper is like 70 years old so for him to still be exhibiting art and doing all this crazy shit at that age is badass. If I was 70 years old and a 26 year old kid rolled into my show and thought it was rad that’s when I would feel like my life was meaningful in some way. I just wanted to do an ode to him for making me feel like that.

I was nervous like a little kid but he was blown away. He was even speechless a little bit. He was like “No one’s ever done anything like this for me.” He was just ecstatic. The emotions that he was expressing were really cool. He was saying how great of an artist I was and pumping me up. So I was like “Man, this is about you.”

Gang Starr has a song called You Know My Steez. With me being over obsessive with words, every word that I was saying during that time period was Steez. Then at the same time, I’m a weird dresser, I guess you could say and I was wearing these stupid outfits and everyone was like “He has madsteez.” The words just melded together and just transferred onto me being Madsteez.

I recently did a brand name campaign for Target which was weird because of how mass consumer they are. But for some reason, it reflected my artwork a little. It won’t come out for another three years because they are doing a whole action sport line. I probably would have said no but since I do have a kid I do go to Target all the time and I always buy shit there. It’s a place that I can accept and I actually like. They have cool shit there so I figured I would do it. Of course, money does talk sometimes.

Yes it does.

About when I was 18. I got lucky.

It was my first semester at college at Cal State Long Beach. They supposedly had this great graphic design program and I couldn’t even get into the classes because you had to take two years worth of prerequisites bullshit. I went to the final class and just sat there to see what I would come out with. The teacher showed his portfolio and I felt like I was better than the teacher because I’ve been doing this shit since I was like 14. There was no way I could stick around for two or four years just to do what this guy can do because I can do it now. After I left I ended up getting a job with Rusty Surfboards as an assistant graphic designer that same week. Six months later I was the one coming up with all the concepts and all the cool ideas so I became the art director. I was 18 years old art directing a 60 million dollar company. Then when I was 20 I quit and traveled and did all that shit.

I had an art class but it was just something that was easy for me to get an easy grade. I ended up being a sales rep for a web program like Dreamweaver and this is when I was 14 so websites weren’t even really invented. When I was doing that, I ended up learning the program. So I started putting together websites and everyone’s websites were so boring so I started to put my artwork towards building websites and everything melded together. I ended up making money by building people’s websites that looked cooler than what they could have done on their own. Then from there I went more into the art side.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck