Please, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you.
Sfaustina (Stephen Faustina) Graphic Designer/Artist. I have been doing art as long as I can remember, art has always been apart of my life.
Recent, current or future projects you are involved in that you would like to share with us?
No new projects at this moment outside of my professional work designing for, Francis Ford Coppola. Working for Mr. Coppola is like a new project every week which is a huge creative outlet for me. In a lot of ways that might hinder my fine art and my current output. It can be hard to find time for my personal work. In regards to my art, I have taken a really low key presents, but I do continue to create smaller and quicker new works all the time. Right now I just don’t have the urge to push that side of me right now.
What kind of things do influence your work?
Now a days it’s going to the city, bigger metropolitan type cities. The pace, the people, the sounds, the graffiti all over whelm me and I love it. I think I have always been like that but now that I live in, pretty much the country I can now really feel the inspiration once I get home. The country is also a big influence in its own way, which I probably don’t realize yet. Other things that inspire me are rap/hip hop music, I feel it is the musical form of collage. My son and daughter of course influence my work as well.
How is your normal process of collaging? (idea or commission, where do you get your materials or find your images, which is your cutting technique, best way you have found to paste, where do you work and how, and very important: what do you do with your scraps)
In my art I incorporate my passions- typography, graffiti, old photos, new photos, my photos. I am visually driven, an image-maker, for me that is a beautiful collage work for all to interact with. What makes an unforgettable college work is the viewer. A piece of artwork usually grows on me. In terms of my art, it can be a negative because most of my work is complex, ambiguous, and rather hard to digest on the initial viewing consequently it often gets over looked.
Cutting technique, of course an xacto knife and a cutting mat. More often than not I use spray mount when needing to paste. I try my best not to have a lot of scrapes but when I do I throw them back into the box that I keep my material in… cause you never know when that scrape will become part of a piece.
Which is your latest discovery in the collage world? What advice can you give to a collage beginner?
The latest discoveries…um… the latest discover is always the same…the possibility are endless. Study your history, Collage has been around for a long time.
What do say your friends/family about your collage work? And, what do you do when you are not working on art?
I have a big box of scraps and old magazines, anytime I come across an image, text, photo, whatever stops me for more than one second I put it in the big box. My friends have said to me before, you view things so quickly as if you are not even taking in the image or context. I am open to the material but I also know what turns me on. I have been collecting old photos from the late 1800’s early 1900’s I also collect rubber stamps, old flow master markers, old magazines & design/art books. The old photos to me are like little pieces of art, the photos are usually cut with scalloped edges, the size and shape varies, some are rectangular and the size of the palm of a hand, others are tiny and square. To me the old photos are like a reality television shows. But your imagination is in charge of putting all the pieces together.
Would you like to ask anything to John Baldessari? Shoot
Did you like the Zoetrope: All-Story magazine we did?
