It’s amazing what you can do when you remember your password. I’m starting 2011 with all kinds of goodwill and wishes and exercising and eating better and vows to post regularly and to actually enact my harebrained scheme for world domination. So expect another post or two, and then for me to drift back into obscurity and the waiting arms of complacency. Eh…no point in being negative, but still stating the grim reality of so many resolutions and best intentions.

So I’m offering up “Todor & Petru”. (Maybe that should be italicized rather than within quotes, but I’m probably the only one who has a rat’s ass to give around here for that sort of thing. Please note that I probably will not spellcheck this post before publishing. Conundrums rule everything around me.)

So yeah, I’m following up my New Year’s reality check with a bit of unreality in the form of a short film from Wizz. I love the combination of motion graphics and still photography injecting some living colour into what by comparison is a much bleaker world. If only these cartoon creations started to live and breathe in the physical realm, we might need them to stave of the clone armies our military must certainly be working on. Or am I only suggesting that because Cartoon Network had the gall to introduce what looks like Darth Maul 2.0 in a Star Wars: Clone Wars episode, but start it a half hour earlier, and I’ve been denied getting my geek on for the evening.

Bastards.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Surfing on the Street and Scary Ideas for finding this clip. And yeah I’ll be looking for Thunderclaps track, “Judgement Day” that’s featured in the video. Happy New Year.

Let’s start off with where you’re from, where you’ve been, and where you’re at now?

I was born in Atlantic City, NJ, lived in Manahawkin, NJ (really amazing place) until I was 19, then I moved to Arizona for about 9 years. I met my wife in NJ, so I packed up and left Arizona for NJ again. So what got you interested in tattooing? Well besides being a total fuck-up when I was a kid, I used to do stick and pokes (tattoos done with a sewing needle) on my buddies, but I never really thought much of it. When I got into my 20’s I stopped being a fuck-up for the most part and and got interested in doing artwork again. I got my fi rst professional tattoo when I was 21 and that was it – I was hooked.

Outside of the tattoo scene, what have been some of your biggest artistic influences?

14th and 15th century painters, that stuff is amazing. I never made it to college so I don’t know anything about art history, but any museum I go to, that’s all I look at. Like most things from the past, people had so much more passion and time, we live in chaos. But i guess that helps sometimes. What is your all-time favorite album cover? Iron Maiden, Number of the Beast. Actually, I love all the Maiden album cover because the dude that painted them is sick. I forget his name, but I forget EVERYONES name.

What is the most unorthodox place you get inspiration from?

Being 13 years old and watchin’ Friday the 13th part two, and pissin’ my bed that night from a bad dream. Now thats inspiration.

Tell us about the first tattoo you ever gave someone?

It was on my self I was 12 years old and I did a small cross on my ankle bone. I didn’t pay much attention and it wound up looking like an X instead. Tattooing is full of “interesting” characters.

Of all the people you have ever tattooed, who was the weirdest or funniest person?

That’s a tough one, there’s so many, but I do have one that I like to tell. It’s long but here ya go. I was tattooing for maybe a year professionally and the place was crazy, it was on the west side of Phoenix, not the worst place I’ve ever been but not the best either. So it’s a Friday morning and this couple walks in. The guy that looks like Chet from Weird Science when that chick turns him into that creepy little critter. His girl was about 6’6”, maybe 200 pounds and poured into this 1980s, one piece, skin tight, electric blue thing that did nothing to hide her strangeness. Amazing. So she wants to get her pussy tattooed and I’m just the guy for it. She has this little scar she needs to cover, easy as pie I tell her. The skirt comes right up, no undies, bald as a baby and enough piercings in that thing to chip ALL your teeth. Not a bit of shame in this one. So with that, the tattooing begins, and she likes it, A LOT. So meanwhile her creepy little boyfriend is getting real excited that she’s getting excited. He’s sweatin’ and breathin’ real hard and I’m doing everything I can to not kick this retard outta my room. So I reach over to get some more ink for her tattoo and when I look back, she’s knuckle deep in her meat pocket. I screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?” The sound of wet meat and metal burned itself in my brain. So she apologized and said the vibration of the machine was getting her wet. Now in most peoples mind this sounds like a dream job, but when you’ve got a 7 foot 200 pound Amazon in your chair wiping her sloppy wet pussy with a bounty paper towel, while her even more disgusting boyfriend is about to beat off behind her head, it makes you wonder why you got out of bed that day.

Different styles of tattooing have come and gone over the years. What style do you think stands the test of time?

Traditional style tattooing. Whether it’s American traditional or Japanese, it has to have those elements of a strong outline and black shading. Anything after that is just preference. If it’s a black and grey tattoo, you just smooth out the black more or if it’s color, you just pound color right into the black. It doesn’t have to be a huge outline or this really simple clunky tattoo, it just needs black, bottom line. But then again, some people like shitty tattoos, so there ya go.

In your eyes, how do you differentiate between a good tattoo and a shitty tattoo?

I can appreciate a lot of tattoos – everything from a great piece of flash to the sickest design by Mike Rubendall. It’s hard to explain what makes a good one and what makes a bad one. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.

What are your thoughts on graffiti?

I like it a lot, but I don’t know shit about it. I can’t even read it but every country I’ve gone to I always take pictures of it. I like that you have to be a criminal to do it.

The top three positives to living in New Jersey?

I live close to the ocean.

I don’t live in Arizona anymore.

My wife and baby girl are here with me.

The top three negatives to living in New Jersey?

The Sopranos.

Living so close to the ocean where The Sopranos visit.

Trying to get by in maybe the most corrupt government of any state. $8 dollars to walk on the fuckin’ beach with my daughter, and she gets on free.

What is your favorite place in New Jersey to spend a day off?

The Mall.

Any last words?

If I had to pick the way my life turned out, I would have screwed it up. This has become my everything. Thanks for asking me to be a part of your magazine. I wish you all the best in your endeavors.

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1

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So where did your interest in Bigfoot come from and why did you decide to startpainting Bigfoot characters?

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It’s been about 14 years now since I decided to start writing Bigfoot. I realized the symbolism of Bigfoot was the culmination of all things I was into portraying, nature, magic and an opposition to the modern human world.

“If I stayed in Jersey I would definitely be making art but wouldn’t have started writing Bigfoot and would’ve ended up doing hard time for like 2 grams of weed.”

Graffiti artists have the luxury of hiding behind their artwork. I have met tons of graffiti artists and there are a lot of dorks, social idiots and loners in the graffiti game myself included. But they have a unique talent, graffiti is illegal, above the law, the act of graffiti has street credibility, so for a lot of people it serves as an alter ego. Is this the case for you as well?

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Yeah I’m definitely all those things above for sure. I have been a loner my whole life. When I started to write it was something I just wanted to do for myself and then I started to feel better as a person as I accomplished stuff and got some recognition. It makes sense that the people who start doing graffiti are outcasts from society and don’t do normal square stuff. You don’t hear about people that play football in the daytime and then go out and write. Above all it’s a big F.U. to society in general. I feel the need to transcend normal human life and represent
the Bigfoot spiritual world of spirits and dimensions, being a human isn’t all that.

Many depictions of Bigfoot are of a mean and violent being. Your paintings, at least in my opinion, don’t convey that. Even when you do a Bigfoot painting with an angry face it doesn’t come off too threatening. Is that intentional? Do you think the big guy has a soft side?

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Yeah I think it’s true for the Bigfoot’s out there that they aren’t completely mean or else they would be terrorizing humans all the time, which they are capable of. They are more into being undiscovered than attacking. There are so many natural places to hide still that they don’t have to attack people. But yeah they defi nitely have a soft side. They are part Buddhist. I do try to have the faces I draw have a lot of different emotion. Ranging from angry to understanding.

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Some of your Bigfoot characters are painted Green. Why? That seems like an unlikely color.

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Well they all aren’t dark brown or black, because I believe there’s many Bigfoot’s in different stages. The green ones are still in the plant kingdom dimension traveling through earth. The Paterson fi lm…..Fact or Fiction? I don’t think its real because a Bigfoot would know better than to get caught on fi lm like that.

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Has your commercial artwork been as fulfilling as your street work? Do you like one over the other?

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The commercial stuff is more fulfilling as far as survival, the amount of content and detail, but the street stuff is more fulfi lling to me when I need a release. Stuff comes out better sometimes when I’m giving it away to the world. I’ve been real addicted to freights lately. They both reach different people and have completely different purposes.

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Musically you seem to be into old school bands, you have long hair and dress a little bit on the 80’s rocker tip. It seems like you draw a lot inspiration from the past vs. the present why?

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That’s pretty much what I know, what I grew up with. When I was 12 and it was 1986 I was really into skateboarding and my mom wouldn’t let me grow my hair as long as I wanted so I settled on a Tony Hawk style. Long bangs to one side haircut. Now I am older and can do whatever the hell I want. I have a lot of nostalgia for the past. I wish I coulda been 18 in 1986 or 18 in 1976. To me It’s about everything that I think is the ultimate from the 70’s and 80’s. The music, art, and everything visual was just the best to me. Nothing from today really gets me excited. These little kids don’t know how to play rock and roll today.

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You are really into KISS, Iron Maiden and a lot of throwback bands from the 70’s and 80’s. Have they influenced you creatively?

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Yeah big influence. I had this best friend in 7th grade, Marcus LaRock. He drew Eddie over and over. Through him drawing Eddie it subconsciously taught me to persevere, pick something, and stick with it. KISS is just everything to me. I am obsessed with things around the eyes on my characters and KISSis of course partly responsible for that. A lot of early Metal/hard rock bands had the best album covers
ever, period. Ken Kelly’s covers for KISS’s Destroyer and Love Gun are my favorite pieces of art work ever. I once had the honor of seeing the original Love Gun painting in Vegas in 2003. I stared at it for hours.

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Speaking of KISS what do you think of the band Angel? My boy put me up on Angel and Punky Meadows years ago. Gene Simmons found these guys in like 74’ and got them signed to Casablanca. I am always curious what die-hard KISS fans think of Angel.

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I haven’t been exposed to Angel that much, never bought any records or anything. The most I’ve seen was they were in the Casablanca produced movie “Foxes” with Jodie Foster and Cherie Curie of The Runaway’s. I’m pretty much down for any band in the 70’s that had feathered hair though.

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You lived in Jersey until you were 18, why did you decide to move?

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I think it’s natural for a kid to wanna see what’s on the other coast. My whole life I just wanted to go to California, from seeing it on TV, skateboarding, and the good weed. I was taking NJ Transit all over Jersey and would take the path into NYC, playing hooky and all that. I felt like I saw most of what there was to see around me so I wanted to go see the big trees.

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What is the biggest difference between pursuing an art career in San Francisco vs. New Jersey? Had you stayed in NJ do you think you would have been as successful?

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Nowadays somebody can do their art anywhere and put it on the Internet but for me I had to go on a journey and fi nd things out, search within. The skateboard industry and my homies from Jersey that relocated to SF also helped out. If I stayed in Jersey I would definitely be making art but wouldn’t have started writing Bigfoot and would’ve ended up doing hard time for like 2 grams of weed. So definitely not
as successful.

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On your visits back to the Garden State have you paid attention to the graffiti scene? Who are some of your favorite artists from New Jersey?

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Nace will always rule Jersey. Route 78 was runnin for a while, a couple of my Jersey favorites are Jes and Kemos. Thanks for the interview any Last Words? What’s up to all my Jersey homies. Teddy Becks, Quimtime, and Haculla. Dirty Jersey represent
www.bigfootone.com

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY RAN IN THE ART OF STORYTELLING MAGAZINE ISSUE #1.

For the past 25 years Derek Riggs has supplied us with countless images of the most well know monster in heavy metal history, Eddie Maiden. Eddie has transformed Iron Maiden into a merchandising giant. The attraction to Eddie is as strong today as it was with his first appearance in 1979. Riggs is opinionated, upfront, and out to impress no one. We linked up with him to talk about art, religion, politics and of course Eddie. Enjoy.

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Iron Maiden’s management came across a painting of yours that featured a character called Electric Matthew. Electric Matthew would later be transformed into Eddie Maiden. Obviously the original Electric Matthew wasn’t designed specifically for Iron Maiden. What was your initial inspiration for the character you were creating?

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The original picture was inspired by a photo of a dead soldier’s skull that I found in TIME magazine when I was about 15. I used it in a photo-montage, stuck it to the front of a folder and covered it in plastic. Years later I found it and decided to use it for the basis for a picture. It was the late 1970’s and Punk rock was big in England. I thought that maybe some punk band might be able to use it.

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What was the creation process like when doing the Iron Maiden album covers? Did you have free reign on the designs or did most of that come from the band?

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Most of the time almost nothing came from the band. I would get a title or the title and a direction to go in and then I would send a sketch to the manager Rod Smallwood. We would talk over the idea and decide if Rod felt it needed anything. Quite often he would just say go ahead and I would get on with the job. For example, the brief I got for Somewhere in Time was, “We want a city like the one in Blade Runner,” and the rest was left pretty much up to me. The look of Eddie was my invention, as was the content of the city. Steve came to me near the end of the work and asked if I could include some little details, like the names of his previous bands.

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Of all the Iron Maiden covers you created, which one is your favorite?

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Somewhere in Time, because of the detail. I like detail. Clairvoyant and Can I Play with Madness because they are so ape shit, and Stranger in a Strange Land because it looks like Clint Eastwood.

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For the 80’s, some of the album covers were very over the top. The Sanctuary single’s sleeve had a picture of Eddie with a knife in his hand, standing over the dead body of Margaret Thatcher who had just been caught tearing down an Iron Maiden poster. Did you come under attack for that and did you have any issues with doing a cover with that kind of imagery?

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How does military grade nerve gas get out of a secure facility? From that time on my experiences with the medical profession indicated to me that my health has been monitored by someone other than the local doctor.

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Margaret Thatcher was twisted and evil. She did England an enormous amount of harm. She destroyed a great deal of England’s national resources. The last thing I heard was that she was under house arrest for trying to have assassinated an African diplomat who disagreed with her policies towards his country. In England they talk about free speech, but they don’t have any. Or, the free speech they do have doesn’t matter because it doesn’t make any difference anyway. In fact, they are the most tightly constrained and highly monitored society in the world. If you go into central London, by the time you get there you will have been photographed more than 80 times and your picture will have been fed through some software which can measure your facial features and check it against databases of criminals or known troublemakers. Just so that you realize, “known troublemakers” are people who have not been arrested for anything. In other words, innocent people like you and me who have the wrong opinion about things. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s I was on such lists because of the people who I knew (political radicals, secret service people, I even knew a hit man once, he worked for the US air force in the U.K. and he shot foreign diplomats in the middle east). I wasn’t actually one of them. For some reason I just kept meeting them all the time. So on paper I looked really suspect. There are cameras everywhere in England – shops, banks, public places. I lived in a little village and it had two cameras in the village square watching people. All of this technology was up and running in the 1980’s, so by now it’s much more pervasive. There is no free press in England. They think it’s free, but after a few years it becomes obvious that the government really has an iron clampdown on the press that is quiet and absolute. It comes down like silent steel doors whenever certain subjects come up. What the press does give people is endless shit about celebrities. Yes, it’s free, so is dog shit. About being attacked for that picture, within a few months of doing that picture I was exposed to a substance that turned out to be military grade nerve gas. It was being used by a chemical company to make domestic pesticide and somehow it “got out” of their secure facility and into my home. How does military grade nerve gas get out of a secure facility? From that time on my experiences with the medical profession indicated to me that my health has been monitored by someone other than the local doctor. I know this makes me sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but you can check everything out for yourself if you have time. You will find it’s all true. Why do you think I left England? Are we there yet?

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I started listening to Maiden in about ‘88. I remember my mother coming home from church one Sunday and destroying all of my Maiden cassettes. The priest told everyone that Iron Maiden was Satan music with “demonic imagery.” Back then, Maiden’s lyrics came under intense fire and so did the imagery on the album covers. Did that piss you off or did you get a kick out of it?

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How many of your children will you let these creatures fuck before you wake up to the truth? All priesthoods are perverted. The more you follow their lead, the worse your life will become.

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I did not experience any of that and I don’t care what they say. The Christian church has no right to condemn anyone for saying anything. After all the wars they have fought in the name of their loving god, after all the people they tortured, after all the religions they have destroyed and peaceful people they have persecuted, I think they can shut up and go away. Nazis burned books, Fascists burned books, Muslims burned books, and Christians burned books. They are all as bad as each other. They will all hate, persecute, and kill anyone who disagrees with their nasty point of view because they are sick. This is why they follow perverted priests and beg for forgiveness. How many of their priests have been found to be child molesters? How many times has it been covered up? The priests are well known for “going after” the choir boys. In America they tried to cover it up for years and failed, and in Europe it’s a bit of a joke, but it’s not really funny. How many of your children will you let these creatures fuck before you wake up to the truth? All priesthoods are perverted. The more you follow their lead, the worse your life will become. They are just manipulating you. They are very good at it. They have been doing it for thousands of years. Do not be such a sheep to be lead around by monsters like that. They call you their “flock.” This is an insult to you, they think of you as sheep. Are we getting there yet?

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After decades of designing the Eddie Maiden Characters, Iron Maiden decided to go with an artist by the name of Melvyn Grant for the Fear of the Dark album cover and he subsequently did two album covers after that. Did it bother you to see your character represented by another artist? Was there any animosity between you and the band for choosing someone else?

By the time they thought of using other artists I really wanted to stop doing it anyway, so I felt nothing about that. Working with Maiden at that point was getting more and more painful and I was just glad that it stopped. Eddie was my invention and I could have made some kind of a fuss about it but I didn’t see any reason to do Maiden that amount of harm. Eddie was a part of their core business, I couldn’t really use him for anything useful, and I wanted to stop painting him anyway. So to have other artists paint him seemed like the sensible and obvious way to go. Doing harm to other people is not really in my nature. I would rather just walk away and let them get on with it. Although, they didn’t seem to mind what became of me. I wanted to get on with other things and invent new worlds

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Album cover artwork has changed a lot over the years. Much of it is now computer generated. A lot of bands rely on fonts and text coupled with computer generated or manipulated images. A lot of metal bands still use characters and illustrations, but a lot of it looks very similar in my opinion.How do you feel about album artwork these days? Do you think that computers have taken away from or helped the progression of album artwork?

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Both of the above. They have become indispensable because these days you cannot do the work for the price and in the time allowed if you rely on traditional techniques. Big budgets to cover artwork, like they had in the past, are not available to most people. So, everything has to be done cheaply, but this is a bad thing because now you have a load of unskilled people trying to make album covers. They don’t know what they are doing or why it is right or wrong. Before I get any smart arsed children trying to tell me that art can’t be right or wrong, yes it can. Your artwork can be done in a right way or in a wrong way. You are not infallible. You can do it wrong. Suck it up. In the hands of a good designer computers are a great benefit, but not everyone who uses a computer is a good designer. A lot of what you see is by people who are untrained, so their designs are amateurish looking. The upside of computers is that you can do diffi cult things very quickly. Th e downside is that this ease of use fools some people into thinking that they are now designers or illustrators. They congratulate themselves on what they do, but they are not good enough to realize they have just made a load of slick looking crap. They used to sayin art school, “You can’t polish a turd,” but in the computer age I think you see a lot of polished turds.

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Outside of Iron Maiden what was some of your favorite cover art from the 80’s? Who are some of your favorite cover artists?

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Well, I like Roger Dean’s work. He was probably the most creative artist to grace album covers. Luckily he worked in an age when such originality was more readily accepted than it is today. How much of your current illustration work is created with a computer?

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Do you prefer doing illustration work on a computer vs. painting?

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The vast majority of my work is done on a computer. In the last ten years I have only done two traditional artworks. One was an oil painting and the other a pencil drawing. Th e computer is really the best tool for making commercial artwork of any kind. If you want to sell pictures in galleries then you need other techniques, but for commercial art the computer is best. I also enjoy working with computers more than I enjoy painting. I was so sick of painting in the mid 1990’s that I was about to give up making pictures and do something else. If I hadn’t discovered computers I would not be making pictures today. It gave me access to a whole bunch of techniques which were a lot more fun than paint ever was. Paint only ever got in the way really. Paint put the pain into painting. Computers took it out again.

You have also done work for bands like Stratovarius, Gamma Ray, Valhalla, and Chris Impellitteri. Has that been as rewarding as the work that you have done with Iron Maiden?

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Yes, I got to make some new and different images. I don’t think that they were always used to the best advantage – another case of untrained and second rate
designers at work. It’s not so good financially, but life isn’t all about money. So I don’t give a shit really, as long as I can live.

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A lot of the people who are reading this magazine are heavily inspired by street art, like graffiti, wheat pasting, and things of that nature. Some of the most known artists of this class are KAWS, Shepard Fairey, Espo, and Bansky to name a few. Are you familiar with any of these artists? If so, what do you think of their work?

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No, never heard of any of them. I don’t pay much attention to other artists. I am too busy trying to work out what I should be doing to worry about what others are up to. I don’t paint pictures because I want to join some kind of bandwagon or fashion, I do it because I have ideas and I want to make them into pictures. I don’t care about creating painted originals, I don’t give a fuck about other people’s half arsed artistic philosophies. I want to make a picture, so that is what I do, and I do it the way I enjoy doing it. Then I try to sell the result. Other times I do work on commission. But to be honest, I don’t really consider that my art. It’s my job. I do that for money. Sometimes it’s interesting to me, sometimes it’s just a job.

What are your views on graffiti? Do you consider it art or do you view it simply as vandalism?

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Some of it is art, an awful lot of it is crap and shouldn’t be there, and if it’s on someone else’s wall without their permission, it’s always vandalism. Personally I see it as a waste of energy. If you think you are a good artist, then put your money where your mouth is and live by selling your art. Putting it on the walls for free is playing chicken isn’t it? It’s just a lack of commitment to your art. You are frightened of selling it in case you can’t and you fail. So instead you just spray it onto other people’s walls. Th at way you don’t have to cope with being rejected or failing. It’s artistic cowardice. Do you have any idea the number of times I got thrown out of an art director’s office? How many times I got artwork rejected by someone? Some people even told me that I never had any hope of succeeding and I should go and get therapy because I painted monsters (really, I’m not joking) but they were all assholes, and I’m still out here doing it. At the end of the day, if they don’t like it… then I don’t care. Th e fans like it, that’s what matters. I paint for them (as well as for me) not for the bloody art directors. About living by your art, a lot of people talk the talk but the number of those who actually live by their art is quite few. That is is because the soft options are many and easier to do. To a man they make up bullshit philosophical reasons about why they do it the way they do, but it comes down to the same thing, FEAR. Th ey are scared of failing, that’s all. A lot of people talk the talk. I am one of the few who has walked the walk. I have been there. I walked all the way there and back again. I know what it’s about. Get up and do it. Toughen up and stop wasting your life. Th ere is only one qualifi cation you need to become an artist and that is to paint pictures that other people like enough to pay money for. Everything else is bullshit.

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Thanks for the interview. Any last words?

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No, maybe I’ve said too much already. I think I may have pissed off half of your
readers. Remember to have fun.

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Yeah, I am pretty sure you pissed off 99% of my readers, but no worries.

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