CORONA TIMES - Jasper Talks with Dre Lopez about Designing During COVID

Cindi Boiter November 14, 2020

Please don’t give up. Your worst days will always pass, even if that is difficult to see sometimes. If you won’t do it for yourself anymore, do it for your loved ones. Always keep fighting.

In keeping with Jasper’s coverage of arts and artists during these weird quarantine times, we had the fun of a virtual interview with Columbia-based artist Dre Lopez last week. Catch up with Dre below & see what he’s been up to in this parallel universe we’re calling 2020.

JASPER: Dre, you’ve been a stalwart figure on the Columbia arts scene for a while now, but not everyone knows your story. Can you tell us about where you grew up and how you came to be the artist you are now?

DRE: Thank you for having me! Well, my family moved around a good bit when I was a child so there’s several places that I sorta grew up in. That said, I moved to Columbia from Miami. In regards to my journey as an artist, it’s a big mixed bag of experiences and influences. I’m self-taught so I’ve been creating since I was a kid and have pulled my lessons from all over the place. Illustration of different kinds, renaissance painters, Graffiti writers, animation, graphic design, fashion design, etc. I’ve always been a student of the craft so I just kept practicing and experimenting but forayed into professional waters as a freelance illustrator in 2003 and started doing professional graphic design around 2007. I’m lucky to have dove into so many mediums and methods which allowed me to become a fairly versatile artist. I’ve been able to work in several different fields which is so important as a freelancer, to stay productive and busy. I’m still learning (which I love), so the journey to “master” what I do will end when I die. That feeds me, keeps me excited, seeing that there is so much more that I can add to my tool belt as I see improvements still after all these years.

DRE: You are a designer, illustrator, graphic artist and more – where do you spend the bulk of your time and what would you rather do if you could do whatever you wanted?

DRE: The bulk of my time is split between graphic design and illustration. Depends on the season, it varies. I love doing it all and prefer the variety. It keeps things fresh and challenges my mind to work in different ways, from one project to the next. Helps with boredom as well, my mind gets bored easily. Now, if I had the ideal conditions, I would add even more variety, lol. More illustration, more design, more painting, murals, sculpting, custom fashion, etcetera, etcetera.

JASPER: Do you mostly do freelance work or do you have a regular day job?

DRE: Yeah, for the most part I’m a freelancer. I’ve had other jobs throughout the years that are both in my field, as well as other areas that have nothing to do with being a creative.

One thing I’ve learned is that your goals can change as you go through your career, and allowing that perspective to take hold will open up so many other opportunities and accomplishments that you may not have realized were possible when you started.

JASPER: Who have been your greatest influences as an artist and what have you learned from them?

DRE: Hmm, that’s a tough question. I’ve researched, studied, and pulled inspiration and lessons from SO many creators and creative fields. With illustration most of my influences come from comic books, anime and editorial illustrators. I still use a sense of storytelling with most of the work I do, this being part of what I learned specifically from sequential illustration and animation. With my painting, the masters of the Renaissance and the Baroque Period were the main sources I looked to for technique and foundation to better my process. My graphic design is probably most influenced by German minimalist aesthetics. I would also say that Street Art and Graffiti have influenced all of my mediums as well. Honestly, I would say that all the fundamentals and techniques I’ve learned, no matter the concentration, all have crossed over into the many things I create on a daily basis. All of them have made me a more fundamentally complete creator.

JASPER: Do you have any great goals out there on the horizon or are you chill doing what you’re doing now?

DRE: Definitely not chill where I’m at. I’m not satisfied and know that there’s so much more to accomplish. I will always freelance and continue to create my own work, so I will ride that wave wherever it takes me. I’m also open and intrigued to work with art/design/illustration houses in the U.S.’s major cities, as well as Europe and Japan. That’s one thing I haven’t done yet so the possibilities and challenges of that excite me. I’ve done freelance work all over, but to work in one of those houses, especially overseas, would be amazing. One thing I’ve learned is that your goals can change as you go through your career, and allowing that perspective to take hold will open up so many other opportunities and accomplishments that you may not have realized were possible when you started.

JASPER: How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your work as an artist?

DRE: It’s been weird. I think the constant stress of it has at times affected my focus. Many routines had to change as well, which threw off schedules and the consistency of how I did things. That’s been an adjustment, but not the worst part of it. With COVID and the turbulence of what this presidential election year has been, it really has been challenging some days to deal with both of those burdens riding you for months, on top of whatever my “normal” life stressors have been. I’m used to working under a lot of pressure, but it’s been mentally and emotionally exhausting on some days. Some of these heavier days have dwindled my creative energy, which has been something new and strange for me. I’ve never lacked in the creative energy department. That said, having done this work for many years, I’m thankful that I have picked up enough skills and experience to maneuver through creative slumps, pandemic and chaotic political climates be damned. Take breaks when your mind needs them, power through when you have the chance.

JASPER: For those of us who don’t have your skill sets, what words of wisdom can you offer us that would help us communicate with design artists more successfully?

DRE: One of the first and most important things I was lucky enough to learn early on, is to study and learn fundamentals. I always had natural ability and style, but I lacked in the fundamentals department which is common for many self-taught creators. Depending on which creative field will make a difference as to which fundamentals to focus on, but the rule applies the same to all of them. Then practice, practice, practice. Repetition in any skill is paramount. The idea is to get as natural and comfortable with the fundamentals, so that once you know them intimately, then you can play around, twist and bend them to your will. The beauty of creative fundamentals no matter your concentration, there’s crossover for many of them so you can use them across the board regardless of the work you’re creating. Examples like color theory, composition, the way you lead the viewers eyes on an image, texture, lighting, are among a few of the fundamentals that can be applied to most visual creations. Oh, and grow a thick skin as quick as possible.

Talent lives here, determination and passion live here. The money? The money does not live here, unfortunately. Figuring out how to embrace quality creatives that are serious about having a professional career and make Columbia their home base is the main problem.

JASPER: Can you tell us about any arts organizations you are affiliated with and what their mission is?

DRE: My most consistent collaborations and affiliations are with Palmetto Luna. They are a non-profit organization based in Columbia that focuses on the arts and Latinx artists in the southeast United States to expose communities to Latinx culture through art. I’m a Latinx/Latino artist so the collaborations have been a natural fit (being that I’m passionate about both of those parts of my identity), thanks to the wonderful efforts that Ivan Segura and Alejandro Garcia-Lemos have put forth throughout the years for that organization.

JASPER: What one thing could we do in the Midlands – something that is actually within our power to do – that would make life here so much better for artists?

DRE: This is one I’ve been trying to figure out for the many years I’ve partaken in the Columbia art scene. The main problem for most artists in this town is not being able to survive and succeed financially. Many artists I’ve known here have burned out on creating and/or moved to other cities give at least an opportunity to make a decent living. Talent lives here, determination and passion live here. The money? The money does not live here, unfortunately. Figuring out how to embrace quality creatives that are serious about having a professional career and make Columbia their home base is the main problem. I’ve seen several ideas implemented but nothing has been tangibly successful to make a real difference. The support from both the city and the arts patrons has to be with real money, not just platitudes and high fives.

JASPER: Anything else exciting going on in your professional life these days you can share with us?

DRE: Sure thing! The next thing I’m about to birth into the world and am excited about is an apparel line I’m releasing called Gutter Baby. It’s gonna be a lifestyle brand/fashion line of shirts, hoodies, hats, accessories, one-of-a-kind customs, and prints inspired by many of my influences in Punk, Hip Hop, horror, sci-fi, lowbrow, pop art and street culture. It’s more or less my uncensored, whatever the fuck goes art line. The store link, soon to be released, is www.gutterbb.com

Benzel front cover illustration by Dre Lopez

JASPER: And how can readers get in touch with you to learn more about your work?

DRE: Different ways, on IG look me up @infidel_castro_x and @gutter.baby.apparel and if you’re interested in my more corporate/conventional work my website is www.drelopezcreative.com

www.drelopezcreative.com

JASPER: Anything else you want to say or suggest or complain about – here’s your platform!

DRE: No complaints. Keep fighting, nothing is permanent. Many people in general and especially in these times of uncertainty with COVID and political unrest are dealing with great amounts of pressure, anxiety, depression, and PTSD of some form. Suicides are rising everywhere. Please don’t give up. Your worst days will always pass, even if that is difficult to see sometimes. If you won’t do it for yourself anymore, do it for your loved ones. Always keep fighting.

West Columbia Brought the Magic to Friday Night's Fall Back Festival 2017

Cindi Boiter November 4, 2017

Michael Krajewski & Lucas Sams collaboration

You couldn't have asked for a more beautiful night on State Street last Friday when West Columbia threw their first ever Fall Back Festival. With the help of the shop owners on State Street, and a very strong influence from Frame of Mind owner Mark Plessinger, the night was warm and welcoming, full of music, food, drinks, and good and new friends.

Among the artists creating street art -- literally art on the asphalt paving of State Street -- were ten of Columbia's top creators, and you could tell they were having a great time creating art for art's sake. As one artist said, "It was nice to be able to just come out and make some art without having to abide by too many rules or fill out too many forms and applications." The artists, whose works are pictured above, included Alicia Leeke, Herman Keith, Sammy Lopez, Karl Larsen, Michael Cassidy, Dre Lopez, Tony Brown, BA Hohman, and Michael Krajewski and Lucas Sams who collaborated on their piece.

After 10 provided some great cover tunes, Pawleys food truck fed hungry bellies, and all the restaurants and bars had their doors open welcoming folks to come in and buy a drink to take back out on the street.

Frame of Mind featured an innovative art show by IRL couple artists Bohumila Augustinova and Barry Wheeler. ( Full disclosure: Barry Wheeler is the president of the board of directors for The Jasper Project.)

Converge Above the Plane by Barry Wheeler

Art for art's sake. Answering the need to create and share that creation. Music in the air. A happy little buzz from a Friday night drink. Friends, old and new, clasping hands, slapping one another on humid backs, giving good deep hugs. Celebrating Friday, fall, art, and one another.

Keeping it simple. Preserving the joy.

FUERZA! New exhibit explores reality of domestic violence through art

Jasper September 21, 2014

There’s something that goes on everyday, around the world, country and right here in Columbia. It happens next door, down the street and for some in their own homes. It’s what Palmetto Luna Arts board member Alejandro Garcia - Lemos refers to as “a serious and complicated issue.”

That issue is domestic violence.

The Columbia Museum of Art has teamed up with Palmetto Luna Arts, which promotes Latin arts around the State, to bring a one of a kind exhibit to museum visitors during Latin Month. ¡FUERZA! meaning strength, force, and power in Spanish, Artistas Latin@s in South Carolina, is the effort of Dre López, Sammy López, and Robert Chambers of the Piensa Art Company as well as Lemos, Ashley Berendzen, and Mariángeles Borghini. Together, the team created panels of art to convey the struggles of domestic violence, specifically in minorities around the country. Aside from the CMA, this group of artists teamed up with the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, which is compiled of 22 sexual assault programs in the state.

The exhibit, which will be located in the Carolina Guignard Community Gallery of the CMA will open on Tuesday, September 23, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will feature music, dance and a lot of meaningful art to take in.

Garcia-Lemos is proud that this art is not solely for the purpose of entertainment, but to bring a necessary awareness to the community. As an issue close to all the artists in the Latin American community, Garcia-Lemos hopes he can make a difference through this art and bring much more awareness to this often-occurring issue in South Carolina, as well as the entire U.S.

As an issue that can effect any population, gender, race or person, the artists, SCCADVSA and the CMA calls on all members of the community to get a better understanding of domestic violence through a unique form of artistic expression. Opening night of ¡FUERZA! is free to the public and will be on display until November 30., giving guests ample opportunity to experience the heartfelt strength, force, and power.

-By Caitlyn McGuire

Book Review -- The Accidental Candidate: The Rise and Fall of Alvin Greene, by Corey Hutchins and David Axe, with art by Blue Delliquanti and cover by Dre Lopez

Jasper July 11, 2012

Before I begin, I should admit to no real expertise with graphic novels. I have read only a handful before tackling The Accidental Candidate, the new book from Free Times reporter Corey Hutchins and freelance war correspondent and graphic novelist David Axe, with art by Blue Delliquanti and cover art Dre Lopez. However, each time I return to the medium, I am amazed by its power to tell a story in a way fundamentally different, but equally as compelling, as a traditional novel. The interaction between word and image and the momentum and movement that a narrative gains from the frame structure has its own beauty, and one should read a graphic novel or two for that experience if nothing else.

But enough about the medium -- let’s talk about this particular book, which is not technically a “novel," but a graphic non-fiction work; an emerging genre in which co-writer David Axe is a leader. The book chronicles, as the subtitle says, “The Rise and Fall of Alvin Greene,” South Carolina’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010.

If you’ve already forgotten this bizarre, and embarrassing, political spectacle -- the kind of thing that can only happen in South Carolina -- here's the quick and dirty summary. Knowing that unseating Tea Party kingmaker Jim DeMint from his Senate seat was likely going to a be a Sisyphean task, nobody really geared up to take on the charge other than one former State House rep -- who did only minimal campaigning before the primary -- and Alvin Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed Army vet of whom nobody had ever heard, and who didn’t bother to campaign at all. But something strange, improbable, and a little suspicious happened -- Greene won the primary in a landslide. Suddenly Greene became a huge story, as countless media outlets ran interviews of the socially awkward man, who lived with his father in Manning, SC, and who seemed to have painfully little political acumen, if indeed he had any at all.

The depiction of Greene by both the writers and Delliquanti seems to be deliberately unadorned, conveying not only the uncertain sense that Greene might not be “all there,” but also that he lives his life largely in his head as a misunderstood loner whose poor communication skills make him come across as less intelligent than he actually is. Hutchins and Axe don’t shy away from some of the more off-the-wall ideas that Greene came up with during the race -- his suggestion that action figures of himself be made and sold to jump-start the economy and his claim that DeMint single-handedly started the recession, for example -- but they avoid making those moments merely punch lines. Greene's opponent in the primary, Vic Rawl, also comes off pretty well as an embattled defender of election fairness and democratic responsibility. It is primarily party figures on both sides who come off badly, as the writers read the Tea Party riot act and come down on the bumbling ineffectiveness of leadership in South Carolina's Democratic Party.

As compelling as the basic story is here, though, it’s a little too straightforward and limited to carry the book by itself, so the writers use the story as a jumping off point to illustrate some troubling truths about our political discourse. Hutchins himself becomes one of the central characters in the book, as he recounts not only Greene’s story, but also his own role in the debacle. An astute reporter with a knack for long-form intensive journalism, Hutchins was the first and only reporter to cover Greene before the election, and also had the benefit of conducting some of the most in-depth interviews the candidate was willing to give. While his winning portrayal of himself might come off as self-serving to some, it also seems rightly earned, given his extensive coverage of the events in Columbia’s Free Times.

Hutchins and Axe's depiction of Hutchins' own efforts point to a glaring failure, in most traditional media outlets, when it comes to covering politics, as many of the biggest and most important stories go unreported while exhaustive attention is given to the horse race of polling and acquiring the cheap sound bite. Hutchins and Axe draw connections from Greene’s story to a variety of these issues, including the controversy over faulty voting machines (South Carolina bought their current batch from Mississippi, after the latter decided they weren’t reliable enough); the known shady practice by Republican operatives of planting poor black candidates in races in the South; the rise of the Tea Party; and, DeMint’s connections with the cultish fundamentalist group in DC known as The Fellowship.

In doing this, the team's work fits into the emerging trend of non-traditional reporting techniques made both possible and necessary due to the rise of the Internet and 24-hour cable news. While most of the story comes directly from Hutchins' own reporting on Greene, there is also a deft use of quotes from other journalists and national political figures that lends the book a weighty sense of argument.

-- Kyle Petersen

(In addition to being the music editor for Jasper Magazine, Kyle Petersen holds a master's degree in English from USC and is currently pursuing a PhD in American Literature. He is also a former employee of the SC Democratic Party Headquarters.)

Playing After Dark -- This Friday and Saturday Nights

Jasper June 21, 2012

Neither cartoons, puppets, video games, nor music sound all too foreign. Unless you’ve been living under a rather sizable rock (or had the misfortune of attending an artistically disinclined South Carolina public school), you’ve undoubtedly encountered each of these creative media before. But chances are you haven’t encountered them together as a single, collaborative event.

This Friday and Saturday, Pocket Productions affords you the opportunity to do so. Since 2009, this local arts organization has been expanding the public’s definition of art by exposing Columbia to innovative examples of interdisciplinary artistic cooperation. Their “Playing After Dark” series, in particular, has introduced audiences to visual, musical, performing, and even culinary arts.

This weekend’s installment of Playing After Dark (titled “1001”) revolves around the unique collaboration between digital and analog art. It will feature the following performances: Dre and Sammy Lopez of Piensa Art Company will present a combination of digital and analog drawings; Lyon Hill (puppetmaker and puppeteer with the Columbia Marionette Theatre) and Wade Sellers (commercial producer/director and owner of Coal Powered Filmworks) will perform a marionette/cartoon act; Professor Fripples (brilliant young programmer David Hamiter) will show off an audio controlled video game that runs alongside a puppet show; and DJ Deft Key (Entropy Studios’ producer, sound engineer, multi-instrumentalist, and remix artist) and singer/songwriter Bob Benjamin will perform a fusion of digital and acoustic music.

Playing After Dark “1001” begins at 7 pm this Friday and Saturday at CMFA Arts Space (914 Pulaski). Tickets are available for $10 in advance (online at www.pocketproductions.org), $12 at the door, or $8 with membership. In addition to the one free drink with admission, fine IPAs, stouts, Merlot, Syraz, and hors d’oeuvre will be available. The event may also feature a “puppet” boiled peanut stand courtesy of Happiness Bomb (a diverse group of artists, musicians, designers, programmers, and, of course, puppeteers).

For more information about Pocket Productions, check them out on Twitter (twitter.com/PocketProSC) and Facebook (facebook.com/pocketproductions).

-- Austin Blaze - intern, Jasper Magazine