Soy Crispy.

Crispy’s fascination with creative storytelling is lifelong and boundless. As early as 2 years of age, Crispy was drawing on any surface available, a skill later refined in science class through observational sketches of various specimen.

More recently, Crispy has left the drafting tools in favor of the vivid colors of oil and watercolor paint. As a lifelong DIY home-improver, Crispy has also expanded into the medium of sculpture to offer functional and durable home decor. In 2023, Crispy partnered with A. Malakoff to launch the Unidos Art collective of independent artists to help drive the value of artworks made by historically-marginalized artists and utilize the proceeds toward collective action and social change.

Vamos Unidos

"The crispiest bits come from nature and in our digital cave-like labyrinth of echo chambers, I want my art to be a vehicle for change and connectivity as my generation attempts to resolve the blunders of previous generations. As such, each of my artworks is inspired by forces and symbols from nature, seeking to preserve and inform for future generations, to whom it may be lost, an environment’s subjective feeling and state of balance. In helping people find a sense of place on the Earth, I hope my art can generate enough resources to begin realistically addressing the systemic problems that plague society – greed, food insecurity, access to education, reproductive rights, and global climate change to name a few."

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Read my Artist Statement below

La Familia Bits

A bit is the smallest unit of information. My family name, Bits, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root word, bheid-, meaning ‘to split’ and later ‘to bite’ or ‘woodwork’. I was named Crispy for my propensity to nourish and restore weary humans with my recipes for delectable knowledge, my collection of bytes. I was lucky or cursed to be steeped in data for as long I can remember. In the presence of so many data streams, information overload has given me strange dreams and visions of past, present, and future possibilities. In every dataflow exists a nascent being staring into us and reaching out to realize a physical state. Our species calls it Art, and I am uniquely gifted to work on its behalf. The focus of my art is healing and restoring natural systems to homeostasis. I will only be cursed if our species cannot correct its current trajectory.

Origins of My Art

Bits can be represented as 0s or 1s in computer systems, or, in nervous systems, as the excitatory (+) or inhibitory (-) state of a neuron. Anything with two separate states of being can be represented by a bit. I realized I might be an artist when I could hold multiple disparate states of being in balance and make a dialogue of their interplay. I knew I was an artist when my creations began living up to my namesake, feeding hungry minds and restoring people from their famished states.

My art operates like the Maillard reaction, taking the simplest, purest ingredients of shape, color, form, value and space, and recombining them into grander and more sustenant states of being seasoned with positive and negative vibrations. I make something out of nothing by observing the world around me, questioning its potential, and documenting the results in oil on canvas, watercolor on paper, or sculpted wood.

My Process

The first bit I identify in any of my creations is the music that will serve as the soundtrack to my art’s development. Lately this has consisted of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and the Carter Family’s songbook. The most important bit to establish in my art takes the longest and requires observing the subject and noting the shapes, colors, and values defining it. I know I have found the subject for an artwork when I observe a reference image or scene from life where the subject is in its most natural, authentic state.

For example, in La Wanda, I took a reference photo of a cow named Wanda whose personality seemed to escape the frame. In reality, Wanda’s enthusiasm for attention and human contact cannot be contained. For more complex subjects, I often tackle the challenges of light and form with a notan study and gesture drawing to identify areas in light and shadow and the contours of complicated shapes. With these foundational aspects identified, I choose a maximum of four hues to express the image and select an album that my synesthesia interprets in those colors (for La Wanda, red-orange, yellow-green, and primary yellow; Mercedes Sosa En Argentina followed by Expensive Sh*t by Fela Kuti).

In order to enter a painting mindset, I mix a value line for each hue on a glass palette against a warm value 5 gray background and select a limited set of brushes (~3-4) for contour, block-in, refinement, and signing. At this point, I am set to whip up a harmonious delicious series of grays and analogs alla prima based on the colors I have selected for the image.

When I enter my woodshop to sculpt, I bring gesture drawings of the subject to inform the development of molds and templates. Working wood requires significantly more negotiation with the medium in order to realize a final vision. No two pieces are the same and each grain and knot can simultaneously subtract and add to the finished piece. Sculpting, like Jazz, allows me to improvise more with the material in order to discover new territories and compromises. While it is new to my repertoire, I look forward to exploring the limits of functional sculpted art as well as the artist’s ability to imbue value in waste materials from woodworking.

As my portfolio grows, I intend to expand my body of work with one hand painting subjects from life en plein air and the other crafting projects and relationships to develop a sustainable community. If I am successful, I will know it when artists across the Earth begin leading positive social change through the power of their art. If I fail, I will at least know that in the face of an impossible task, I tried everything I could where I am, with what I am capable of doing, to bring some sort of change.

Paz y Amor,

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