80sixed began as an outlet for its founder, Alex Herber, to escape the mundane world we occupy. With a childhood dream of becoming an artist, but with the inevitably of life somehow pushing us in the opposite direction of our dreams, Alex accidentally fell into a career in engineering, research, and development.
Before getting into engraving Alex had never ventured into digital art; “Everything was pen to paper, paint to canvas, traditional work”. Through 80sixed, he is learning how to draw digitally, learn the physics of lasers, and making mistakes that allow him to grow. “I spin 80sixed as a business with lots of people running around doing shit, but its really just me. Every email, every post, every skateboard…is me. Its authentic, and I’m proud of that. The actual art in 80sixed is just me trying to be an artist. Its a show no one is paying attention to, which is hilarious to me.”
So, why did Alex chose skateboards as his medium? “Skateboards are a just a sexy canvas in my mind. They have beautiful curves, made from good natural material, and they’re fucking challenging to work with”. Though limited in subject matter in terms of scale, and having to work around 8 holes and the curvatures of the board making the laser process a complete “pain in the ass”, Alex sees this as what makes the boards so beautiful.
80sixed’s main products are their city map boards; offering 174 major cities, as well as custom city commissions for people all over the world. According to Alex, there are a couple of things that are appealing to the city boards; “One, street skaters dig them because they have such an intimate relationship with the cities they live and skate in, and secondly, other weirdos, like me, think it’s a cool canvas to represent their cities and think they look sexy on the wall… That’s the beauty in these… it’s tailored, custom art.”
His working process begins in a traditional fashion with sketches and ideas which are later finished in illustrator, Photoshop, and Corel. Alex often has to work backwards, or inverted, because engraving is more or less binary, or on and off. Black and white vector art is usually the final output, but when working with photography the process follows closely to that of screen or wood block printing, and any colour needed is put in by hand.
Alex also works on custom work for individuals, artists, tattoo conventions, and photographers, which are some of his favourite projects to work on. “Its the collaboration with another artist that’s exciting. I can breath new life into an existing work and give it a completely different feeling and look” says the artist.
Having recently invested in screen printing, Alex is currently working on some new experimentations and processes of trial and error with exposing screens and pulling ink onto paper.
www.80sixeddesign.com
@80sixed_design
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