ADORN: An Interview with Eric Elms
Interview with Eric Elms
Generally speaking, what’s your approach to graphics? Is say, each one a reference or flip of another design?
I do reference stuff a lot, but I try to reference weird stuff. For shirt graphics, it can be more obvious. T-shirts are really anyman’s territory, you can do whatever. I don’t take it to seriously. It’s supposed to be fun, look cool, it’s whatever. But, the smarter the reference the better. If you’re taking two really weird things and putting them together in a cool way, that’s what I’m into. Every once in a while I like to switch up my stuff and do things a different way though. Playing with different visuals. I do like a hand quality to things, starting by hand and then ending up on the computer.
Over the past few years you’ve created a few of these mixed-media sculptures. How did you get into that style?
There’s a light bulb in the “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out” piece, and that light bulb kind of started the whole thing. There’s this antique shop by my house and they had an old ’60s signage light bulb in there that had this kind of graphic feel, so I
noticed that and it got me thinking about doing graphics in 3-D. I started with that light bulb and built around it. I’d call it a graphic sculpture.
Is there a way that you think your work has evolved?
It evolves naturally, but I work to evolve it as well. When I was in school I was doing very traditional graphic stuff with a specific look. Then I changed it a little bit to create my own look or identity. I think there’s a feeling to my work across the board, but there’s not a very specific or exact way of doing it. I think there’s something you can’t put your finger on. Polished things with rough edges is the vibe, maybe.
When is your Vans shoe coming out?
It’s coming out in a couple months, I think. The design is all done, but I’ll probably do a couple things around that. I’m going to do a sculpture based on one of the graphics related to it. The shoe isn’t a pro model or anything, they said that I could do whatever I wanted, so it’s my own model.
