Josh Wisdumb Article!

The Boston Phoenix has published an article today on Josh Wisdumb, the man behind the Artist Edition New Balance 574… read the article below.

Thanks to HepDog from Sneakergame.

name: Josh “Wisdumb” Spivack

age: 23

resides: Somerville

influences: Ninja Turtles, Nintendo

It’s late last Thursday afternoon and Josh “Wisdumb” Spivack’s cell phone rings. Hunched over a coffee table/computer desk beside his live-in girlfriend Christiana, Wisdumb ashes a Marlboro Light into a tray, then takes the incoming call. “I’m chilling in my crib,” the 23-year-old full-time artist says into the phone. “Brendan’s making beats, I’m doing a painting, and I’m getting interviewed, all at once.”

That’s pretty much what’s been going down for the past hour in Wisdumb’s loft, a/k/a Gallery Inertia, a wide-open space of hardwood floors and abstract artwork perched on the fourth floor of Somerville’s Brickbottom Studios. Wisdumb’s friend Brendan, a lanky Worcester beatmaker who produces tracks with the crew Audio Kings, has been pressing buttons on a Roland Groovebox at the kitchen table, experimenting with a cowbell-tap loop over a digital bass-kick. Meanwhile, Wisdumb, a Providence-born painter/drawer with piercing blue eyes, thick eyebrows, and a bushy white-boy Afro that makes him look like a lion, has been concentrating on a pink-and-green canvas in the corner, brush-painting faces into an overlapping pattern that looks like a stained-glass framework constructed by a graffiti writer. He says the live music helps his art. “MC Escher was inspired by mathematicians,” explains Wisdumb, who has the Escher piece Curled-Up tattooed on his left arm. “I can compare that to me being inspired by music.”

Wisdumb’s also stenciled a few white high-top Nike Dunks onto the canvas. He loves the Nike Dunk. But Wisdumb’s sneaker is a New Balance 574 — and it really is his sneaker: on September 1, the international athletic-footwear company released a limited-edition sneaker rubber-etched with his black-and-white linework. Dubbed the “Wisdumb Icicles” because the linework vaguely resembles crystals, the shoes sold so well for $90 a pair that they’re now going for $175 online. Right now, both Brendan and Christiana are wearing them.

Wisdumb got the New Balance deal while he was still studying at the Museum of Fine Arts School. “This is a dream come true,” he admits. “I just remember being a little kid and really wanting those Pumps and having to save up money to get them. Or doing well on a test and getting a pair of Jordans out of it.”

Wisdumb’s been drawing since he was a kid. He’s “from all over the place,” he says, born in Providence, moving to the Bronx, then Connecticut, then Georgia, then California, then Massachusetts. He’s equally vague about his high-school years, which took place “in reform, lock-down-type deals.” Beyond his sneaker designs, he’s sold paintings for $8500. His biggest influences are Ninja Turtles, Nintendo, and skateboarding graphics from decks and T-shirts. He also likes to say that “when I don’t paint, I go insane” and describes his aesthetic as “discombobulated faces in abstract places.” Meaning that “if you were to look at [my work], you might see a turtle, you might see a spray-paint can, or you might see a person…. But faces tend to pop out [of] most of my work.”

Due to the success of the 574, things have started exploding for Wisdumb. In early October, as part of a traveling sneaker exhibition called the Sneaker Pimps tour, he painted live at NYC’s Avalon while Public Enemy played. Now, he’s been commissioned to design another pair for New Balance, in addition to an old-school tennis-ball pump that’ll be re-released by Reebok in 2006.

“Speaking of which, I gotta get back —” says Wisdumb firmly, nudging his black cat Samo, who’s named after Jean-Michel Basquiat’s street tag, and heading back to his artwork-in-progress. An hour later, he declares that he’s finished with the piece — he knows he’s done when “you feel like you just had sex.” But a few minutes later, he’s solemnly squatting at the bottom of the canvas with a light-green Krylon can. He’s not done — not just yet. “Almost. I’m still climaxing.”

Wisdumb paints live with DJ Matt Nolan at the Brickbottom Artists’ Association on Sunday, November 20 at 1 Fitchburg Street, Somerville | 2 pm | Open studios all weekend from noon to 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday, November 19 and 20 | free | www.brickbottomartists.com or www.joshwisdumb.com