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| "Jay222 was born in the south San Francisco town of Daly City, where he was promptly declared unfit for Catholic preschool. He showed early promise as a young artist, and he ultimately traded Hail Marys for horror movies. Like any good flick from the genre will tell you, suburbs + nuns = scary stuff, so Jay222 took safe haven in the offbeat humor of Ren & Stimpy and the creative expression of hip hop culture. Arriving at the higher learning crossroads of art school and cosmetology school, Jay222 initially took the path toward hair. It was during a fateful 2-day class on horror makeup where he learned to make an open neck that everything suddenly aligned. What began casually in 2005 is now an obsession that eats up 8 pounds of polymer clay every 2 weeks. The result is the visual equivalent of a cartoon horror movie on acid. It's blood and guts; fascia and fungus. It's early Peter Jackson mixing it up with early Bill Cosby. It's Wes Craven sharing a laugh with George Carlin. It's Stephen King sparking it up with Slayer. These twisted and tormented creatures are Jay222's commentary on a society filled with hatred and violence. His mutated toys serve to remind us of the damage we're doing to the world. the exposed viscera lays out their suffering, and they refuse to be ignored. While Jay222 certainly has a (too put it mildly) tactile style, he prefers versatility over a single technique. Much like the tiers of day he layers over each piece, he works by building new ideas onto previous ones and never sketches before sculpting. Jay222 believes in the reciprocity of inspiration. In his first 4 years of sculpting, he gave away all his pieces. Among the recipients were: DJ Qbert, Sage Francis, Zach Galafinakis, Patton Oswalt, Balzac and Jesse Hernandez. Jay222's original creations and modified creatures have been exhibited nationally. He was in an opening for Toy Art Gallery and a show curated by Buff Monster for Giant Robot in Los Angeles on the same night. When Sacramento's Dragatomi invited him to an event called Not Vinyl, he incorporated live fish into his piece. In another challenge, he transformed an innocent stick of deodorant into a monster for Genuine Artikle in New York. He then dispatch more homegrown monsters to the Arizona desert for a two-man show at Phoenix's Red Hot Robot. Jay222's monsters are often in impressive company, whether alongside Mars-1 and Damon Soule at San Mateo's Thud Rumble Gallery or as part of Multiversal, a massive group toy art show, which took place during Miami's Art Basel. Jay222 is available for commissions, and despite how his art may look, he's not scary at all." -Jeremy Brautman |
