JEFF SOTO

Jeff Soto really needs no introduction here, He has quickly become a giant force in this hard to label new art movement. With a blend of Graffiti, cartoons, robots, cacti, and illustrative know-how, his work has gained a broad audience that is sure to only grow in the future. Jeff is a personal inspiration to me as one of my contemporaries, so it’s really an honor for me to welcome him to our Art Dorks Community.

What would you say the percentage of the work you do is commercial and how much is personal or for galleries these days?

First, thanks Chris for the nice intro and for welcoming me to the Art Dorks. My friend Maxx always calls me an art nerd, which I guess is about the same as an art dork. I should get his ass in here too, he’s an Art Dork for sure. Anyways- the question- My goal has always been to do more gallery work and slowly phase out the illustration portion of what I do.

But so far this year I’ve been doing mostly commercial work; the jobs keep on coming in and I keep on accepting them. I usually don’t like illustration too much but this year I’ve actually had a lot of fun projects where the Art Directors just let me do my own thing pretty much. So this year so far it’s been like 95% commercial work. Usually it’s like 50%.

Are you still doing installations?

The last big installation I did was about a year ago. It was so time consuming and I put so much effort into it, but it was worth it. I’ll be working on more small pieces and doing more installation work in the future.
How long before you got out of school did you start showing? How did you hook up your first show?

When I was in high school I decided I’d like to do something in the arts so I got a book that talked about different avenues you could take as an artist. When I graduated I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do but I liked to paint and draw so I started trying to show in galleries.

I took photos of my artwork, and this was all high school work by the way, and sent them to galleries in Southern California. I never heard anything back for the most part, but I kept trying. I was in a group show about a year after high school at a small local gallery/coffee shop.

That was the first time I’d shown in a real gallery setting. After that I took part in a few local group shows, which were almost always at coffee shops. So I guess I started showing in 1994 a year after I finished high school. My first solo show came much later in 2001. I was a student at Art Center and I went to talk to Marsea Goldberg at New Image Art Gallery.

Somehow I played my cards right that day and Marsea said she’d take a look at my work. Luckily she liked what I was doing and put me in a show called “Paintaholics”, where my work went over pretty well. This led to my first show, “Potato Stamp Dreams” in Sept. 2001. I worked as hard as I’ve ever worked to finish enough good work for that show.

LEARN MORE -
http://artdorks.com/features/interviews/11#more-11

http://www.jeffsoto.com/