Today we’d like to introduce you to SKIP.
Hi SKIP, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was born into a southern baptist household to a carpenter/music & youth pastor father. From one week old until my late 20s, I lived within the walls of the church and its community and was only allowed to leave on rare occasions – unless I was sneaking out. Both my sister and I were homeschooled by our mother until we entered high school, which at that point had permanently affected my social skills and ability to make friends.
Throughout our youth, neither I nor my sister were allowed to listen to secular music, or watch any movies that weren’t rated PG. As a result, my awareness and experience of pop culture were severely stunted and unfortunately replaced with aggressive bible-thumping, self-hatred, homophobia, and terrible Christian alt-rock music. Later in life, this cultural void eventually became a source of my own creative inspiration. Yet, it also meant that while I was moving forward through time, my awareness was split between processing the present culture, while also still catching up with the past.
My family moved around a lot because of my father’s Jesus job but landed most regularly in the less desirable areas in-and-around Miami, Florida – namely Opa Locka/Hialeah. Somewhere in my early teens, I began to sneak-listen to secular radio stations after my parents went to bed, and create “pause tapes” on my cassette player. Popular music gifted me unconditional acceptance at a point and time in my life in which I had none coming from anywhere else.
It began to pull me away from the rigidness of my belief structure and to really call into question many of the guiding principles I was raised to obey. In middle school, I transitioned from being homeschooled to public school, with the main trade-in value being that I was able to now take band classes and learn how to read and perform music. This led to playing multiple instruments throughout high school and eventually receiving a full scholarship to study saxophone as a music performance major at the University of Central Florida.
All throughout college, my social awkwardness was at an all-time high. Growing up, I had always had a really tough time connecting with other people and making friends – most likely attributed to my extremely sheltered upbringing. As I gradually distanced myself from that programming, I became bombarded with these intense and challenging concepts and feelings all at once, I became acutely aware that my entire identity was complete bullshit and that my sheltered life up to that point was a total lie.
This new level of honesty and self-awareness was just too much to process all at once, and my brain snapped in half and I experienced a complete existential/identity crisis. I dropped out of college, sold the saxophone that I had owned since middle school, bought a computer and audio recording gear, and then enrolled in Valencia Community College’s audio recording program. My new life goal is to find my way into the world of writing and recording my own music and to somehow contribute to the pop culture that made such a massive impact in my own life.
Beginning in 2004, I set out to build a music career under the mentorship and production of emcee/painter Asaan “Swamburger” Brooks. Over the course of ten years, the two of us recorded and released a number of albums, and performed that music lives on stage alongside Lauryn Hill band member/producer, Glen “DIVINCI” Valencia. However, in those beginning years, the greatest lesson that I learned from Swamburger was how to hustle CDs out on the streets of Downtown Orlando. At that time, I suffered from a significant amount of social anxiety, which was also paired with a total lack of confidence.
Yet despite the trauma of approaching complete strangers in bars and clubs, the experience forced me to come out of my shell and to practice my social skills. As I began to book more and more shows, the problem of needing flyers and promotional materials needed to be solved, and for cheap! So because of the absolute and inescapable fact that I couldn’t afford to pay someone else to design flyers for me, I knew I had to learn it myself. After downloading a pirated version of Photoshop, and teaching myself the basics to use the program, I started producing quality work very quickly.
At no point while growing up did I ever think that I would eventually end up a visual artist. I was never any good at painting with a paintbrush, or even sketching and drawing out ideas. Even just sitting in front of a blank canvas would give me crippling anxiety, and the beginnings of a panic attack. Graphic design solved the biggest problem that had always kept me away from the visual arts. It removed the stress and pressure I would feel staring at a blank canvas. Plus, I was always particularly awful at drawing and illustrating, no matter how much practice I got, I never seemed to improve.
In 2010, B-Side Artist, Chris Tobar, invited me to take part in my first group exhibit, a show consisting entirely of artwork made with spray paint and stencils. The challenge and opportunity were exhibiting, though rather unnerving. But despite the reservations and feelings of imposter syndrome, I showed up to the event with my canvas painting in hand and hung it in line along with the other works. But within a short amount of time, the new paintings I was creating – all still stencils and spray paint – had caught the eye and attention of many other artists and gallery owners in town.
So in 2011, an unexpected opening slot at local Orlando venue, Redefine Gallery, created a last-minute opportunity to pull together my first solo art exhibit, entitled “OCD: An Expression in Obsession.” The theme spoke to my natural attraction to misusing what is a traditionally wild and messy medium, to create clear definition and cleanliness… creating order out of chaos… However, the vibe of the new materials was very “middle-finger-forward,” and it contained a loud and direct counterculture voice, lampooning religious leaders and politicians of the time. The main thing to come out of this exhibit was my first Franchise Industries painting.
The Franchise Brand is essentially a testament to my rocky-but-rewarding life journey, disguising social activist messaging through the bold lettering and commanding tone of fascist-styled propaganda, and using bright colors and pop culture references to create a base tone and more organic connection point with viewers. However, the main purpose of my artwork is not to change the world – both I and my art are far too nihilistic to believe that idea.
There is a very effective form of therapy that I receive from cutting stencils is hugely beneficial in treating my ADHD and anxiety/panic attacks. Just the amount of focus and pacing necessary to carefully cut each line of the stencil with absolute precision, forces my brain to push out all the extra noise, transcend my surroundings and find zen, which I feel carries over into the rest of my life.
In addition to spending most of the last decade as an artist, I have also had the opportunity to conceive and operate two pop-up art galleries, and am responsible for curating a large number of art exhibits in Central Florida. An example is the annual B-Side Artists exhibit at CityArts Factory, Sam Flax’s On The Spot exhibit, and the Maker Faire Orlando fine art exhibits. Moreover, my relationships within the local arts community have afforded me the opportunity to direct/produce arts education video content and award-winning short-form documentaries, which highlighted fellow artists and creatives within Orlando, and in different areas of Florida.
This last year of COVID has been spent working almost exclusively on client/commission work, however, the last few months have allowed me to turn the page on that chapter and to get back to painting. That absence was not without its own benefit, however, returning back with more depth and raw emotion inserted into the cold and exact precision of most of my work. Everything I am creating now has a concerted effort placed towards texture, shading, and expression.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Growing up in what was essentially a religious cult, and then being sheltered and cut-off from the outside world was extremely difficult and has followed me through most of my life. However, the distance between me and pop culture and the arts really ended up defining my own personal relationship with music and film and culture.
However, as I removed myself from that blatantly toxic and emotionally abusive environment, my family made it clear that they had no interest in being a part of my life. So I gained my independence from the cult but lost most of my family in the process. Also, they were also not accepting of my sexuality either, that had a lot to do with it.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Florida-based satirist and pop-art perfectionist, SKIP, creates work in a wide range of artistic mediums, all while maintaining a distinct style and artistic voice. His art adopts the moniker of Franchise Industries – an imaginary crypto-fascist super-corporation – to deliver biting criticisms of the pop culture machine from an unconventional point of view.
Disguised behind a transparent venere of nihilistic humor and bright colors, SKIP addresses various “prickly” social issues in a way that makes them more approachable to the average person. This unique balance of propaganda and pop imagery, allows him to present his concepts in a wide variety of self-taught creative mediums including – but not limited to – hand-cut stencils and spray paint, woodworking, photography, interactive art installations, sculpture, murals, seamstressing, digital illustration, and graphic design.
SKIP delivers an ultra-technical level of precision in his work and weaponizes his sharp wit and dark sense of humor to lampoon subjects ranging from politics to pollution to populism. He is known especially for his level of comfort and control in using spray paint, and for his ability to manipulate the medium to more closely resemble the smooth finish and clean lines more commonly associated with screen-printing.
I paint ugly things in pretty ways, just like I have done throughout my whole life. Every piece is a puzzle that begins with a punchline and then works itself backward to find the human experience. I have never been interested in creating work that preaches to the choir. Instead, I filter my ideas in a way that allows me to find humor in the horror, and to use those techniques of stencil cutting and spray painting to relieve my own anxiety and existential panic.
My subject matter is our daily relationship and interaction with The Multinational Cryptofascist Machine, and finding peace and joy in the weight of that oppressive jackboot.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
For anyone who travels or tours on the road, Orlando is the perfect city because it is small enough that you can hide away if you need to build or restore, but then is also large enough that you can go out and find some trouble to get into if you like.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seeskip.com/shop
- Instagram: @seeskipfranchise
- Facebook: @seeskip
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/seeskip
Image Credits
“Holy Cow” Photography by Zachary Scheffer
