Words & Photos by: Andrew “Drew” Thomas
Thursday, May 8th marked the debut of David Barnett‘s solo exhibition “Be Here Now” at the Poppington Gallery. “Be Here Now” presents Barnett’s new works in print, paint and light from this Brooklyn based artist and Creative Director for Damon Dash’s DD172 and Poppington multimedia art collectives.
With a background in silk screening, the basis of Barnett’s artwork style is vector-illustration, a computer process where the work created is infinitely scalable. Whether you blow it up or shrink it, the artwork still maintains it’s visual integrity. Inspiration for his work is drawn from various areas, including Eastern philosophy/religion, patterns in nature, alternative comics, 20th Century modern design and vintage album cover and prints.
Barnett’s chance to showcase his artwork style coincided with one of his first assignments at DD172, which was handling the art direction for the cover of Curren$y’s album, Pilot Talk.
“We vibed on it for a minute, bouncing ideas around for months, I did one we really liked it and then at last minute we had this great idea for what it ultimately ended up being which is the vector-illustration with green print everywhere, the leaf pattern mixing in with the skyline and obviously the F14 jet airplanes”.
The main draw of the “Be Here Now” exhibition are exclusive never-before-seen prints from his forthcoming graphic novel titled “Green Sky” a culmination of a year’s work based on a idea around the images of the “Pilot Talk” album cover.
“The album cover had been out a couple of years and developed legs of it’s own were people still talk about and ask me about it. I thought it would be really cool to see how a comic would look like that took place in the Pilot Talk album cover’s universe.
Barnett’s goal is to publish “Green Sky” his first graphic novel in time for ComicCon in the Fall of 2014
Be Here Now is a classic book from Ram Dass a spiritual thinker from the 1960’s, and the message [of this exhibit] to myself was this was my stage and I needed to rise to the occasion”.
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