Ryan McGinness Charts His Childhood as a Skater and Illustrator | Big Think

Ryan McGinness Charts His Childhood as a Skater and Illustrator

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Artist Ryan McGinness describes his early study in brand consciousness.

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Ryan McGinnes:

Ryan McGinnes was born in Virginia Beach, VA. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts, Pittsburgh, PA. He has worked as a Curatorial Assistant for the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. He lives and works in New York City.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How did your childhood influence your art?

McGinness: Well, you know, because Virginia Beach primarily this skate and surf culture, it’s… a lot of the things that surrounds the people there are valued according to the brands, I guess. And so from a very early age, I… from a very early age I was noticing how branding and logos and images on objects created or rather increase the proceed values of those objects and so, you know, certainly while I grew up at the beach and skateboarding, I was never really good at any of those activities but what I really… I guess was good at, to some extent, was kind of emulating those graphics and logos because I couldn’t afford the cool brand so I would make my own shirts and paint on my own skateboards and those objects in turn, almost ironically, became valued by other people and so there’s a… I started to understand how that worked and I wanted to assume that power and that’s what kind of leads me to my interest in graphic design. And so from Virginia Beach, I was in Virginia Beach from kindergarten to 12th grade. I went to study graphic design at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

Question: What did your parents do?

McGinness: My father was primarily computer systems analyst and was also a stockbroker for awhile and my mother did a variety of odd jobs and she also made a lot of things that she sold, kind of crafts, you know, we had a garage full of jigsaws and sanding belts and tools, woodworking tools and so I was always in an environment of making things and creating things and furthermore making things for herself. So a lot of my toys growing up were homemade toys, cars made out of chunks of wood with milk carton lids for wheels and things like that, yeah.