This season, (capsule) commissioned Brooklyn-based artist Mike Perry to illustrate his vision of our community. Perry’s signature line style coupled with a soft, spot watercolor application is brought to life with pops of color and fill-ins using fabric patterns. Here our community becomes a global dreamscape of spools and reams, helping hands, chutes and ladders, sunsets, galaxies, seasons and tides. Pretty accurate, we’d say.

Name: Mike Perry
Age: 27
Hometown: Kansas City, MI
Currently resides: Brooklyn, NY
Favorite Brands: APC, blank tees (in the last year I have committed to not wearing any graphic tees), J. Crew is good right now. I keep
it simple.
 
Your web address and company used to be called Midwest Is Best. Now you’re in the big city. Can you talk about your background and its influence?
I grew up in the ‘burbs, but the really rural ‘burbs. I had typical neighborhood experiences and as a place to grow up it was very good, comfortable, safe. But it was rural -- I found a dead horse that had been eaten by wolves in my backyard. Skin was stuck to the bones.
My grandfather, we called him “the mad scientist” was an inventor and artist, we moved a lot because of that. My mom is just a rock. She encouraged me as an artist, was 100% supportive. That completely informed everything about who I am. She taught me to take chances and experience things. When I was in middle school, she got laid off and we were really poor, but instead of being uber defeated, she went back to college. She’s my role model. I went to college in Minnesota and it was a great first city experience. It was supportive and my attitude was to make the most of everything. I put in all the hours it took to do it. I developed great peer group and we’re still close.
I graduated in 2002.

What next?
I got a job with Urban Outfitters after college. I was really fortunate. It was a dream then, -- all the things I was into, they were doing. I applied and went thought the typical just-graduated unemployment scenario, went into debt, sent my portfolio out, didn’t hear anything. Then I got a phone call from Jim Datz (my mentor and we now share a studio in Crown Heights), quickly moved to Philadelphia and jumped right in. I couldn’t believe for a second I even had this job, so I hustled hard and I did so much extra for the company – I would redesign the logo for example, and then they ran with it. So I got to push my book and work.

It’s great you came away with so much. Usually you just hear about UO ripping off and using young artists.
I know, there’s a website devoted to stolen designs. But there are different worlds within the company and there are super creative people who are making the print materials, graphics, store displays. It’s important to pay attention in an environment like that, to the way things work. It was so important for me professionally, like we’d work with freelancers, it takes a week to get back to them just because we’re busy. You have to see things from the inside. I did so much – band-aids, a Lomo camera, a 3D typeface, and there’s a great post-work relationship. It’s a club. Once you work there as a designer, they say you always have a job there. I worked there for three years and finally got a chance to produce a catalogue (that was all I wanted to do), I finally got the shot. I met my current girlfriend (photographer Anna Wolf) on that shoot and she lived in New York, so I moved.

Now what’s life like?
We share a studio in Crown Heights and live in Prospect Heights. We wanted big space and to be able to walk from home to work. We found a space in a converted Heinz Ketchup factory that is the go-top reference model for green construction and renovation in the city right now. The whole building is an artist’s building. It’s called Big Sue.

Sounds great.
I never go into Manhattan; I don’t even have a monthly MetroCard. There’s an incredible community blossoming here. The businesses
that have been opening have been really special. There’s a skate/flower/antiques shop. The owner isn’t changing the original space, just reinterpreting it. He’s building skate ramps for the neighborhood. Really doing it right.

What are you listening to?
I listen to a lot of talk radio – I love the show called Radio Lab they only produce one show per season. It’s This American Life meets Cartalk. Clever banter, all about science – my favorite subject. Bon Iver, Smog, Lil Wayne and podcasts.

Computer versus hand work?
They’re fully integrated for me; one wouldn’t live without the other. Computers are tools, not the end all be all. All I know is, don’t base your education on what software you use – you’re going to be outdated quickly. Technology changes all the time, I use whatever’s there. In my practice, there are only so may hours in a day that I’m willing to sit in front of a computer. The question I ask myself is what else can I do to not use the internet all the time?

You make a magazine called Untitled that is sold almost exclusively through your website. How did that come about?
I really wanted to do a magazine, I think every young designer does. So I did it. I kept meeting photographers and other artists and we’d always talk about how we never got hired. I tapped into my own cash and made a forum for myself and my peers. It’s a great opportunity to collaborate, it’s fun to work with other people. Right now, I’m letting other people direct issues and stepping back into a publishing position. Untitled has drawings, fine-art, photography, poetry. The next one’s a science issue.

And Untitled also has fashion.
Well, it’s not necessarily a fashion-slanted magazine. But fashion is the thing that helps makes it a magazine? Question mark? (Laughs).

Any thoughts about the piece you did for (capsule)?
Well, community -- I’m big into it. It’s a really important thing for me. I grew up in the midwest and everyone assumes it’s all community-oriented but my neighborhood in Brooklyn is the smallest town I’ve ever lived in. It’s super important to who I am and the work that I make, and it’s never been that way anywhere else. I see you guys as smaller little guys who may get beat up now and then, exactly how I see my friends and I who are all creative; we all go out and shoot the shit but build into important conversations about work and industry. How that turns into a drawing, well…the fabric pattern elements are my favorite part of the drawing.