Your images are everywhere. What initially motivated you to take your artistic skill in the directions that it has gone in?
In the very begining it was my pure fascination for art:cartoons, comics and seeing graffiti for the first time that subconciously planted seeds. My Mom was always doing paintings at home and worked jobs where she did graphic design when I was really young. So it seemed natural for me to make art. When I got into skateboarding in the late 80’s all the graphics really left an impression on me. It was all these things that I aspired to somehow be involved in when “I grow up”.
You helped create the visual identity for one of the illest skate brands out there today. Describe the early days of your involvement with IPath.
Me and my homie Matt Field created the name and I drew the “I” logo this was about November-December 1998. We both had this vision of what we wanted as far as the overall visual aesthetic of the company and also taking skateboarding shoes back to where it all started for us, late 80’s style high tops but with our own flavor. At the time all the skate shoes out there had really bulky soles and a bunch of plastic all over them to make them look more tech or something, all that kinda changed soon after.
With artists like Banksy, Neckface and a host of others coming onto the scene it’s almost becoming cliché to hide your face and not tell people you’re real name. You’ve been doing this for quite some time. What are the practical purposes to having an obscured identity?
Well I’m really shy and paranoid, and I feel the that more people see my face the more I’m likely to get into trouble, even though I don’t do much painting outside anymore. Things could come back to haunt me. It's really
easy just to put all my hair in front of my face cause I’ts really what I want the people to see, a hairy mutant! Also it’s always about looking like a Bigfoot and looking less like a normal person.
Do you think there could be/are too many artists running around under the guise of a cartoon character and a nickname?
Well lets just say I named myself Bigfoot back in the summer of 1994. A lot of the other writers and artists around me in S.F. really didn’t understand it, they all had pretty much normal graffiti sounding names. Nowadays anything goes, it can be “My name is the Toxic Serpent”, I think if you do art outside you don’t have to stay in the guidelines of the Hip Hop graffiti manual. But when I started I was the only organic hairy monster from nature, it was all robot and b-boy characters out there. Now there’s all these people with short hair making art about hairy
creatures from the forest.
Think back to the first time you saw a random person wearing a shoe with your graphic on it. Now think of the last time it happened. How has your reaction changed between now and then?
My reaction hasn’t changed much, it’s always cool to see people wearing stuff that I had some hand in creating.
The relationship between street art and hip hop almost goes without saying. With that said what kind of music are you into these days? Is there any music that inspires your work?
I’m really just all about hard rock and heavy metal from the 70’s and 80’s: KISS, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, Judas Priest, for example. I really love music almost more than anything, even life itself, I can’t live without it. I really don’t like anything from today, King Diamond just released a new record and it’s really good though. I like old hip hop before like 96’, the music made today is so undeserving compared to what paved the way for all of it. I could
listen to anything from the 70’s, pop, soul, funk and blues. I even like The Carpenters, that stuff makes me cry instantly. Pretty much music and Nature drive my life and art.
The image of Bigfoot and the imagery of your work is very nature oriented. What are your personal views on the state of our natural environment?
I think the human race took a wrong turn a long time ago, they didn’t see the magic of nature and they went in the direction of Robotland. Polluting nature all for greedy convienence. The environment has suffered because of this, and in the future everything that the people took for granted will be taken away from them. I hope it will get better.
What can we expect to see from Bigfoot in the near future?
A lot of paintings going deeper into the world of the Bigfoots. Always shoes and shirts with I-Path.Right now I’m working on some vinyl action figures with Strangeco. And slowly trying to put a book together which will show a lot of the drawings, paintings and designs I’ve done in the last 13 years.