Evan Yamada
What made you start collaging, do you remember the first time you did?
I was always into drawing, design, and graphic design. You can see that in some of my first posts on instagram. If you exclude vision boards from elementary school. I didn't start collaging until about five years ago. I was doing an assignment in college for my Visual Journalism degree where we had to shoot a documentary. My ex-girlfriend's friend's mom was dating Cheyenne Randall (@indiangiver) and I loved his work. I was fortunate enough to get to shoot a documentary on him and follow him around for a few days. He had a bunch of work from Jay riggio (jayriggio) in his house. Cheyenne really immersed me in the art world and introduced me to collaging and I’m really grateful for that. It's funny, in college I worked for the school magazine and helped design and put out a few issues and now I'm cutting up magazines.
What aspects of how you grew up make you and your work what it is today?
I have been into creative outlets my whole life. I think what really helped my art become what it is today is t-shirt design and graphic design. I took a photoshop class in 7th grade and loved it. I pirated photoshop and started designing all kinds of stuff. I actually used to be a professional scooter rider and the company I rode for gave me the opportunity to work for them and make some website banners, tee shirt designs, etc.In college I started a tshirt company with my two best friends as well that feature some of my art designs. My art typically features a minimal style, I have always been into simple design and minimalism.
Are there any past life experiences that directly correlate to one of your pieces?
I'm not sure if there's any one particular piece that have connection to past life experience. However, a good majority of my pieces feature flowers. Flowers are near and dear to me because of my mom. She passed when I was 16 and absolutely loved flowers. My biggest regret was going to the skatepark with my friends instead of planting flowers with my mom. She ended up going to the hospital a few days later. I now have a big connection to flowers and that's why you can see them incorporated in a lot of my pieces.
Is there any overall message or vibe that you want your work to convey?
I have always made art for my own creative outlet and im really just creating whatever comes to my head. Art is very therapeutic for me, particularly analog collage. I do a few digital pieces as well, but analog collage is so soothing. So i guess my message would just be to inspire others to create.
What inspires you the most? What ignites your creative process?
I think honestly just scrolling through instagram and seeing other peoples work. Evene like seeing a good movie or documentary. I just think seeing other artforms, whatever the medium drives inspiration and creatively for me to create.
Are there any specific obstacles that you've encountered while pursuing your artform? What advice would you give your younger self?
There are times where I am not feeling motivated. I took a long break from instagram for a while after I tore my ACL and was really in the dumps and swamped at my work. I think advice to my younger self would be to not worry so much about what other people think of your work and just create.
Do you self promote, how do you get your work out in the world?
Yes, all my promotion is done via instagram. I do have some youtube videos, and I want to try to grow that more as well. I have been lucky enough to have some shoutouts from other people to help me promote my work as well. I used to be a professional scooter rider so I had a decent sie following on my personal instagram page from those days. It was nice to get a few hundred followers from self promotion through that avenue. I am grateful to have a lot of self-promotion knowledge from my days in scootering I have been trying to post once a day to help the organic growth on instagram.
What is your end goal, your dream?
I think my end goal would be to have this be a nice "side-hustle" if you will. This is my hobby that I would do regardless, but having extra income is always super nice. If I ever got up enough one day to make this be my main source of income , I would be very grateful. I have a lot of ideas that I can't put the time into at the moment.
What would you be doing if you couldn't create your artform?
That would be devastating. You would catch me playing more video games, and probably finding a diferent artform to pursue. I love cooking, so I would probably take up cooking, or music or something to help me creatively express myself.
How do you challenge your creative limits? How do you continue to learn and grow as an artist?
I love to try and test my creative limits by trying new techniques. I tried dabbling in painting on canvas and collaging with mod podge, I do some digital works in photoshop so I have learned new techniques there as well. I want to try and do a challenge where I grab a random magazine or book and flip to a page and work with whatever is photographed on that certain page.
