Requirements:

• Live in Toronto
• Be able to volunteer 3-5 hours per week
• Own a digital camera that’s 8mp or higher
• Own a computer with access to the internet
• Take 5 street photos/week

This position is ideal for someone who loves photography and interviewing people. In addition, this position will also allow you the opportunity to work closely with OGLE on future projects, other than photography, throughout the summer. To apply for this position, send us a link to some of your work, and send your résumé to contribute@ogleto.com

Every once and a while an artist will come along that commands your complete attention. Such was the case with artist/illustrator Alexei Vella. This award-winning illustrator’s work has been recognized by some major players in the illustration world, including Juxtapoz, 3×3, American Illustration, Applied Arts and Creative Quarterly. When this creative juggernaut isn’t working on illustration assignments, you can find him earning his MFA at OCAD in their Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program.

We asked Alexei to continue our “Filling in The Blanks” series, where we ask local artists who live, work, or play in Toronto to finish off 20 questions that we give them. Here are Alexei’s responses:

• Q1. The thing I like most about being an illustrator is the satisfaction of coming up with interesting visual solutions to conceptually hard or bland material.
• Q2. If I could collaborate with any person or company on a creative project, I would love to work with a dream team of my own invention consisting of Barry McGee, Gary Panter, Yoshitomo Nara and Banksy. If you do not know who these art stars are, it is time to call up your friendly neighbourhood web-search.
• Q3. The last good movie that I saw was …let me interject before I move on… a “good movie” depends on one’s definition of “good”. I personally have not seen a movie I would consider “good” in a while; but that does not mean others have not. The way I see it is, all movies have their merits and shortcomings and I am not just saying that to be safe. What I do know from what my friends and family tell me, is that when I recommend a movie they know what to expect – one of Alexei’s bizarre and often-curious choices in movies, I guess I am not one for the mainstream. If you are interested in my strange tastes watch some of the following films: The Holy Mountain, Stalker, Begotten and Freaks. P.S. But you don’t have to take my word for it…
• Q4. One thing people would be surprised to learn about me is that although my illustrations are bright, colourful and often positive I am quite the opposite, it really all stems from my love of Black Death Metal. However, that does not mean I fit the brooding artist stereotype… Well, actually now that I think about it, that is the image I project to those who do not know me well enough. I guess that happens when you consider yourself as the “other” in the crowd and share an affinity with the Elephant Man, Skeletor and Frankenstein.
• Q5. I believe everyone should experienced the 80’s. Those of you that do not know who Gizmo, Megatron or Skeletor are you are totally missing out and should not exist at all; you are a waste of space. All seriousness aside, everyone should have a sense of humour.
• Q6. My creative inspiration comes from a variety of sources and is in constant flux. If you had asked me last year where my creative inspiration came from I would have responded with vintage comics and cartoons (E.C. Segar, Joe Oriolo, et al.), ephemera and the early 20th century, but I find that stuff so passé and over done right now, marketable yes, but over done. With that said, it does not mean I do not use that visual vernacular in my work – what it does mean is that I have been looking elsewhere for inspiration, especially after returning to school. Graduate school really changes your headspace – currently what inspires me is the concept of abjection, the occult, monsters and psychoanalysis. If I was asked for a broad all encompassing source of inspiration (past, present and future), which I think this question was expecting, I would have to say it would be popular culture.
• Q7. Another illustrator whose work inspires me consists of a list of about 50 or so artists and illustrators – there are so many out there, all rightfully amazing and inspiring, so I cannot say one inspires me more than another. I am currently enjoying the work of Alex McLeod, David Altmejd and Andy Warhol.
• Q8. If I wrote an autobiography about my life to date, the title of the book would be a tie between “One Foot In Front Of Another” and “Kick Ass And Take Names” or possibly a combination of the two – “One Foot In Front Of Another, Kicking Ass And Taking Names: The Life And Times Of Alexei Vella.”
• Q9. The best thing about being an illustrator is drawing and getting paid for it.
• Q10. The worst thing about being an illustrator is drawing and NOT getting paid for it. SPEC work is evil… avoid it at all costs.
• Q11. My favorite place in Toronto to hang out is difficult to say. Being a recent addition to Toronto, I really do not know where to “hang out”. Can you recommend a place to hang out? I will seriously try it out. I suppose I enjoy hanging out in my ivory tower, contemplating my artistic revenge by squishing people’s heads from out my window. Seriously though, I would say the Art Gallery of Ontario, it is like a 2-minute walk from where I live and it is free entry for OCAD (name drop) students.
• Q12. The thing in life that scares me the most is change. I see myself change everyday and not in the good way. I guess all we can do is accept change and move forward.
• Q13. I love it when it rains.
• Q14. If I could go on a vacation anywhere in the world tomorrow, it would be California. Not exotic enough? Okay… fine… New Zealand/The Land of Mordor.
• Q15. The most important lesson I’ve learned in life so far is there is more than meets the eye. Just because someone might be crippled does not mean they are any less than everyone else. If you are afraid of them, do not further the fear by calling them names like freak or gimp. Karma will get you in the end… I am certain of that.
• Q16. I love Toronto because it is a city and I love cities. I think I am biased though, I think it stems from living in suburbia for so long, everything there is so far apart.
• Q17. One of my favourite places to eat in Toronto is not one but rather many. Toronto is littered with a ton of its fine fast food establishments and I love my junk food. I know… I know… I should be eating healthier. I hear enough of that from my mother.
• Q18. The most influential person in my life is Skeletor… no wait your Momma… no wait actually my Momma.
• Q19. My ultimate goal in life is to eliminate everyone standing in my way of becoming the king of everything and attain world domination through the use of image.
• Q20. If I could meet anyone in the world, I would love to meet Stephen Hawking, Slavoj Žižek, Hades or Skeletor, depending on what world is being referred to.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer, each link will take you directly to the listed song, album, or artist. If there isn’t a link, we couldn’t find it on iTunes.

Alexei’s Playlist: 10 songs currently getting heavy rotation on his MP3 player.

1. Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box, by Radiohead.
2. Molten Light, by Chad VanGaalen.
3. Iron Man, by Black Sabbath.
4. What’s He Building In There, by Tom Waits.
5. Bad Romance, by Lady Gaga.
6. The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion, by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.
7. East Hastings, by Godspeed You Black Emperor!.
8. Aghartha, by Sunn O))).
9. Delìrium Còrdia, by the Fantômas.
10. The Magic Position, by Patrick Wolf.

To learn more about Alexei Vella, you can visit his website or Facebook page.

We meet a lot of people and see a lot of interesting things while traveling around Toronto. In order to start sharing some of these experiences, we have created our own Flickr page. We have also decided to use our new Flickr page to show off our First Impressions series. This way, you can view hi-quality photos with great detail. So from here on out, all of our First Impressions series will be hosted on Flickr.

Tiana’s Outfit

• A: Necklace from Aldo Accessories
• B: Louis Vuitton wrist coin purse, for carrying all the little things without lugging a purse around!
• C: Paul Mitchell Flattening Iron
• D: 120 eye shadow palette by Beauties Factory- colours to match every outfit!
• E: WOW mascara in black by Lise Watier
• F: OPI nail polish in “Teal the Cows Come Home”
• G: Vanilla Bean Conditioner from Greg May Hair- to keep your hair looking and smelling delicious.
• H: Sparkly Dress from Forever 21
• I: Sony W705a phone- phone that does everything without having to pay for those expensive bb/iphone plans!
• J: Stephania- Shoes by Guess

Outfit Close-up

Are you interested in sharing with us what you would wear/bring with you on a Friday night? If so, simply contact us.

Describe a typical day in the life of Gary Taxali

Well, a typical day, I guess, is getting up in the morning and drinking my ginger tea, reading my emails, and trying to figure out what I’m going to do first. Usually, I have to go through a process of doing some quick drawings to get in the groove of just relaxing and in a state of what I need to work on. For example a typical day: right now as I’m talking with you, I’m working on an illustration for the London Telegraph, and then I’m going to work on this for a few hours. I’m going to take a break, then I’m going to work on some personal work. Later in the afternoon, I’m going to work on some sketches for two other jobs I’m doing, and I’ll see how that goes. By the evening, if that still takes me to the evening, I’ll force myself to stop working around six o’clock, walk away from the computer, walk away from my drawing table, walk away from my studio, and just try to make some plans to go out. Maybe watch a movie, make some dinner, or hang out with some friends.

…I had a teacher named Jerzy Kolacz who helped me understand that illustration is a language. He said that you have to learn how to speak a language before you can express thoughts and ideas in that language. He said when you learn how to speak that language then you have your own style and way of speaking.

So what’s the best thing about being you?

Maybe the best thing about being me is that I’m really lucky and thankful that I exercise honesty about my career and my work. I think that’s very important, because it reminds me of what I really want to do and what I love. I’m guided by (honesty) in my career decisions and when it comes to the pictures that I make and all that other stuff. I guess just having that honesty, self-respect, and value for my pictures and my designs.

What do you love about living in Toronto?

Toronto is great. It’s home. My family is here, my really good friends are here. I teach at the art university in the city, OCAD, I really like teaching there—I like that school a lot. I like the infrastructure of the city. There are certain quirky things about it that make Toronto great. I like my neighbourhood. I live in a Portuguese neighbourhood in the north west part of the city, in the junction. I like the proximity to Europe, the proximity to New York, and the proximity to LA. So, going to Europe or going to LA is not a crazy leg. It’s manageable, you know, like five hours to LA and seven hours to Europe. It’s totally great to be central in that way. So, I feel like Toronto is a really good nucleus for my career. I like the cold weather; I really do. I love winters. I love the seasons. I like the cold weather, because it keeps me busy and keeps me working.

So who’s work inspires you?

A lot of my friends inspire me because they are my friends. People like Yuko Shimizu inspires me; I love her work a lot. I love the work of Mark Rosenthal; I think he’s a great illustrator. I love the work of the Clayton Brothers. They’re really good friends, and I love talking to those guys about art. Then there are a lot of dead people that still inspire me like E.C. Segar, the guy who created Popeye; his work is amazing. The Fleischer brothers I love. I love Dr. Seuss, Andy Warhol, Picasso, and Jackson Pollock. Then there’s film makers like Jim Jarmusch; he really inspires me. He’s a big influence in my work. I’m inspired by a lot of old packaging from all over the world from different countries. Typography is a big part of my work, so I look at typography more than I do at other people’s pictures.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

The best piece of advice was from a teacher. I went to the school that I teach at, back then it was called OCA, and I had a teacher named Jerzy Kolacz who helped me understand that illustration is a language. He said that you have to learn how to speak a language before you can express thoughts and ideas in that language. He said when you learn how to speak that language then you have your own style and way of speaking. So that helped me understand the power of the visual voice and how what we say is a language and it’s just a form of speaking. That gave me an understanding about what I do beyond just making a static picture versus that picture just being a part of all the other pictures I make, because they come from the same person. So it’s the same person saying different things but collectively it’s one language.

What are some of the biggest challenges the illustration industry now faces?

The most obvious one, this is something none of us has any control over, is the economic state of the planet. The country that was hit the hardest was the United States, and culturally speaking, there are not many countries in the world that are good to illustration like the United States is. So therefore, because the American economy is going through a very difficult time, a lot of publishing companies are being forced to downsize and just go online and can no longer afford the level of content they once did. That’s affecting illustration. So I think that illustrators today are going to have to be concerned more with looking at online outlets as a means to survive. I don’t think print is dead. Print will never die. It’s just becoming smaller, and maybe it’s going to enter a state of comatose. That’s going to be a really big issue.

Aesthetically speaking, I don’t think a lot of great art direction is happening in publications and therefore there’s a lot of literal, unoriginal, and cliché solutions that I see in illustration. I think it’s become somewhat mediocre.

There’s more illustrators today than there were 20 years ago. The market is smaller but it’s over saturated with illustrators. Stock houses have really adversely affected the industry so that has in turn forced the rates to stay the same and in many cases decline. If illustration today is worth the same, in terms of magazine real estate, as it was worth 30, 40 years ago, and you take into account the cost of living and inflation and so forth, that means we’re really taking a hit. At the same time though, there’s more opportunities in other areas that didn’t even exist before. For example, the online convergence with things that require creative people to create imagery, interactive websites, motion graphics; the gaming industry has also exploded. There’s a lot of really wonderful things that have emerged, which I think are great opportunities for emerging illustrators to tackle.

The sensibility has also changed which is also a reflection on the times. Aesthetically speaking, I don’t think a lot of great art direction is happening in publications and therefore there’s a lot of literal, unoriginal, and cliché solutions that I see in illustration. I think it’s become somewhat mediocre. I think that has to do with the fact that there’s too much power being exercised by editors who are fearing losing readership and perhaps starting to do the art directors jobs; I see that all the time.

As a well known illustrator and artist, you have the power to reach a lot of people. Do you feel you have a social responsibility to your community, your country, or your world?

I think everybody does. There is an unwritten social contract for living in the world. We all have a responsibility, but I think that the person who has cemented a career in a particular industry where people are aware of what that person is doing should recognize that their actions do affect the course of the way that industry can unfold in a negative or positive way. One of the examples I tell emerging illustrators and students is that be very careful about what you perceive to be the way things are versus the way things actually are. For example, if you see the work of an illustrator in a publication, don’t assume that person signed that contract, because different publications have different contracts for all kinds of artists. People make deals all the time. When it comes to things like rights, I don’t give away my rights, I don’t sell stock, I don’t work for low fees, and I’m very vocal about that. I think that it’s very important to uphold something in the way of ethics, which ends up becoming standards, simply because they evolve from having a moral value system about one’s own work and self-respect and career. I think people that give up the farm early in their career are doing a disservice to themselves, but because they are a part of the whole industry the industry suffers also.

Do you have any new toys on the horizon?

I just had a little figure released from Kid Robot a few months ago that came out with a little tiny friend that was an inch high. I just did another design for the key dolls. I think it’s a two and half or three inch key. I did that. Other than that, I would say not this year, but next year I will come up with more designs for Chump Toys.

Finally, what are your plans for 2010 Gary? Do you have any big goals?

This might sound silly, but maybe just to do bigger pictures, scale wise, like large canvases that are like seven or eight feet. I did a show last year and I had a canvas that was six feet. Well, actually, it was canvas on plywood. I just want to do bigger paintings.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer, each link will take you directly to the listed song, album, or artist. If there isn’t a link, we couldn’t find it on iTunes.

Gary’s Playlist: 10 songs currently getting heavy rotation on his MP3 player.

1. Cold Sweat, by Thin Lizzy.
2. Psycho Daisies, by The Hentchmen.
3. Heading for the Texas Border, by The Flamin’ Groovies.
4. John the Revelator, by Blind Willie Johnson.
5. Hate To See Ya Go, by Jack O’ Fire.
6. The American Ruse, by MC5.
7. Rockin’ the Joint, by Esquerita.
8. Lie Detector, by The Mighty Caesars.
9. Rock n’ Roll Murder, by The Chesterfield Kings.
10. I Really Want You Right Now, by The Lyres.

To learn more about Gary Taxali, you can visit his website or Facebook page.

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