I love watching people at cafés and overhearing conversations. I’m inspired by patterns that I see a lot in architecture. The worst thing for me is to be inspired by other people’s work. I don’t have other artists’ work on my wall. I am inspired by real things, by photographs, by people, by things outside the art world.
I write down a lot of notes in my Moleskine sketchbook—phrases and sentences that will later trigger a thought or a source of inspiration. I sketch a lot in my head when I have an idea. My head is a very pliable and erasable surface—if an idea in my mind is too cliché, I’ll edit it until I get something that works and then I’ll write it down in words. Later, I will sketch what was in my head and written in my sketchbook, and that’s usually very close to what the client will see.
The Food Affair series came from an idea I had about fat people eating. This was a personal project that I sent into competitions and used as mailers that ended up getting me a lot of work, including, I found out later, my first cover for The New Yorker magazine.
I started taking pictures of myself, and by the end of my time working on the “Honor Thy Clothes” campaign I had three or four hundred pictures, and that’s what these illustrations are based on.
The only brief I had said to do a series of mailers based on “Honor Thy Broccoli.” So, I changed it to “Honor Thy Clothes.” I drew one girl each month in the piece of clothing she wanted me to highlight. They were all naked except for wearing the featured clothing item.
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