Here is the webs first preview of the new WeSC summer headphone lineup.  This season WeSC continued their run of impressive prints with the Typography Blocks Bongo, Gradiant Stripe Bongo available in Plaster or Beetroots, and a new Checked Bongo.  The fan favorite Oboe picked up five new color-ways...Teal, Powder Pink, Black-White and Medium Blue or Smoked Pearl for the Golden Oboe.  WeSC's Maraca and Alp Horn models see one addition with a touch of teal that will make you stand out from the crowd.  Teal seems to be the common thread through WeSC's collection for summer, because nothing says summer like classic teal.  Break out your flip flops and Speedos, with pieces of burgundy and flirty pink WeSC's summer headphone will give you that summer fever.  Get them at Bobizzo.com this April.

An artist living and working in New York City, Matthew Weinstein to some might seem unconventional, to others, amazingly imaginative.  His work is wild, thought provoking, and primative with a quiet confidence that he will be known for.  We contacted Weinstein to see if we would get in his head and ask a few questions about his WeSC headphone collaboration that released Spring of 2010.

www.matthewweinstein.com



Tell us about yourself:  what kind of kid were you, when did you know you wanted to be an artist, and how did you get your start?
I was a hypersensitive dyslexic kid.  I scared easily.  I hated amusement parks, loud noises, team sports, random kids my age, religion and mass experience.  I liked art galleries, Fiorucci, reading, being alone, running, biking, skateboarding, the MET, drawing cartoon characters, acting and writing extremely ernest and terrible poetry.

I decided to be an artist because I realized I was terrible at everything else and incapable of doing a good job for anyone on anything.  My mother brought me to many art galleries when I was a kid, as well as museums and movies that were way over my head.  In fact it was all over my head but I loved all of it.  But it did not click in that I could actually be an artist until college.  I was going to be an art historian, but I can't sit still for more then half an hour, so I realized that a life spent in libraries would be pretty awful for me. I got my start by bothering and annoying everyone until they relented and started to show me.

When did you first discover your creative talents?
I won a prize for drawing a Viking ship.  I won because I drew 100 Vikings.  Then I won a prize for drawing a turkey for a thanksgiving plate.  I won because I gave the turkey a peacock tail and I drew in a lot of feathers.  I realized that I may not have talent, who knows what talent is anyway, but I know how to separate myself from the crowd and I know that you do not release your drawing of a Viking ship until every single Viking is colored in.

Your artistic medium comes in so many different forms, from paint, sculpture, even 3D animation.  When you are inspired to start a new project, how do you decide which medium it will be?
I always start by writing a script for an animated film.  Characters come up in the script.  A singing Koi, two Beta Fish; now I am working on enormous fat pigs and a man who lives inside of roast chicken.  Then the animated film is made (takes about a year and a half) and I make paintings based on the world that I have created in the film.  The sculptures come out of this world as well.

How would you describe your artistic style?
Unrealism.

How often do you start a new piece?  How long do you usually work on one piece before you feel like it is ready to show?
An animated film takes about a year and a half, a large painting takes about two months and the sculptures vary from six moths to two years.  I don't make much work because my work is so labor intensive, but I am always working on many projects at the same time.

Lets talk about the collaboration WeSC headphones that were just released.  Obviously you created the artwork, was this created exclusivly for the headphones, or is the art taken from a prevoius work of yours?
The two Siamese Fighting Fish are from my animated film, 'Siam.'  In 'Siam,' two Siamese Fighting Fish try to iron out their differences and explore their attraction to each other.  At the end they sing a song about how 'we float on the surface of each other's dreams,' in other words, we are not real to each other, and we fight and love in an attempt to become real to each other.  I thought, 'two ears, two fish, stage lights under the headband that shine on the fish, and the fish are in the act of singing into each ear; stereo fish.'

How did the collaboration headphone with WeSC come about?
Ted Dalenson invited me to do the headsets.  WESC also generously donated T Shirts with one of my characters that were sold to benefit AMFAR in honor of Natasha Richardson, who was the voice for one of my characters.

Is there any particular artists you personally look up to?
Many many.  Artists were my heroes when I was growing up.  They inhabited the world I wanted to be a part of.  There are too many to list and as I get older the list keeps growing.  My work is as informed by non art as it is by art, as well as literature, drama and film.

Any words of advise for budding/aspiring artists out there?
Don't let the bastards grind you down.

What drives you to create this world of CG characters, songs, paintings and dialogue?
We all test the boundries of reality all day long; it takes effort to separate our fantasies from our realities.  Then we are confronted with the illusions of the entertainment industry and we have the potential to be as alien to ourselves as we are to eachother.  There is enormous joy as well as danger in this floating away.  It is possible that we will not come back.  It is our exchanges; sex, love, information, purchase, dialogue, fighting and the infliction of pain and pleasure that continually re-ground us.  I paint and animate these exchanges in an unreal world of my own making.  If I am going to drift off, it's going to be into a world of my own making, and anybody who wants to come along is welcome.