You're in the Suckhole right now, which is the facility of the Super Sucklord
And his company's Suckadelic and this is where we make our bootleg action figures.
Making bootleg action figures is a lot like sampling and hip-hop,
where you take little bits and pieces from different songs, different figures.
We combine them into something new and hopefully there's something transformational going on.
I don't know where this stuff belongs because it's not quite right in a toy store
and it's not, doesn't fit into like a traditional art gallery either.
It sort of exists in its own space.
And that's a space that's being created as it grows
and that's what makes it exciting, I think, to people.
I've been inclined to make toys my entire life
Since I was a kid, since the first Star Wars figures came out
and that just became hardwired into my way of, sort of, experiencing the world. So
that's just the direction that my creativity went.
I started studying the mold craft
and started producing the stuff in Earnest in 2005.
It was the same time that I got my first art studio.
So I was under a lot of pressure to pay for that
and that's what drove me to come up with a
cheap way of doing mass production.
We started making the mold boxes out of Lego.
Like this is for making a mold of this sexy girl.
Normally I would have, like, gone to the container store
and had to buy a box if they made it.
I can make custom boxes and there's no waste.
Fuck you. Pay me.
Everything, it being made here, is always being rushed out the door
'Cause I always have to fucking make money.
Corners are cut everywhere and that just materializes in the product.
I was smart to build that into the brand
And make that the sort of chief aesthetic of it.
I think other artists would be more inclined
to keep the fact that they're hustling and struggling kind of quiet
and make it seem, or present themselves of this they're making the work at leisure when
they're probably, not they're probably hustling just as much as I am.
It's the Gay Empire figure and
This isn't the first figure I made, but it was the first success that I had
It is a "Fuck you" you know to people that think
that gay people should be anything less than completely integrated into everything.
So just the fact that it exists and like these big cock Stormtroopers are gonna come
and, and kick your fucking family values ass off the edge of the earth.
So, get ready for that.
Using things in popular culture is just a great way to say something like
putting a Sleestak in a business suit it's almost sort of
calling into attention. Or just the fact that we are really just these
animals, you know, with this sort of veneer of civility on top of us and
inside of us are these savage creatures
Plus Sleestaks are fucking rad.
I have, I have a lot of theories or just like, uh,
underpinnings to the work that has to do with super villains.
You know, the villain is the one that takes action
to make something happen for his own benefit.
And all the hero can do is react.
Like I think I'm too good for my own good.
And that I sacrifice things
that I should have because I'm too
concerned about other people and I always struggle with that.
I'm a good person trying to be worse.
That's always been a quest for me.
They have better helmets
They get to do bad shit.
Villains are just better. In a villain world
there is no such moral law that just exist by nature.
If you can get away with it then you get away with it.
You can live with it Then you get to live.
And I just think, that's how I like to think life really is.
None of those are my masks those are for other guys.
I have certain masks and I don't --
That represent different --
- This? - No, none of these represent
any parts of my identity.
These are masks for other people.
I have a couple different masks
That I wear for different reasons.
These are none of them.