#sleisure

Whats your story?

My story as it relates to this photo is I am a full time artist who has been having fun making art and murals here in PHX and sometimes beyond when traveling.  This mural was a trip because of the size but also because of the support and help I received to get it done well and on time. Inspiration is staying open through travel and friends and experiences.

I grew up building bike tracks and forts out in the desert, and then skateboarding around the city, then art around the city. From that point of skateboarding and art (around age 14-18), is where ideas started to take form for me as far as how do I maintain and secure time and space in my “adult life” for creativity;  how do I thrive creatively and survive economically. At that time, I would do school, do work, then do my creative interests, I knew that when I looked around me in North Phoenix, there wasn’t necessarily a creative ecosystem that I saw myself thriving in long term. I realized around age 15, I was doing what I had to do so I could do what I wanted to do. This idea has stuck with me since. I knew I wasn’t a conventional type of person, and recognized I could use those conventional type of opportunities to support my unique interests.  My friends were my primary source, also seeing the work of local guys around Dwntwn Phx and Tempe (early local influences: supportive friends (Testers Crew), Tbk crew (storm, robgoblin, jedi), House, Alec, Turtle skateboards, Saturday skateboards, Z Trip, Mos Def, Swell Clothing, Style Rock, this list could go on and on and on.)

In 96 is when Soldierleisure started…. It was a very simple idea, share my art through putting it onto tee shirts and giving them to friends etc. So I worked at a print shop at 28th St. and Greenway Parkway to be around a screen press, printing tees whenever I could. So mid 90s was all about Art, and learning and having fun, hip hop, punk rock, selling tees from backpack, random jobs here and there….Graduated High School, worked and went to college, kept making art and selling Soldierleisure tee shirts, travelling when I could afford it, mostly to California at this time.

In 2005, I decided to go see what life is like in Los Angeles so I moved there and started as a sales rep for a different tee shirt company (Drifter) that was based fairly close to the beach in la. I had to go learn from People who were doing it above and beyond what I had done in Phoenix.  I joined a team of 6 people, working in the rented out lobby of a huge warehouse in Compton, and we had like 50 accounts. The time I got lucky was when the boss man Peter Hong said your horrible at selling after my first month, and was offered the role of developing the brand outside of the US; For the next 7 years I ended up travelling between Europe and the States, working during the days and drawing on the airplane flights…During this “Airplane Studio” period is when I started drawing the top views, and the “Happy Man” kind of works….. I had the time of my life but always would come back to PHX knowing that one day I wanted to be back here despite the opportunities elsewhere. After 7 years of that, I decided that I had experienced that as fully as I wanted to, and took a step back and answered some questions for myself.

In 2011 I moved back, saying no to the most money I had ever made; My co workers and friends in LA from this experience thought I was crazy that I was going to go to PHX to try to make art and a living at the same time.  I lived with friends and my brother, worked super random jobs, kept it alive…..so Here I am.

  Where are you originally from and why phoenix?

I spent early years on west side at 63rd avenue and Glendale, after my parent split when I was 2, my Dad took my brother and I here from Wisconsin.  I grew up in North Phoenix. Then lived in Tempe. Then 15th ave and Thomas before leaving to Los Angeles. After seeing more of the world then I ever thought imaginable, I now realize why I was always attracted to Downtown Phoenix at age 14-18, waking up early to take my skateboard downtown and just riding around. …. At that time is when I knew there were bigger things out there, especially after seeing Del at Icehouse, The Roots at the Roxy. Phoenix is where it all started for me. I have some great friendships here and I love the desert, both to leave, and to come back to.

Whats the future hold for phoenix?

Some Hopes:

From an artists point of view: Hopefully an improving and maturing artistic ecosystem, with the infrastructure to support more full time working artists.

From a muralists point of view: More artists standing up for their work and requiring payment for their time and talent.  More artists willing to take step forward, or back, seeing the big picture and not the “right now”.  Sometimes saying “No” creates freedom.

More fidelity and signal, less noise and lots of sunshine!

  Soldierleisure.com

@sleisure

[email protected]

Photographer: Hector Raul Primero 

Subject: Andy Brown