Bryan A. is a musician who grew up in Los Angeles, California surrounded by many art forms like music, cinema, and drawings. He acquired his first guitar when he was sixteen years old and he found his life utterly consumed by music. He was exposed to bands like Black Sabbath, Pixies, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins, and others, and their style of art for their album covers made him appreciate the use of graphic design and related artworks. He fell in love with art even though he did not know how to draw. Later, through social media, he found a variation of art called “collage art.” This form of art had an impact on him that led to his journey with art. He says, “This style of art was chaotic and made no sense; sometimes the images differed in colors, or they featured images of people and locations that didn’t fit together. Like seeing a hotel with space background. It was not real and did not follow any natural laws but it was beautiful.” He felt that there was a beauty in the chaos that collage art offered and decided to peruse it.
After several attempts and dissatisfaction with pieces, he realized his own process of creating a collage artwork. He says, “My first piece did not flow, none of the colors or images I used fit together in a way which was aesthetically pleasing.” Later he used inspiration from music to create a collage art rather than using visuals. He says “I would use lyrics from songs to make a piece that attempted to reflect what the lyrics were saying. Like Black Sabbath featured lyrics which said, “What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me.” With this in mind, I created a piece called What Is This That Stands Before Me?”. Since he could not draw, he used images from magazines, old vintage photographs, and illustrations to materialize the vision in his mind. Even though his work is surrealistic, it does have an element of reality. His idea was to visualize lyrics, he says, “like something you would see when listening to a specific song.” Bryan believes that making beauty from chaos is what collage art is about and music adds a larger dimension to it, plays with the eyes of the viewer and provides a eerie comfort we all long for.
