Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon L.
Hi Brandon, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
For all of my life, the visual arts, graphic design, communication through drawing, and street art have been elements that have kept me going. They’ve brought me to places that I could have never dreamed of.
My story starts in Southern California. Both of my parents were born in Vietnam and immigrated to the U.S. during the 1960s. To them, the arts were not a practical means of success. Leaving a country with limited opportunities due to war, they viewed white-collar opportunities in the U.S. as worthier pursuits than a life of creative angst and financial hardships. As the eldest child, I felt pressured to please them by becoming an emergency medical responder, mortgage loan officer, or something that provided a more steady income than an artist. Deep down, I knew my path in the visual arts was inevitable.
As a young person, I was always creatively ept. I would rather build toys without the instructions, be the student who draws for the group projects, and use creativity to solve my problems. So when I got to college, I pursued graphic design and painting. It was fun and a great middle ground between stability and creativity. In addition, my family was excited about my choice. As it would happen, that path of higher education didn’t last very long. Soon after, I “took a break” from college to become a live-in artist’s assistant to my friend, Rolland Berry, and for four years I learned the way of the artist. I helped him take on late-night projects, complete physically demanding artwork, and assisted in printing and putting up street art. I loved it all and I knew that was where I was supposed to be. My family, however, thought the opposite. What they saw was their son being taken advantage of, when in fact I was getting far better education than what any of the college textbooks could teach me.
At the end of my tenure, I moved out and got a small studio. It was there that I began down on my own path, painting and working as a graphic designer at a men’s suit wear facility. Around this time I got serious about street art, and I posted my art all over L.A. as INKSAP, a name given to me in college because of how I used tree sap as a medium in my paintings. I started on the streets with drawn images of my family wearing a face masks as a way to address air quality and environmental issues. My spots of choice were neighborhood hot zones, high-driving traffic areas, and places where my posters could be on display for long, undisturbed periods. Over time, my work became recognizable and I was approached with exciting new opportunities.
It began with invites to group art shows, art inquiries, and collaborations. One particular collaboration worthy of highlighting is with my friend Linda Lack, Ph.D, a movement therapist. We met after I installed my art piece on a faux building wall covering up a crash caused by a drunk driver. She took the poster as a sign of good luck and tried to contact INKSAP. After convincing me that she wasn’t trying to press charges, I agreed to meet her, and an unexpected collaboration started. Our work together involves posting street art images I drew of her combined with my signature style. The goal was to share the good luck feeling she got after seeing the initial piece on her building. Our work has since been honored by the LA Times, Larchmont Chronicle, domestic and international art galleries, and a documentary titled Ink & Linda, soon to be broadcast on PBS sometime by the end of this year.
Street art has really treated me very well. I have been fortunate to receive commission work, invitations to present my solo work, and opportunities to befriend respected artists in the field. Of all the great moments it has gifted me with, none is better than the gift of sharing my work in a setting as public as the streets, free of admission and without any sort of gatekeeping. Through this medium, all are welcome to view, touch, and interact with the work. It has opened me up to the limitless possibilities and pushed me to develop a style unique to myself. The best part about street art is that my family respects my contributions to this medium.
In addition to my artwork, I currently run my own print shop called Always Lucky Studio. I started it after getting laid off from the suit-wear facility and being gifted a fine art printer by my neighbor. The studio caters to fine artists, creatives, and small businesses. We offer a wide range of solutions, from archival prints to stickers to mobile gallery walls and guerilla ad campaigns. I do this for the love of seeing people’s reactions to their work once it’s been produced. I also do this to separate my creative energies. When painting, I am guided by my own creative desires and when printing, I am guided by my client’s. It keeps me balanced knowing that I can handle any sort of project.
My goals going forward are to continue to run the shop, paint and put up art. I plan on expanding the studio and my own portfolio. It is quite a lot to juggle, but I am blessed to have great friends, family, and my lovely fiancée to help me out. Shout out to them all! Hopefully one day, I can give back to young artists and show them that the field of creativity is limitless as long as you set your mind to it. Your dream will become a reality.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth ride to get to where I am today. Fortunately, the struggles I had faced were mostly temporary and fixable. There were challenging moments such as not having a proper home, access to basic necessities, and financial struggles, but I was able to overcome all of them.
There has never been a situation that prevented me from achieving my goals. I am very fortunate to have great health and lots of blessings.
Everything good in my life was earned through hard work and keeping my head up.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My street art is recognized as INKSAP. I create works of art that can be found on the streets and in galleries. My signature style, known as ARTIFACT, are collections of decommissioned street works that I collect and meld with life drawings and screen-printed images of people in my life. My debut work titled Xuanha features a young girl wearing a face mask and carrying a tree in her backpack. This image — which was burned into a silkscreen and then printed onto paper — has been installed in numerous urban settings. Installing art in the streets since 2015, I have been invited to partake in artistic events and projects around the world. I discovered that the streets provided a public platform that anyone could access and developed into large outdoor murals and site-specific art installations.
For me, I approach my paintings from the standpoint of not needing to please anyone except myself. I don’t mind what people think or say. I just care that my work is true and moves viewers in the same way it moves me.
As mentioned earlier, I run Always Lucky Studio. We offer our clients giclée art production, guerilla ad campaigns, large format printing, mobile gallery walls and creative solutions. If you are interested in more of what we do, please visit our website linked below.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Oh that is simple. Just listen to your gut! Everyone is going to tell you how it didn’t work for them or how their friend got tricked into it. It doesn’t matter what they all say. As long as you have a simple plan, a process of execution and a decent amount of belief in yourself, then it is inevitable that you will achieve anything you set your mind to. I always remind myself to take 50% of someone else’s suggestion and combine it with 50% of your own suggestions, abilities, experience, etc. and that will lead you to your answer.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.inksap.com / www.iloveinksap.com / www.alwaysluckystudio.com
- Instagram: @alwaysluckystudio / @inksapp
