Art & Life with Robert Bieselin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Bieselin.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
Sure — I’m a graphic designer by trade. I work for a pair of indie bookstores here in L.A. Previously, I’d worked as a music journalist at a daily newspaper on the East Coast. I did that for five or six years after college, then took some time off to travel a bit and focus on fiction. Eventually, I landed in L.A. and studied design. That’s when I began toying with the idea of doing something that intersected all of those worlds, something that had components of design, music, and language.

That’s more or less how the work with Word is Bond came about. It was a design project that imagined literal depictions of lyrics from rappers like Jay-Z or Missy Elliott in minimal, modern styles influenced by artists like Mark Rothko and El Lissitzky.

Can you give our readers some background on the art?
Yeah, so like I said, I thought there was something interesting in kinda smashing together two or three seemingly unrelated mediums. Depicting lyrics literally gives you an avenue to be clever or cheeky, but working in the style of a particular visual artist lets you take it a step further. You get to play in a painter’s world and see what makes different styles and aesthetics work.

When I get it right — and it takes a while — I’d like to think it acts as an homage to disparate artists and art forms. And, on some level, I hope it challenges those silly discipline hierarchies (i.e. the notion that modern art is “high-brow,” while hip-hop is “low-brow”).

In a certain respect, hip-hop helped inform my appreciation of wordplay, and my understanding of the elasticity of language. You learn that even the shallowest rhymes have art and artistry in them. And it’s the same with the “simplest” paintings — the “my kid could have painted that” pieces. There’s a world of thought and composition and color theory that goes into minimalist work. So, ultimately, there was something fun about merging two mediums that can be so refined, yet still so easy to disparage. It’s like, “yeah, 2pac was a hypocrite.” And, “yeah, Josef Albers just painted squares.” But what’s beyond the easy criticism? And what do you get by mixing it all together?

Again, I don’t think of it as “art,” per se. I think of it as a design project. But it asks questions about art, at least. Or art criticism, maybe… If nothing else, it’s a fun way to merge language and design and music.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I have an Etsy store (etsy.com/shop/WordisBondArt) where I sell prints.

As far as support goes, I recently decided to donate all profits to charity. At the moment, everything goes to Equal Justice Initiative, a great non-profit working “to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality.”

I’d eventually like to partner with some of the artists whose lyrics I depict. It would be neat to donate profits from each print to a different social justice or environmental charity chosen by the musician or artist who inspired the art. That’s a whole other project though. One step at a time, right?

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @wordisbondart
• Other: robertbieselin.com
• Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/WordisBondArt