Daily Inspiration: Meet Roy Vessil

Today we’d like to introduce you to Roy Vessil.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Born and raised in California, I always knew I would end up in the arts, in whatever capacity that may be. There was an overstimulation of art and cultures from both my parents, so naturally when I said that I wanted to go to art school they were excited and supportive. To this day they are still my biggest supporters, also I am an only child so all the attention and responsibilities of their legacy are on my shoulders. My mother has her degree in painting and my father is an architect. I like painting, I thought about studying environmental architecture, but instead I focused on sculpture and miniatures.

I attended both Art Center College of Design (ACCD, BFA, 2018) and California College of the Arts (CCA, MFA, 2022) for Fine Art. Although I found my experience with both institutions were in moments of great internal school/franchise change, sometimes frustratingly anti-student, they gave me some of my most cherished memories. Both schools taught me how I wanted to be as an artist: someone who isn’t driven by fame or fortune (it would be cool but not necessary), someone who doesn’t want to conform to what’s popular (make what makes me who I am), nothing too big and bold (miniatures are easier to handle), and don’t be afraid to take your time– you are never too late to make. I missed every opportunity I got to go abroad and study, I felt like I failed, especially in my Masters degree. I got accepted to a school in Norway, Trondheim Academy of Art, but because of COVID ended up at CCA. It was strange being on a screen, a degree in Zoom Communications really, yet it forced my perspective on other methods of making while still being me. I started making videos about landscapes, building and breaking them apart similarly to how I’ve always made things. Ultimately it seems the universe told me that everything was okay, even if it wasn’t ideally how I envisioned my life going it worked out in the end and I’m in a good place.

Now jump to 2025 and I’ve had the pleasure of showing my work locally and internationally including California, Estonia, Italy, Nepal, and this December I’ll be in France for a residency at La Maison De Beaumont in Provence. I work part time at a restaurant in Los Olivos, Bar Le Cote, which have also been more than supportive of my growing art career. Next year in March I’ll be having my first solo exhibition, “Galls & the Secrets of the Universe” at Indah Gallery in Santa Ynez.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Throughout my arts education, I was discouraged by the institution and white-walled galleries on multiple occasions about my miniatures not being good enough. I think it was an arrogant and stupid notion, probably only thinking about popular sculpture in museums that were large-scale, abstracted, and minimalist of some type. As I grew up I understand better and appreciate it for what it is, but that’s simply not me. I had my moment in undergrad working larger, didn’t get much larger than that of house plants, even still a good exercise. Money and fame has never been a strive for me, I make because I have to and I just want enough funds to live decently while still being able to show others my ideas. I like to say that art is a language that I understand better than English– I’m still learning English, heheh.
The questions do still creep up on me: Is the art I’m making worth it, even if I can’t sell it? Do I drop everything and become a Yayoi Kusama or Richard Serra, even though I’d much prefer to be a Charles Simonds or Ian Hamilton Finlay. Am I already too far behind to make an impact? Do I need to try harder? Why am I so bad at advertising myself? What if my work doesn’t engage with the contemporary dialogues of works current, would that make me seem ignorant? I am of Korean and Scandinavian DNA, I grew up with Asian influences that most of my friends didn’t have. Some past works where I’ve used Asian antiques from my family were perceived as “white man appropriating Asian culture”, ironically enough that piece was about misunderstandings of a person. This phrase of my character has echoed throughout my life, “not quite White enough, not Asian enough”. I believe that now to have been a personal insecurity, today I am proud of my parts more than ever.

Yes it’s true, miniatures and sculpture are some of the hardest works to sell, and video is even harder, but I just want to stay true to what I use to manifest these ideas. Through some personal, familial, and a lot of relationship traumas, my self worth and value as a person was greatly challenged and found myself in an existential sandbox. To this day I still have the feeling that if I didn’t have art in my life I would be pretty useless; like I would just disappear under the sand, only to be excavated and put on display as “A hopeless artist of the 21st Century”. Honestly that does sound romantic though. I have a Masters degree, yet nowadays I embrace being a master of none and jack of all trades. Going through pandemic time in public space and education was an enormous hurdle. From finding a job post-graduate to wondering if what my family just paid two years of tuition for was a waste, was I a waste once again? Questions and insecurities flooded back in from my undergrad days, I went into deep depression, cut ties with certain groups, until I got the opportunity to try something new. I’ve been working for Bar Le Cote for the past two-and-a-half years, portering, serving, gardening, building community in a small town that I’ve really grown to admire for it’s rhizomatic roots.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am classically trained in model making and sculpture. It started with taking apart old electronics and putting them back together with hot glue, then as I grew older I got more proficient in making miniature foliage out of cardboard cereal boxes, pieces of trash, old wrappers, or just about anything I could find. When ideas come I usually don’t plan ahead, more so just improvise with the materials I got around me. Thus began my practice of scavenging, collaging, and assemblage. Thanks to my formative years of Lego, Minecraft and other video games like Myst and Bioshock, my wonderlust for worlds is as vast as my stomach at Korean BBQ. Most of my miniatures are slices of life, hopelessly mundane corners of landscapes that I can imbue some preternatural character to. I love plants and islands, and I think subconsciously I see landscapes as bodies and beings; and I’ve always wondered what our relationships are like be it symbiotic or parasitic. In comparison to the Romanticists and transcendentalists, the small human in grandiose nature, miniatures present a different perspective of intimacy and omniscience that I enjoy greatly. More of my current three-dimensional works play with stand alone pieces that utilize raw, unedited wood scraps that act as a stage/backdrop for the miniatures to perform; partially nodding to a bonsai or ikebana aesthetic of arrangement.

I focused my efforts during pandemic grad school to learn video making. A classically analog Neanderthal learning to love the screen was quite poetic, and not to say I’m completely sold, I found my way of doing digital work in an analog mindset. much like my miniatures, I scavenge and find photos and videos from my personal archives, cut them apart with the magic wand via Procreate on the iPad, and find myself worldbuilding a new landscape. Kind of like quilting with image, or screen collage, I call my videos “video collage” because it sounds more organic to my process. Some videos have me in it, and the fact that during pandemic I had no one to act for me, peers thought of these works as self-portrait. Simply put, I wanted to use myself to embody the idea, a vessel for the intangible, an actor, my vessel.

And that’s how I created my pen name Roy Vessil, spelled with an “i” because it’s uniquely my vessel to use. Now it’s been a challenge of mine to not limit any mediums to make, I think it suits my work ethos better 😉

I pull from a multitude of sources ranging from folklore and mythology, plants, internet culture, books, video games, personal experiences and imaginary worlds I daydream of. I’ve been a practicing Buddhist, mostly in the school of philosophy and meditation for almost a decade, which has greatly allowed me to be less precious and more loose with new works. I used to be perfectionist and stubborn when it came to how things needed to look, now if something breaks while making I embrace the imperfections as the details that make them feel special. An old termite-eaten 4×4 becomes a mountain, corrugated cardboard packaging becomes ancient ruins, accidentally deleting a part of an image makes an entirely new landscape on top of the moving image– I’m having fun 🙂

Who else deserves credit in your story?
My parents and I have been through a lot. As an only child all the attention and effort goes to me. I try my best to pay it back as much as possible. I’m not always the easiest to work with, definitely goes both ways, but through it all they encourage me wholeheartedly. They even told me that after my Graduate degree if I want to try again with education, not in the midst of a pandemic, to go for it. I love them dearly.

My found family, Wyatt, Sky, and Madi, I may not always be around but you occupy my heart and soul everywhere I go. Thanks for believing in me, love you all 🙂

Two of my professors and friends in both ACCD and CCA were Daniel Small and Clifford Rainey. with writing letters of recommendation and vouching for me, talking me through my processes, genuinely being interested in my work, they both made an effort to recognize my worth.
Daniel and I have had contact for awhile, really the only professor I still talk to from school. The class I had with him really opened my eyes to the way I approach the world, seeing the beauty in the magical realism and the hilariously fake things asserting themselves as real. I’ve always been a fan of his art, hearing him speak about works got me to engage in storytelling more and not worrying about things needing to be true to reality. He also validated my sources of inspiration, something others prescribed to me as wrong. Thank you my friend.
Clifford Rainey is an exceptional man of character and one of the most analog workers I know. He made me fall in love with long processes and taking the time to slow down and think. I was his right hand man when the walls of CCA were falling down before him, it felt reminiscent to a time of rebelling against the system when clearly we just wanted to maintain some of the old art school culture. We ate lunch together on Sundays, Lamb vindaloo medium spicy, and he told me once that if you’re an artist and you don’t have an ego you aren’t an artist. I now can say that my art is fucking great and I think what I do is good enough for any gallery– thanks buddy.

And of course to my new art colleague and friend Max Gleason for putting my name out here in the valley. I know we will do great things in building this new contemporary space for the great people in our place. I’ll return the favor to you in due time my friend.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://royvessil.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slimymountainpotato/