Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy DeBor.
Jeremy, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started my career as a web designer for a boutique digital agency after graduating art school. Sometime later I founded the branding and digital design studio “Other Things” with my friend and collaborator Buddy Boor. In 2015 we left our day jobs and spun our studio practice into our full time gigs. Our days are spent designing brands, marketing, and websites for local and national nonprofits and other socially conscious companies.
On the side I started doing ink illustrations and screen printing as a way to bring traditional media back into my repertoire as our studio work is highly commercial and digitally focused. Friends who were familiar with my inking began commissioning portraits of their pets, which spurred me to see value in the thing I was doing and work harder to create increasingly complex pieces.
Currently, Buddy and I are working to unite our studio practice with our individual art styles blending digital and traditional media and bring our version of screen printing style to the animated web.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I create screen print graphics with stippling effects. Most of my work is focused on surreal interpretations of flora and fauna. My background as a designer also lends a graphic quality to my work, using minimal color palettes and translating many of my designs to patterns more appropriate to packaging or textiles.
I enjoy combining images in odd ways, taking a very basic interpretation of an animal, but making it a bit off. My recent series of predator animals posed with children in the context of summer fun is a good example of this. Blending something macabre with something humorous or cute or even mundane, I enjoy that juxtaposition. There’s also a certain expectation about detailed traditional art that its to be serious or pretty and like playing with that, adding something humorous or scary or gross to what at first glance should have been something else.
I’m inspired by traditional artists like Danny Larsen, Edward Gorey, and Aaron Horkey as well as designers and studios like Paul Fuentes, The Heads of State, and Delicious Design League. Though on every count of that list I have a long way to go towards living up to those references.
How can artists connect with other artists?
This is a good question. Art and design, but art especially is a very lonely sort of endeavor. The heads down studio mentality and hyper focus that it takes to create great art naturally lends itself to a solitary experience. Add to that that many artists are essentially freelancers, working for themselves or on commission, and you have a brew for some extreme cabin fever.
I have been a member of AIGA (a graphic art association) for many years and have made a habit of attending their events as a way to meet other designers and artists and just get myself out of the studio. For any Chicago designers, Buddy and I have both been in and led groups with the mentor program at AIGA which is a great program I would highly recommend to anyone. But these types of programs and organizations exist for literally every specialty there is, whether its copywriting, motion graphics, screen printing, basket weaving, there’s a group of enthusiasts out there waiting to be connected with.
As a freelance artist and extreme introvert myself the idea of networking and mingling can literally make my skin crawl, so I understand the conflict many artists find themselves in. If you’re like me in that way, one of the best things you can do is volunteer. If you’re volunteering it gives you a purpose to attend events, and can make introductions smoother and easier to come by.
And lastly just keep in touch with people. I know my business partner Buddy because we were in art school together. We had never talked about working together, and weren’t even particularly close friends in college, but when he moved to Chicago looking for work I turned out to be looking for a new apartment and a roommate following a fire in my building, a couple quick back and forth emails and a year as roommates later, and here we are today.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
The best way to stay on top of anything new with me is to follow me on Instagram @jeremydeerboar and @otherthingscreative.
But you can also see my work on the web. My design practice Other Things is at otherthings a clever URL that is an absolute nightmare to describe to people over the phone. And you can see my illustration work at my illustration portfolio site deerboar.art.
Contact Info:
- Address: Other Things Creative
4636 N Ravenswood Ave. Studio 102
Chicago IL 60640 - Website: deerboar.art and otherthin.gs
- Phone: 517.667.0172
- Email: jeremy@deerboar.art and jeremy@otherthin.gs
- Instagram: instagram.com/jeremydeerboar and instagram.com/otherthingscreative
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