Salt ‘N Pepper Bear, a gift from the miraculous Jason Villegas. I’m gonna treasure this piece forever. Now I just have to find a prominent spot to display it on my wall!

(more…)

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Great Jason Villegas Giveaway this week! We were honored to have this opportunity to give one of you a one of a kind original art piece from one of our favorite artists, and we hope to host more contests like this in the near future.

Sifting through the 90 entries submitted here and on our Facebook page– including one megafan who diligently entered the contest 30 times under 30 different names (sorry dude, you were only counted once)– we ended up with 59 official entrants and assigned each of them a numerical value. We then used a highly complex formula generated by a secret machine* buried deep within Future Shipwreck headquarters**, to select our winner.

So without further ado, Jason Villegas‘ Lil’ Stink Eye goes to: Frank Antonoff! Thanks to everyone for playing!

* This.
** My bachelor apartment.

When Dan and I approached Jason Villegas about doing an interview, his website was in a sincerely sad state. Jason felt frustrated with the site and hadn’t had time to manually update it in months. The archaic design was distracting from the amazing work it was intended to promote, so I decided to try out the new website builder my bud Matt Rubin helped bring into the world. Using Virb, it only took a matter of minutes before we whipped up a truly handsome platform for Jason to share his artwork. Plus, now it’s super easy for him to go in and add new images whenever he needs to!

Virb is clean, flexible, and couldn’t be more intuitive. Like Tumblr and Vimeo, it has an uncluttered interface– but it also provides enough control to customize your site to your heart’s content. If you have some artwork of your own to share with the world (or know someone who does), I highly recommend checking out Virb. It’s almost 2011. Two thousand eleven! You deserve a real website.

Look at some screenshots of the back-end after the jump, and don’t forget to enter the Jason Villegas giveaway!! Only two days left to take home Lil’ Stink Eye!

(more…)

I couldn’t be more stoked to announce the following news: in honor of today’s interview with Jason Villegas, he’s created an original art piece exclusively for Future Shipwreck, and we’ll be giving it away to one lucky reader! The piece is entitled Lil’ Stink Eye, and it’s a lovingly handmade fabric sculpture that playfully expands upon Jason’s thematic obsessions with the Lacoste alligator and tanks.

Jason’s artwork has been shown from coast to coast in rad galleries like Okay Mountain and esteemed institutions like LACMA. This might be your only chance to take home one of his completely unique art pieces! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post or on the Future Shipwreck Facebook page (both to increase your chances) before Thursday, October 28th at midnight! We’ll choose one lucky a winner at random and announce their name here on Friday morning!

(more…)

Ed. Note: I’m pleased as peaches to present the following feature on artist Jason Villegas and his magnificent multi-dimensional artwork. Below you’ll find an insightful interview by Dan Rosplock, alongside exclusive portraits shot by Landon Metz. Don’t miss our unprecedented giveaway of Jason’s original art piece!! – Graham

Like energy and matter, meaning cannot be destroyed, only redistributed. The symbols in Jason Villegas’s artworks are the children of complacent capitalist icons born into an unpredictable environment. As such, they retain something of the glamorous impact of their forebears, yet their uncertain future has forced them to become more versatile. These are cyborgs, war machines, strange hybrids and channelers of mystical energy suited for survival in any scenario. Villegas is one of those rare creative personalities who seems to be able to reform any cultural construct or market force no matter how concrete or abstract into something more resilient, useful, and, above all, beautiful. He recently took some time to talk to us about such diverse topics as globalism, mainstream Bear aesthetics, and how he came to be a master seamster.

(more…)