Growing up, being born and raised here in LA, I’ve started to understand — upon my various travels in Europe, Asia and South America — Los Angeles definitely does have a certain weather to it, a certain kind of brightness that fuels the culture of the city. You wake up, and it’s 75 degrees out every single day, and it feels like you’re going to the beach. Everyone is less afraid to wear color — to celebrate color — to celebrate graphics and drawings. Somehow We All Seem Connected, Collaborative Exhibition with Justin Krietemeyer, Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles In Steven’s design, Disney characters interact with paint brush and palette, to celebrate the process of making art. After college, you dove into design work and started National Forest with your friend, Justin. How did that come about? I met Justin at Art Center and the two of us had a mutual passion for art, design, and drawing. At the end of college we both thought, “Whoa, we’re either going to split up right now and go work for different companies or we can do this together and try to figure something out.” It was a really big decision. We chose to put our portfolios together, create a business, and try to get jobs. And that’s what we did: we literally put our illustration portfolios together and hustled our work around. I really liked that. I liked how he talked about art being personal poetry. Over time, I embraced that. Everything I make in my own time is poetry, even if it looks like an illustration or even if it starts to become client-based. It’s about letting myself explore new ideas and be intuitive with what it is that I like doing, which I’ve realized has to do with drawing.

SH: My most important work tools are ultimately just the pen and pencil. I am one of those people that was handed a pencil or crayon at a really young age, and I just kind of kept it around. I drew through early school then into middle school, high school, then into college and here I am still drawing. Do you think one of the reasons you were able to develop such a strong voice with your personal work was because you had the commercial work as your bread and butter and there was no pressure no make money from the personal stuff at the start? It didn’t cross my mind then, but it does now. I completely agree with you. What was the first big gig National Forest did that made you and Justin realize you were making it happen? Right after we graduated, we got a pretty big illustration job for Rolling Stone. It wasn’t the cover, but it might as well have been. It was like, “Holy shit!” So you had a plan when you went to college? I knew that there would have to be some kind of financial reward at some point, but, to be honest, I didn’t think about it. I still feel somewhat guilty for that. I’m older now, and this is serious. This is what I do. I’ve realized that a certain amount of living off of this takes not thinking about whether or not it’s going to work. I’ve somehow managed to do it, so I’m going to celebrate that. I can say I never put together a plan or anything. Have you found inspiration in being able to create on the go and having a customizable experience to your workflow?As a creator, how does the ASUS Vivobook aesthetically align with your personal taste and how does it enhance your creative process? Did you always want to be an artist and designer? Like most kids, I grew up drawing and painting. My parents really embraced that and pushed me further into it. When I hit high school, I realized that I liked drawing and painting so much that I didn’t want to stop.

SH: For incorporating and having the ability to draw the Disney characters and blend them into my world at first it felt extremely surreal. At the same time, having permission to pull and experiment and extract elements from this really rich world of art for me felt really exciting. In the past, you were constantly crumpling stuff up if you’re embarrassed by it. Now the process is like a stream of thought, and I think there’s something that’s really liberating to the mind when it comes to developing ideas and creating. It’s more about the ideas and that stream of consciousness rather than the aesthetics of what you’re placing. I’ve found that to be really inspiring and helpful when it comes to the act of creating. Especially within the last several years online and digitally, I’ve found it extremely important and inspiring to get my mind out of that space. It’s this big shift that I think we all [experience] — almost like dimensional, physical things around us have taken on a lot more meaning. Recently, I feel like you kind of get down into nature, you get out on a walk — it can be a simple fleeting [moment] that you can find meaning in. With the emergence of digital mediums — NFTs, immersive walkthroughs — have you found yourself or your peers utilizing this new technological frontier to expand the scope of what art can be? No, but it has a lot of feeling. Exactly. That’s what I’ve tried to create. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I grew up hearing interviews with people who said, “Oh, I love telling stories.” Films are all about stories, and it’s about great storytelling. Don’t get me wrong—I love stories—but what about when you don’t want a story? What if you just want to feel something? What about the artist who believes there’s another language and grouping of emotions that you can’t express through words?

Selected Press

Yeah. Let’s talk about your voice. It’s fun, vibrant, fresh, and definitely recognizable. Did that moment you just described—thinking about music and the things that inspire you—help you find your voice? Was it a conscious evolution for you? No, it wasn’t. It was actually something I was trying not to do, which is bizarre for me to think about now.

HYPEBEAST: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your ASUS Vivobook and the process behind your design? I read a book by Milton Glaser, and he talked about the big difference between art and design: art is a really personal dialogue that you have with yourself over a long period of time. Everything you make has a direct relationship or correlation with the previous piece you made. It’s about exploration, which you don’t necessarily need in design work. In design, you feel more free to play with general aesthetics, approaches, and perspectives because each project is completely and absolutely different from the previous project.I once heard a really cool interview with Tom Hanks. The interviewer asked him, “What makes a piece of art good to you, whether it’s film or music?” He said, “Every great piece of art asks the eternal question that we all have, which has to do with existence.” As generic as that sounds, it has to do with asking the eternal question: Why? Why are we here? What are we doing? What is this place? That said, I think it goes both ways: there are plenty of people who find their passions in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. I can see myself evolving within art and drawing, and I hope I will. It’s awesome to think that all of us could someday evolve into something completely unexpected. That’s just as awesome as the initial thing you fall in love with. It’s interesting to think about our tendencies as children, too. Thinking about your natural inclinations and what you were drawn to or what experiences you really enjoyed over others can give insight into what you might explore as a starting point. Yeah, I think so. I remember a big turning point for me in school, which I still think about. I was trained academically during the first half and then turned loose to make whatever I wanted. It was kind of frightening. We had done lots of figure drawing courses and were forced to do academic drawing, but I had a moment when I thought, “Wait, if I’m not going to paint naked ladies for the rest of my life, what am I going to do?” Your artwork is known for capturing a Californian-infused pop aesthetic. Being based in LA, how has the city informed your work? In those moments where you need to decompress from the studio, how do you connect with natural environments?