Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/749295
culturedmag.com 287 THE KAWS EFFECT Brian Donnelly, better known as KAWS, is the subject of a major survey at The Modern in Fort Worth. Before the show opened in October, Zesty Meyers sat down with the prolific artist to discuss architecture, skateboard decks and how the X became his signature. Zesty Meyers: I want to go back to when you got started, around the early '90s. How do your dreams from that time compare to those you have today? KAWS: I have always been interested in communication. Even back then, I was a young kid trying to make work—and get work into the world—and it hasn't changed much. How did you get started with graffiti? It was just the thing that was in front of me. Other guys were doing it, it was a little bit of socialness and a little bit of art. I wasn't inclined towards sports—you just sort of work with what you have. But while I would do graffiti on nights and weekends, I would also be looking at Sargent and studying all these different painters and, you know, just sort of finding my way around what it would be like to be an artist. Your spectrum runs from toys at a more affordable price to whatever a large sculpture in wood or bronze goes for now. Is that important to be effective? When I am making work I think of when I was younger and how I came upon work, whether it was magazines, stickers, skateboard deck designs or T-shirts. These different things meant something for me when I was younger. All you know is your world that is exciting to you, so I try to make work that disseminates in the same sort of avenues as the stuff that led me to learn about the greater picture of art. So if I am making a large sculpture, I am also thinking about how to make these smaller accessible objects that people will come across in a more candid way. Are there things you still want to make that you have never tried before? I always want to explore and learn about different companies, how things are made. That is why I like to do collaborations, because you gain an insight into how people operate and even if it's bad, at least you've figured out that is what you don't want to do. You've mentioned being interested in the