What are you doing at home reading this? You need to be at Bwana Spoons Grass Hut Corp in Portland, Oregon for Martin Ontiveros Rock and Roll Fantasy Show!!
Rock & Roll Fantasy
New Work By Martin Ontiveros
Featuring fresh paintings & Ojo Rojo toy release by Gargamel & friends
February 1st (Friday) 6-9pm
Grass Hut Gallery
811 E. Burnside
Portland, OR
www.grasshutcorp.com
New Paintings in the tone of Awesome!
With this fresh paint Martin explores the strange and beautiful world of Rock&Roll, vivid colors and mythology.
Ojo Rojo toy release.
Bigger and better then the mini releases at Comic Con '07, this new Ojo has movable limbs and will not fit in your mouth. It's a Grass Hut exclusive, locals get 1st dibs on opening night, but they will be available online the next day. The sculp was masterfully executed by Kyoka Ikeda of Gargamel. Gargamel & the Grass Hut gang have been stoked on each others work for quite a while now. Just last summer we arm wresteled in the sand at the Giant Robot bon-fire party in San Diego during Comic Con.
Martin's friends are going to pitch in too:
Arbito Hibert
Kiyoshi Nakazawa
Evan Harris
Scrappers
Tweeqim
Cupco
Bwana Spoons
Gargamel
Mark Nagata
Apak
Le Merde
Not everyone is customizing a figure, some are just doing a painting. Some are doing both.
pics via Gargamel:
A tiny interview with Martin:
grass hut- So you graduated from Cal Arts along with the inventor of the Power Puff Girls, do you see any common trends in line work and character design from the artists who go through that school?
Martin- There were two schools of animation at CalArts, Experimental and Character. I was in the former, which meant that we were allowed to do anything we wanted, traditional cell or 3D or whatever, at our own pace and with minimal structure. We were encouraged to explore our own visions and explore new ways of making animated films. Experimental worked more from the angle of animation as short art films than as something that would develop into a series on TV, not to say that alumni from there didn't wind up doing such things (for example, Stephen Hillenburg, who created Spongebob Squarepants, Henry Selick, director of Nightmare Before Christmas and others, Jorge Gutierrez, creator of El Tigre, and Brad Bird, who worked on the Simpsons and is the genius behind Pixar were all from my program). I never made a film myself though. Character Animation, which was the school that Craig McKracken graduated from, was way more structured in that it taught students everything from the mechanics of constructing a film to the history of animation to character design itself, a true program with teachers straight out of the industry itself. Most of them were really young, right out of high school (versus the older crowd of Experimental) and were actively following what was going on at the time in popular animation, all fans of the same stuff, and all impressionable by what they dreamed of being a part of. When I started CalArts, indie and alternative animation was just gaining popularity--Ren and Stimpy, Spike and Mike, Nickolodeon, and later on, Cartoon Network's original programming-- so suddenly there was more to offer than just getting a job at Disney. More opportunity to be a maverick in line work and character design, and if not that, than at least more productions to get a job on. So, I guess the answer is yes... Jesus, could I have spent more time answering this?
gh- How is this new show at the Hut different from the solo you had at Giant Robot the other month?
M- The GR2 show wound up being a catharsis of all these emotions I had been harboring for the year prior. The art was the natural outcome of having gone through some heavy stuff and yet having worked and created through it regardless, resulting in some of my best work to date. Like drinking a mix of all kinds of things that aren't necessarily good for you and puking out rainbows in the end. Having said that, I think it exhausted me in a way too-- I'm still too burned out to load the new
stuff with all the color that went into GR2. This new show is a switch to something simpler, lighter in mood, subject, and spectrum, and just plain fun. It's all about my deep love for Rock N' Roll and Heavy Metal, combined with mythology, and the cheesier the composition, the better. It's a new year, a lot of things have been resolved or are on another, more positive course. I'm in strange new territory and I want to have fun. When this is all over, I'll get back to the big-color thing.
gh- What's Ojo Rojo's story, what's he stand for?
M- Story...? I guess you could say he's a bit of an alter-ego. He smiles all the time. He has cooler hair than me. His fashion sense is somewhat glam, which is a look that I could never pull off. He's a character I can throw into any piece and he would brighten it up. I don't know if it's the grin, the hair, or the boots, but he gets some good response. His name is kind of a fluke-- I tend not to title things until the last minute... I like to see what I come up with spur of the moment. In his
case, I was titling everything in the show he premiered in after rock song titles, and since he had red eyes, I used Ojo Rojo from a Fu Manchu song. I wish it could be more extravagant a story than that, but there you have it. Good song too.
gh- What's you connection with the Japanese kaiju (monster toy)
company Gargamel? How is Gargamel different from other kaiju-makers?
M- I met and became aware of Gargamel through Bwana Spoons. We shared a room with them at Comic-Con 2006. They knew very little english, we knew very little japanese, and we had a blast regardless. I'm not the biggest expert on vinyl out there, I don't collect much since I don't have the money, plus I'm really selective about what I get, and won't buy something just because it's the hot thing out there-- so my opinion is sort of limited about the vinyl world. It's really up to the tastes
of the makers and collectors as to what's cool. That said, I love Gargamel best personally because they are in league with my taste in kaiju--they hail back to the aesthetic glory of Bullmark and Marusan, the older days of vinyl. I don't really see anyone else out there doing it that way (except Super 7 and Max Toy), and that's why I'm into Gargamel. That we are pals with a strong mutual admiration for each
other's work is just the icing on the cake. Those guys are fun!
gh- What is going to make 2008 two thousand great?
M- Grass Hut, duh! And going to Japan for the first time, that will
definitely help.
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