Ryan Gibbs: From T-Shirts To Canvas

What began as a way to make cheap band shirts about 12 years ago, has turned into a unique expression of art on canvas. Ryan Gibbs, born and raised in Santa Cruz, started attending punk and hardcore shows at an early age. Unable to afford the shirts of his favorite bands, he decided to start creating stencils of the logos that he saw on his own t-shirts. Plus, at that age, the more DIY the better, so Ryan was not really missing out by making his own. Bands such as Tragedy and Born Against were among the first of his muses.

Fast forward to about three years ago. Ryan and friends began to pick up the art of stenciling once again, only this time on just about anything that they could get their hands on. Whether it be their skate boards, light poles, their house, everything had some sort of design embedded on it. As the interest was lost among friends, Ryan continued, and began using more layering techniques and better materials to improve his art. In the last few years, the talent and work gone into his stencils have only become more and more complex and visually pleasing.

His topics range from musical influences, to cult films, to random interests such as zombies. For now, he is sticking to canvas, but in the future hopes to move to air brushing and making shirts.

To check out Ryan’s work, or to contact him check out his Myspace or Deviant Art

CJ Fagundes

Tags: CJ Fagundes, Ryan Gibbs, screen printing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 6:00 pm by Ethan and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.