As a sports and pop culture fan, it is not often that I get an opportunity to write about both in the same article. Well this past week changed that when I was introduced to the work of artist, S. Preston. Nationally known for his his collection of Minimalist stadiums and mascots, he is one of four licensed MLB artists and the only licensed NHL artist. On top of those he also does NBA, NFL, College, Looney Tunes, Star Wars and much more. No only did I get to learn about S. Preston’s amazing work, I got to sit down and chat with him (through Zoom), about his art.
One on One With Artist S. Preston
First off, it was a honor to chat with S. Preston and talk art, sports, and pop culture. If you are a fan of any of these like myself you you could sit down and talk with him for hours. Unfortunately we didn’t have that much time, but we did get to cover a lot in the interview. So, of course I had to ask, how did he get started in this type Art?
S. Preston On How It All Started
“The style exists in the art world, it is call Minimalist. It kind of developed from two ideas. One of them I was a graphic designer, and the company I worked for specialized in Minimalism art in their ads. They would have a bunny in the corner and it would say Buy Our Phones. It was a very Minimalist style. I spent 10 years designing that kind of ad space, where the Minimalist style draws you into it and you know what you are looking at in the first ten seconds.
The next thing, well it may be just a Canadian thing, but we had a little magazine call Highlights, and in the back would always been these zoom-ins and you would have to guess what they were. They would have themes like cars and you would be like, Oh there’s the wheel and so on. So I mixed those two concepts together of zooming in so you knew what you were looking at only if you were a fan.”
“I first started with ballparks. With baseball there are little knick-knanks at every ballpark that is so unique to that park, like the Twins it’s the shaking hands of Minneapolis and St. Paul in center field, the Green Monster in Fenway Park, and even the ivy in Wrigley Field. All you need to do is see that, and you know what you are looking at as a sports fan. What is really cool is that you should be able to fill in the gaps as a sports fan, and then fill in your story to go with it. I was told by someone “All I need is a Minimalist to trigger those emotions”, and you know that is right. That is what an artist does, is to trigger emotions.”
Make sure to head over to page two for the rest of the interview.
