Influences Header Dialog Box Go Back to Homepage
For what is probably my favorite page of this site, here is where I thought of every conceivable artist and/or piece of media that had an impact on my artistic and personal sensibilities. All of the people & media listed below left an impression on me in one way or another. For the artists whose names darken upon being hovered over, you can trigger a pop-up where I expound a bit on the given topic.
Artists (Music) I Like
Broadcast, Cardiacs, Cibo Matto, Devo, early electronic music, Emmylou Harris, film and text-parser game soundtracks, Joanna Wang
I've been listening to Joanna for awhile now. She was initially known for her breezy jazz-pop covers she recorded as a teen under the supervision of her father, but after gaining some artistic freedom she let her influences run wild with the sounds of folk-baroque to cartoon soundtracks, high-fructose pop & lounge music frequently in her roster. Her original work is as kitschy as it is compelling.
, Joni Mitchell
Ah, Joni. She's arguably the poet laureate of the folk/singer-songwriter genre, and for good reason: she's likely the greatest living songwriter alive. Her discography spans heartwrenching ballads ("Blue") to country rock ("For the Roses," "Hejira") and even avant-garde jazz.
, Kate Bush, Laura Nyro, the works of Neil Cicierega (as Lemon Demon)
Neil is a maestro of the wonderfully weird internet. I've been alongside him since before his music exploded: through the inside jokes, the browser games, the mashups. He's the Enigmatic Artist of the Goofily Online; not to discount his astounding musical talents.
, Little Simz, Logan Whitehurst
Logan Whitehurst was the drummer for the indie rock bands Little Tin Frog & the Velvet Teen, though I know him most through the music of his solo project, the Junior Science Club. There, his songs oscillated wildly between the hilariously odd and the beautifully poignant. He passed away in 2006. I miss him.
, the works of Mike Patton
Mike Patton's various bands, most notably Mr. Bungle and Faith No More, catapulted me into a world of obtuse and amazingly inextricable avant-garde music. He is as inclined to banshee-howl over blazing metal riffs as he is to throat-sing over space-age jazz.
, musique concrète & sound collage artists, My Bloody Valentine, Nelories, No Doubt, Oingo Boingo, Prince, Talking Heads, The Beatles
These guys were little-known for their time, briefly earning a place under the sun for their kid's song, "Yellow Submarine".
, The Sundays, The Zombies, They Might Be Giants, Tujiko Noriko, Ween
Television and Films I Like
Television: "Daria," "Freaks and Geeks," "Home Movies," "Impractical Jokers," "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "Kenny vs. Spenny," "Mystery Science Theater 3000," Nathan Fielder's "Nathan for You" and "The Rehearsal," "Workaholics" Films: “Elvira: Mistress of the Dark,” “Matilda,” “The Breakfast Club,” “The Dark Crystal,” “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” B-movies
Traditional Artists I Like
Agnes Pelton, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, Berthe Morisot, Charley Harper, Daron Nefcy, Frida Kahlo
What is appealing to me about her work is not her technical mastery per se, but rather her predilection for the willfully misshapen, the grimly grotesque, and the spine-tinglingly surreal.
, Gwendolyn Magee, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Leonora Carrington, Michaelina Wautier, Tarsila do Amaral, Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky was a little-known Russian artist in his time, but his style proved to be very influential on some of my artworks. His aesthetic is governed by the geometrically calisthenic: vivid colors, contorted lines, and jagged, mathematical edges. Eye candy.
Writers (and Their Works) I Like
Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,”
Marry, I readered him.
, Daniel Keyes’ “Flowers for Algernon,”, David Foster Wallace
DFW wrote about depression and the intricate discomforts of living with a clarity and a truth that I had rarely read before in fiction. With his gift for articulating minor transgressions so well, he left behind revelatory works of a beautifully complicated reality.
, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Julia Kristeva, L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables,” Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak,” Louise Glück, Mark Fisher, Sadie Plant
Sadie Plant's work as both a cyberfeminist and an accelerationist enriched my conceptions regarding the digital age and the maternal role in a way that nothing else had done before. She reveals that through the subconscious societal anointment of the computer as mother--friendly, serviceable, circumventing problems with relative ease--we all feel entitled to a savior: most often one that is archetypally feminine.
, Sylvia Plath,
Sylvia's writings, similar to Wallace's, became revelatory to me for nearly the same reasons--for her mining both the vast, interlinked networks of the human condition and the sensations of psychic pain, as well as the routine and subsequent melancholy inhabiting a domestic life. Her work as a diarist and a poet proved enticing to me; her prose imaginative, and her feelings palpable.
Thomas Pynchon
GIF 1 GIF 2 GIF 3
gifs courtesy of pixelsafari.neocities.org