I know Justen from back in the day when he was a vis comm graduate student at OU and I was a sophomore. During critiques, I think we all trusted his advice more than our regular professors because of his keen eye for design as well as his awesome Brooklyn accent. We were all blown away and inspired whenever he showed us any of his work. What a class act.

Where are you from?
I was born and raised in New York City (mainly Queens) and came to
Oklahoma for college.

What do you do?
I teach graphic design at Oklahoma State University where I’ve
developed a program focusing on motion and interactive design. My
design work encompasses motion graphics (video, typographic animation,
etc.), printed work (including posters, logos, custom typography,
etc.), interactive work and illustration. I have also enjoyed making
sample based music for many years.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
My son, Hudson and wife, Holly. My grandparents, Anna and Arrigo
Ghedini (both artists) were huge inspirations for me. A laundry list
of assorted inspirations would include; Hipgnosis, R. Crumb, Ralph
Bakshi, Jack Kirby, Ghost, Saul Bass, Tehching Hsieh, Ivan Chermayeff,
Herb Lubalin, Weegee, Futura, Francis Bacon and old lady Pray. In
general, I am motivated by a sense of life being very short.

What artists do you respect right now?
I respect all the artists and designers I know. I’ve actually found
myself having a deep respect for scientists like Vilayanur S.
Ramachandran. Maybe it’s interesting because it’s outside art theory.

What are you sick of?
Joylessness disguised as professionalism.

What music are you listening to recently?
Bodega System, J Dilla, Thelonious Monk and the Odd Couple theme song.

What is your first creative memory?
I remember inventing the Star of David being a huge breakthrough for
me (I was playing around with triangles and thought I had invented a
new star).

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
The shag carpet room at Opie’s.

Anything else?
Shout out to the Renyer, Ghedini and Dirickson families. Thanks for
checking out my work.
http://www.behance.net/JustenRenyer

Preliminary type design and character study for upcoming motion design inspired by Justen’s home borough of Queens (NYC).

CD cover concept. Image and layout created in 2004, type designed in 2009.

Self-initiated project. Lunar phases. Birds.

Promotional video for Oklahomans For Reproductive Justice.

The Non has been causing quite a stir lately with all the hype for their new album Tadaima. I’m really diggin’ the new album art and the general direction these guys are going. Their mathy instrumentals are a welcomed sound in the local scene. Plus, it’s always nice to see something good come out of Edmond. You can download their debut album Paper City for free on their website for a limited time, and don’t forget to check out their two night album release party this weekend.

Where are you from?
Wil – I’m from Edmond, Oklahoma.
Tom – Oklahoma City, born and raised.

What do you do?
Wil – I’m a student at Oklahoma Christian but spend my time daydreaming about music.
Tom – Lots of music things and lots of airplane things. I love playing in the band and working on everything that entails, I love everything about it. I listen to huge amounts of music all the time, always finding new tunes from the past and present. I really can’t get away from it and would never want to. A life entails more then music, though. I’m a student at the University of Oklahoma and spend a good amount of my weeks flying airplanes out of Norman as a professional pilot major.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
Wil – I guess I read a lot of literature, which always makes me question all of my convictions on everything. I think being unsettled as a person keeps me moving, and as long as I don’t get stuck in my thoughts, I think I’ll always be able to find inspiration.
Tom – Every day I wake up is one for inspiration—everything influences us, musically or otherwise. From the coffee in the morning to texture of your mattress at night, it can make you think or feel a certain way and that can have an impact on whatever it is you do. My biggest sources of inspiration are my mood and thoughts at any given moment. They can make you play a certain way and think about the music you’re making from completely different angles within a matter of minutes. It’s amazing. Of course I have to mention music as an inspiration; something is constantly spinning wherever I am and I am hugely impacted as a musician by what I listen to and think is cool.

What artists do you respect right now?
Wil – In Norman/Oklahoma City, I am obviously a huge fan of Evangelicals and Sethy McCarroll, both in Gentle Ghost and as a visual artist. I will always love Kunek/Other Lives/whatever the band featuring Jesse Tabish and his talented band mates.
Tom – My big time all stars are John Frusciante, Weather Report, Modest Mouse, Jethro Tull, Yes, The Mars Volta, Led Zeppelin, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, and Charles Mingus, among others.

What are you sick of?
Wil – Christmas music. It’s enough to drive me out of Starbucks for a month, which is actually a good thing anyway. So that too, I’m sick of Starbucks and all the money I wish I never spent there.
Tom – Petty problems being abundantly voiced by those feeling the need to do so.

What music are you listening to recently?
Wil – I feel fairly unoriginal for loving Animal Collective’s “Fall Be Kind” but it really is pretty amazing. I fell asleep to it a few days ago and I swear I had visions of a tight-rope walker (Bleed), flashing neon shapes (On a Highway), and strange pyramid tunnels (I Think I Can). Really great. Also, I am obsessed with Kaki King’s “…Until We Felt Red.” She’s brilliant. Her chord progressions are impossible and she’s able to make guitar sounds that are unique in a musical world of constant reference to other bands.
Tom – I just got bought two Midlake records the other day and that’s what I’m binging on at the moment. They’re an astonishing band from Denton, if anyone doesn’t know who they are. I had never heard them before but now I know what I was missing. The top five CDs sitting in the stack in front of me are by The Sugarcubes, The Clash, Dan Deacon, Return to Forever, and Tortoise.

What is your first creative memory?
Wil – I’ve been drawing since forever. In elementary school, I used to draw these extremely elaborate drawings of Star Wars-esque soldiers or medieval knights and whatnot. For class in second grade, my friends and I drew this super-bloody mural of a medieval-era siege, complete with people cutting off heads and getting boiling liquid poured on them. I’ve always wondered what my teachers thought of stuff like that, it was pretty morbid. But awesome.
Tom – The farthest back I can recall is a family road-trip where, for some reason, I had a really old child’s keyboard, the kind where you can hit only one key at once. I figured out how to play that thing on the drive and had a great time. This would have been in the mid-nineties.

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
Wil – It’s really hard for me not to pick anything other than The Library. It’s great when it’s warm enough to sit outside there, and the Sunday $5 pizza is just about impossible to beat. The atmosphere’s a little irreverent and you always overhear some way-out-there conversations by what seem to be brain-fried physics professors or something and that’s always great for a little while.
Tom – Lot’s to choose from! If I had to pick, I would say I either The Greek House or Midway.

Anything else?
Wil – Thanks!
Tom – Check out our new website and our new album, Tadaima!

Video by Nathan Poppe.

Hannah’s gorgeous prints and paintings have been used by bands like The Panda Resistance and Dead Sea Choir. She’s a bit of a recluse, but if you manage to get your hands on some of her work, don’t let go.

Where are you from?
I grew up in Tulsa, Ok.

What do you do?
I’m a painter.. I manipulate mediums, experiment with material, this is just the beginning of the process. Lately I’ve been making creatures, photographing them, and using them as references for my new pieces.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
Anthropology is a huge inspiration, bone and carcass collecting, the process of decomposition.

What artists do you respect right now?
I never get tired of Egon Schiele. Lately I’ve been really into Allison Schulnik and Kiki Smith.

What are you sick of?
I’m longing for a break, other than that I can’t complain.

What music are you listening to recently?
Recently Air.. The Cure/The Smiths always.

What is your first creative memory?
Obsessively drawing flamingos.

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
For drinks mainly the library, and Blu on occasion.

Anything else?
Nothing witty or informative is coming to mind.

I’m not sure why I had never seen Esteban’s work until recently, because he has some of the freshest photography around. His portfolio site has several wonderful projects that definitely deserve a look. I added a few photos from his People and Where They Live project at the end of the post.

Where are you from?
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. When my family moved to the US, we started in New York, where I went to preschool with a famous actress, then Los Angeles. We left after an earthquake for Miami, then DC and Hawaii. I moved back to New York where I was living before I moved to Norman.

What do you do?
I photograph people in moments when they are being honest, not altering themselves or posing. I try to make the camera invisible and allow the viewer to create a direct relationship with the subject.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
Seeing a person who shows an honesty about them , a stranger who I see and think about afterwards. I know that I relate to that person somehow, but am not sure how. In some ways, that is the thing I am trying to find when I photograph, even when I am not photographing people.

What artists do you respect right now?
Reineke Djastra, Ira Glass, Todd Stewart, Andy Anderegg, Michael Wolf, Nigel Shafran, Thomas Struth.

What are you sick of?
Wedding photography.

What music are you listening to recently?
Chuck Berry, Ratatat.

What is your first creative memory?
Finger painting Batman.

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
La Luna, Blu, J-Pats.

Anything else?
Cops reruns.

Some of my favorite memories of high school include driving to the city and listening to a girl with a surprisingly powerful, absolutely beautiful voice play her own folk songs at Galileo’s on the weekends. I even bought a little 5-song CD from her, with a wonderful, hand-crafted paper case made from the pages of an old children’s book. Then the world fell in love with Samantha Crain. You will too, if you haven’t already.

Where are you from?
Shawnee, OK (that’d be where Pretty Boy Floyd layed that deputy down), but I seem to have vehement affairs with the cities I call home. I’ve been shackin’ up with Grand Rapids, MI, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, Concord, NC, Portland, OR, and Greenville, IL over the past 3 or 4 years.

What do you do?
Ah little of this, ah little of that….mainly making music, drawing pictures, shooting air rifles, and typing letters. I also spend a lot of time taking things apart to see how to put them back together.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
I am a VERY active sleeper. I used to walk and talk in my sleep but that has since been phased out and replaced with super vivid and invovled dreaming. So my dreams provide me with a wealth of material to write about. Other things I get inspiration from: science textbooks, silent movies, Radiolab, Anais Nin, traveling, astronomy and astrology, rap music, Buckminster Fuller, and flea markets.

What artists do you respect right now?
I assume that this is asking what artists I like right now….because, being an artist, its hard for me to really respect artists, knowing that the world has all the great art it probably will ever need and understanding that being an artist is pretty much the most egotistical and unproductive thing you could do with your life. I respect car mechanics and preachers much more than I respect artists (this of course makes me an impossible contradiction but Que sera sera)….BUT artists that are smothering my radar right now are Reinhardt Sobye, Jason Molina, Wes Freed, Joey Lemon (of Berry), Kyle Field, Michael Hurley, Dr.Dog, Phil Elverum, Nate Henricks, Theodore, Zeb Dewar, and Tim Lowly.

What are you sick of?
Expectations, bad string arrangements, greed, and Taylor Swift.

What music are you listening to recently?
Leadbelly, Withered Hand, Mount Eerie, Student Film, Roger Miller, Eric Satie, Bunk Johnson, Cass McCombs.

What is your first creative memory?
Drawing on the driveway with a melting purple popsicle.

What is your favorite food/drank spot in Norman?
I don’t really hang out in Norman much…If I am in Oklahoma, I’m probably in Shawnee and my favorite spots there are Hamburger King and Benedict Street Market.

Anything else?
I’m recording a new album right now….it’ll be out in the spring of 2010. Also, http://www.oklahomafood.coop/