We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Steve Yim a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Steve, appreciate you joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?
It’s hard to categorize anyone’s actions in this world as truly “right”, however I would say my parents certainly had (and still have) a profoundly positive impact on my life. The way I view it, before a child is born, they are like a blank piece of paper. A pure soul who has been kept sterile and untouched by the outside world. However the moment a child is born, that blank piece of paper slowly gets drawn on by the outside world. Like a spongey mirror, we absorb every single frequency and stimuli around us, and that shapes who we are as a person. Love and kindness leave spots of color and beatufil patterns on that delicate piece of blank paper. While hate and pain leave stains, rips, and tears which cannot be removed. Stains can muddle the colors on our paper, yet more color can be drawn, for there is always balance.
My mom and dad have always been my colors. As far back as I can remember, they would always allow room for me and my siblings creative and experimental minds. We would all go on adventures together and there would always be some sort of lesson to be had, whether intentional or not. The memories of my childhood are the building blocks of my soul, and I cherish momentary flashback I have. Sometimes certain smells, tastes, and sounds can be extraordinarily nostalgic for me, and I savor those moments as much as I can. I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for my parents, and I believe that applies to every person on this planet. Every human interaction we have leaves an impression on us, and vise versa.
I guess all of this boils down to the greatest lesson my parents taught me. A lesson that has greatly improved my life, even though it seems simple. “Just be kind, and be honest”. Once I decided to have this on the forefront of my mind, many of the walls I had built up in my mind started to crumble. And it’s not as simple as thinking about kindness and immediately having a change of heart, its all about putting it into action. No matter what tries to push you down, persevere. Never give up.
Steve, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have been drawing ever since I was a kid. Creating worlds and characters based off of my interests was something I constantly did and still do. I remember always drawing dragons in elementary school, and I eventually got into comics in middle school. My whole life I have loved art, but until high school I never fully decided on having a career based around art. As a kid I used to have dreams of being a biologist, traveling the world to find new species of plants and animals. However once I reached middle school I realized how much of a curricular mountain I would have to climb to reach those goals. Being someone who has never enjoyed sitting in a classroom under fluorescent lights, the idea of going to school for science started to seem unappealing. So in highschool, I decided I wanted to go to an art school. Yet even still, I didn’t have any big goals in mind except for finishing my comic BASS HEAD, which I am still currently working on.
Once I made it to my first year of college, I saw a clip of a philosophical speaker talking about the concept of finding your “WHY”. In short, finding your purpose. This video stuck with me for a while, because I was still in a state of aimlessness. I was in art school, I could draw decently, yet I had no idea what the hell I even wanted to do with my life. Moving on to a year later in my second year, I had a revelation. I had just started listening to the band King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, and listening to their music I started to feel something. I started to feel the soulful impact of their music. Songs that made me think about the world around me, songs about how we as a human race are destroying the earth. I started to get the feeling that I wanted to change the world around me, I felt as if my soul got jolted awake by a celestial defibrillator. Then it dawned on me. I started to realize what my WHY is.
I want to harness this feeling of soulful awareness, I want to wake up people’s souls the same exact way KGALW’s music woke up mine. I want to use my art to help motivate people to take positive action in their life. Using comics and illustrations to teach and invoke thoughts that some people might let slip through the gaps of their brains. We might no have “magic” in this world like they do in fantasy novels, but I am a firm believer that there is magic in this world. Music, painting, sculpture, every single form of art is all magic. We are able to make people across the world feel emotions that they haven’t felt in years. The art we create is literally a representation of our soul, and if that isn’t magic than I don’t know what is.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson that I believe is engrained into a lot of people is that we all need to follow this “invisible social code”. As I kid I used to always think I had to become a specific kind of person because that’s how the other people around me acted. I would see the way adults dressed and talked to each other, and I thought that all adults ended up in a suit and tie with an office job. In school we were told how to dress, when we can and cannot go to the bathroom, who we can or can’t talk to during class. Looking back, I felt like I was on a conveyor belt in a factory, on my way to become just another brick in the wall. But towards the end of high school, I started to experiment. I listened to the music that I was actually drawn to, and I started to wear clothes that I felt represented me more (at that time it was a lot of floral shirts haha).
Soon enough once I began my first year at college, it dawned on me that no one knows who I am, and in someway it felt like a fresh start. I was able to become my own person. Slowly the cookie cut person that I thought everyone expected me to become slowly started to change shape. A 1 of 1 cookie you could say. But a lot went into finding my true self and I have recognized that I am always changing. But I am happy to say that I am no longer on the way to becoming another brick in the wall, I’d say I’m closer to a tree or flower or rock outside of the wall. I love being me, and me is what I will always be.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In the beginning of my journey to discovering my WHY, I was at a standstill. All throughout middle and high school, I had always thought I would be creating comics and shows, and only those. But at a certain point in my second year of school, I realized that creating only comics and stories wouldn’t be a dead set way of making a living. Unless I get lucky, there isn’t a huge chance that a studio will hire me for their next project. I started to think about my dreams of creating my own comics and it felt like those dreams were slowly slipping away. But then I started to experiment. I though about all of the different mediums and styles I enjoy, and I ended up finding a passion for illustration in general. Specifically music illustration and environmental illustration. I discovered that I love to create complex psychedelic art, and it’s my goal to have a gallery featuring these complex depictions of my soul. Eventually I kept finding more and more niches, and my artistic tool belt started to get bigger and bigger. This is a pivot that I am extremely grateful for, and I wouldn’t be able to end this without thanking my old roommate and great friend Luke Perkins. His style of illustration helped me discover a lot of different creative avenues, and I couldn’t have made this pivot without him!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://steveyimstudios.com
- Instagram: steveyimstudios
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-yim-635143300
