We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Oni Sakti. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Oni below.

Oni, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

For Visual Artwork it would be a toss up between the large piece Monument that I did last year, and the 30 painting Icons Of Horror series. For the piece Monument I went above and beyond my usual style and technique, using more shades than normal, making a large wooden from with shelves, and collecting items for each shelf that were significant and meaningful to the woman I was painting. The piece is of someone very important and influential to me, pretty much someone that awakened something untouched in me for a very long time, brought a different level of beauty and happiness to my life, and that made me step away from a very strict working schedule I had for myself and live life again. I collected her favorite movies on VHS, music on cassette tapes, books, trinkets and and various oddities that are some favorites of hers and some from moments together to fill up the shelves. It is a monument to all those moments that maker her who she is. The entire painting process was filmed and edited into a time lapse video. For the Icons Of Horror series, it was more of me facing a challenge. I had made a list back in 2012 of 30 horror movie characters that I wanted to do paintings of. I sat on that list for a long time thinking it was too much of a task to do all of them, so procrastination set in. in late 2020 I reworked the list slightly and decided to do one a week, again getting time lapse video of each, so when 2021 rolled around I started them, doing one a week every Sunday morning, and uploading the video the Thursday of the same week to my YouTube channel. The start of September I had completed the list, and couldn’t believe that I had finished the entire project, and had already started another one. For music, I would have to go with the album Contact: Internal from my music project Ephedream. It’s one that I had been working on for several years off and on again, with some tracks sitting around for about 6 years. Over time it turned more into a collection of songs featuring friends I had known for decades, guest vocalists from bands I had played with before, or worked with in various ways, either mastering their albums, remixing each other, or featuring them on my old record label I used to run. What started off as just another album morphed into more of a homage to the connections made along the way, and moved the sound away from just electro-psychedelic instrumental work to featuring more alt-pop songs with vocals and even some spoken word material.

Oni, 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?

Where to begin with both sides of the creative outlets…it is tough finding a balance between the visual art, and sound art elements. With the visual side, I got started in that long ago, just playing around before I found my voice. Originally I was doing fine art nudes, and portraits, mostly influenced by art nouveau, which interested me even as a kid, but one thing that stuck out to me was that everyone looked the same in the artwork, and I was wanting to see more of a variety of people, like in real life. Over time I worked in a few different styles until I reached the point where I could achieve what I wanted to, and then the art changed and moved away from what I was doing and moving into more design work and portraits, stylized to mimic digital styles, with the subject matter changing also. I have done various commissions and album covers over the years, all fun to do, and learning exactly what people want, communicating and working to make sure they get what they want is interesting. Out of one of those commissions many years ago came a collaborator for music as well, another fun chance encounter that you can never tell where it will turn up next. With music, that also started early, playing around with different sounds and experimenting with making my own layered and effected sounds to use. Over time I worked on a few projects back in Boston and NYC before moving to Minneapolis and starting an avant garde project, and an indie label soon after. Since that time I have recorded and released music with over a dozen different bands or projects, including solo and collaborative works, film scores, and touching on different genres including Electro-pop, Ambient, Industrial, Psychedelic Trance, Drone, and Classical and have been featured on compilations along with some of the biggest names in Industrial music. Film scoring came in an unusual way though, it was always an interest, but never really an outlet until I was approached by Alan Tracy of Colliding Pictures back in 2012 to score a short for him. Our second collaboration debuted at Cannes Film Festival , and we have been working together ever since. What works with us is his willingness to give me full creative control, as I’m not one for doing the basic film score that sounds more like fanfare, but like making something more abstract to elevate the mood or scene. Over the course of my time here in Minneapolis I have recorded and released about 90 albums, have a few dozen on the shelf for future release, and have produced or mastered albums for several other artists, which I find just as fun and creative as working on my own material.V

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the biggest pivots started for me in the fall of 2019. I had more time to myself, and made a point to start painting every day, sketching new pieces, and organizing music. By the time 2020 started I was in full gear with a routine, I was working a full time office job during the day, set alarms on my phone for when to start painting, when to eat, when to sleep and stuck to that routine every day, except for taking a few days off when I had a massive kidney stone I had to have surgery for. I spent 2020 with that routine, nothing changed during Covid for me, I still had to get up and go to work every day, so the routine was easy to keep and I started posting daily on social media, from progress shots, to finished pieces, I made that part of the daily. At the end of 2020 I started releasing albums as well, did a few time lapse painting videos, and alive music stream via facebook. Another pivot happened when 2021 started, kept the same routine, but went into overdrive with it, beyond painting every day I added in releasing a new album or EP every Tuesday, a new time lapse painting video for the Icons Of Horror series everything Thursday, in May I started a second weekly time lapse painting video from a series of Star Wars themed paintings, and also did a monthly live music stream, an hour long set of improvised ambient and electronic music that I would release as an album 2 weeks after the stream. The amount of work during 2021 was a bit over the top, but a way of testing my limit, drive and determination. By the end of the year there were over 64 album released, around 70 time lapse painting videos, and well over 100 new piece of art completed. In the end, I understood my limits and the extent of my drive and need to create.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My thoughts on social media go the opposite way of most people I think. I spent a few years painting and posting every day, networking, and promoting my work and others through my work, and in many ways I feel like that can easily lead to the downfall of being creative. To me there is a point when social media becomes such a big factor in what you do as a creative person, and you have to stop and look at it and ask are you making something for likes, or are you being your authentic self. It is something that is easy to fall into without even noticing, and can take over and diminish your voice if you let it. I always see social media as a double edged sword for creative types, it is good and important to get your work out there, but if you change your work based on what others like, are you being you, or are you chasing likes and clout? I fell into that myself for awhile too, posting daily for over two years, networking and all that, but it wasn’t until I met someone that has become the most important person to me that I realized that type of trapping. since then I reworked my approach, I went a long time without posting, and even now post maybe few times a month if that, and keep it to finished pieces and vital updates. I deleted over one thousand posts over the coarse of several years, and kept it to the things that are important to me. I would rather have those that are special to me feel special and celebrated through my work, than others just for a few extra likes. After that shift I lost a few followers, but in the end I couldn’t even tell you who they were, the difference between the real world and the online is an important one to remember, as well as remembering to keep your authentic vision and voice the focal point, and not likes.     

Contact Info:

• Website: http://onisakti.net
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/oni.sakti.artworks
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OniSaktiArtwork
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@onisakti9597
• Bandcamp: https://surrealisticsoundlabs.bandcamp.com/