We recently connected with Ben Tipton and have shared our conversation below.
Ben , appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
Somehow I have been able to make a good living by being creative. I believe my journey began with drawing over at my grandma’s house. I would eat animal crackers and drink 7up and I would draw and show her what I drew and she would meet me with approval. I’m not sure I have ever really thought about this until this exact moment. She would always tell me how good I was. She entered me into an art show at a bank downtown where my piece was given a gold seal. these are my first accounts of approval for creativity. It felt good. I grew up in Austin, Texas in the 1980s and 90s. I got my first influences from graffiti in the drainage ditches we played in, skate shops and skateboard and heavy metal magazines, Penthouse and Playboy, MTV, weird Christian “Satanic Panic” access television shows. Austin was a very small town at the time compared to what it is today and I just soaked everything up. I would skate downtown on the weekends and go to this shop All That Jazz or Atomic City which sold “punk and band tees.” All of these influences play a major role in my creative process today, well over 30 years later. I’ve been socially awkward and shy as far back as I can remember. Art is one of the ways I could find connection with people or approval where maybe I didn’t know how or was afraid to communicate. I haven’t passed an art class since junior high but if I was in Algebra class I was drawing my ass off. If I was ditching high school I was tagging on the bus and so on. I dropped out of High School at 15 , got sent away for a couple years came back got big into graffiti, spent a bunch of years lost. I spent a decade In and out of county jails where I would draw on envelopes for commissary. In 2008 or 2009 I started a dj night at pool hall and I needed art to promote it so I started out doing illustrations along with cut and paste, kinda like any other punk flyer but instead of xeroxing them, I would just take a pick with my phone and maybe upload it to myspace (I think that’s what was going on). Before long I was booking bands and my girlfriend at the time was telling me about photoshop she downloaded it and tried to show me a few things and I smashed a couple keyboards. I knew at that time I wanted whatever I made to have kind of a cut and paste astetic to it even though that would take some time. Within about a year I really started honing in my branding and aesthetic having these parties every week. I used every bit of all the influences mentioned earlier. This is when I started making T-shirts. printing them in my car port and hanging them to dry all over the house. Eventually my nights were packed out and I was asked to bring my talents over to a venue. I started working side by side with one of my favorite local artist Jaime Zuverza. He was doing amazing work and like graffiti and being in a crew with other talented individuals it pushes you and you wonder how they did something so you try and figure it out and in doing so I find something else to call my own and completely quit trying to figure out what he was doing. That’s how I learn. I have always done things my own way. I don’t really know another way. I see something I like and I try to make it mine. I love photoshop because there’s a million ways to accomplish any one thing and I get payed to be creative otherwise I might still be flipping burgers like I was at 30 years old but I loved that too because it fueled my creativity as well I hate photoshop because it made me lazy and I don’t pick up a pen that much anymore. I broke my leg in like 2014 and had a buddy Justin Weems with a printshop here in town called Feels So Good, I was bartending and booking and doing posters at the time for Hotel Vegas. I was mainly making my living behind the bar so I needed to supplement my income. Justin said I could design 3 shirts, I designed 20 in 3 months. Lots of bootleg style stuff. I just wanted to make the kind of t-shirts I wanted to wear. I hit my stride in artstically 2019 all the while my drinking and drug use soared. I planned on quitting the bar after SXSW in 2019 and pursuing being a full time artist. Instead I was let go before that could happen. At the time I was absolutely devastated. My identity was really wrapped up in that place. In hindsight I believe Identity only exists in our own mind, no place else. Me losing that job and the circumstances of my life and life seemingly burning to the ground was the absolutely best thing that could have ever happened to me. All the while the mighty purpose and rhythm of the universe saw fit that the tour poster jobs kept coming in. I haven’t had a drink or drug in over 5 years. I don’t work there and I’ve made a comfortable living being creative ever since. I have never had a website. All of my jobs ever have been word of mouth. I have done work everyone from Willie Nelson to Dua Lipa I Just finished working on an album cover for a band called Cults that I’m very excited about but I still enjoy doing album covers for local friends bands. I will say that I have got lost trying to make things I think other people might like and I didn’t like the way that felt. I believe if I just do what it is that I am truly interested in, the right people will find I will find them and it’s impossible to fail if you actually love it. I don’t wish I could have sped up this process. I am grateful for today, I am grateful for all the experiences that brought me here especially the seemingly scary ones and without them none of this would have been possible. I can’t actually say with any certainty what it is that I do for a living except I just try and do the next right thing and I believe everything will work out as it should. I love lowriding and taking photos of cars more than anything right and nobody has payed me to do that but I’m successful at it, just ask me. The absolute best art comes from using only what’s in front of you.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
A lot of what I do is Merchandise design, tour posters and album covers. I got into this primarily from booking shows and throwing parties and having a constant need for promotion gave me a daily practice for almost a decade. I think growing up painting graffiti as well I had a natural drive for shameless self promotion and being highly visible in lots of places at once. I think that helps with getting noticed. I was simultaniously doing work for two bands at once, one was called Surfbort and The other was called Amyl and The Sniffers and I found myself using photography of the band making it black and white and then kinda going a little Warhol on it and people seemed to really like it. I haven’t ever studied any art and I’m terrible describing it I think.
I have two brands of my own the first of which is called Strange Magic, it incorperates a lot of pop culture references. I have always enjoyed making people laugh or smile with my art or say WTF. An example of a popular shirt was a Grateful Dead/Olive Garden shirt which I made because initially it was a GD/ Buccee’s (the Texas gas station chain) tee until I got a C&D from Bucc’s but it all ended with a C&D from Olive Garden.
The other Brand I have recently started is Lows in The 70s which is more of a lifestyle brand that reflects my affinity for all things “Wild in the streets” like Lowriding, Kustom Culture, Choppers, Vannin and Graffiti. I was born in 78 a lot of that early influence from the 70s was all around me in the media with reruns and magazines at the time. I like the clothes and the hair. I love a lot of the 70s style in particular before you associated Dr. Dre with a 64 impala (not that I’m not a fan) I like a juiced 73 boat tail Buick Riviera blasting Pink Floyd.
I love when the clients. or just people in general have great ideas to work with. I loved Rick Rubin’s book where he was talking about collaborating. I feel like that word gets tossed around and usually one party is capable of pulling off whatever they are trying to pull off by themselves but the idea of a true collaboration to produce the absolute version and vision between parties, all ego aside. Recently, I worked with this band Cults on their new album and the photographer Shervin was amazing! I was able to do some art direction from afar. Everyones input was super helpful. The bands vision for the cover was amazing. I’m just absolutely in love with the final product and the album is fantastic! I love stepping back and thinking, that is exactly what it was supposed to be! That’s a win!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I feel like my goal is just to keep learning and growing and remain openminded and teachable in every aspect of my life. I have a friend Brenden who says ” I like finding out I’m wrong because then I get to move on.” I believe in a limitless expansion if I’m open. I want to lift people up in everything I do, I believe that is the true creative journey for me.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Being willing to start from nothing, day one. Doing what I am interested in and not what I think you want. Being creative for the sake of being creative and helping others and putting in a lot of work, years of work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fsgprints.com/pages/strange-magic
- Instagram: @lowsinthe70s @bennyfromtexas
