We were lucky to catch up with Craig Woodhull recently and have shared our conversation below.

Craig , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Destroy Art started with the idea that I personally experienced as an artist myself, that artists in the underground art scene where not being represented well with opportunities to show their work. Having grown up listening to punk rock music since my teenage years, I was always interested in the artwork that accompanied my favorite punk records and after moving to the Bay Area, California I saw an opportunity to connect with old and new artists and get their work shown. The name Destroy Art is meant to express how the art scene felt very bourgeois to me and was something only available to privileged folks and could be something for the common working-class people so I came up with Destroy Art to signify our goal was to “destroy” the status-quo of contemporary art and make it something available for everyone to enjoy and appreciate. And once we started to reach out to other underground “punk” artists we could see the same sentiment and pushed forward with art shows and events.

Craig , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We started off in the Bay Area with a big punk rock art show that was a huge success but in the process ran into many problems working with established art galleries. This lead us to move towards the DIY art community to seek more like-minded folks in the art community. We then moved into creating merch and art prints for our roster of artists which all started during the COVID lockdowns and primarily restricted us to online marketplace. From there we put on more art shows, starting working with artists from all over the world and seeking to fill that gap of under-appreciated artists in the underground scene.

The best part of creating this space was working with the artists and giving them a platform to share their work with the world! We’re punks so we do everything very bold and extreme so the kind of stuff we were putting out there gained a lot of attention quickly with lots of attitude, some history and again showed our growing yet underprivileged artist network work to the world!

We also found working with the Bay Area outreach and nonprofit community very exciting so we connected with some amazing people. We’re most honored to do a lot of work with Black Panther Party Alumni Legacy Network check it out at BPPALN.org we did many amazing art projects together when we’re living in Oakland. Please check out the great community work they’re doing!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

As of more recently times have been tough in the global economy and online sales have plummeted and finding friendly art spaces become more of a challenge. Through all of it, I maintain and carry on with perseverance trying to keep things afloat.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I mostly worked another job to start-up and grow the business so it was very difficult balancing the work-life balance. This often resulted in working 60-80 weeks at times which I’m sure any other small biz owners can relate to! Our initial online sales were very good and our gallery art shows were also very successful so that helped us start to grow capital the run the operation. Nearly every penny of profits we made went into the next project and that worked very well for some time – until it didn’t lol

Contact Info:

• Website: https://destroyart.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/destroyartinc/

Image Credits

Edward Colver (main photo submitted)