We were lucky to catch up with Sean Bernhardt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sean, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I think the biggest risk i have taken in my life so far would be diving into making artwork full-time and dedicating all my energy into my work. I enjoy drawing, collaging, designing t-shirts and working on commissions for people on a daily basis. Its hard for me to stop working on art some days. I feel like once you realize your purpose as a creative everything will fall into place. It takes a lot of patience, consistency and experimentation to get here. Happiness is making art for me and happiness comes out of what i produce for people. Without it people would go elsewhere, but my stuff is raw and in your face. I chose to go a different path than everybody else and i’ve stuck with it for many years. Some people are meant for a normal 9-5 job, i never felt connected with one. I am not saying get up and quit what you’re doing but you can make things work without having to be trapped in a box with someone looking over you. Take that risk, get out and get inspired, explore, dive into different mediums, learn and grow from mistakes made.

Sean, 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?

My name is Sean Bernhardt aka Space Bat Killer, turning 33 years old today (Feb. 19, 1991) i am a full-time freelance artist and creator. I like to make sharpie drawings, analog collage graphics, apparel designs for brands, customs, shop graphics etc. I also run Evil Paradise clothing aside from making commissions. Evil is all about the tees, one offs, art prints, stickers and more of a guerilla style approach. I work out of my art studio in Manasquan, NJ 5 days a week and live in Ocean Grove, NJ. I dove into artwork at an early age, was always inspired by skateboarding/surfing/snowboarding basically the three things i still do to this day that keep me going. I always liked seeing logos from those industries as a kid and always put stickers on things and a lot of my work is connected in that way over time. Art class was always where i shined and i’ve stuck with creating things up until now and have not given up at all. People can come to me if they need any sort of merch artwork (calling all brands, shops, bands), i do funky hand-drawn logo art, paper collages, all things wild…My work is mixed with psychedelic touches, all original, rough around the edges and never the same. You see a lot of art out there being produced but most of it looks half-assed or mass produced. Theres heavily digitized and AI stuff out there taking over and putting real artists down. Its whack. I am most proud to have stuck to my guns and really took the time to work on my art when everyone else was out doing something else. I take the darkness in my head and turn it into something special for you. We need to get out our feelings, art does it for me.

How did you build your audience on social media?

When I first created my instagram account it all started out pretty slow. This was when everyone was posting just the square images with a few filters on them, looking back it was pretty wierd and boring haha. I hit a point where i had a few companies reach out to me and visa versa. I did a bunch of work for Globe (AU) and tons of other smaller random international brands. They were into my work out there and then it spread to the west coast of the USA. I did some stuff for Vissla and then Billabong came about. Basically those three companies promoting me as an artist, getting some write-ups and re-posts with my collaborations the word was spread pretty fast and i started gaining a lot more of a following. I also used to share my work with a lot of smaller independent zines and other artists and built sort of a small network over time. The more you submit and re-post the better off always, you never know who might stumble upon your work, thats the beauty of it. If you’re just starting out and wanting to build more of a presence i would say first start off by really having your art where you want it to be. You can post things all day long but nobody might even see them these days, try not to give up or take it personally.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The world is a mess, we need more chaos and art out there. Expression and freedom is the best. I just hope that with everything changing in the art world (NFT’s coming about, more digitized stuff taking over, AI art, corporate being the main leader) that people will turn more to the ones who are keeping it true and working by hand. I like art that is produced more handmade and one of a kind. Theres too much non-sense going on out there and everything is looking tacky to me. Make shit that speaks.

Contact Info:

• Website: linktr.ee/space_bat_killer
• Instagram: personal @space_bat_killer / merch @evilparadise
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/SPACEBATKILLER