We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yanis Zambeis, aka YaMZ, a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, YaMZ thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I have been working on a project that I started in 2016. It is a continuous drawing on a 10 yard mixed media paper roll that sits on a special easel/display I built in order to show it and continue to work on it any were I take it. As of today, it has been my defining and most notable artwork that I have begun and am still creating. This project is Subconscious Surrealism from start to finish taking no planned execution only what comes to mind at the moment, but always continuous. This is all done using technical art pens with an extreme focus on detail and utilizing different shading techniques. The display I built is designed so that I can move from one end to the next and back again using a cranking system like an old animation reel. I enjoy drawing live at events with my Scroll, I particularly love the different ways people interpret what I am creating without conscious thought.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. Since grade school, I aspired to work in comic books. In High School, I became interested in the concept of surrealism, that’s when I started drawing the “weird” stuff that didn’t necessarily have any goal in mind. It became a release of burden from planning and plotting what to do. I never thought there was any path for my work since I felt confined. I was primarily working in graphite, in what I saw, compared to successful artists was a very basic medium. I didn’t start attempting to take it professionally until around 2014 when I moved out to LA. I was introduced to the owner of The Hive Gallery and Studios in downtown Los Angeles, by my very close friend and fellow artist. And from that point, I became a resident artist at the Hive. I’m always trying to expand what art I am able to make being primarily an illustrator using pen & ink, being surrounded by so many amazing painters and sculptors it can be daunting. So on top of just doing surrealist illustrations, I would play with the idea of using other ways to expand the range of my art by going big and/or playing with layers. Especially, with my pop-up, pop culture llama parody “CineLlama”, which utilizes a lot of different layers to create a pop-up 3D effect.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I would say one of the most rewarding aspects is the reaction I get from people towards my work. Especially from my scroll. Having people validate my work really gives me that feeling of pride over the fact that so far I have truly created something unique to me. Many times over I have been told that they have never seen anything like it, and that is very rewarding for me. And also selling original work.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I try my best to be consistent, I’m not the best at it but I find trying to post often helps. I used to post at least every other day when I was on top of it more. Consistency can help for you to be seen, you can’t always post everyday but it can be good to try.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://allmylinks.com/yamztheartist
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yamztheartist/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YaMZtheARTIST
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@yanismariozambeis https://www.redbubble.com/people/yamztheartist/shop