Overshare Podcast: Tristan Eaton on Inventing Your Own Universe and Secret Identities

WORKING NOT WORKING

Overshare is a Working Not Working event series and podcast that features honest conversations with our favorite creatives about the tough stuff we don't talk about in public often enough.

This episode is from a live recording on stage in Cannes, France during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Host Justin Gignac has a beachside chat with street art legend Tristan Eaton.

Tristan started pursuing street art as a teenager, painting everything from billboards to dumpsters in the urban landscapes of the cities where he lived. He created his first toy with Fisher-Price at the age of 18 and was and was at the forefront of the designer toy craze in the early 2000s with his work at KidRobot, creating the Dunny and Munny art toys.

He is regularly commissioned by a roster of clients that includes Nike, Versace, and even Barack Obama. These days, Eaton is one of the most prominent street artists working today. His large scale mural work features a meticulous, visual collage of pop imagery mixed with his unique personal style, all executed with freehand spray paint on a colossal scale.

In this conversation, Tristan discusses how toy design was a natural evolution from the world of street art, but why he ultimately felt a calling back to his roots. "Being deeply in the middle of hypebeast culture and being a slave to people's shopping habits and how you make your art—that was never why I wanted to make art. I didn't want to retroactively design my art for a seasonal release-or a shopping habit."

Tristan sees his creative career in chapters, but no matter the reinvention, he is forever cast under the spell of spray paint's alchemy. His art is a permanent catalyst in his own life. "A lot of my girlfriends in the past have hated my art because it's a strange force. It gives me my sense of who I am and my work ethic. Sometimes the people in your life want to be the ones that give you that. But I'm very lucky because I find this power and strength and peace from my own art."

In this episode, you will learn the importance of self-reinvention to escape formulaic mediocrity, how to know if your subconscious is driving your work, and why inviting people into your own invented universe is perhaps the only way to get clients to give you free rein.

We have good news: you can listen to the entire conversation below on our podcast. Subscribe to Overshare on iTunes, Soundcloud, or with any other podcasting app via our RSS feed.