Wallace IS Art: Eat. Sleep. Breath. Art.
Hanging out with Wallace Piatt, aka @WallaceisArt, is like jumping on the bumper cars at the state fair and then magically hopping over to the wildest roller coaster ride of your life. But it’s not just any roller coaster, it’s a vintage coaster with chipped paint and squeaky wheels like the tumbledown Cyclone at Coney Island. One minute you’re chugging slowly up a rickety track, the next you’re being jerked to the right and flung down a steep hill. It’s a madcap, colorful, stylish ride with a true original.
Wallace is a vintage freak. His obsession with thrift shops, began in high school and his proclivity for junking accelerated through college. Back in the early ‘90’s he started working as a graphic designer in Santa Barbara and met his match in then girlfriend, Jill Johnson. “We were true vintage enthusiasts. Full on biker meets cowboy meets American Indian junkers.” They translated that love to designing their own clothing line, creating original screen-printed tees, stickers, pamphlets and bus cards (wait, what?!).
“Jill and I [ravished] thrift shops. We’d go in and [knew the clothing and the value of each piece]. It was so da%$ fun going into these small towns and scoring cool sh&%, on the cheap. Old movie posters, denim you name it. And it wasn’t like today’s thrift stores that are full of mass produced surf crap. Back then, American denim was HUGE in Asia. Once we sold $4,5000 worth of jeans to a guy from Japan. We thought we were rich.”
So fantastic was their success, that within days they were making money. In 1991, Wallace and Jill took that $4,500 and opened a brick-and-mortar shop. The name? True Grit, of course. The shop was an overnight sensation — a magnet for style watchers in Santa Barbara and accounted for “7 of the best years of my life” according to Wallace. “We hosted parties and truly were the hub of downtown. It was absolute pure fun!” says Mr. Piatt.
That meteoric rise came crashing down 15 years after Jill and Wallace first opened shop. The store closed. “I went broke. I was homeless and on drugs.” He lost everything. “Clubs were my favorite place to drink. It was truly an insane time. And I loved it, except for the excruciating hangovers.”
In the midst of the late-night party haze, Wallace became laser-focused on his art. He lived and breathed art. He began dating a new girl after he and Jill split. This new girl broke his heart. It was this heartbreak that catapulted his success. One night Piat came home to find her with another man. The next day he started working on a Lichtenstein-esque portrait of her with ruby red lips and glittery eyelids. In bold-face print at the top of the poster read: “WALLACE I KNOW HOW YOU MUST FEEL FINDING ME IN BED WITH ANOTHER MAN, BUT I’M REALLY…” And at the bottom in HUGE letters he wrote “EVIL.” He plastered the giant posters all over town. And the recognition rolled in. “I was a hero in every man’s eyes in Santa Barbara.”
This recognition fueled a new-found success and he dedicated all of his time to his craft. Live. Breath. Dream. Art.
He begins many pieces by sewing canvases together. It’s no surprise that many of the canvases are found at thrift stores and paired with new canvas. “I sew first and then paint. The thread in my American Indian pieces means the most. [To me it represents] how [Europeans] tore apart Indian culture. The stitching is my way of bringing the [culture] back to life.” And, perhaps the canvas are symbolic of Wallace’s own life. He jokingly says, “These [canvasses] have a lot of dirt and crap all over them. I actually step all over these pieces as I paint. …with time, they get filthy and look more and more like vintage. Kind of like me.
Wallace is sober and back, riding a different high. By all accounts he is successful. Still living, breathing and preaching; pop-layered-silk-screened, vibrant art that is full of life. He attributes his sobriety to increased creativity and a work ethic that is “through the roof.”
The Architect’s Wife and the world are the benefactors of his new-found appreciation for life and art. At the beginning of the summer, the prolific Wallace and his new love, Angela (aka: #pooter), made the epic journey from Cali to Bozeman to deliver a collection of eleven pieces to our downtown furniture store. The collection ranges from pop-art to screen printed pieces; some political, some not but all of them layered with meaning. We are grateful to have found his talent and to share it with our Bozeman friends.
Stop by to check out his collection and delve into the layers of meaning in each piece.
