Nicholas Di Genova
mediumphobic.com, www.skeletonhug.blogspot.com

Tell us a little about your background?
I'm 22, a painting student, and I have a part-time job at an art supply store. I live in a big city, and I draw a lot..

Where are you from?
I'm Canadian. My mom is Australian and my dad is Italian, and they both immigrated to Canada when they were young. I was born and raised in a small town called Belleville, and now I live in Toronto.

Design education:
No design education, but I've been studying fine arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design for the last four years. I did a general foundation year, studied sculpture for two years, and now I am enrolled in the drawing and painting program. I would normally graduate after this year, but because I switched majors, I have to finish one more semester in the fall...I hate school...

How did you start out as an artist and designer?
I've just been drawing like mad since I was two feet tall, and haven't stopped. When I was younger I was really into cartoons (I'm sure most kids were), and I used to sit in front of the TV for hours drawing what I saw. Then I started making my own characters and drew them in scenarios with the characters I saw in TV. Then I discovered comics and it was all over, ALL of my money went towards those for the next 8 years; I still buy comics, but most of my money goes towards rent and art supplies.

Another thing that really got my juices flowing for a few years was street art. It still does. When I moved to Toronto, I saw all of this cool shit all over the walls, and was amazed, because up until then all I knew about street art was the hip-hop influenced variety. Seeing "artsy" street art really blew my mind, and has dabbled with that since I came here.

How long does it take you to create a single painting?
Depends on the size and materials. If it is just a small pen and ink, I can usually finish that in a day or two. If it is a pen and ink on Mylar, and then painted from behind like an animation cell (most of my recent pieces are done like this), then that could take between three days to a week. But some pieces take a really long time. I just finished an 8 1/2 foot pen and ink drawing with a lot of detail, and that took me a month and a half.

You must have been asked this a million times, but what inspires you to create these crazy pieces?
Everything that I do is fueled by an interest in nature, biology, genetics, evolution, and all that good stuff. Since I was a kid, I've always had tanks full of fish, crustacean amphibians, reptiles, and other strange creatures. I'm obsessed with animals and drawing, so it makes sense I draw animals, I guess. But there is a healthy dose of comic book and Japanese animation influences in there too, so these animals come out pretty twisted sometimes.

Who wants to see pictures of animals that already exist? Making new ones is far more interesting. In my head, these are the creatures that will populate the earth, long after human beings have blown themselves up. We will destroy not only ourselves, but almost all other life on this net as well, but some creatures will survive, even if they are only single-cell organisms. Evolution will continue and life will go on. There will be a new race to see who will become the dominant species, and I imagine myself documenting that race.

PDC: That's freaken cool!

What's the story behind "Chicken Puppet"(image 3) and "Bone-limbed Two Leg (piggy bank)"(image 4) ?
I made Chicken Puppet because I was dead broke, and thought that I could make money by making puppets and throwing puppet shoes on street corners for spare change. My best friend made a puppet as well, and we intended on have our puppets act out different scenario such as caring for their young, gathering food, and (hubba hubba) *mating rituals*. But Canada gets VERY cold in the winter, and by the time we finished the puppets and collected our ideas for the show, winter had come, so no one would actually stand around a corner in the freezing cold and watch a show.

But spring is coming so we will see what happens. The Chicken Puppet spits colored fluid, like how a mother bird regurgitates food into its baby's mouths. That looks pretty weird. The Bone-Limbed Two-Leg is actually a piggy bank. My best friend I worked on it together, I planned it out, he built the form, cause he doesn't trust me around his power tools, and I'm a clumsy bastard, and I painted it. We take it around with us when we do the zine and underground comic book fairs, and try to convince people to put money in it. We are planning to do many more, and want to set up a show of them within the year, and create them in the forms of other species, like Land-Fish and Elephants and Camel Skins.

I've noticed that a lot of designers are creating static sites rather than Flash, what are your thoughts on flash?
I'm going to have to wuss out on this question. I know next to nothing about computers and computer-related animation, if indeed that is what flash is I'm not even really sure.

What was the most difficult piece you ever created?
The Chicken Puppet was a really difficult one. Although I took sculpture for a couple of years, it is a lot more difficult and time-consuming for me to work in the 3rd dimension. And the puppet has moving parts that can be operated by some ones fingers that would be inside the puppet, so it took awhile for me to figure out its mechanics. It took a lot of trial and error to get its frame constructed, and to sculpt its eyes, ears, and hands. But then the really time-consuming part came when I had to sew on the fur. I ripped apart a stuffed animal and dyed it, cut it into small strips, and sewed them onto the frame by hand. But like I said before, I am really clumsy, so it took me a REALLY long time and I kept loosing my needle.

What are your thoughts on community sites such as DIK, Urban Collective and Pacdesco?
I'm not all that plugged into the Internet I'm not very familiar with these sites. I've been to DIK and Pacdesco a couple times now, and I like how I can access a wide variety of work from one (or two) places. Hmmm... I guess if I did go on the net more, these sites seem like they would be places that I would like to frequent. I don't have the Internet my studio and I spend most of my time here, so I don't know much about it.

How did you come up with the name Mediumphobic?
When I started writing graffiti and doing street art, I used to draw all of these dead looking people, like zombies and demons and stuff. I called myself medium, and it was referring to me acting as a spiritual medium, a person who connects the living to the dead. So I was drawing all these zombies, demons, spirits, and stuff, so it just kinda fit. The phobic part got tacked on a couple of years later; some of my friends would say that I drew really frightening monsters, which made them medium-phobic (creeped out by my art). The last part is kinda silly, but when it came to registering for a URL, medium.com was already taken, so I took mediumphobic.com cause it was in my head. But when I do street art, I just write medium, medium phobic just supposed to be that name of the website, or company, or whatever it is.

What do you do besides Art?
I go to the woods and walk around, and turn over rocks to try to find creatures. I go to the lake and swim, and canoe, and I have an ATV that I drive around the trails. These are my favorite things to do, and I do them in the summer when ever I can get up to my parent's cabin. It's hard to find the time though. I read a lot, usually nerdy books about science and stuff, and still read comics and watch anime. And aside from spending time with my girlfriend and my best friend that's about it. I try to draw for between 8 - 12 hours a day, so it is hard to do other things.

Music has a great influence on designers, what's your choice of music these days?
I mostly listen to hip-hop, lots of backpacker stuff. Lately I've been listening to stuff like MF DOOM, Noah 23, Arecee, Aesop Rock, Jean Grae, Mr. Lif, Juggernauts, El-P, and Pip Skid. And lots of old trip-hop, cause that was my favorite type of music when I was younger, and I am a sucker for nostalgia.

You have any tips for those trying their hand at Mixed Media Art?
Don't be afraid to try anything, and don't get frustrated when things don't work out for the first couple of months. With mixed media stuff, you are always taking on new media that you are not familiar with, so patience is very important.

What are your bad design habits?
In the summer, I tend to drink too much beer when I am working, so I get really spacey and make bad decisions. And I have a habit of selling work before I photograph it, which is kinda the stupidest thing I could do, but I'm trying to curb that habit.

Design styles you dislike:
The over-use of hip-hop influenced graffiti in advertisements and design, especially when it is used by people who really have nothing to do with graffiti culture at all; it's all pretty silly. That always pisses me off.

How would you like to be remembered?
As a great storyteller.

Do you have any new projects coming up that you can tell us about?
Yup! Right now I'm preparing for a big solo show in July, where I will be gutting a gallery in Toronto, and turning it into a "History of the Land-Fish" museum. I'll have the space for the whole month, and I can do anything I want to it. I've been working on the plans for this for a couple months now. But I don't know all the details yet, keep going to my website or email me to get on the mailing list, or something.

Thanks again for doing this interview, any last comments you would like to add?
Sure. Thanks for letting me do the interview, and thanks to anyone who took the time to read it. Until next time...

PDC: Thanks Nicholas for another entertaining interview.

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