My name is Daf. I am an artist and designer from Texas. I grew up in the south and have type 2 bipolar and high functioning autism. I often felt unfamiliar and out of place among my peers. Art was for me a way of processing the difficulties I was having socially, offering a bridge for me to connect with others. I found solace within my art and began learning, scouring the internet for resources and reading books, texts, and watching videos, spending hours upon hours furthering my art education. I started with the basics and slowly forged my skills and practices. Since a young age I never stopped that learning, and it has taken me to some really cool places with my own self expression, and allowed me to share parts of myself that would otherwise go unnoticed. So far I have worked in photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery, sewing, and screen printing to name a few areas. I have learned not just the specific skills I needed for creating whatever art I need, but much more importantly I have learned how to learn, and how to love learning. Without the need for external motivation I can learn whatever needs to be learned quickly and add it to my expanding tool belt.
I work in a variety of genres and fields, combining different materials and mediums (including screen printing, lino cutting, photography, graphic design, and painting) to communicate struggles, joy, and contemplations on complicated topics. One of my recent pieces is on display in a theater in Humboldt park. Inspired by the old popeye cartoons and the pop art of the 60’s, this piece consists of crumpled cans screen printed on newsprint with lots of different colors. It is a collection of 30 prints arranged in a spiral. The word “Movement” is on the label of the cans and there is an accompanying video which quickly flies through 100 different prints and shows their evolution through the structure of the colors within each print. This piece serves to show movement in its many different forms, asking the viewer what movement means to them, and how it manifests in their lives.
I own a fashion company called One of Productions LLC. I started this company as a way to deal with the textile waste problem in America. I take vintage clothes and add my own screen prints and modifications/repairs. I also create custom pieces from my own imagination. I source pieces from estate sales, thrift stores, and second hand shops around Chicago. Outside of the company I also design and sew fully original clothing, as well as creating a lot of textile designs. My design style tries to incorporate mathematics and science with fabric to give physical life to intangible concepts.
List of programs I am proficent in: