Subjective: Sasha Barr
In this ‘Subjective’ interview we chat with Sasha Barr, a Seattle based artist, skateboarder and co-owner of by and by skateshop.
Thanks for being down to chat art & skating, Sasha! Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about where you grew up?
I’m from Tennessee, I like to claim both Memphis and the Nashville area. I was born in Memphis in 1982, then moved to Murfreesboro (a suburb of Nashville) when I was 7 and lived there until I moved back to Memphis for college after high school. So I kinda grew up in both middle TN and Memphis, with my grade school years in the middle and my “growing into an adult” years in Memphis. I finished my undergraduate at the University of Memphis in 2006, I like to say it took me 6 years to get a 4-year degree and moved to Seattle in 2007. Because I was born in Memphis and later had some very formative years there as a young adult, I feel more of a spiritual pull to Memphis, but my time in middle TN is also a huge part of who I am today.
My main knowledge of Memphis is from old rap shit like 8ball & MJG or Three 6 Mafia haha. I know Tennessee is also a big music hub, especially for country stuff, but what was it like actually growing up there?
I don’t remember much from my early days in Memphis since I was so young, but I will say my folks were pretty poor and they managed to do a great job with what they had and what was available to them. They were both art students at Memphis State University (later renamed the University of Memphis, where I also went to college), and worked in bars and restaurants in what’s referred to as the Midtown area of Memphis. Since they were both artists they instilled in me an appreciation of the arts at an incredibly young age, and were always supportive of any kind of creativity. We were very much a creativity-forward household. My mom was a painter and a printmaker and my dad did ceramics and had a background in photography. Since they were raised in poor-ish circumstances themselves, they very much had a “doer” sensibility about the making of anything and everything. From gardening, cooking, the making of clothes, down to the furniture in the house. They also grew up in the 60s and 70s and had a pretty great record collection and general appreciation of music, so that was always a big part of the household. My dad started teaching after he finished graduate school and was offered a job at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. At that point, they were ready to move out of Memphis and try something new.
Growing up in Murfreesboro was weirdly pretty incredible. It was a growing suburb of Nashville, about 30 minutes southeast, and naturally had a pretty robust music scene and lots of creative folks. The local college MTSU, where my dad taught, had a bigtime Mass Communications/Recording Industry department with tons of music industry stuff and, eventually in part thanks to my dad, an incredible digital animation department that fed students to places like Disney, Pixar, and all of the companies during the early days of what’s now commonly known as CGI. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in that environment. Nashville was a country music/music industry hub, but it wasn’t yet the tech behemoth it is today. In addition to all of the music I acquired from my parents, being in such a vibrant indie music scene played a huge role in exposing me to music and that culture early on. Keep in mind this was long before streaming music or social media so you’d have to find things out in the actual world. Because there were so many RIM (Recording Industry Major) students at MTSU, we had several venues in Murfreesboro where local and touring acts would play, some of which were all-ages. A lot of the venues in Nashville at that time weren’t all ages, plus it was nice to be able to go to things in our town without having to do the drive. Looking back on it now, while I didn’t start working for bands or in the music industry until I moved back to Memphis, my time in Murfreesboro set me up to feel comfortable in that world thanks to making friends in bands and attending shows at an early age.
In addition to all of that, I will be eternally grateful for my high school art teachers, who played such an important role in my upbringing and education. I definitely wouldn’t have a career in the arts if it weren’t for the teachers in my life. That can’t be overstated enough. When it comes to Nature vs Nurture, I tend to believe it takes a lot of both. Also, thanks to it being a college town and proximity to a “big city” like Nashville, there were a few skaters around and skate shops to go to (or a bike shop with skateboards).
Photo by Steve Settles.
Damn, that’s really sick how creative the zone is there, never really knew that. And I love hearing about parents who support their children’s creativity, it’s so important man. So how did you get into skating?
Honestly, I think it was a CCS catalog someone showed me on the bus in 7th grade. That would have been 94, maybe. There were a few catalogs people would pass around back then (again, before you could buy this sort of stuff on the internet). Mostly mail-order catalogs for band t’s and whatnot, but there was always a CCS in the mix too. I think we just started ordering t-shirts that were funny (Foundation had the best ones back then) and somewhere along the line a buddy and I got our first completes. I can’t remember if we got our first actual completes from CCS, but it’s likely. There was a bike shop in Murfreesboro that had some skate stuff and I know for sure I got some stuff from them, Beer City blank decks were my go-to for the first couple of years because they were cheaper. I like to say I was 14 when I started skating.
Ok, so you were a bit before me, I started in 1999, but I definitely remember CCS always floating around and just being stoked looking at all the new stuff in each one. Tell me about the early skate days?
By this point we were living in a pretty big neighborhood with chill streets and a public school nearby, so my neighborhood buddy Justin and I would just skate around the neighborhood day and night, learning to ollie over the manhole covers and do manuals in people’s driveways. We were too young to drive and going to downtown Murfreesboro, the University, or even Nashville, wasn’t remotely an option yet. We were so out of touch, we spent our first summer as skaters without videos or magazines or anything. We just winged it, totally clueless about the “industry” or pros or whatever. Pretty nice, thinking back on it. Eventually, we got our first videos, mine were a birthday present from that skater buddy, which I still have in a box somewhere. Transworld’s first video Uno, the first Zero video, and the Trilogy video from 101, Mad Circle, and Blind. I also remember when the X Games started (the Extreme Games), and I’d recorded the street skate contest which I rewatched all the time like it was a regular skate video. I got my first Thrasher, Transworld, and Slap not long after as well. By the time we got to high school, Justin got out of skating, and I started making new skater friends at school. Keep in mind though this is the mid to late 90s, and there were probably like 4 skaters at my high school. This was long before there were any skateparks around, but people would skate the MTSU campus and downtown Nashville like Legislative Plaza, which is still very much a spot today. There were also a couple “core” shops in Nashville at that time, Vertical Inline and XXX Sports, so access to more skaters and gear was constantly growing. One of my best friends in high school had an older brother who skated, and I was able to sort of look up to his crew as the “elders” of our Murfreesboro/Nashville scene. There was even a thing MTV Sports did back in the day on Nashville and they were all in it, which was so cool. As I grew older I started skating with a few of them regularly. It’s on YouTube…
Woah, that’s a crazy time capsule. What types of art were you drawn to back then? And now?
I guess in grade school it was mostly the classics- drawing, painting, collaging, photography, ceramics. The kind of stuff my folks did and what we did in my high school art classes. As I grew older I’d be more exposed to graffiti and street art, as well as poster art and graphic design in general. A lot of this came from the skate and skate adjacent world, from deck graphics to magazines like Juxtapoz and books such as Beautiful Losers and graffiti books like The Art of Getting Over. My interests and tastes have grown and fluctuated over the years, these days I just try to appreciate all that I can, though there’s so much out there in the world now!
It is wild how much stuff is out there now, it’s a gift and curse. When you were young did you visualize a path into your current career?
Not when I was young-young, no. I started doing “freelance” with some local bands in Memphis who were kind enough to let me do posters and CD layouts for them, and it’s been a natural progression ever since. Over time it developed into actual “work” and what I’d now call my career. I’m not sure if I ever visualized anything in particular, but I think it’s all worked out in some pretty cool ways, not to mention my 16-year (and counting) career in the art department at Sub Pop Records.
That’s a wonderful working relationship to have. Did you know anyone growing up who "made it" in skating or art of any kind from Tennessee?
Oh, I’ve known several folks who made careers out of their passions in some kind of art or music, whether it be gig posters, design, architecture, small businesses, bands, labels, and venues. Nashville and Memphis are well-stocked with talented and driven people. Skating-wise, that’s a hard one. I do remember seeing a tiny Dee Ostrander charging around the Nashville park from time to time a million years ago. Heath Brinkley (who’s also in that MTV clip) is from Nashville and has gone on to run Primitive with Paul Rodriguez. Harmony Korine went to high school in Nashville before moving to NYC and doing Kids…There are probably folks I’m not thinking of. Some of the older guys I looked up to growing up are still skating, and in my book that counts as making it!
Absolutely. And damn those are some heavy hitters. Who were your favorite artists growing up?
Off the top of my head - In grade school let’s say Warhol, Brian Froud, Basquiat, Jasper Johns, Ralph Steadman, Dave McKean.
College days - Chris Ware, Evan Hecox, McFetridge, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Steve Keene, Travis Millard, Andy Jenkins, and a whole heap of my gig poster buddies - Jay Ryan, Jeff Kleinsmith, Aesthetic Apparatus, Sonnenzimmer, Heads of State, Isle of Printing, Jason Munn, Aaron Horkey, the list goes on and on.
I also read lots of comics (surprise), so all kinds of comic artists were deeply implanted in my brain - Mike Mignola, Jim Lee, Alan Moore, Todd McFarlane, Neil Gaiman, Bill Waterson, Gary Trudeau, etc etc.
Many I recognize but a few I don’t, so I’ve got some studying to do. In what ways do you think skating influenced your style and direction as an artist?
I think it mostly exposed me to the whole world of the “skate” artists that were on the rise at the time, which hit during some very pivotal years as a person and a creative. There was this mix of graphic and handmade art with the rise of adding computers to the mix, and the whole idea of these “self-made” artists making careers for themselves in skating and music. Hecox, McFetridge, and everything happening with the Art Dump at Girl/Chocolate, and everyone involved in the Beautiful Losers world - Barry Mcgee, Kilgallen, Deanna and Ed Templeton, Chris Johanson, and so on.
You've worked with a ton of skate brands and shops, Vans, Emerica, Crail family, Transportation Unit, 35th, Atlas, to name just a few. How did you get your foot in the door in the skate industry?
I feel very fortunate to have done anything at all for anything related to skating. It’s been a pretty non-linear path, but it’s mostly been all about the friendships and connections I’ve made along the way. The first person to ever get me to do anything skate-related was Joey Pulsifer, who was a coworker of one the older guys I grew up skating with (Ames, with the big hair in the MTV vid) and was running a hardware brand called Project Hardware in the early 00s with Giant Distribution. He asked me to do some t-shirts for Project in like 2004 or so (?), and he continued to hit me up and link me with folks for a long, long time. I also did graphics for Furnace Skateshop, Planet Earth, Stereo, and Listen because of Joey. He’s always stayed involved with brands in one way or another and we still work together on things from time to time.
The first (and only graphic) I did for Chocolate in 2006/07 I got from just emailing Andy Jenkins and Hershel Baltrotsky. If I dig deep in my email account I’ll find emails I seriously just sent out to every company I hoped to do some work for, a lot of whom would respond even if they didn’t want anything. I guess I wasn’t scared to just put myself out there. I honestly don’t have much recollection of any of it, but the evidence is there! Hershel is now a good buddy and a lot of the folks I communicated with back then have turned into people I continue to cross paths with today.
Photo by Ben Ericson.
Love it. So once you had your foot in the door doing skate projects, how did you keep building on that?
I’d say it was when I started doing this board brand Amigos with a bunch of buddies here in Seattle that made the biggest impact on my connections to the bigger skate-world. Not only was I able to art direct and design our brand, I also started becoming close with Tony and Dave at the 35ths and meeting folks from other shops around the country like Atlas just by virtue of putting Amigos out there. Amigos gave me/us a reason to start collaborating with shops on graphics and gear, as well as putting on art shows and events at 35th North, all of which led to meeting other artists and brands from the “industry” at large. Not to mention starting to do more graphics for the shops, which I still do today. Being involved with 35th North I’ve been able to help out with lots of cool stuff across the board, from shop graphics to art shows to fundraisers for Skate Like a Girl.
Having the ability to link Sub Pop with skate projects also presented some cool opportunities. When it was Sub Pop’s 25th anniversary I spearheaded doing a collaboration of soft-goods with Altamont, and for the 30th we linked up with Girl to do a series of boards and other stuff. By that point, I was able to help bring together my two worlds, music and skating, and get rad people together to do rad stuff. It’s all about the connections you make along the way.
These days I’m helping out with the shop Tony and I have in West Seattle, By and By, and whatever local projects we/he has going on at any given moment with both shops. I’m also affiliated with Transportation Unit Skateboards/Qualified Distribution. T.U. is a board brand Russ Pope has done for several years, a few of us banded together to start a little bistro to sell it. We also carry Film trucks out of France. I find I’m still making new friends and connections through skating all the time. Catch me at Jack Block any time!
It’s rad to see how the music that shaped your roots in Tennessee kinda came full circle and connected into your art and skating here in the NW today. I should also say before I moved to Tacoma in 2000 when I was 12, but before that I had grown up in West Seattle, just a few blocks from where By and By is now. Oh how I wish that shop existed when I was kid! So you also do a lot of work not in skating, what does that look like?
I’d say my freelance stuff is always evolving. For a hot minute there it seemed like I was doing lots of mural projects. Lately, I’ve done a bunch of random gigs for people like Ikon Pass, Fortnite, Stanley, and the Seahawks. I’m always down to chat with folks, and am consistently honored when anyone reaches out to do projects together! I still do a lot with the folks at Sub Pop, and I average a few poster gigs a year.
And what does your work look like day to day?
So I’ve been with the art department at Sub Pop Records for around 16 years. I was full time for most of it, but a couple years ago I reduced my hours to part time while I explored a couple other full time paths. I did a brief stint as an art director at Zumiez, then was at AWS (Amazon Web Services) for about a year and half, and that just ended in February. I’m still part time with Sub Pop. Day to day I’m just taking it as it comes. Not rushing in to another full time thing the moment, am working up some new freelance for the summer and will try to just do some traveling and not be tied down to any one thing. I’m also always working up stuff for By and By and 35th North, whether it’s softgoods, prints, art shows, or other random projects.
Sounds like a good spot to be. I really think a bit of free unstructured time can be really good for us. That space and time to breathe is important creatively. I know a lot of skaters want to be pro skaters when they grow up, but realistically it’s a tough road and there's not a ton of money in it for most. I’m curious, is it just as difficult as an artist in skateboarding?
Oh, I’d say there’s not a ton of money or opportunity for skaters in creative positions either, unfortunately! That was actually one of my deciding factors when we started Amigos in 2011. I didn’t need to email a bunch of brands hoping for their response, I could just do my own thing. Turns out that doesn’t pay the bills either, but it was pretty fun. In the skate “industry” at large, there’s probably a hand full of creative jobs, and they’re almost always occupied. I’d imagine most of the creative work in skate is from freelancers or contractors. Not that many brands or distros have full on dedicated creative roles. When it comes to design/illustration I can only think of a few - Crailtap, DLX, NHS, Baker Boys and? To be clear, I mean like employees, not a team rider that also does graphics. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, though. With the footwear brands there’s some roles, but really just at the big brands. And even then, when you’re at a big brand, layoffs are a thing. In house creative roles at footwear brands have been dwindling, too. That’s just my impression, I could be totally wrong here so someone should reach out and correct me if so!
Switching gears a bit, walk me through a few of your favorite projects you have worked on in skateboarding?
I feel very fortunate to have worked on a bunch of really cool skating related projects. Here’s a handful
Manwolfs art show/weekend - A group art show and weekend of fun stuff I helped organize and curated back in 2012.
Girl x Sub Pop - Sub Pop partnered with Girl Skateboards to create a limited edition run of skateboards, soft goods, and accessories to commemorate Sub Pop’s 30th Anniversary. I wanted to create a line of boards that spoke to the enthusiast and collector culture that embodies both music and skateboarding. I wanted the boards to work individually as well as a set that appealed to both music lovers and skate fans. To make it a true collaboration, and not just Sub Pop’s branding on skateboards, we devised a way to include unique 7” flexi disc records with each board. We manufactured a limited run of branded record crates for in-store POP and utilized them for the marketing videos.
Surprise Me! with Skate Like a Girl - Another group show I curated, organized and participated in featuring over 20 artists from around the world to benefit Skate Like a Girl.
Support Your Local Skateshop graphic/ Skateshop day
So the original “Support Your Local Skateshop” graphic was an idea Tony and I had a while back, maybe late 2019. We used the graphic on social media as well as made stickers and prints that we sent to shops around the country. Around that same time Chris Nieratko was starting up the Skateshop Day annual event, and tapped me to make the graphic the official Skateshop Day Graphic and first round of product. So now, once a year, I get to see everyone and their mother posting the graphic for Skateshop Day.
Vans US Open of Surf Murals - 2015 2016 Super humbled to have had the opportunity to participate in these couple years of bowl painting. Great times, great humans. Super cool to see people skating the bowls after we were done, too!
Photo by Nat Russell.
Damn, so many good ones! Your catalog is truly fucking impressive. And that skateshop day graphic is really everywhere, it’s taken on a life of it’s own. What about some favorites outside of skating?
Father John Misty - Pure Comedy (We won a Grammy for Recording Package in 2018 for this)
Sub Pop Airport Store & Merch - I’m on the team at SP that puts together our storefronts and all of the merch within. I helped create the SeaTac airport store (now in it’s 10th year) and developed a merchandise line from the ground up, which has grown to be a substantial part of the company’s annual revenue. Really honored to be a part of this ongoing project.
Fortnite - I’ve done a couple of Fortnite load screens for Epic Games, fun projects for sure. Hoping to do more!
Bangers! So many good ones. That Amazon mural is so massive, I love that one too. Any advice or words of wisdom for young skaters / artists out there?
I mean, obviously, I’m a workaholic. Have been since I started this whole thing. And, I enjoy making stuff, I like being creative and having passion projects. But, we only get one run around this universe, make time for friends, family, and things that aren’t work, if you can. Cheesy and obvious, perhaps. If you have the time, I suggest reading this essay by now-deceased New Zealand Art Director Linds Redding as he was looking back on his career at the end of his life. It’s quite powerful and sobering. He speaks from the perspective of someone who worked in marketing and advertising, but it can easily be applied to any “career.”
Hell yeah, love it. Let’s end with that. Thanks for making some time for us Sasha!
You can follow Sasha on Instagram, check out his website and pop in to By and By in West Seattle to buy some of his art.