Artist Feature: St. Francis Elevator Ride
"Take a joyride in a hypnotizing time machine"
Sourcing from his vast collection of 70’s Sears Catalogs, old editions of Stitch-by-Number and vintage sci-fi novels, St. Francis Elevator Ride’s work pulls you into a colorful snapshot of time and space. Primarily working digitally to create his collages and gifs, he is no stranger to the more archaic methods of utilizing X-Acto’s and glue sticks. While oscillating between the two methods, the body of his work is “highly informed by simple and minimal design aesthetics, timeless vintage imagery and twentieth century romantic ideals. His creations are often inspired by interpersonal relationships between the artist and those closest to him: he explores themes of love, sex, delusion, visceral emotions and the struggles in balancing and maintaining intimacy while leading an ardent, prolific life in one of the most competitive creative professions.”
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St. Francis Elevator Ride, aka Josh Breeden, is a freelance multi media artist living and working in Memphis. His work has been featured in several publications including Vice, Urban Outfitters Blog, Beautiful Decay, among others. He also works with several select clients including Wired, Trashy Creatures Records, and MTV. Breeden has held several solo and group exhibitions throughout Tennessee and in New York. His most recent commission was to create the featured images for the MTV 2015 Video Music Awards ad campaign. He is currently working on a new series of prints and assemblage works for a 2016 solo exhibition at the Memphis Botanical Garden, confronting normative family and gender dogma and the tensions between human innovation and nature. To view more of his work, visit his artist site: here.