Nate McCartney AKA Nate the Milkman is an American artist and all around creative powerhouse who has quickly gained a firm foothold in the art toy scene thanks to his varied and highly unique releases – which at this point includes ‘Stomak the Upset Stomach’ (2016) and ‘Gordon the Garbage Goblin’ (2018). Both of which are creepy meets cute, human body inspired figures with a whole lot of personality!

(Photo below of the Gordon the Garbage Goblin art toy by Nate)

Like many artists these days, Nate notes small town isolation, and a chance encounter with some Pushead merch as a kid as major reasons for his interest in art and everything outre – stating how:

“While at a car show in West Point, Nebraska, I came across Ministry’s “Scarecrow” t-shirt done by Pushead. I became an instant fan of both artists, and couldn’t believe I was able to find something so cool in a place so boring… Seriously, finding that Pushead design was a pivotal moment for me. It taught me you could do big things with creepy artwork.“

Fittingly – just like Pushead before him – Nate is a highly accomplished musician and an artist, who ultimately found his community in the art underground.

So without further ado – get to know all about Nate’s life, art, thoughts on the current state of the art toy scene, see some photos of his cats, and a whole lot more – by reading the Art Talk interview below…

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Lance aka ‘Renone’ of ‘Renone Labs’ is an American artist, designer, publisher, scene builder, and all round creative mensch who work has been blowing our minds for many years now. His most recent project is ‘Rotten’ – a gang of artists and misfits who create toys, stickers, art, apparel and more.

(Photo below of a toy version of Lance’s well known Minion character)

Seeing as though it has been over four years since we last spoke with Lance, we decided to hit him up for a catch up interview to get up to speed with all his current projects, work with ‘Rotten’, thoughts on the art toy game, his artistic process, and a whole lot more.

Read it all, below….

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Shane Bugbee is an American artist, writer, publisher, curator, journalist, salesman, manager and even for a brief period – successful soda-pop purveyor. Indeed in our varied and sordid career running Art Whore, Shane is the closest we have come to finding the very aspect of ART encompassed in human form. Art is Shane, and Shane is art.

Recently Shane moved to Oregon and has quickly embedded himself in the State’s culture scene, and this coming October 5th in the city of Portland, Oregon; Shane is holding two art shows – to present to the world the fruits of his many years of artistic creation, celebrate his upcoming 50th birthday, and to showcase to the world artists that Shane loves. Pure ego, meets selfless scene builder. Pure Shane. Pure ART.

(The flyers for both of Shane’s October 5th shows, below)

Both shows will feature art, music, performances, food and other surprises and are not to be missed experiences! To that end we sat down with Shane to find out more about the upcoming shows, as well as to discuss what Shane loves about the great city of Portland, and the local artists he admires.

Read it all below…

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We at Art Whore have loved the designer toys of American artist Gabriel Rivas aka ‘Nerviswrek’ for over half a decade  now – and even had the pleasure of interviewing the man himself for an Art Talk back in 2014. Well, recently Gabriel revealed to the world a new Platform Toy he designed, the ‘Drone Blank’ figure.

What’s a Platform Toy I hear you ask dear readers? Well simply put it’s an unpainted toy, with a basic design that is sold for the purpose of being customed by it’s new owner. Kind of like a blank canvas in toy form. Classic examples are the Dunny and Munny figures from ‘Kid Robot’, the Qee from ‘Toy 2 R’ and now the Drone Blank from ‘Nerviswrek’ – which cost $US 25 shipped within America.

Describing the Drone Blank, ‘Nerviswrek’ states how he,

“Just thought that this would be a different type of platform, one that doesn’t give you a limited platform. Most other platforms are kind of outlined for you, like coloring books. But this one I think leaves it open to a lot of different designs.

Plus I’ve been using this base for a long time in  a lot of my original work, like over 5 years.“

On top of the huge news of a new, made in America resin Platform Toy – and one that is being sold for a very reasonable US $25 – is the fact that Nerviswrek has also decided to play host and curator for an upcoming group show to be held at DesignerCon / Dcon in November this year! For the show, a slew of well known and highly respected artists will get the chance to publicly display their own customed Drone Blanks, which will also be for sale throughout the show – Exactly the kind of scene building event Nerviswrek is known for.

(Photo below of the flyer for the upcoming Drone Blank multi artist custom show – Coming to DCON in November)

Well we thought it would be a good idea to find out more about Gabriel’s ‘Drone Blank’, and the associated multi-artist custom show, so as usual we asked him a few questions… Read all about it, below…

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Christian ‘Bees’ McGowan is a major young American artistic talent who can go from sculpting a perfectly detailed dragon, to painting beautiful watercolours of animals, to drawing hilarious cartoons featuring vomit in a single day. She is a veritable Renaissance-woman!

We discovered Bees’ and her work through Mr. Chance Priest of ‘Victory Comics’ – as Bees has collaborated extensively with Chance on his art toys, painting figures, character art, display backgrounds and more.

Aside from her work with Chance, Bees has an interest in animation, runs her own comic brand – ‘Pigeon Comics’ – and works in almost every artistic medium known to man.

Whilst capable of being aesthetically varied as mentioned, all of Bees’ vast and varied catalogue of works are soft yet strong, feminine yet tenacious, full of movement and detail; and oh so damn funny. We fell in love immediately and know you will too!

Explaining what led her to become an artist, Bees states:

“When I was around 4 years old, I saw a behind the scenes clip of Disney’s “The Lion King” where a group of artists were sitting in front of a wall of tiny drawn out thumbnails and I was entranced.

 How could thousands of these small drawings become one big movie?? I had to know!

I’ve been drawing ever since.“

(Some Overwatch inspired art by Bees below)

Wanting to know more about her work, we asked Bees some questions about working with Chance, growing up, love, sex, gaining a foothold in the art scene; and much much more! Read all about it, via the Art Talk Interview, below…

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James M. Wisniewski aka Jim Wiz is a self described life-long working artist hailing from America who has been active in the industry for over 40 years now – beginning in the early 1970’s. In that time Jim has worked in advertising, cartooning, story-board art and greeting cards – all whilst also being involved in the comic book industry. There he has also worked for years as a character model for his friend and fellow artist Mr. Alex Ross, worked on his own works and also notably on the ‘Ghostbusters’ comic series.

Indeed Jim is living proof that you can not only make a living as a full time commercial artist but also have a whole lot of fun along the way.

Now after a lifetime of primarily working for others, Jim has recently semi-retired and is finally spending time working on his many personal projects – stating:

“I’VE N-E-V-E-R,  E-V-E-R, BEEN SO CAPABLE AND CREATIVE. THINGS I WANTED TO DO YEARS AGO, I NOW DO.

I’M WRITING, ILLUSTRATING MY OWN STORIES FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND AM BUSY WITH LESSER PAYING WORK, BUT IT’S ENOUGH BETWEEN MY WIFE’S THING AND ME.

I AM DRUNK ON CREATIVE HAPPINESS, AND PRODUCING ART.

I’M 66, AND JUST GETTING STARTED ALL OVER AGAIN. I MEAN HOW COOL IS THAT?“

Jim, it is very cool indeed sir! Inspiring even.

Now we must here admit that we discovered Jim’s art thanks to our ego… we were trawling the internet one day for mentions of well… ourselves, and stumbled upon a brilliant cartoon depiction of an ‘Art Whore’. It was vibrant, sexy, funny and unique. We fell in love immediately. From there we found Jim on Facebook, sent a friend request and promptly begged for an interview. Which he was happy enough to oblige us with!

(The very art that made us fall in love with Jim, below)

So without further ado, read all about the life of Mr Wiz in his illuminating, funny and very insightful Art Talk Interview, below…

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Chance Priest is an American artist, sculptor and man of many talents – weapons making, hunting, snake wrangling, antique dealing, law enforcement and a whole lot more.

We fell in love with Chance’s art immediately upon discovering it early last year. We had never seen anything like it: 1960’s bold comic colours, cubist lines, storyboard-style movement, photo-realistic details and a unique singular vision.

As a result, we fell hard into the glorious rabbit hole of Chance’s creations. It’s a whole world – comics, paintings, sculptures and toys. All interconnected yet able to stand on their own.

Simply put? It’s pure art and we have never seen anything else like it before.

As Chance himself states, art for him is an unrelenting force. Something that he can’t ignore and must pursue above all else:

“I’m a 100% dedicated to my vision. And to be honest if nobody buys it I really don’t care; I’m at total peace with what I consider success. I will build on “my world” till the day I die, if my art sells then wonderful because I really want to share it. If it doesn’t sell then if will not hinder me in any way except for the time it takes to make end meet.“

(Photo below of Chance and some of his art)

With Mr. Priest our new favourite living artist, and the fact that the man himself is always working on something new to blow the mind of his fans – you must, we repeat MUST get hip to the man right now, by reading his Art Talk Interview below…

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Crack Cartoons is a young American artist who hit us up asking us to look at her work, and consider her for a “feature”… Well… We here at ‘Art Whore’ respect the hustle and also dug ole Crack’s work, so we asked her to take part in the ole Art Talk series of interviews so both ourselves, and our dear readers, could find out more about her.

(Art by Crack Cartoons below)

Read it all, below…

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Bob Conge is an American multidiscplinary artist who first came to our attention thanks to his art toy works released under the ‘Plaseebo’ brand. Born in 1939 Mr. Conge has seen many trends come and go over the years, but he has forever remained his own man, pursuing a lifelong dedication to the arts – in all it’s forms.

Indeed, whilst many know Bob primarily through his art toy works; that aspect of his work spans only 10 years of over 60 spent as a professional artist. During that time Mr Conge has taught, run an art gallery, worked as a freelance designer, gained respect and adoration for his paintings, fell in love with vintage toys and much much more – the very definition of a fully lived lifetime in the arts.

(Photo below of a Nightgamer sofubi by Bob / ‘Plaseebo’)

With Mr Conge and ‘Plaseebo’ continuing to push artistic boundaries now is the perfect time to read one of the most revealing and insightful interviews we have had the opportunity to do, below…

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“Fake” is all the rage right now – what with Mr Trump and his ‘fake news’, Damien Hirst and his recent art show comprising of ‘fake’ artifacts from a made up lost civilisation, the rise of unpaid internship aka ‘fake’ jobs and now, added to this list is Mr Tyson Tabbert and his brilliantly curated travelling John Waters tribute art exhibition full of ‘fake’ pieces of pop culture trash.

We at ‘Art Whore’ were exposed to the ‘Lost Merchandise of the Dreamlanders’ John Waters tribute group show and immediately blown away! Here was a show devoted to one of our favourite directors – Mr. John Waters – and featuring a whole slew of amazing pop art pieces. From toys, to bed sheets, Halloween costumes, ash trays and more. The show itself featuring thirteen artists working both collaboratively and independently, all under the loving eye of curator Tyson Tabbert.

(Photo below of artist and show curator Tyson Tabbert)

Coming to the end of the exhibit’s first showing at ‘LaMaMa’ in New York City (May 25th to June 24th), and just about to travel to Lethal Amounts in Los Angeles (July 8th to July 28th) – we thought it would be good to have the exhibit’s curator Tyson Tabbert explain it all, so we asked him a few questions. From who the other artists involves are, how they all came to connect, if there had been any legal issues, potential John Waters sex toys and much more.

Read it all below…

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