About Freehand Profit

Gary Lockwood (Freehand Profit)

ARTIST/DESIGNER/ILLUSTRATOR: [Hip-Hop head / sneakerhead]

"Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week." - Jay-Z

*- known for destroying coveted kicks in order to make gas masks from them.

BIO:

Gary Lockwood aka Freehand Profit came up in the DMV area as a lifelong artist with a passion for Hip-Hop, graffiti, sneakers and art. In 2005 he graduated from the Corcoran School of Art & Design with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts.

In 2006 he made his move to LA to pursue his dreams of art, design & music. Some folks call it persistence, some call it stubbornness; whatever you call it Freehand Profit continued to push forward and in 2010 he began his daily creative project - MASK365. In the search for new materials he began creating gas masks from deconstructed sneakers.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My first passion has always been art but Hip-Hop became my mistress. She first tempted me in grade school with Snoop Dogg’s ‘Doggystyle’, in middle school she introduced me to graffiti and emcees/rappers like Bone Thugs N Harmony and Busta Rhymes, in high school Method Man & Redman sealed my allegiance to the beat of Hip-Hop. In 2001, when I arrived at Corcoran College of Art & Design, I set my mind to exploring and expressing the visual languages of Hip-Hop beyond graffiti.

After earning my BFA in 2005 from the Corcoran I moved to LA chasing those Hip-Hop dreams. In 2010 I began a year long creative project inspired by Noah Scalin’s ‘Skull-A-Day’. It was called MASK365 and every day for a year I created/drew/assembled/designed/painted/sculpted a mask and published the work through my site: freehandprofit.com. This creative gauntlet forced me out of my comfort zone and a few months into the project my hunt for new materials led me to tear a Gucci handbag apart at the seams only to reassemble it into a functioning gas mask/purse. The finished work clearly held the key to unlocking my next body of work, but I knew and cared very little about handbags. I wanted to work with materials that I cared about and revered.

Shoes, kicks, sneakers – whatever you call them – have always been a part of Hip-Hop. Run DMC turned the Adidas shell-toe into an icon for a culture. Since then rappers & emcees alike have curated the dress code adding staples like Chucks, Uptowns, Timberland boots, Jordans and Pumas. The shoes on our feet came to represent a part of our identity. The lines, color and textures of sneakers sold today even parallel those used by graffiti artists.

But why the gas mask? Mask making is an ancient art form and I look to link our modern times to this ancient art. The gas mask is the mask of our times, it represents atrocities at war, civil unrest, environmental damnation and works both as a symbol of fear and of protection. It also tips its hat to the keepers of the graffiti flame who wore/wear respirators and masks to protect their lungs from their poisonous art of choice. The ties to Hip-Hop’s original art form deepen when we examine the language within graffiti- the act of painting renamed “bombing” solidified the warlike nature of the art form.

I don’t offer answers in my work, instead I seek to explore issues we face within the Hip-Hop community. Issues of identity, materialism and duality intertwine as the work reflects a world that is in love with objects but that also has a love for a culture & lifestyle. The masks embrace our guilty pleasure while reminding us there are much more important problems at hand. The sacrifice of the shoes I love for the sake of my art is essential.

-Freehand Profit (Gary Lockwood)

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