GALLERY II- Scott Stephens

 hand-cut punk collage artist, has been assembling intricate, thought-provoking, surrealist montage collage artworks since 2019. In his short career, he has produced record covers, flyers, skateboard decks, fanzines as well as being featured in several professional art publications and gallery spaces.

The artist combines vintage wartime propaganda, adverts and photographs from the early 19th century into the late 1960’s with more modern imagery of our current socio/political landscape. Using hand carved elements from an enormous selection of diverse sources, Scott’s artwork invokes a powerful message about the unscrutinized incongruities and hypocrisies of our modern society, and he is consistently creating new, dynamic and striking original compositions that constantly challenge his viewers to rethink our social structures in terms of who benefits and who suffers from said beneficiaries.

Scott’s artwork pays homage to the many uncredited artists of pre-digital media, whose hand painted adverts brought life to the pages of now vintage books, magazines, and catalogs, sparking the commercial boom of post-war consumerism in America. Using antiques of the past to make statements of our present and predictions of the future using witty, surrealist tongue-and-cheek insights reminiscent of the likes of Max Ernst, Scott’s artwork continues to serve as a reminder that no one is immune to propaganda and the only way to bring truth to power is to destroy and rebuild it.

Scott began making collage art after being inspired by the many intricate, handmade collages appearing on album covers in the punk rock music scene. After discovering Green Day’s “Insomniac” record and being enamored with its cover artwork, “God Told Me to Skin You Alive” by renaissance collage artist Winston Smith (famous for his work with punk band Dead Kennedy’s and record company Alternative Tentacles), Scott immediately knew collage was the medium for him. Scott’s artistic influences come mainly from artist Winston Smith whom Scott had the privilege of meeting and studying under for a time, though, he was also heavily inspired by early artists of the Dada period, namely Max Ernst and John Heartfield. Scott has also been influenced by more contemporary artists such as Shepherd Fairey, Raymond Pettibon, David Lynch, Mark Wagner, Gee Vaucher, Jamie Reid and Jello Biafra to name a few.

Scott has won numerous art competitions across the Southeast and has participated in art exhibitions around the North Carolina area as well as group exhibitions in New York City and San Francisco. In 2020, Tyler became the youngest artist in the California punk art collective: Destroy Art, whose collective members use their art as activism to fight off bigotry, hatred, and injustice as seen fit and use their talents to promote love, empowerment and community.