BCN WEEK Tests:

Artists We're Diggin'

by Mia Klein

Name: Pietari Posti

Job: My work is to draw, basically. I came over to BCN 2 and a half years ago and stayed, mostly for personal reasons, but also I find this city easy and energetic and I enjoy living here. The people, culture, weather, food and beach...all cliches, but great. I can do my job from any corner of the world as long as I can access the Internet, but for now it will be Barcelona.

Part I :: Sentence Completion

1. I am... thinking how to answer these weird questions, especially part 2.
2. Creativity originates from... hard work.
3. Jordi Labanda does... good marketing of his work.
4. Barcelona needs... fewer cars, more trees.
5. Three colors... red, black & white.

Part II :: Fill in the blanks

I’m sitting in front of my favorite painting by Egon Schiele. I’ve already been staring at it for 3 minutes. It gives me this inspirational feeling of drawing naked bodies. It’s hard to explain. I wish I had lived in that era. People then were a lot more concentrated on one thing. When I look at the crowd I play with in Barcelona these days, I see a lot more red guiris but they’ve also lost a sense of how much sun is too much sun. But who wants to complain? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Right? Some people can!

Part III :: Free Answer

1. How long have you been working as an illustrator? About two years.

2. You are invited to Hereu’s birthday party and he explicitly asks you for an illustration. What would you draw for him? A guiri with a sunburn.

3. Was Warhol right when he said that being an artist is just another job? Yes, I agree. Commercial illustration, especially... it’s no rocket science.

4. What makes you dedicate your time to illustrating other people's ideas and texts? For me it comes from a love of drawing. When I was a little kid I was drawing my favourite characters from comic books like Tintin and Asterix, before I actually could read them. Later on came superhero stuff and after that more underground comics like Crumb, Manara, some old Japanese manga masters like Otomo and Shirow. I just liked the way they drew and wanted to draw like my heroes. I still study ways people draw a lot, look at different styles and experiment myself with different styles, constantly developing my own style. I love comics, but I don’t really want to create them myself. I don’t like telling stories that much; I’d rather concentrate on creating one image. So, since drawing comics is not my thing, I guess being a commercial illustrator is the job for me.

5. Where do you draw the line between commercial illustration and art? Commercial illustration can be art, too. I mean, if the piece has some depth to it and it says bit more than, "Buy Coca-Cola," it has potential to be art. Otherwise it’s just a commercial. For example, I have exhibited lots of client projects in galleries, and people buy them for their homes because they mean something to them or they simply think they’re beautiful.

6. If your illustrations were music, they would sound like... Pop.