Syko Oner

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Syko is an artist born and raised in L.A. He grew up being inspired by cartoons like Cowboy Beebop and Pokemon. Drawing these anime characters as a youth turned out to be a good distraction from falling further into the wrong crowds he mentions (solid advice). Today he is positive part of the culture with his art and his podcast The Basement, where he interviews other artists within the community. I listened to a couple and was pleasantly inspired. Nans Former talks about the origins of the banana in his work and his journey with anime. In the Q and A's episode Syko gives some really good advice about markers and developing letters, you can tell he cares a lot about his audience which is honorable and something we believe should be supported in this culture. He has a welcoming presence in his interviews that makes it fun but most of all real and laid back.

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◼️1. What got you into art? Do you have a favorite medium to work in?

Well it started when I was young, I was doing bad shit like hanging out with the bad kids and not really paying attention in school, I started watching anime and cartoons and that kinda distracted me from all that bullshit, eventually I decided I wanted to draw the stuff I’d seen on tv and it just engulfed all my time to drawing, it started with anime, I used to watch Inuyasha, Cowboy Beebop and Pokémon, and it just made me draw more and more, one day walking home from school instead of taking my usual walk home I decided to walk under an overpass that connected to my neighborhood and under it I saw fresh color pieces and throws and some toy shit too, but I didn’t leave that underpass for hours I was just captured by how amazing it all looked and that was the birth of my graffiti interest, now a days I find myself drawing on mostly the postal stamps you get from your local post office, something about it caught my eye even before I found out there was a whole community online about it

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◼️2. what inspired you to start a podcast?

 tbh, about the podcast, idk what really inspired me to do it, I might have talked about it on the podcast but I didn’t know where to start with it, I didn’t know what direction I was going to go with it, I just knew I wanted to share my story and if it inspired other people to do shit they wanna do then that alone was the reward, sadly I was very closed minded when I did the podcast at first because I didn’t know how to approach it but eventually when I started talking to other people that were like me and we had similar stories to tell, it made it all worth while, and I learned that everyone has a story, the people I’ve talked to on The Basement are people I genuinely fuck with and have worked with and it makes me happy knowing that other are touched by the stories we tell, it’s like a domino effect man, like once you get the ball rolling there’s no stopping it and it shows when these young kids message me saying how my story, or someone else’s story from the basement helped them

◼️3.  Do you have a favorite medium or style to work in?

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My favorite pieces to create are always the simple ones, don’t get me wrong I like doing burners and just crushing shit but I find my eyes leaning towards the simple pieces rather than the crazy balls to the wall's pieces but that’s just me.

I used to see slaps all over my city so it just made me wanna be apart of that, the tags, the throws, the pieces, idk just seeing it first hand I knew I wanted to do that, I was born and raised In Los Angeles, grew up in Long Beach for 12 years then moved to Compton where my spent my high school years to my adult hood, went to different cities like Inglewood, Long Beach, south central, the city was my playground.

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