Joel is the guy who manages Through The Roof! He most recently collaborated on the 2*A5 Zine. He hopes to build a community of creatives who can come together to help each other out and be there for each other. Go check him out @Trisected.
Where is he from?
Joel studied in Temasek Polytechnic Visual Communication, back in the day when it was still called Visual Communication. Later, he continued his studies under RMIT SIM, doing a bachelor’s in Communication Design.
What does he enjoy doing for fun?
Currently, Joel is very into bouldering and building mechanical keyboards. Every now and then, he will go for a long distance run, as part of a way to clear his mind. TV and movies are definitely a great background noise as he makes things. Most recently, a friend gave him a second hand Playstation 3 and 4, and that’s been very exciting. This reignited an old love for video games!
How did he get started?
A large part of Joel’s creative inspiration was the friends he made during his secondary school years. Graphic design and cool typography were often shared through magazines, books, and designs on music CDs. These continued into the digital space, with website designs, using Illustrator to make t-shirts for school and other projects. A lot of his design work was also helping his church make posters, postcards and stickers of sorts.
What kind of art does he like/do?
Joel’s favourite artist is Mark Rothko, because of the experience of abstract expressionism. Mark Rothko makes really big colourful paintings, without any subject but just colours. It makes people stop and stare, and just think for a long period of time. It’s the opposite of Joel’s current work, which usually has subject matter and very definite looking things. Joel hopes to one day release work in this direction.
Joel does a lot of watercolour work, and pen and ink work. There are usually two extremes, one is with very bold and high contrast lines, and the other is with very soft and blurry watercolours. Both are part of his way of drawing and painting, but at the same time, he is constantly looking to explore. Thus, the work in the 2*A5 zine is more graphic and digitally created, which Joel is actually not the most comfortable with yet. It’s a small step into trying something new, which Joel hopes will help him grow as an artist.
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