![]() ![]() “I would add a bat to my backpack in case I got into trouble with some other graffiti artist and I would leave," he recalls. He left his mark in squiggly letters lifted from Looney Tunes, images of men with gas masks and riffs on the Dodgers logo.Īrmed with a backpack and black-and-white spray paints, he'd sneak out of his home at night, hop on his bike and graffiti the streets of downtown Rialto. He quickly transitioned from sketching in notebooks to tagging streets, bridges, sidewalks and traffic signs. The windswept city of Rialto, 50 miles east of Los Angeles, today a hub of massive distribution warehouses, was the perfect artistic backdrop for the youth with dark, alert eyes, who was introduced to skateboarding and graffiti through friends at Kolb Middle School.ĭuring his early teens he earned money by customizing friends' skateboards. To find his way out he had to retrace his steps - back toward the simple and the beautiful. Yet it wasn't so long ago that Vides felt trapped in a different kind of immersive environment, a labyrinth of depression and self-doubt. "Josh is a game changer who has an uncanny knack for taking something classic, if it's a Chuck Taylor sneaker, an Eames chair, a baseball card, or a tarp, adding a seemingly simple yet unexpected twist and creating something unique," he says. Jon Roy, vice president of global energy brand marketing at Converse, said his company is constantly looking for young creatives who also want to engender positive change in their communities. "At that time my behavior did not show a bright future for me, did it?" says Vides, now 31.īut the guy who dropped out of design school now appears to have a blazing future ahead of him. ![]() The youngest of three children of Guatemalan immigrants, he was regarded by his parents and teachers as a troublesome kid, mischievous at school, with poor grades, no college prospects and a bad attitude. In a way, what Vides does to quotidian reality is what growing up in exurban Southern California enabled him to do: see the world anew. Joshua Vides is an illustrator and visual artist who designs for major brands including Fendi and Converse, along with striking art installations. ![]()
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