Joined in 2023 
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In Steven’s design, Disney characters interact with paint brush and palette, to celebrate the process of making art. I really liked that. I liked how he talked about art being personal poetry. Over time, I embraced that. Everything I make in my own time is poetry, even if it looks like an illustration or even if it starts to become client-based. It’s about letting myself explore new ideas and be intuitive with what it is that I like doing, which I’ve realized has to do with drawing. Steven Harrington: The ASUS Vivobook is kind of my first time applying artwork or my illustrative imagery to a digital device of this kind. So I thought it would be really interesting to play around with my world, almost meeting this visual representation of the future and tech. On the product itself, you’ll see this really playful world kind of meeting this space-like scene. It’s my way of playing around and being inspired by the possibilities of technology. Being a visual artist, it’s something that I use quite frequently within the production of my own paintings, drawings and products. So I thought it would be really cool to reflect the dreamlike qualities of being able to create a tech device. It’s interesting to think about our tendencies as children, too. Thinking about your natural inclinations and what you were drawn to or what experiences you really enjoyed over others can give insight into what you might explore as a starting point. Yeah, I think so. I remember a big turning point for me in school, which I still think about. I was trained academically during the first half and then turned loose to make whatever I wanted. It was kind of frightening. We had done lots of figure drawing courses and were forced to do academic drawing, but I had a moment when I thought, “Wait, if I’m not going to paint naked ladies for the rest of my life, what am I going to do?”
No, but it has a lot of feeling. Exactly. That’s what I’ve tried to create. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I grew up hearing interviews with people who said, “Oh, I love telling stories.” Films are all about stories, and it’s about great storytelling. Don’t get me wrong—I love stories—but what about when you don’t want a story? What if you just want to feel something? What about the artist who believes there’s another language and grouping of emotions that you can’t express through words? So you had a plan when you went to college? I knew that there would have to be some kind of financial reward at some point, but, to be honest, I didn’t think about it. I still feel somewhat guilty for that. I’m older now, and this is serious. This is what I do. I’ve realized that a certain amount of living off of this takes not thinking about whether or not it’s going to work. I’ve somehow managed to do it, so I’m going to celebrate that. I can say I never put together a plan or anything. That makes sense. Not that you don’t take your work seriously, but if you consider everything you have to do to start your business at once, it could feel overwhelming. Exactly. And to this day, it can feel overwhelming. You have to invest so much of yourself into your work that if you get caught up in questioning yourself too much, then that imaginative, creative spark can easily vanish. Being vulnerable by making things is uncomfortable enough in the first place. To add the discomfort of being an adult, paying bills, owning a house, and all that other shit makes the stakes even higher. That said, I think it goes both ways: there are plenty of people who find their passions in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. I can see myself evolving within art and drawing, and I hope I will. It’s awesome to think that all of us could someday evolve into something completely unexpected. That’s just as awesome as the initial thing you fall in love with.
Selected Press
Often described as psychedelic-Pop Art, Harrington’s acid-infused illustrations seem to grin in the face of chaos — bold, large-scale paintings and sculptures that personify familiar fixtures of LA. The palm tree, for instance, is a visual motif often deployed by Harrington and seemingly renders fantastical beings in the City of Angels. As a creator, how does the ASUS Vivobook aesthetically align with your personal taste and how does it enhance your creative process?
I read a book by Milton Glaser, and he talked about the big difference between art and design: art is a really personal dialogue that you have with yourself over a long period of time. Everything you make has a direct relationship or correlation with the previous piece you made. It’s about exploration, which you don’t necessarily need in design work. In design, you feel more free to play with general aesthetics, approaches, and perspectives because each project is completely and absolutely different from the previous project. In those moments where you need to decompress from the studio, how do you connect with natural environments? Especially within the last several years online and digitally, I’ve found it extremely important and inspiring to get my mind out of that space. It’s this big shift that I think we all [experience] — almost like dimensional, physical things around us have taken on a lot more meaning. Recently, I feel like you kind of get down into nature, you get out on a walk — it can be a simple fleeting [moment] that you can find meaning in. With the emergence of digital mediums — NFTs, immersive walkthroughs — have you found yourself or your peers utilizing this new technological frontier to expand the scope of what art can be? SH: For incorporating and having the ability to draw the Disney characters and blend them into my world at first it felt extremely surreal. At the same time, having permission to pull and experiment and extract elements from this really rich world of art for me felt really exciting.Did you always want to be an artist and designer? Like most kids, I grew up drawing and painting. My parents really embraced that and pushed me further into it. When I hit high school, I realized that I liked drawing and painting so much that I didn’t want to stop. After college, you dove into design work and started National Forest with your friend, Justin. How did that come about? I met Justin at Art Center and the two of us had a mutual passion for art, design, and drawing. At the end of college we both thought, “Whoa, we’re either going to split up right now and go work for different companies or we can do this together and try to figure something out.” It was a really big decision. We chose to put our portfolios together, create a business, and try to get jobs. And that’s what we did: we literally put our illustration portfolios together and hustled our work around. Yeah. Let’s talk about your voice. It’s fun, vibrant, fresh, and definitely recognizable. Did that moment you just described—thinking about music and the things that inspire you—help you find your voice? Was it a conscious evolution for you? No, it wasn’t. It was actually something I was trying not to do, which is bizarre for me to think about now. What was the first big gig National Forest did that made you and Justin realize you were making it happen? Right after we graduated, we got a pretty big illustration job for Rolling Stone. It wasn’t the cover, but it might as well have been. It was like, “Holy shit!” Growing up, being born and raised here in LA, I’ve started to understand — upon my various travels in Europe, Asia and South America — Los Angeles definitely does have a certain weather to it, a certain kind of brightness that fuels the culture of the city. You wake up, and it’s 75 degrees out every single day, and it feels like you’re going to the beach. Everyone is less afraid to wear color — to celebrate color — to celebrate graphics and drawings.
Somehow We All Seem Connected, Collaborative Exhibition with Justin Krietemeyer, Subliminal Projects, Los AngelesYour artwork is known for capturing a Californian-infused pop aesthetic. Being based in LA, how has the city informed your work?
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