Sam Flores x Carryology | ‘Backpackhead’ Artist Series (CAS05)
The fifth instalment of our Carryology Artist Series and the creation of our very own cultural icon – the Backpackhead.
A limited-edition patch that represents our community and culture – and obsession for backpacks. Designed in collaboration with one of the Bay Area’s most prolific and distinctive artists, Sam Flores.
Sam Flores
Originally hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Flores grew up skating, drawing and sharpening his graffiti skills in a city surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert – a place brimming with the wildness of nature.
After honing his craft, he landed in the Bay Area in the 90s, and came up in the golden era of contemporary ‘street art’ on the West Coast.
A self-taught artist, Sam’s ever-evolving style spans from anthropomorphic characters, beautiful goddesses, landscapes, portraiture, pop-surrealism and graffiti-inspired montages, playing on the themes of natural beauty, street culture and self-expression.
Working in many mediums, from murals to collectible toys and fine art, he’s shown in galleries across the world, and collaborated with Think Skateboards, Chrome SF, Shrine, and created his own signature high-tops with Adidas to name just a few.
Sam is currently the creative director and founder of his brand Twelve Grain for Upper Playground (the “12” representing his original crew in Albuquerque and the “Grain” representing the role that nature has played in his work and life).
One for the Culture
Sam is best known for his figures with down-drawn eyes and clasped hands. And they appear in a long-sweeping series of ‘Head’ characters, illustrated with varying combinations of head adornments – animals and machines and scenes playing out and roaring atop the crowns of Sam’s many imaginations.
It’s a series that speaks to the obsessions that hold inside our minds, like music or art or pop-culture, seen in his works like, Sneaker Head, Music Head or Train Head.
And, of course, that’s where our inspiration came from for this project – our obsession with backpacks and backpack culture.
We are ‘Backpackheads’.
Backpackhead
Noun | Informal
- a person obsessed with backpacks and backpack culture.
We collect and trade backpacks, and excitedly gather knowledge about the the two-strap phenomenon we carry things in.
And so Sam was the perfect artist to work with, and bring to life our very own character for our culture: Backpackhead.
