The Collector
When I step into the Downtown building that houses Treiops Treyfid’s large studio, it’s hard to imagine that it was once a creamery. The original fourth floor occupants were actually cows, carried up by a water operated freight elevator. Once in the studio, I’m overwhelmed by intricately assembled art and collected materials.
Treiops blows the sand from a jug of water that made it back from Burning Man and offers me some, when there is a knock at the door. Treiops returns with a broken leather man. “I’m sort of known in the building as the guy who takes broken instruments and crappy stuff that you’re gonna throw away… I’ll take anything.”
Considering himself a sheltered child, Treiops grew up in rural Illinois where the edges of town were cornfields. As a boy, he collected everything he could get his hands on. Though much of that is lost in time, he still has over 90 books by his first art influence, Charles Schulz. He still collects everything.
Into the Blender
During art school Treiops quickly developed friendships with others that shared his creative spirit. At The Corcoran in D.C, these new experiences initially allowed him to develop a unique view of the world. However, by the second year became disenchanted and left. “They were a concept school and I decided I can make these concepts for myself…all I have to do to be an artist is BE an artist.”
But, art took an unexpected backseat when he began playing in the well-regarded DC art punk band Pitchblende. Between 1991 and 1995, the band released 3 full-length albums, several singles and toured extensively. When the band broke up, Treiops was still making art, but says, “It hadn’t occurred to me what to do with it.”
Way Out West
With his experience in the band inciting a need to connect with a wider audience, and his 14-year love affair with DC withering, Treiops made a risky move to LA, where he would give his art a full go in a place where he had no contacts. He arrived in the summer of ’99.
It Takes a Hive
Quickly finding his paintings welcome in some of LA’s favorite group shows like Cannibal Flower and Create: Fixate, Treiops looked for a place to settle into the thriving LA underground art scene. That’s when his friend Nathan Cartwright secured the site of his brainchild, The Hive Gallery and Studios. Treiops was the first in a long line of residents to move into the honeycomb and helped make it the community it is today.
Transformation
Surrounded by innovative artists, and with equal parts frustration and inspiration, Treiops began to transform the way he put paintings together. “I started to experiment with simple stuff, like cardboard, and also putting stuff on paintings, and new ideas, and it just kept going.” His paintings grew further off of the canvas, until the canvas was no longer relevant. Treiops had become a sculptor, his recycled materials making the global and spiritual statements he’s come to embrace.
Reunion
When I ask about spirituality, the artist explains, “Spirituality to me is the strength of the realization that everything and everyone is connected…when you’re in the womb, you have that connectedness, but you get distracted from it later in life. Then you find a place where you come back together. The stronger I feel that, the better things are.” This statement is alive in his story, his journey, and his art, where seemingly useless and unrelated items come together in beautiful, singular, nearly technological forms.