Cristy Road is all over the place these days: t-shirts, album covers, band posters, zines, magazines, Current TV... and she deserves it.  Her nasty/sexy illustrations of girls, lesbians, crusty punks, and, everyone in between, have garnered her a bit of fame.  Or at least people started ripping off her work.


Chief Magazine: Hi Cristy!

Cristy Road: Hey! What’s up? What’s up? What’s up girls out there? Ladies?

I saw someone wearing “Dumpster Make Out” on a T-shirt and it lead me to think, “Hey, am I friends with a famous person who I didn’t even know was famous?” Do you think you’re famous?

[laughing] Um, I’m really grateful that a lot of kids have gotten a hold of my stuff.  It’s really rewarding, but I’m kind of a hermit so I feel like, um, I’ve been putting my stuff out there for a really long time, so it’s nice that I get nice recognition.  But it is weird.  Because I’m just used to having a response from people that I know or people who are exactly like me, but it’s good, it’s one of the things that keeps driving me to do what I do.  And make a living off it, instead of just doing it for myself.

But, the crew you’re in, I mean, it’s a sub culture.

Yeah-

And any sub-culture has their icons, folks who’ve been around, and just from talking to the few people I spoke to, before this interview, when I mentioned your name, are like, “Yeah, Cristy Road. Punk.”  They know you or know your work. Kind of ubiquitous. Do you react to that in a strange way?

No, I just kind of, like, I don’t know. I think it’s amazing. I just have the default stoner reaction, which is like, “Whoaaaa”, you know?

"Whoaaaaaa, that’s raaaad."

Yeah, and it’s also good because the stuff that I’ve worked on, the last novel I put out and the novel I’m working on now, have the general themes of sexuality and gender and racism and you know, questioning things like, why does this society think it’s so weird that women masturbate, you know? And when I see that a lot of people do appreciate what I do, it’s nice because it means they’re appreciating stories about marijuana and masturbation and obviously more serious undertones.

Basically, stuff that you live and the stuff that you do.

Yeah and stuff that, in a lot of other sub-cultures, wouldn’t necessarily be praised.

Kind of getting away from this for a second, but like, in consuming media and other artists and their work, for example there’s this one book cover I saw, it looks a lot like your stuff and I’m always checking for the “C.Road” at the bottom of the piece and often times, I don’t see it, do you think other people have jocked your aesthetic?

Oh yeah, I’ve seen that!  And I’m sorry to whoever you are, with your book, but I don’t think that’s a good drawing, it’s not very skilled. I mean, it has cute lines, but it’s that aesthetic which isn't anatomically correct or proportionate, it’s like really loose.  And I mean, like whatever, I don’t draw proportions correct all the time, but it like doesn’t have zits and hair and there isn’t a girl sitting there with a hand in her vagina thinking about its relationship to the destruction of the universe. It’s just a tape. [Laughing] Going back to your question though, I think, like, the way I execute my stuff is a basic technique that every comic artist does and I don’t even do comics, but drawing figures with black pen like Jamie Hernandez or Adrian Tomine, and then coloring it with markers or watercolor or filling it in on the computer… I feel like it’s a technique used by artists who do comics or write graphic novels, and a lot of illustrators have been doing it too, and a lot of people have said “this artist is copying you” or “that artist does stuff like yours”, but I mean, I’ll start complaining when someone starts drawing hair on everything. Even inanimate objects.

[Laughing]

Because that’s what I feel, like, when I notice art, I notice the line variation and the texture and I think my art is different based on the lines I do and texture and I think what I’m talking about right now is really boring.  I mean, a lot of people do drawings of human figures with thick micron pens and color it however they do; it’s a basic medium.

But, you’ve been doing your stuff since you were 15.

Yeah, since ’95.

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Right, Green Zine, give us some background…

Well, Green Zine is my ‘zine that I started about Green Day, because for two years of my life, I had no friends and Green Day had that song, “Coming Clean” and when my whole family didn’t understand me, I felt like they [Green Day] did and I was like, “I’m gonna write a ‘zine about how cool they are”. Eventually, I turned 16 and started realizing there were things like sexism and things like [pause] boners and boys and girls and drugs and speed, yeah, and so I started writing more about my life and less about my take on music. I guess when I was around 16 or 17 I started writing, every now and then, about my feelings or my views and not just band reviews and band interviews. And eventually, I just stopped writing about bands altogether, because there are other ‘zines that do that and I’d just rather write about my feelings.

How’d you get hooked up with Microcosm?

We were friends. When I was 17.  Me and the people there. And they had a ‘zine distro and they also had a bunch of sweet ass 90’s pop-punk records available through the distro and some of it was new, and some of them were classics that no one could find. So, I thought they were really cool. And when I wrote the last issue of my ‘zine, which was Green Zine #14, it had a really big focus on the different kind of bullshit I was experiencing at the time, which was racism and just like, how general racism exists in casual, normal relationships.

Were you still in Florida?

No, I had just moved to Philly and so the ‘zine is about leaving Florida and going to Philly and learning how to deal with bullshit in a whole new way,  ‘cause you’re in this new place in your life and um, and then there’s writing about rape and the way a lot of perpetrators get away with the they way they treat women because a lot of coercive behavior isn’t recognized by the law as being a crime or anything and like, so I wrote a lot about how to deal with that in your community; if it’s your school or the punk rock scene or the hip-hop scene, or wherever the fuck you hang out and there was a demand for it [Green Zine #14] and the last ‘zine before it.

Green Zine #13?

Yeah, I had Xeroxed 1,000 copies of it and I was like, “I can’t fucking do all this shit, this is sooo much Xeroxing”, I used to do that thing at Kinko’s where’d you get those big ass cards, that are ten pounds each, I’d get one and a friend would get another, and I’d Xerox a bunch of them and then I’d take the card out and throw it behind the machine and then I’d put in a new card and paid for like a quarter of the amount I should have, but Kinko’s no longer has those cards, you have to use credit cards.

Fuck Kinko’s. Ruining punk ‘zine culture, one day at a time.

Yeah, I know. So when 14 came out there was this demand for it and I was like, “Fuck I don’t know what to do” and Microcosm was like “we’ll print it for you and we’ll sell it and make the profit back of what we put into it and we’ll pay you royalties” and it was really awesome, because they were investing in me, believing that they would make it back. And I didn’t know they printed any ‘zines before mine, I think they did, I’m not sure. They decided to do that, and it’s still in print and a year later I asked them if they’d do a book, which was Indestructible. And they said yes, and they distributed it like it was a ‘zine, so it was cool.

And! It’s available on Amazon.com!

Ha, yeah, they distribute through AK Press, so they get shit out there. It’s just a matter of promoting it.

So, Indestructible came out like two years ago, right? It had to of been.

Well, I moved to New York in 2005 and it came out a year later, and yeah, totally that’s when I met you [in 2005]. What a time.

It was a time! And it did get press, I mean, [shock and awe] you were on T.V.!

Yeah, my fucking release party was on Current TV and it’s also, like, with that book, I had a lot of friends who already had media jobs and I had a lot of friends who could help me out a lot with getting the word out. My friend Esther Bell, who is a film maker, is the one who hooked it up with the Current piece, otherwise they wouldn’t have given a shit, “who’s this crazy bitch drawing pictures…”

A crazy bitch that’s been doing her thing for fucking ten years.

That book release party was sweet, hosted by Stache, a popular nightlife extravaganza.

It was a good night.

It was, although, I didn’t really feel like that career leap because I was really depressed and crazy at the time.  And it was a good time period because I was living in a fun house, with wild ass people and my friends were fun and I was always fucked up and partying, but when I moved to New York I wasn’t in the best place, two of my friends had passed away, I was such a mess. I mean, you remember certain nights! Like it was a shitty time period. But I was still really motivated to do something about my art and not just be a freelancer.  Making little drawings for GQ.

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But, once you got to New York, you were doing stuff for Bust and...

Yeah, Bust and Bitch and- I just did something for Bust for the new issue actually. I also did the cover for this magazine Razorcake, which I loved doing because one of the guy’s had this gigantic  beard and I had so much fun drawing it. I mean, I’ve been doing freelance for a while and it’s been my primary job since 2004. Like Venus, Jane, Bust- all these feminist pop-culture magazines hire me a lot. And that’s awesome because those are the magazines I care about, I do get a lot of work that I don’t really care about. Like, this GQ drawing, I couldn’t give a fuck. It was some stupid bullshit about a concierge or something, they didn’t even send me the magazine, but I didn’t really care, just as long as I got my check.  It’s nice now to be focused on this novel I’m working on with like a clear head; when I wrote Indestructible I was really confused about what I wanted to do with my life, I still felt like I was writing ‘zines, which was fine, I was 22 or 23 at the time. And writing ‘zines and doing freelance stuff and hanging out just felt right, as soon as Indestructible came out, a couple months later, I was like “I really need to do something about my mental health and my well-being and I’m such a fucking mess.” And I did. I took care of business. It’s been a long time.

Well, you’re business. I mean, you look pretty business right now.

I’m wearing a fucking V-neck sweater, I know all of you can’t see this out in Chief Magazine Land, but I’m wearing a V-neck sweater and I don’t really do that.

It’s the weather. Blame it on the weather.
 
[Cristy singing] “Blame it on the rain”