Frank Kozik: An Artist in a Different Kitchen

Moving beyond expectations, Frank Kozik sidled his way into the toy industry after becoming one of the lumpen masses functioning under the banner of ‘low brow’ art.

“I always collected toys,” Kozik says in an interview from Babylon Falling. Travelling to Japan for leisure as well as to display his work in 2 dimensional formats, the artist found himself amidst the burgeoning vinyl toy market.  After realizing what his Japanese connections were interested in was making toys as well as recognizable, digestible characters, Kozik knew he wanted in.  The results of the artist’s latest work are displayed and consumable at the Rotofugi Gallery (1953-55 W. Chicago Ave.) with affixed price tags ranging from 5 dollars to upwards of five-hundred.

Soon after Kozik’s toy-epiphany, the Austin bred artist was contracted by Medicom, a toy manufacture, and Kidrobot, a clothing and toy company, to design vinyl figurines and memorable mascots according to Sunny Chanel in an interview she posted on ToyCyte dating from May of 2008.

These sought after collectable toys combine pop art’s simplicity with the three dimensional form of sculpture while making use of recognizable cultural icons – Mao Zedong and G.I. Joe – or even creating them. But arriving at this third stage of his career only resulted from Kozik having grown tired of working within the rigid confines setup for himself in poster design

Growing up in Spain and moving to Austin, Tx at the age of 14, Kozik wound up being enamored of the enormous music scene in his adopted home town according to an interview Kozik gave to Paul Nudnitz in October of 2007. Daniel Johnson, a singer and song writer was kicking around, as was another Texas outfit, the Butthole Surfers.

Apart from the music, though, the imagery that local artists used on fliers advertising shows in addition to what he saw in comics caught the attention of the teenaged Kozik he told Nudnitz. Initially, what he created were simple black and white, photo-copied fliers. Eventually, though, the artist began using color and creating imagery incorporating '60s psychedelia, Japanese cartoons and enough kitsch to be readily identifiable.

Due to the striking images Kozik tackled, ranging from nude golfers to drunken yokels, music acts as far a field as Neil Young, Ice T, George Clinton and the Melvins asked him to create fliers or album art for various projects.

Resulting from these works in design various companies – like Nike - approached Kozik to work on ad campaigns . “I'm not Jesus Christ. Someone comes along, I'll whore myself, ” Kozik told The A/V Club’s Scott Tobias in a January 2000 interview.

Despite such a perspective on paydays, Kozik remained enmeshed in various musical subcultures and retained his relevance by continuing to work with bands. His involvement in the music industry reached a fever pitch when the artist founded Man’s Ruin Records, while living in San Francisco during 1994.

The mid ‘90s was an auspicious time for underground sounds and consequently, the Man’s Ruin roster, which came to include such names as Unsane, Fu Manchu and the Candy Snatchers, momentarily made inroads on MTV.

Kozik designed the covers and layout for many of the Man’s Ruin releases further distilling his wide artistic influences. The recognizable bursts of color were now frequently joined by biker and hot rod imagery and played into the concept of ‘low brow’ art. There were always comic book references in Kozik’s work, but with releases from Electric Frankenstein, the artist made use of Mary Shelley’s best known character and placed the green, stitched together man in situations that were not just startling, but amusing.

Designing vinyl toys has “little or no connection to the stuff I did for the music scene,” Kozik says in a 2005 Vinyl Pulse interview. The artist, though, hasn’t completely disregarded his roots: that would be fool-hardy. Instead, he’s turned to anthologies, collecting his 2 dimensional work in what amounts to a series of coffee table books like An Ode to Joy and Desperate Measures. While those publications have seen a collector base spring up around them, it’s Kozik’s work in toys that now define the artist three decades into his career.