True (artist)

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TRUE, formerly known as David John Riggins (b. 1968, Los Angeles, CA.) is an American artist / designer of German-Russian, African-American, and Blackfoot descent who lives and works in New York City.[1] He is regarded by the international design community as being among the “A-list”[2] of the world’s “leading design innovators”[3] whose work has been discussed in numerous design books, magazines, and conferences, as well as in newspapers, television and radio programs around the world. He began using the word “TRUE” in place of his birth name in the mid-1990s.[4] His work incorporates elements of illustration, character design, and graphic design.

He began his professional art career in the late 1980s as a set painter for Roger Corman Studios in Venice Beach, CA.[5] He moved to New York in 1991 to study at Sarah Lawrence College, and then transferred to The Art School of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (BFA, 1996). He first gained international notoriety for a series of non-permissional site-specific “guerrilla” installations on the streets of Los Angeles[6] and New York City,[7] and in NYC’s subway system[8] (1993–1994), which were done under the pseudonym “str8up” (pronounced “straight up”).[7] The impetus for these projects was the belief that the “Art World” was unnecessarily ethnocentric and elitist, and that greater meaning could be infused into a work by taking a populist approach.[9]

While TRUE has generally avoided the gallery and museum system, his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), in Brooklyn, NY, Restoration Plaza in Brooklyn, NY, and the Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, Portugal, as part of the Experimentadesign Bienal de Lisboa. He has taught or spoken about art, new media, and design at institutions such as The Cooper Union, The New School University, Parsons The New School for Design, The Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, and Sarah Lawrence College.[1]

He has been interviewed and / or had his work featured in: All Things Considered (National Public Radio);[10] Arc Design Magazine (Brasil) (discusses TRUE’s work in the Lisbon Biennial);[11] AREA (a Phaidon design book that named TRUE as one of 100 of the world’s “most innovative emerging graphic designers”);[12] BBC-TV (UK); Crain’s New York Business;[4] Eye Magazine (in which Stefan Sagmeister refers to TRUE’s subway stickers as “the one piece of graphic design that truly influenced me”);[13] GalleryBeat (TV); How Design Magazine;[14] I.D. Magazine (who named TRUE as one of the “I.D. Forty” [40 of the world’s “leading design innovators”]);[3] Los Angeles Times;[6] M.A.P. Magazine (Australia);[15] Manhattan File Magazine,;[9] Men’s Club Magazine (Japan);[16] Metropolis Magazine (who named TRUE as a “rising star of the new millennium”);[17] New York Daily News;[18] New York Magazine,;[7][19] New York Times;[20] Pix Magazine; The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist;[21] Sagmeister: Made You Look,;[22] Surface Magazine; TED Talks;[23] Time Out New York; The Village Voice,[24] and others. An educational CD-ROM video game for which TRUE did illustration, animation, and UI design won the top award, the “Palm d’Or,” at the MILIA Interactive Conference in Cannes, France.[25]

He has lived in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn, since 1999, where he has received numerous[26] public art commissions,[27] and co-organizes a free annual children’s film festival called The KIDflix Film Fest of Bed-Stuy.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, “Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation honors the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm,” November 19, 2008.
  2. ↑ TRUE was asked to contribute to the “Oodles of Doodles for Your Noodle”, an activity book for seriously ill children (which the December 2001 issue of HOW magazine described as “the design world’s A-list [gave] their time and talent to one big book”) which was printed in English and Spanish and distributed in over 500 hospitals across North America.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bonnie Schwartz, I.D. The International Design Magazine, “TRUE Believer,” February 2000. I.D. puts out an annual themed list of the 40 best designers in the world (in 2000, the list was of who they considered to be the world’s “leading design innovators” who were 30 and under).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Judith Messina, Crain’s New York Business, “Cyber Whiz Kids Exercising Options,” May 13–19, 1996. This is the first known interview in which he uses the name “TRUE.”
  5. ↑ Internet Movie Database entry.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Steve Harvey, “Only in L. A.,” Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1994.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Ellen Cohn, New York Magazine, “Sign of the Crosswalk,” December 6, 1993.
  8. ↑ New York Times, “Philosophy In Transit,” August 28, 1994.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Katharina Sand, Manhattan File Magazine, “Art in Unusual Places,” November 1994.
  10. ↑ All Things Considered, NPR, “New York Artist Uses Crosswalk Signs As His Canvas,” December 2, 1993.
  11. ↑ Arc Design Magazine, “Comunicação E Olho Crítica (Communication and the Critical Eye),” February 2006.
  12. ↑ Phaidon, AREA, April 2005.
  13. ↑ Stefan Sagmeister, Eye Magazine, “Inspiration,” Autumn 2001
  14. ↑ How Magazine, “From the Heart,” December 2001.
  15. ↑ Tina Brown, M.A.P. Magazine, “International Success: TRUE,” December 2003-January 2004.
  16. ↑ Men’s Club Magazine, Issue 406, November 1994.
  17. ↑ Frances Anderton et al, Metropolis Magazine, “Crash Landing: 54 Unscheduled Arrivals: 54 Experts on the Future of Design,” January 1999.
  18. ↑ Rick Hampson, “Manhattan Mystery: Crosswalk Signs,” October 7, 1993.
  19. ↑ Alice Twemlow, “Rock / Don’t Rock,” New York Magazine, February 14, 2005.
  20. ↑ Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, “Panic / Don’t Panic,” October 17, 1993.
  21. ↑ The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist, Enhanced Second Edition, Margaret R. Lazzari, published January 2010.
  22. ↑ Sagmeister: Made You Look, Stefan Sagmeister, published January 1999.
  23. ↑ In addition to his inclusion of TRUE’s subway series in his design book and mentions in numerous interviews, Mr. Sagmeister has also been discussing it at countless design symposiums around the world, including this TED Talk, referring to it as “…one of the few pieces of graphic design that really touched my heart.”
  24. ↑ The Village Voice, “Instant Karma,” May 25, 1993.
  25. ↑ Michael D. Bush, Multimedia Monitor, “Cannes Content Focus: International Publishing and New Media Market Conference,” February 1997. The game was The Pink Panther: Passport to Peril, published by Wanderlust Interactive. It won numerous other awards, including the European EMMA Award for “Best Family CD-ROM.”
  26. ↑ Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, “Brooklyn Icons Shirley Chisholm, Lawrence Fishburne and Jackie Robinson Gaze Upon Fulton Street,” January 23, 2009.
  27. ↑ Ashaunte Solomon, Brooklyn Family, “The Brooklyn Hall of Fame, On the Stairs” September 2012.

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