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Interview with Christopher Atkins

Michael Cina is a polymath. His accomplishments in art, design and typography have been celebrated around the world by leading brands, publications and galleries. Cina is a notable pioneer of web design and also an accomplished painter who has exhibited across the globe. He is the principal at Cina Associates, which focuses on custom branding/design/type. VSCO released a monograph of his art for Ghostly International. He recently won an Emmy and in 2020 he is nominated for a Grammy for design.

Christopher Atkins is an independent curator and writer. He was Curator of Exhibitions at the Minnesota Museum of American Art from 2015 – 2019, where he organized numerous group- and one-person exhibitions, including the nationally recognized Ken Gonzales-Day: Shadowlands. He organized a variety of site-specific installations, solo- and group exhibitions, and dozens of exhibition-related public programs. He was Coordinator of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at Mia from 2009-2015, organizing ambitious and experimental site-responsive projects and initiating various artist-in-residency programs. He holds M.Res & M.A. degrees in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College, University of London and B.A. History of Art from the College of Wooster.

Christopher Atkins: Michael Cina and I have each been orbiting the Minneapolis art scene for more than a dozen years; I’ve been curating exhibitions and site-specific installations at museums and galleries while he’s been exhibiting his paintings and designing album covers and books for artists and record labels. Michael and I met a few times over the years through mutual friends but, unfortunately, our professional paths never crossed. When I saw that he was connected with some of my favorite musicians, like Matthew Dear and Lusine, I really started to pay attention. I’ve always admired his work; the monochromatic and full-color paintings are beautiful abstractions that are full of expressive and restrained energy, his graphic design is so assured yet clear and his typefaces are spectacular explorations of language and communication. And it’s all really strong. 

The pandemic and social distancing have affected us all but it’s forced me to stay connected to family and maintain meaningful connections with friends and colleagues. It just feels good to talk to people after being isolated for so long so I reached out to Michael after I heard a recent episode of the Plans We Make podcast. It turns out we have a lot of mutual respect for each other’s work and a lot to talk about. What started out as a short Zoom call has turned into an exciting work-partnership that includes surveying the work he’s been making for the past 20 years. The following interview (edited for length and clarity) occurred during a few visits to Cina’s studio while we were reviewing his paintings and drawings. He’s coming off his first Grammy-nomination (more on that below) and his work is moving in some new directions, which includes posting NFTs on SuperRare, so it’s a great time to hear more about what he’s up to. 

Atkins: Tell me about the trajectory of your career. Where did you start and where are you now?

I took a less traditional route than most. In 1996 I started looking for jobs after dropping out of college. I had been going for a double major in Visual Communication and Fine art. In my spare time, I was designing and learning to code my first website. The internet was an amazing place for me because I could publish work (design, fonts, art, 3D, etc) without having to print anything and thousands of people would see it immediately. 

I landed a job at a non-profit but at night I was working on a lot of personal projects like Cinahaus, Test Pilot Collective and contributing to the emerging design scene. After a couple of years I had enough momentum to go freelance. My first few jobs were doing animation for the NBA and working on the MTV website in 1999. 

Art and design equally appealed to me so a lot of my work has a dual focus of form, images and text. I wasn’t concerned about following a specific style as much as creating my own “artful” design. Looking back, it was digital art. I felt like the work was extremely valuable but it had no place in the design or art world, until recently. The ironic thing is that it’s locked on my old server and I couldn’t even play it bc the tech is obsolete. Technology holds the power in the end. 

When 2000 hit I changed things up and I started to get more serious about my career. My TrueIsTrue website was where I experimented with form, time, animation, code, etc. Joshua Davis got me into Flash and I started running with a new wave of designers that were also making some really exciting creative personal design projects. I started up an agency based on personal work with a fellow designer called WeWorkForThem and eventually started up YouWorkForThem to sell my typefaces. We did forward thinking work and showed work all over the globe. 

After running those companies for a while, I changed pace and started my own design studio, Cina Associates in 2010. That has been a wonderful and wild ride as well. 

And now you’re getting some well-deserved international recognition for your work, not just from the fine art world but from the music and design community too.

I don’t focus too much on the wins, but the last few years have offered some great opportunities to have my work seen by larger audiences. I was just nominated for a Grammy for my Ghostly International box set design with Molly Smith. It was a big honor to go up against giant nominees; Wilco, Paul McCartney, Depeche Mode, Grateful Dead, especially working with an indie label. I also won an Emmy (Zero Days movie), had a book on my work for Ghostly published by VSCO, had a solo gallery show, shot a 45 minute video that traveled around the world’s galleries with Rafiq Bhatia, spoke at Adobe’s main conference, etc. Cina Associates has had a great last couple of years also with some great branding projects as well. 

You’re a mulit-media artist, graphic designer and typeface designer. You also have this deep connection to music. Tell us a little more about what you do and how does it all overlap? 

I am interested in everything. I have explored a lot of the arts; video, animation, photography, pottery, stone lithography, painting (drawing, watercolor, acrylic, oil, murals), theatre, music, poetry, writing… I now concentrate on branding, art, graphic design and typefaces. 

I don’t see any divisions between the arts, it’s all expression in some way or form. I love coming at a problem with new and fresh eyes. Not knowing what you are doing, truly exploring, is a fun ride for me. Sometimes it’s stressful but I love being challenged and seeing through new eyes. 

And that diversity of expression extends to the people you’ve worked with too, right? Tell us about some of the creative collaborations you’ve done with artists and musicians with both your art and design work? How do you approach these collaborations and create a response to another artist’s artwork? 

I love collaborating. My main collaborator would be Ghostly and so many of their musicians, like Matthew Dear, Shigeto, Tadd Mullinix, Lusine… I have done well over 150 covers and each collaborator is very different. My absolute favorite part of collaboration is when the person is truly open and wants to explore with me. I like to listen to the music and understand it, ask questions when we start; review the music, ideas, or whatever they bring to the table and then begin walking down that path together, exploring and building language and hopefully a world. 

Musician and composer, Rafiq Bhatia from Son Lux, has been a great collaborator. It feels like our worlds have entwined. We start with the ideas he composed his music around and then we expand that language visually. It’s a give and take process but one that gets refined in fire. A few years ago, I shot a 45 minute video of abstract art for him and he toured that work with galleries all over the world. The project was commissioned by Kate Nordstrom for Liquid Music/The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and premiered at the Walker Art Center.

The response to their work comes from understanding and practicing semiotics, the language of visuals. It’s important that I know how to speak in many different visual languages. Some of this comes from my curiosity but I always operated under the pretense that I should be able to work on a wide range of subject matter. I have spent my whole life developing this fluency and I understand it’s a massive undertaking. Sometimes I see myself almost as a medium to let other people express their ideas, but I also like to develop my own worlds. When I speak, I like to communicate abstractly. It’s a lot harder and time consuming to successfully realize your ideas. On top of that, I use non traditional instruments to paint with and I like to alter the paint I am using to perform uniquely. Lately I have been working with a larger scale and that has been challenging. 

I just did a big project for the mighty GMUNK that set the tone of what a physical body of work can look like in the NFT world. Right now I am helping Matthew Dear a bit with his show and working on branding. I am hoping to release some work I did with ZuluZuluu/AstralBlak w/ John Klukas and a Zola Jesus project with the heavyweight Timothy Saccenti on SuperRare.

Let’s hear your thoughts on the NFT, block chain and the future of the digital art marketplace. 

I am still figuring out some of my thoughts and ideas, it’s a new space, new energy. Years back, when I first heard about the blockchain, I knew it would revolutionize the arts. I love the idea of being able to catalog your work via this method. This will be a big breakthrough for some of the best minds and creators around and also revolutionize how people can make a living and sell work. We are at the very early stages but it gives a major advantage to digital artists which is wonderful. I am looking forward to seeing it evolve.

What’s  your interest in/connections to art history, music, posters and/or graphic arts. Who or what do you cite as creative influences?

When in college, I really enjoyed art history. I took every class that was offered and had a really brilliant teacher that pushed us hard and taught us to be inquisitive. Our tests would consist of being shown pieces of art we have never seen and we had to say who it was, when it was done, what style and write about the subject matter. It was very foundational for me. Whatever I am interested in, I like to dive deep and learn everything I can about that topic so learning about art through this lens was a perfect fit. That quest led me to collect books (art, design, architecture mainly) and eventually to start a bookstore. 

The list of influences is endless. I think artists like Paul Klee and Dieter Roth stand out in the art world because they spoke through a boundless vernacular, having no limits. I love Emil Ruder for consolidating a set of rules for design and Wolfgang Weingart turning them on their head. I love Andrei Tarkovsky and Orson Wells for being masterful and non-linear story tellers while also being visually breathtaking. I have a passion for Japanese design and art as well. There are thousands more people I could list.