John Michnya
I am a Pittsburgh-based freelance illustrator, graphic designer, and screen printer. I’ve been creating posters, logos, T-shirts and personally commissioned illustrations since 2014. I've always been the guy more interested in the doodles in the margins than the notes I was supposed to be taking. Distorting the serious world around me into something funny. Or gross. Usually it involved monkeys. Who doesn't love monkeys? Luckily for me, in the middle of working on getting a PhD that I didn't actually want to get, people started looking over to my dissertation of doodles and said, "Hey, that's pretty good." So I ditched the books and dove into art. Acting, directing, drawing, puppets - anything that brought me joy and didn't pay me a dime. Not having a formal visual art education, I have carved my own style and process that elevates a lifelong doodler into a collaborative cartoonist. My favorite pieces of work are the ones that make the viewer feel uneasy, where something feels unexpected, or maybe just makes them laugh. My work is active, alive, like something might fly apart or suddenly go awry at any moment. I love to reach for the playfully warped, skewed, or downright weird, capturing bold, colorful characters in moments of exaggerated emotion. Perhaps it’s my background as a live performer that makes me want to create art that pulsates. That breathes and blinks and farts and smirks and leaves you wanting to meet it in person. Or run away as fast as you can.