EAST ROCHESTER — You’ve probably seen Dave Pollot‘s artwork before. After all, he’s been featured on Mashable, The Chive, Nerdist, Bored Panda, The Daily Mail, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, and MTV.com. So at some point, he was likely in your social media feed.
If you happened to be at Buffalo’s Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts this past weekend, you most likely saw him there, too. Maybe you said to yourself, “Hey! It’s that guy!”
Well “that guy” lives right here in Western New York, turning trash — or close to it — into treasures. Pollot takes paintings from local thrift stores and livens them up by adding Optimus Prime, for example … or maybe a Sharknado or the Kool-Aid man.
Pollot says the inspiration came to him a few years back when he was with “a quirky young lady named Becca,” at a thrift store and the two “joked about how fun it would be to paint funny things into some of the more (or less) interesting pieces of abandoned thrift art.” The thought was as fleeting as most potential thrift-store purchases are. Until a few weeks later, when Becca showed up with one.
Years after that, Pollot is still a software engineer by day, but he spends his nights (and weekends) adding geeky touches to oil paintings Becca brings home.
Pollot was kind enough to answer some questions for us we thought you might find interesting.
1) Tell me about that first painting that Becca brought home from the thrift store. What made what had previously been a joke between the two of you become a real thing?
It was a small framed print of thatched roof cottage in the woods with a woman either washing or perhaps hanging clothes up to dry, and it (that small framed print) was the thing that turned our joking conversation into a real thing. It was a few weeks after we’d first joked about it, and Becca found it on one of her thrift trips and couldn’t resist bringing it home. I painted in a little monster that night and was hooked.
2) The “re-creations” tend to be geek and sci-fi heavy. Is that due to demand or personal preference?
I very much paint the things that I love. I grew up loving sci-fi of every kind and I work in an industry that stays on top of geek and sci-fi pop culture. It’s just great that the things that I love happen to resonate with other people as well.
3) Do you have a favorite or two? If so, what is it that you like about them?
There’s one (out of the approximately 160 that I’ve done) that we keep hanging in our living room. It’s called “Unplugged”, an ocean scene with a giant cork plug suspended from an old chain. I grew up in a house with a clawfoot bathtub and it had one of those stoppers. I also find that I usually like the most recent painting I’ve done the most…until the next one. They’re all things I love, so they always stay fun for me.
4) Is there an average length of time that it takes to re-purpose a painting? Or does it vary greatly?
On average, I’d guess that each one takes two to three nights of painting, but it very much depends on the size and complexity of the piece that I’m working on.
5) Where do you get your paintings? I’ve seen that most come from thrift stores — as this is a local website, would you mind naming a couple specifically?
No one store in particular- Becca cases them all!
6) Do you have any upcoming shows where people can see you and purchase your works?
We’ll be at Clothesline at the Memorial Art Gallery, but we mainly sell online (though it’s been a lot of fun to meet our customers in person).
7) Is this a full-time gig for you now? Or do you have a career in your field of expertise?
I still write software for a living and paint at night. Maybe someday it’ll be a full-time gig, but it’s really nice not to put that kind of pressure on the artwork. I also really enjoy my current job- and doing both works both sides of the brain.
8) There have been several stories on “viral” websites about you and your art going back about three years. What’s been the biggest surprise?
I think I’m always surprised when I see one of these articles. The very first one was still one of the most surprising (It was a blog called Mighty Mega) because the idea that someone would take the time to write about my work was foreign to me.
9) Having been familiar with your work before seeing you this past weekend at Elmwood Ave Festival, I was surprised to realize you were local. Do you get that reaction a lot? Being recognized as “the guy” or “that guy?”
I wouldn’t say that I get that a lot, but it does happen. It’s really cool for me to talk to people who either follow me on Instagram or who have seen my work elsewhere. Putting faces to online usernames is a lot of fun.
10) You list “Rochester” as your home on Twitter. Is it actually Rochester? Or an outlying community?
Becca and I live just outside of the city in East Rochester in a quiet little neighborhood. We love it.
You can catch Pollot in person Sept. 10 and 11 at Rochester’s Clothesline Festival. Or he’s all over social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Etsy. And with prints starting at just $15, he can easily be in your living room.
All WNY is made possible thanks to coffee and sleep deprivation.
We appreciate your readership. We like money, too.