Featured Artist: Sustici

The DBH artist Sustici, or Gianluca, considers creativity to be “the act of molding a feeling into an image.” The bold and colorful graphics practically buzz with a retro tone that evokes a sense of nostalgia, like hearing an old favorite song on the radio.

Although Gianluca was born and raised in Italy, he has been lucky enough to call the Andalusia region of Spain his home for the last 10 years. He grew up browsing local record stores and finding beauty in the vinyl art he discovered. He admits that the “connection between music and graphic design [is] fascinating” and that vinyl art, cd covers, and movie billboards are his biggest inspiration. In fact, his greatest accomplishment is creating designs that were sold as vinyl art worldwide. Nonetheless, his most recent style is encouraged by “simple concepts with a strong retro feeling from the 70/80/90.”

Sustici jokes that during the recent quarantine he has felt like a “desperate housewife” who spends his time baking, cooking, and watching old movies. Still, he shares that creating art has given him an outlet and it is “almost therapeutic for me.” He is not driven by the idea of financial success or prestige – instead – he makes art because he finds joy in the creative process. He confesses, “as long as I enjoy doing it, I will do it.” He appreciates the struggle that artists face when trying to manifest thoughts and feelings into art, but he reminds them to just “have funnnnnnnn and think outside the box.”