On Saturday, November 9, at 8:00pm, Derrick Fast is opening his art show, Tears of Joy, at Antisocial Skate Shop. His work is about labour, constructing pieces from thousands of component parts. Sometimes he uses patterns of dots and shapes, painstakingly painted by hand, to create skulls and hypnotic geometries. Other times he paints on found objects, or builds installations from cumbersome materials, like brick. To Derrick, art is about hard work and patience, achieving beauty through tedium.

Sad Mag: So how did the show come about?

Derrick Fast: I bought a hoodie there [Antisocial Skate Shop], and it was too small. They didn’t have a bigger size so they had to order another one in. I went in every single day to see if another one had come in. Every time she said no and I felt really bad, because I bugged her everyday for this stupid hoodie. And it didn’t come in for months. So over that time she found out that I painted, and said I should have an art show here.

SM: So are these pieces being made specifically for the show, or projects you were working on anyway?

DF: After I found out I was going to have a show I thought it would be cool to have a theme. There are only three colours in it: red, white, and black. I got a lot of the simple colour scheme from old sign painting, I’m pretty interested in that, hand painted signs.

SM: The work comes in a lot of forms: there are traditional paintings, paint on found bottles, paint on bricks. How did you arrive at those materials, what drew you to them?

DF: I don’t really know how it started. With the brick thing, I wanted it to be a real pain in the ass. There are so many, I wanted it to be in a room and have a presence. Bricks are so heavy, they’re built to last and it’s a hassle to move them.

SM: The point of the bricks isn’t just the pile of them on its own, though, it’s about the word that you’ve painted on each one, building it into a pyramid of these jumbled, disassociated terms. How did you select the words? Is there any particular pattern or sequence, or are they just assembled randomly?

DF: The idea was to get words that trigger either negative or positive emotions. There’s one that says “morals,” and right beside it is one that says “slut,” and then “pure.” There’s “eager” and “adore,” but also “needles” and “secrets” and “need,” so I feel, depending on who you are, if you look at it, you automatically connect words.

SM: So the art is informed by what people bring to it.

DF: Yeah, and that’s also why it’s so big, it’s going to be overhead height. There are around a hundred bricks, I think.

SM: It seems like a lot of your style is assembling piece from a number smaller parts: the bricks with words painted on them, the skulls assembled from thousands of dots or shapes. Why that style?

DF: It’s real tedious. I think it’s about what I was saying earlier: I want it to look like somebody’s, oh wow, put so much work into that one thing. So much work went into something so small. All the bricks, all these little dots make up one thing. I like that you can see all the little mistakes, you can tell that it’s done by hand and that it took so long. That’s what I like about it. It’s not like a computer did it. It looks human. It looks like a pain in the ass. Wow, somebody would go through so much effort to make this thing.

SM: Why is that effort important to you?

DF: A lot of it had to do with me getting into sign painting. A lot of signage is vinyl, very heartless, but when you see a hand painted sign, you can see all the little mistakes and you can tell it was done with a human hand. If it’s done by hand it’ll never be perfect, but I feel like it brings something to the table.

SM: When you start on a piece, do you have an image in your mind of what it’ll look like when it’s done?

DF: Not really, I just kind of wing it. With those skull ones, I had no idea if it was going to work or not. With these, you can tell I get more precise over time. I like the imperfect one more than the perfect ones. Margaret Killgallen is really about that, you can tell they’re all wavery. That’s also why I like doing more tedious stuff. If you look at the triangles, you can see every single line waver. I always think by the end of it I’m going to have a shake, going to need eyeglasses.

Tears of Joy opens at Antisocial Skate Shop at 8PM on Saturday, November 9th and runs until December 2. Once he’s done moving his pile of bricks, Derrick sure would love to see you there. To see more of his work, visit him online.