It was in the dark backalleys of MySpace that I first encountered Ryan Myers. In my desire to network myself into oblivion, I’d befriended hundreds upon hundreds of artists who seemed to be working in the same vein as myself. I also befriended pretty girls, because you can never have too many pretty girls aware of you. Mr. Myers grabbed my attention, though, from among the sea of creatives and pierced young thangs.

I’m a fan of plush items, most notably those bizarre little items that are hand-made, unique and completely out of the ordinary. ‘Plush’ has the automatic connotation of being for children, cute and soft and bedtime-huggable. I sleep with my fair share of plush cthulhu dolls and Spider-Men and octopeds well beyond an acceptable age to do so, and I’m not ashamed. Midwinter nights in upstate New York are frigid, and a little stuffed Hellboy might be just the right size to plug that hole at the bottom of your blanket. It’s purely for survival, you see.

Plush figures, especially those made by artists, are recently finding themselves highly desirable. We’ve gone far beyond the Beanie Baby obsession of yore and entered art and craft territory, populated by the Uglydolls and Shawnimals, and the countless creations of other mad sewing geniuses. Ryan Myers has found his way among these folks with his Melancholia mini-plush figures. These are handmade in small quantities, and packaged in mystery boxes, and completely sucked me into their charmingly morose world. For a mere eight dollars each, I couldn’t let myself miss out on them, and I wanted to know more.

Collin David [for CQ] : I suppose that the first question I should be asking you is exactly WHAT it is that you do. So what is it that you do?

Ryan Myers : I’m an artist trying to make himself known, I suppose.

David : Well, I came across you on MySpace and totally was blown away by your Melancholia mini-plushes.

Myers : Thank you, I appreciate that. I actually did a lot of foot work with them before I put them on MySpace.

David : Where are these coming from?

Myers : Well, initially the idea was derived from a reappearing figure in some of my paintings, which was a dead bunnyman. The first versions were quite larger, more of the uglydoll ilk. I gave away a few to friends and such. I thought about marketing some that way… they had x-out eyes and numbers on their chests.

David : X-eyes are the bomb.

Myers : Yes the bomb, but a pain in the ass hand sewn. They were metallic red, and it was quite cool, but I evolved them out of necessity, unfortunately. [Produces images of the original plushes]

David : Nice! Where did the face get changed to a painted face?

Myers : Those were about 10 inches tall, so when they got smaller. I think it was for sanity purposes.

David : These Melancholia are the first example of a semi-printed plush I’ve seen. It’s really innovative.

Myers : Yeah, I got a little inspiration from a friend of mine on that. He figures all this crazy art stuff out, then passes it along to me. We figured out a way to get my paintings onto Zippos at about the same time I was working on the smaller versions of the bunnies, and I think the idea kind of carried over. That, and the sullenness is more subtle with an alive face opposed to x-eyes.

David : It’s wonderful to innovate on these mundane and unusual processes and make totally unexpected things out of them.

Myers : Either that, or it’s art whoring. Haven’t decided yet. [laughs]

David : I like to think of it as dissecting what exists and making better things out of it!

Myers : I’m a ‘glass half empty’ guy.

David : I think that my glass is half full of hypersensitive bees and old milk. For real.

Myers : No, but seriously… since the shape is so basic, I like having inlaid detail, not reinventing the wheel. Just adding the bling rims.

David : There you go! You’re more adept at the hip analogies.

Myers : Either that or I watch too much ‘Pimp My Ride’.

David : These Melancholia mini-plushes are about 3 inches tall and also seem really intricate and labor-intensive.

Myers : I actually hand sew them. I am not handy enough with a sewing machine for the type of curves and things that need to be sewn. I’ve got it down quite well - I figure I’ve made about 50 to date, maybe more. All I know is I am running out of boxes.

David : Do you find that consistency is an issue with mass-production of this nature, or are the possible inconsistencies part of the inherent awesomeness?

Myers : I like the fact that each one is a little different…. Even though I guess I am sort of mass producing them each one is a hand made art object. I have spoken to some other more prominent plush people and they were aghast at how inexpensive I price them…

David : I admit I was also!

Myers : … but that was part of my reasoning for making them to begin with. I wanted people who liked my paintings but didn’t want to spend the sort of money - they deserve to be able to still have something hand made by me.

David : Who are some of the big-name plush people you spoke to? I met Jenny Harada (who is semi-plush) at Renegade and all of those people are incredibly kind.

Myers : Yeah yeah, I like her work quite a bit. Mainly it was Heidi of mypapercrane fame. We had some MySpace correspondence, [and] then we were in a show together. Strangely enough, I had some bunnies at Renegade but never have been to one myself. The gallery that sort of reps me in Philadelphia took some along with them and wound up selling them all. I would like to think of myself as semi plush too. That’s well on the way to my childhood dream of a nerf world.

David : So you’ve found yourself involved in that whole crafting subculture now.

Myers : Exactly - its weird, straddling the line. I think stores like KidRobot, amongst the many others, helped to blur the line of art and consumerism.

David : Do you shop there? What do you find yourself collecting for inspiration?

Myers : I was just there this past weekend, I love that place. I don’t really go there for anything specific… the Dunnys of course are always in the forefront, and they are fun. I have bought, painted and sold a bunch of the 8″ Munny. I have 3 in my closet waiting to be painted.

David : I totally have one ready to go also.

Myers : So now to answer your question which I avoided - umm, I don’t really gear myself towards any one artist or figure. There’s some Japanese guys or ladies who are great. I find a lot of stuff just surfing and browsing names, like Toki Doki. His Bastardino is great - the little dog in a cactus outfit. I tend to favor things in suits, I guess cause its similar to what I do.

David : Yeah, I dig the whole masquerade face-stickin’-out thing. It’s a subtle theme in the whole pop-surrealist world right now. And tentacles.

Myers : Yeah, my work gets compared a lot to Kathie Olivas, who works with a lot of those themes. She’s borderline-big reputation wise so I don’t mind the comparison. P. S. : I love that you said ‘pop surrealism’ instead of ‘lowbrow’. You just stepped up in my cool book.

Stay tuned for Wednesday, when I drop the rest of this man’s heavy, Melancholia soul all up on you.

During a long social drought, filled with bouts of loneliness and plenty of overeating alone at various sushi bars, I made a conscious decision to try to conquer my isolation. You can’t cure isolation with sushi, no matter how many dragon rolls you shove into your slowly-expanding gut.

I already had something of a presence on the internet, having created and maintained at least two different websites for a few years, but I wasn’t on the web in any social terms. So, I found myself setting up small, free profiles on places like Friendster and OKCupid, advertising myself like some kind of prize stallion who happened to really like Batman and cuddling and robots. I kept fairly quiet, waiting for digital passersby to notice me and make contact, and in time, I found myself making a fair number of friends and chatting partners. There was always a kind of distance and dissatisfaction when online friendships didn’t materialize into actual friendships with meat-people, but when they blossomed, they became trips to flea markets, beautiful concerts in small NYC clubs and a few platonic sleepovers. Eventually, I became disillusioned and cancelled my memberships to all but one : MySpace.

MySpace, as is often discussed in the news, is a pretty multi-faceted online networking database. While a significant portion of it is cluttered with woe-ridden early-teens with a predilection for animated GIFs and posting pictures of hot cars or supermodels, beneath it all is a powerful communication tool. People set themselves up like digital trading cards - an image to represent themselves and a handful of biographical information. The only difference is that trading cards are usually made about people of importance. MySpace profiles are ostensibly about how hot Kevin Federline apparently is and what debauchery any given teenager participated in last night.

Above, you can see my personal MySpace picture, in which I try to appear intellectual and / or interesting, mostly to women. Note the use of the fedora and the urban landscape. This, as well as my ‘hand-to-chin-in-thought’ pose, suggests a charming savviness. I like to think.

As with any trading cards, you might want to collect as many as possible, or you might just collect your favorite players or superheroes. In fact, when you’re adding friends to your network on MySpace, you’re actually temporarily re-directed to a directory called ‘collect’, which sends an eMail to the person you’d like to add to your network, and pending their approval, the both of you are linked, inseperable until death. Or at least until one of you changes your mind and makes that harsh decision to click on ‘delete’.

I have a personal account and a business account on MySpace. Through my personal account, friends who date back as early as elementary school have looked up my name and re-established contact with me, inquiring about whether or not I’ve made it out of my tiny town yet (I haven’t), what I’m doing with my life (trying to make it out of my tiny town), and regaling me with how far away and successful they’ve become. I hide my jealous resentment well, behind a facade of LOLs and emoticons. I keep my list of connections slim, because even if I’ve ventured into that world of social networking, I’m still fairly antisocial.

However, with my business account, I took on the monotonous task of collecting as many friends as possible to promote my new hand-made wooden robots. Over the course of a week, I amassed over 500 networked individuals, bands and galleries, all of whom use MySpace to discover new people and develop a web presence. I started with everyone who used the word ‘robot’ in their screen name, followed by anyone who listed ‘art’ in their searchable profiles, followed by many different bands, followed by a bevy of gothic pin-up girls - not only because I have a weakness for them, but because of all of the personalities on MySpace, they usually have the highest number of collected ‘friends’, and the larger the network that you’re attaching yourself onto, like a lamprey to the graceful orca, the higher visibility you’ll acheive when trying to promote yourself. The collection of people continued to grow, and the critical mass of the collection has invited plenty of people to come across my wooden robots and add me to their networks, and potentially, this means sales aplenty.

I’m networked with my favorite art magazine, Juxtapoz, and some of my favorite pop-surrealist artists, like Lori Earley, Ghostshrimp and Sas Christian, all of whom have set up their own profiles to communicate with their fans and discover new things in the realm of MySpace. I’ve talked with some of my favorite musicians, like Tullycraft, Bikeride and Tom Maxwell. And ultimately, I’ve collected a vast network of minds that I can potentially interact with for inspiration and collaboration.

Swing on by, promote your projects and don’t forget to include me in your online adventures.