Today we’d like to introduce you to Kyle Switzer.
Hi Kyle, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
There was this great velocity to everything when I graduated high school. I guess I can start the story there.
Upon receiving my diploma, I immediately moved to New Zealand with my best friend to live out of a van. We bought this van from an old painter, and the painter had just been driving the van around with no ignition. You’d stick this long flathead screwdriver under the steering wheel, into a mess of wires, feeling in the dark for something to turn.
I loved that van so much; it was like a good friend that never stopped pushing forward. It used to hiccup and cough when you tried to start and every time you thought to yourself, ‘This is it’. I think it was the second day we found out the van topped out at 50 MPH—60 MPH felt really dangerous. My mom came to visit, and we took the van up to 80 MPH to see what would happen. The whole radiator exploded on the highway and the fan ripped into the cooling pipe.
I’ll never forget there was always pasta everywhere in the van, especially in the sheets. Someone, sometime, always had an open bag of pasta with no clip. You’d roll over at night and hear this crunch, or you’d hear someone fishing out rotini from their hip thinking it was a bug.
Another good story is my friend and I went into this thrift store one day and found this dartboard, the type with a suction cup to put on a wall. We hung it up to the back windshield and played one round with that dart board until my dart missed and shattered the back windshield. I’ll never forget that sound, it was like a dream, we just sat there for a couple of minutes listening to glass crack like ice in the night.
This sweet girl came along and took me on hikes and showed me how to handstand on the beach, and after that, you never know where the hell you are. I sold the van in a single day, and she let me sleep in the trunk of her Subaru. I spent most nights with the mosquitoes humming and those green electrical boxes humming, streetlights humming. One day the cafe she worked at caught me brushing my teeth in their bathroom then offered me a job cleaning the toilets out of pity.
From there one of the workers offered his floor as a place to stay. When I got to his apartment, right next to his bed, folded carefully, there were two folded duvet covers with a yoga mat laid on top. It was heartbreaking in the best way. Were still friends. I stayed for three months.
Everyone at the cafe was like me, with no dreams and nothing to offer anybody. You were always spitting and laughing, and no one ever tried to find out what it all meant. We used to take the bus 45 minutes into Auckland on Friday nights. There was this small Venezuelan girl and this dark Cuban that used to come into town with us. The Cuban liked her, and she tried not to show she did too. You could always hear them up on the terrace when everyone took the drinks downstairs. Once the Cuban asked the Venezuelan if she was coming on the bus. She said she needed some “me time”, The Cuban lit up and said, “You’re being too selfish with your ‘Me’ time. I need some you time.”
I’ll never forget that line, it was totally a knockout for me. Life is life, and you meet the kindest people in the corners. I think that’s the best way to describe my start in art, maybe that’s a soft introduction to myself. I now sleep in a queen-sized bed and work on my computer most days.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been completely easy, but it’s been as easy as one could ask. The thing is, in design, there’s this plutocratic system where the best schools are incredibly expensive, and the top positions are typically reserved for graduates of these institutions. The kids of the rich get richer, and everyone else gets pushed out of the way. I’m part of the problem, it’s a weird paradox to be a part of. Just go to Brooklyn and tell me why they got good pistachio lattes. It goes hand and hand with what’s happening in SCAD, as the college grows a lot of real estate in Savannah has been bought up by SCAD parents as a 4-year investment. You spend four years here and never really touch foot in Georgia. Steinbeck wrote about it when the banks bought up all the land and pushed the Okies out to Hoovervilles. You gotta be careful with migration, a place dies when there’s no connection to the land.
So, for me, life has been relatively smooth. Everyone goes through their hardships. Compared to what I’ve seen through others, mine is a drop in the hat. I’ve been given great opportunities that many will never receive. I put on an Arcteryx to block to rain for god’s sake. I have these two great parents who always visit me wherever I am, a brother who takes time to call me if I get down. If you have that life moves fairly smooth.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I think as a designer, I always try to create from the streets, the mud, the armrest of a bus. I try to get as far away from the laptop as much as I can before I make the thing. Don’t let your education get in the way of your learning, I always try to live with that in mind. I always try to get to this place of learning hands-on, it’s where I feel most youthful and open. This place, a place of youth and open-mindedness to experience is always where I have found success.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success
I try to go with the flow. I would say I’ve found a good amount of knowledge through observing and being quiet when someone is trying to tell me something. Coltrane has that great line “You have to be silent to learn”, I try to go into most situations with that in mind.
The thing is it’s hard to answer because I don’t think I have much success yet. My professional career is like going to the gym every day, but you still look skinny when you look in the mirror. It’s like Tolstoy said, “I’ll go on arguing, I’ll go on expressing my ideas inappropriately, no matter what happens to me, every second of it, has the incontestable meaning of the goodness I have the power to put into it.” I like that. I remember reading that and thinking, well there it is!
Contact Info:
- Website: Kyleswitzer.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kylesmalls/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-switzer-11411a231
